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What is it like to be a thermostat? (1996)
What is it Like to be a Thermostat? An Excerpt From The Conscious Mind, By David Chalmers Let us consider an information-processing system that is almost maximally simple: a thermostat. Considered …
But even this is to impute far too much structure to the thermostat’s experiences, by suggesting the dimensionality of a visual field, and the relatively rich natures of black, white, and gray. It would be odd for a fundamental property to be instantiated for the first time only relatively late in the history of the universe, and even then only in occasional complex systems. *All of the excerpts on my blog are from books that have stayed with me for some reason—because the concept was awe inspiring, changed how I view the world, was beautifully expressed, or all three.
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