Error converting content: marked is not a function
title:: Books/Life 3.0 - Substrate Independence - I first came to appreciate this crucial idea of substrate independence because there are many beautiful examples of it in physics. Waves, for instance: they have properties such as speed, wavelength and frequency, and we physicists can study the equations they obey without even needing to know what particular substance they’re waves in. - A computation is a transformation of one memory state into another. - intelligence: it feels so non-physical because it’s substrate-independent, taking on a life of its own that doesn’t depend on or reflect the physical details. #sicp collapsed:: true - In short, computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it’s not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn’t matter. - In other words, the hardware is the matter and the software is the pattern. This substrate independence of computation implies that AI is possible: intelligence doesn’t require flesh, blood or carbon atoms. #boom #micdrop