Simulated circuits and computation.

[Thurlor]

Would it be fair to state that computation is substrate independent?

If such is the case would it be possible for a group of humans to pretend to be circuit components and thus 'simulate' a computational system that could run programs.

Taking this further, could a computational/programming paradigm be developed that 'runs' on the natural interactions of humans without any conscious input from them?

I assume such a system would be exceptionally slow, but from my limited understanding it would also be robust.

Not sure where I am going with this. Just pondering.

 

[Cognisant]

For someone to act as a logic gate they would need to reliably receive, process and transmit a signal. If I were an AND gate I wouldn't transmit until both my inputs were active, but what are my inputs, what is my output, why am I doing this, who am I transmitting to (because that needs to be consistent) and what stops me messing things up just to be an asshole?

Imo this isn't really possible, the transistors on a microchip don't move around with minds of their own. I don't think you could make a Turing complete computer out of people, at least not without committing a whole lot of war crimes and inventing a few new ones on the way.

However humans could be integrated into a cybernetic system.

The book Daemon by Daniel Suarez explores the idea of a program that uses the internet to recruit/employ people to do things for the daemon. A daemon is a common type of program in every operating system that waits for an event to occur before performing a task, every time you press a key to type a letter a daemon responds to that input. So this isn't an AI like Skynet, it has no actual intelligence but the person who designed it was extremely clever and incorporated people into the system, people who think they're playing games or doing odd jobs on the internet.

Individuals are unpredictable but people in aggregate are highly predictable, put a task on Fiverr.com for enough money and someone will do it, you don't know who, but someone will.