Hi Phillip,

Thanks for your comments.

Your objection to my experiment seems to be that you can't step into the same river twice. I acknowledge that but I don't think it detracts from the point of the experiment. The point is not identifying the radio and determining if it is one or two radios. It certainly becomes a different radio as soon as you make any change, if not sooner.

The point is in the maintenance of the function of the radio. That is, does each new version of the changed radio still work? It is clear that in order for any version to work, it must be able to detect the fluctuations in the EM field around its antenna, or equivalent, and amplify and change those fluctuations so as to be able to drive the speakers. So, understanding how the radio works, we would probably be able to transform one working radio into a completely different other working radio. I think that attempting to do this without understanding how radio works, or even that there is an EM field rife with broadcast information, would be virtually impossible. That is the position I think we would find ourselves in if we attempted to do Kyle's proposed experiment.

Thanks for the suggestion of "omniscience", but I strenuously refuse to accept it. I am convinced that this consciousness is NOT omniscient. Otherwise I don't think we would see such a long drawn out, trial-and-error, fits-and-starts, fossil record on earth, among many other such indicators.

The universe may be like a computer, as Wolfram recently suggests, but in my opinion, that description misses a crucial component. That component being consciousness. I don't agree that computers can become conscious unless they acquire some type of "radio" communication to put them in touch with some other consciousness and thereby via some suitable VR code, allow that consciousness to experience and express itself through the computer and whatever it has access to. We humans do that now. I suspect that God has been doing it for a long time. But the computer without consciousness is, in my opinion, incomplete.

Warm regards,

Paul