Archived Could completely mechanical machines be self-aware, when being complex enough? (AskScience)
submitted ago by killer7
Posted by: killer7
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Archived Could completely mechanical machines be self-aware, when being complex enough? (AskScience)
submitted ago by killer7
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[–] fxm ago
There's no reason why a mechanical machine can't be Turing complete, as Turing's own thought experiment showed. Any Turing complete mechanical machine should be able to emulate any electronic or biochemical system to any arbitrary degree of precision necessary. The main advantage to electronic and biochemical systems is speed. An awareness built from mechanical units would probably be a lot slower, and require a lot more energy to accomplish the same results, but there's no reason to suppose it wouldn't be just as self aware as you are.