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The Ancient Geek's avatar

If a human accesses the Noetic Realm, does that look like an exception to the laws of physics?I

If an AI accesses the Noetic Realm, does that look a departure from its programming?

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Derek Lomas's avatar

It better not break laws of physics -- that wouldn't be sensible. It may rely on non-reductionist causality. Rather than the material cause of subatomic particles causing higher level phenomena, the forms and structures of the noetic are the cause. Like, the structure of a rational argument becomes the functional cause of human actions in a more meaningful sense than the propagation of atomic forces.

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The Ancient Geek's avatar

If accessing the Noetic Realm is just a causal process that happens to constitute a normatively correct process of logic or maths, then a pocket calculator accesses the Noetic Realm, and there is no problem in an advanced AI doing so.

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Derek Lomas's avatar

The idea is to try to explain the emergence of accurate and effective conceptual thinking. The calculate is a good example to try to explain -- it’d need to explain why it’s not actually thinking with concepts but rather processing information in another way.

I know it’s out on a limb to try to draw Plato into this, but conceptually competent AI is so surprising that I believe it is worthy of diverse hypothetical explanations. Thanks for engaging.

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The Ancient Geek's avatar

if an AI can do.accurate and effective conceptual thinking, it has a mechanical explanation, and there is still no obvious need for a Platonic explanation in addition.The

Conceptual competent AI isn't surprising, it's overdue.

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