From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!agate!netsys!pagesat!spssig.spss.com!markrose Fri Oct 30 15:17:59 EST 1992
Article 7425 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: grounding and the entity/environment boundary
Message-ID: <1992Oct28.204758.5078@spss.com>
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References: <1992Oct27.205040.117959@Cookie.secapl.com> <1992Oct28.000703.5993@spss.com> <1992Oct28.165656.126694@Cookie.secapl.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1992 20:47:58 GMT
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In article <1992Oct28.165656.126694@Cookie.secapl.com> frank@Cookie.secapl.com 
(Frank Adams) writes:
>Computer memories are designed for a certain level of performance.  It would
>not be too difficult to design a computer memory so that it had essentially
>zero loss on time scales measured in decades.  Most existing computer
>memories are not that good, because it doesn't pay to make them that good.

Ah, so computer memories don't achieve the level of performance of human
ones anyway.  QED.  

>Problems of size can be dealt with by providing a big enough memory.

Are you sure you're allowed to play with this computer?  Do you really
think "more memory" can solve all memory problems?  Do you think all
processes are O(n); or if so, that the cost, time, and space required by
additional memory can be ignored?  You're quite sure that accessing greater 
memory will never require modifying or rewriting your software, and that 
this process has no limits?

It may seem perverse of me to insist on these details, and not just allow
that idealized machines with idealized memory and idealized software can
remain grounded forever.  But such an admission would be meaningless.
Grounding concerns connection to the real world; it seems to me that only
entities existing in the real world and subject to its constraints are
even candidates for this status.


