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#4843·Knut Sondre Sæbø revised 4 days ago"Understanding" isn't just another way of saying "can explain.". Explaining follows from understanding, but isn't synonymous. An RNG could by chance generate a good explanation, but it doesn't understand it, and therefore can't distinguish it from garbage. Understanding involves recognizing that something is a good explanation. It is conscious understanding that makes conjecture and criticism possible. Without it, you have no criticism, only random selection. What do you think of the suggestion that what's lacking from the explanatory universality definition, is an intelligent selection mechanism. A random program can generate any explanation given infinite time, but it will never select which explanation is good.
This is a good point, related to Dirk's #4813. As far as the bounty goes, I think my response in #4823 applies here as well, however. To refine it:
Recognizing, criticizing, and being able to understand explanations could all be requisites for tractably synthesizing any possible explanation. The bounty regards whether the tractability requirement can be done without.
It seems like a mind being able to create, recognize, understand and differentiate (etc.) good explanations are necessary but not sufficient criteria for personhood; if that process is intractable, then beyond a certain amount of current knowledge (considering that as the input to the process), the person effectively cannot continue with it... so that compromises the universality.
They must be able to create, recognize and understand any given explanation, and maintain that ability as their knowledge grows, ad infinitum...