🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <37f794$ipf@portal.gmu.edu>, Harry Erwin <herwin@vanish> wrote:
>Here's the reason for the original 'turtles' post. It has
>to do with Searle, Pribram, and Penrose's argument that the brain can
>do computational things that a digital computer can't. If that is the
>case, then an AI will have to have 'analog' components similar to those
>in the brain, and the question of what those components are becomes
>interesting. Now, consider what processes could result in this. First,
>if the fourth derivatives of the underlying dynamics are bounded, then
>the system can be digitally simulated (using numerical PDE integration).
>Hence, for the SPP argument to hold, the fourth derivatives must be
>unbounded or undefined. That could be a result of significant structural
>discontinuities or possibly a lack of a smallest scale for significant
>structure ('turtles all the way down'). 
>
 Is it possible for you to briefly explain what is so special about
the fourth derivative as compared with, say, the fifth that effects
digital simulation?

>Note that I'm trying to avoid arguments from chaotic dynamics (weak
>based on the Grebogi and Ott results) and from computability (the brain
>as a Turing machine), since neither show the brain doing anything that a
>computer cannot do.
>
>--
>Harry Erwin

Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po