Thread: Could a computer program have a consciousness?

You can't map atoms. Heisenburg uncertainty principal. You can either know where it is, or what it's doing but not both, and measuring it changes it.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

You can't map atoms. Heisenburg uncertainty principal. You can either know where it is, or what it's doing but not both, and measuring it changes it.

He means if we can render GOOGOLS of triangles to make up models.

This is basically the Hard Problem reformulated for the sci-fi crowd, isn't it?

Originally Posted by ninja9578

You can't map atoms. Heisenburg uncertainty principal. You can either know where it is, or what it's doing but not both, and measuring it changes it.

No, the Uncertainty Principle puts a lower limit on the product of position and momentum certainty. So that limit (which I think is hbar/2) determines when the Uncertainty Principle becomes relevant. And it turns out, it doesn't really apply until you get down to individual electrons. Whole atoms can be pinned down quite accurately with respect to their size.