If that is true, you have a proof that the Church-Turing thesis is false.
> LLMs can tell you about the taste of a beer, but we know that they have never tasted a beer. Flight simulators can't take you to Australia, no matter how well they simulate the experience.
For this to be relevant, you'd need to show that there are possible sensory inputs that can't be simulated to a point where the "brain" in question - be it natural or artificial - can't tell the difference.
Which again, would boil down to proving the Church-Turing thesis wrong.
>If that is true, you have a proof that the Church-Turing thesis is false.
We're talking the physical version right? I don't have any counter examples that I can describe, but I could hold that that's because human language, perception and cognition cannot capture the mechanisms that are necessary to produce them.
But I won't as that's cheating.
Instead I would say that although I can't disprove PCT it's not proven either, and unlike other unproven things like P!=NP this is about physical systems. Some people think that all of physical reality is discrete (quantized), if they are right then PCT could be true. However, I don't think this is so as I think that it means that you have to consider time as unreal, and I think that's basically as crazy as denying consciousness and free will. I know that a lot of physicists are very clever, but those of them that have lost the sense to differentiate between a system for describing parts of the universe and a system that defines the workings of the universe as we cannot comprehend it are not good at parties in my experience.
>For this to be relevant, you'd need to show that there are possible sensory inputs that can't be simulated to a point where the "brain" in question - be it natural or artificial - can't tell the difference.
I dunno what you mean by "relevant" here - you seem to be denying that there is
a difference between reality and unreality? Like a Super Cartesian idea where you say that not only is the mind separate from the body but that the existence of bodies or indeed the universe that they are instantiated in is irrelevant and doesn't matter?
Wild. Kinda fun, but wild.
I stand by my point though, computing functions about how molecules interact with each other and lead to the propagation of signals along neural pathways to generate qualia is only the same as tasting beer if the qualia are real. I don't see that there is any account of how computation can create a feeling of reality or what it is like to. At some point you have to hit the bottom and actually have an experience.
I think that may depend on how someone defines intelligence. For example, if intelligence includes the ability to feel emotion or appreciate art, then I think it becomes much more plausible that intelligence is not the same as computation.
Of course, simply stating that isn't in of itself a philisophically rigorous argument. However, given that not everyone has training in philosophy and it may not even be possible to prove whether "feeling emotion" can be achieved via computation, I think it's a reasonable argument.
I think if they define intelligence that way, it isn't a very interesting discussion, because we're back to Church-Turing: Either they can show that this actually has an effect on the ability to reason and the possible outputs of the system that somehow exceeds the Turing computable, or those aspects are irrelevant to an outside observer of said entity because the entity would still be able to act in exactly the same way.
I can't prove that you have a subjective experience of feeling emotion, and you can't prove that I do - we can only determine that either one of us acts as if we do.
And so this is all rather orthogonal to how we define intelligence, as whether or not a simulation can simulate such aspects as "actual" feeling is only relevant if the Church-Turing thesis is proven wrong.
There are lots and lots of things that we can't personally observe about the universe. For example, it's quite possible that everyone in New York is holding their breath at the moment. I can't prove that either way, or determine anything about that but I accept the reports of others that no mass breath holding event is underway... and I live my life accordingly.
On the other hand many people seem unwilling to accept the reports of others that they are conscious and have freedom of will and freedom to act. At the same time these people do not live as if others were not conscious and bereft of free will. They do not watch other people murdering their children and state "well they had no choice". No they demand that the murderers are punished for their terrible choice. They build systems of intervention to prevent some choices and promote others.
It's not orthogonal, it's the motivating force for our actions and changes our universe. It's the heart of the matter, and although it's easy to look away and focus on other parts of the problems of intelligence at some point we have to turn and face it.
Church-Turing doesn't touch upon intelligence nor consciousness. It talks about "effective procedures". It claims that every effectively computable thing is Turing computable. And effective procedures are such that "Its instructions need only to be followed rigorously to succeed. In other words, it requires no ingenuity to succeed."
Church-Turing explicitly doesn't touch upon ingenuity. It's very well compatible with Church-Turing that humans are capable of some weird decision making that is not modelable with the Turing machine.
If that is true, you have a proof that the Church-Turing thesis is false.
> LLMs can tell you about the taste of a beer, but we know that they have never tasted a beer. Flight simulators can't take you to Australia, no matter how well they simulate the experience.
For this to be relevant, you'd need to show that there are possible sensory inputs that can't be simulated to a point where the "brain" in question - be it natural or artificial - can't tell the difference.
Which again, would boil down to proving the Church-Turing thesis wrong.