So I'm not exactly sure how an FPGA is wired, so I won't comment on that. However, I feel, but cannot prove that the GOL neurons might have some kind of internal experience.
Your air example is a good one, however, the kind of interactions they have depend on temperature. Also, the information a air molecules transmit has little explicit encoding other than a few attributes, so I imagine that it wouldn't feel like much to be air. Feedback loops are probably frequently formed and broken, so I'm not sure what to make of that.
I think the IIT formula is interesting. I'm not sure if it's right (it probably isn't and will need modifications at least. Dr. Koch talked about this version of it being invariant across time, which sounded off to me). I'm planning on learning more about it though because it sounds like might have at least part of the answer and it might be on the path to finding something more experimentally amenable which is more than I can say of most theories I hear about.
I'm also attracted to the physicality requirements of IIT because it's clear to me that abstract computation alone is not enough to reify physical phenomena. For instance, mathematics often returns imaginary solutions to physical problems. Some math represents reality, but not all of it. It's important to stick close to physical processes in physics.
I haven't yet heard that there were five versions of the formula, but that doesn't surprise me. It's actively under development and it hasn't hit the point where we can conduct experiments to narrow it down. As far as I'm concerned, it's an interesting idea at this point, and I hope I can take away some useful tools from it.
Your air example is a good one, however, the kind of interactions they have depend on temperature. Also, the information a air molecules transmit has little explicit encoding other than a few attributes, so I imagine that it wouldn't feel like much to be air. Feedback loops are probably frequently formed and broken, so I'm not sure what to make of that.
I think the IIT formula is interesting. I'm not sure if it's right (it probably isn't and will need modifications at least. Dr. Koch talked about this version of it being invariant across time, which sounded off to me). I'm planning on learning more about it though because it sounds like might have at least part of the answer and it might be on the path to finding something more experimentally amenable which is more than I can say of most theories I hear about.
I'm also attracted to the physicality requirements of IIT because it's clear to me that abstract computation alone is not enough to reify physical phenomena. For instance, mathematics often returns imaginary solutions to physical problems. Some math represents reality, but not all of it. It's important to stick close to physical processes in physics.
I haven't yet heard that there were five versions of the formula, but that doesn't surprise me. It's actively under development and it hasn't hit the point where we can conduct experiments to narrow it down. As far as I'm concerned, it's an interesting idea at this point, and I hope I can take away some useful tools from it.