X-Message-Number: 11536
From: 
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 11:45:00 EDT
Subject: wrapup (almost?) on simulations

Followng Mike Perry's post yesterday (#11534), I would say we are almost 
fully in agreement on the possibility of people (including ourselves) being 
simulations or emulations.

First, a small additional comment on one point: Mike says, 

>Why couldn't a programmer--an
advanced nonhuman intelligence, design a program that would incorporate new
discoveries for us to make, in the course of our activities? We then would
make discoveries new *to us* at least, thus as far as we could tell really
new. On the other hand, such a program could be halted from the outside from
time to time and modified carefully, to add more possible "new" discoveries
for us to make, to keep pace with any "real" new discoveries.

A problem with that is one of consistency. Seems to me it would be difficult 
to modify a program from time to time without gaps in internal coherence, 
which could be noticed by the simulated people.

However, one could imagine another situation: A computer in the year 3000 is 
programmed to simulate the world of circa the year 2000 (our world, including 
us). Then of course there could be included scientific "surprises" in our 
context, without changes in the program. 

> Another point
to make is that we may *eventually* be able to determine that we are in an
emulation (a good simulation), but certainly haven't done so yet.

So long as no evidence appears to support the simulation hypothesis, I think 
the presumption becomes stronger that we are not in a simulation. Remember, 
it is not yet even clear (although it is not disproven either) that such a 
simulation is even possible, or that the "information paradigm"is true.

I also note a previous suggestion that there is at least one other possible 
way for a simulation to validate the conjecture that he is one--"prayer." 
Speed issues aside, it is possible in principle for the programmer to notice 
what is happening in the computer, and therefore it is possible for the 
simulations to attract the attention of the programmer and communicate with 
him. Since the simulations might even be or become smarter than the 
programmer, they might conceivably gain the upper hand, persuading the 
programmer to do what they want, including "passing miracles" or changing the 
data store or/and the program from the outside.

And yet another previous suggestion I made, somewhat militating against the 
simulation hypothesis--cascades of subsimulations. If someone, sometime, is 
motivated to simulate a world, then almost inevitably, inside those 
simulations, simulated people will be motivated to create their own 
subsimulations, so we get an explosion of subsimulations. Since all of the 
virtual computers involved must run on the physical hardware of the one 
"real" computer, then, depending on various details, we are likely to get an 
almost instantaneous braking effect, with everything slowing down nearly to 
zero. Although a subsimulation at any level might notice no change, 
cosmological considerations might prevent anything much further from 
happening  even in the lifetime of the universe.

I think Mike and I are now almost in full agreement, except for emphasis or 
preferences. The "almost" refers to the fact that, as far as I recall, he has 
not clearly acknowledged the fact that the information paradigm might be 
wrong, or that feeling may depend on time-binding and space-binding 
requirements that would rule out feeling in Turing computers.  

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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