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Programs could be evolved non-computationally. But that process could itself still be simulated, per the Church-Turing-Deutsch Thesis.
By the Church-Turing Thesis, all computation can be specified/programmed. So the evolutionary aspect of a person can be specified/programmed, if it is computational.
The system may not have perfect knowledge of all programs present in it. The repeated independent emergence of winged flight in the biosphere comes to mind.
Because programs present in the system at one time could be no longer present at another time. Previously well-adapted programs could have decayed, been destroyed or consumed. So the same evolutionary path (approximately or not) could be travelled again, in principle.
Actually this is not implied. One experience and an identical later one could be caused by the same program(s) being run again at a later time; if the program which is identical to the given experience is part of an "evolutionary personhood program", that still qualifies: If the second experience is identical, under the above solution that just means that the exact same evolutionary steps are taken in the second case. Maybe this would virtually never happen, but poses no problem of principle.
Understanding explanatory knowledge seems like a better criterion
By the latter standard, neither nature nor random number generators are people, which is sensible; nor can nature create any given possible knowledge tractably -- this is true because the fact that all possible knowledge exists is only by way of the multiverse, which is a process that cannot be simulated in its entirety, even by a quantum computer.
This is a bad criterion because then random program generators are sometimes people.
The other day, I heard an American say ‘must not’ in the sense you mean. So this seems to be more common than I realized.
He didn’t use the contraction, and I suspect Americans would find the contraction unnatural. But they do apparently agree that ‘must not’ does not only mean ‘is forbidden to’ but also ‘necessarily cannot’. So I was definitely wrong about this.
Some people think if they’re hungry that means they’re losing fat. I think that’s wrong.
You can eat a single meal at Cheesecake Factory for 2500kcals and be hungry again an hour later.
Or you can eat low-calorie foods throughout the day and not get very hungry until it’s actually time to eat again.
Some people might have trouble reaching their maintenance calories if they ate nothing but chicken breast, boiled potatoes, and broccoli for a day. They’d feel very full throughout the day.
I don’t expect much correlation, if any, between how satiating and how calorically dense some food is.
The good news for people who enjoy volume eating is that you can eat a lot while losing fat as long as you do it right. That means foods high in fiber and/or water (again, potatoes) and lean proteins. Vegetables generally work well.
The most important thing for fat loss is a calorie deficit, not hunger. Hunger is not a reliable indicator that you’re losing fat. You could be losing fat without being hungry, or you could be gaining weight while being hungry often.
Don’t go off of feelings. Count calories, macronutrients, and fiber, and weigh yourself to track progress.
Need time indicators again, for when an idea was posted, like we used to have. But shorter: something like ‘1h’
In everyday English, we say ‘probably’ to leave room for error and communicate some uncertainty. That’s fine because everyone knows we’re not assigning actual probabilities in the sense of the probability calculus.
In math, we use the probability calculus to describe the frequency of outcomes for underlying processes that look random. Like a coin toss. That’s also fine because we know all possible outcomes and we have a measure for each.
Things go wrong when people use probability even though they don’t know the outcomes (because of the growth of knowledge, say, as you write in #4762) or they have no measure for them or the underlying phenomena don’t behave randomly (again because of the growth of knowledge). Like Elon Musk tweeting we’re 90% likely to see AGI in 2026. (Not a literal quote but he says stuff like that sometimes.)
Some people try to steal the prestige of math and hide their ignorance by using the probability calculus illegitimately.
See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc. It’s been years since I watched it but it’s bound to have related ideas.
(Steel-manning the common sense view)
We assign implicit probabilities as an expression of our current state of knowledge.
"In the summer desert it will probably be sunny this afternoon" tends to come from some who has no reason to think it won't be sunny, but maybe hasn't investigated it enough to be confident. It roughly translates to "everything I know points to it being sunny this afternoon, but I don't have a grasp of all the factors involved, so I am allowing myself the slim possibility (lol) that I will be surprised".
It is mistaken to apply probabilistic thinking to human affairs, because they involve knowledge, and the growth of knowledge cannot be predicted.
In summer in the desert, will it "probably" be sunny in the afternoon?
PROBLEM: Why are we conscious of the apple rendering? Given (6), why is there an experience of it, if the programs comprising it are looping, and so are therefore predefined?
SOLUTION: The apple programs are not the same programs one execution to the next. They are being re-evolved every time they are run. This evolution is what the person is doing, and so must be what gives rise to the experience consisting of the apple rendering.
This suggests that programs can be “run differently” to result in a different computation. This is false because it violates Substrate Independence: the instantiation of a program is unaffected by its physical implementation. If a “context” changes what the program is computing, then that’s a different program. Suggesting that a person running the apple programs “makes them” conscious therefore is not sound. The programs are either conscious or not. If they were, by (A1), they would be people.
(7) We can be conscious of the apple imagery for the entire 5 seconds.
(6) Repeated running of the same fixed program is automatic, requires no creativity, and cannot constitute experience.
(5) Repeated running of the same fixed program, not being a person, does not make it a person.
(4) The programs rendering the apple are not people, so cannot themselves constitute experience.
(3) The programs rendering the apple imagery must be looping until stopped, since they could not have advance knowledge of when the stimulus stops.
(2) The rendering is caused by the running of some number of programs.