Posted: Jan 13, 2017 2:48 pm
ughaibu wrote:As explained above, if all human behaviour is "chemistry and physics doing its thing", then in principle, it would be possible to derive, from laws of chemistry or physics, all behaviour of human beings.
You're hedging, there, with the words 'in principle'. It's a computationally-intractable problem, and we don't have to assume anything more than chemistry and physics. Not because there's hidden woo, but because of combinatorial complexity. Surely you understand enough about 'derivation' to know that combinatorial complexity prevents you from deriving it before the heat death of the universe. Unless, of course, you mean "in principle, with magic computations involving magic beans" or "magic computation that extends beyond the heat death of the universe". If you think there's an 'in principle' that allows that, let's hear the principle.