Re:Is it April 1st ? (Score 1)

1) so your brain doesn't function deterministically? even if you believe it's the case, you'll have a really hard time proving that you have any more volition than the computer you're reading this on. even if you're brain isn't deterministic due to quantum randomness, the same would be true of your computer (and everything else).

2) please explain what self-awareness is and how you know that only humans (or animals, or whatever entities you're limiting it to) have it.

3) do you believe that the brain is more powerful than a turing machine? if so, do you at least have some intuitive argument for why that's the case? if not, it would then seem obvious that the only thing seperating sentient machines from non-sentient machines, if anything, would be computational power and the program being run.

your argument reads like searle's chinese room argument, which ended up being "well, you see, the system of the room and the person can't be conscious as a whole system, because, well, that's just silly." ok, well, thanks for such a logically sound argument to back that statement up. the best thing that the article had to say was brooks' quote about our understanding of conscousness being "prescientific"; we have no idea what creates it, how broad a range of forms it can take, what (if anything) it's restricted to, etc, etc.