[devodo]

> (Pro-strong-AI)... This is basically a disbelief in the ability of physics to correctly describe what happens in the world — a well-established philosophical position. Are you giving up on physics?

This is a very strong argument. Certainly all the ingredients to replicate a mind must exist within our physical reality.

But does an algorithm running on a computer have access to all the physics required?

For example, there are known physical phenomena, such as quantum entanglement, that are not possible to emulate with classical physics. How do we know our brains are not exploiting these, and possibly even yet unknown, physical phenomena?

An algorithm running on a classical computer is executing in a very different environment than a brain that is directly part of physical reality.

[deepburner]

> there are known physical phenomena, such as quantum entanglement

QC researcher here, strictly speaking, this is false. Clifford circuits can be efficiently simulated classically and they exhibit entanglement. The bottom line is we're not entirely sure where the (purported) quantum speedups come from. It might have something to do with entanglement, but it's not enough by itself.

Re: about mermin's device, im not sure why you think it can not be simulated classically when all of the dynamics involved can be explained by 4x4 complex matrices.

[devodo]

Could you accurately simulate the device on a computer precisely following the rules of the challenge? So that means the devices are isolated and therefore no global state is allowed. The devices are not aware of each others state nor results. You are only allowed to use local state to simulate the entangled particle. You can use whatever local hidden variables you want as long as it doesn't break the global state rule.

[clob]

> there are known physical phenomena, such as quantum entanglement, that are not possible to emulate with classical physics

This is wrong. You can even get a mod for Minecraft which implements quantum mechanics.

https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/qcraft-reimagin...

[justinpombrio]

More precisely: you can emulate quantum mechanics using a classical computer, but the best known algorithms to do so take exponential running time.