X-Message-Number: 12988
From: 
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1999 21:40:51 EST
Subject: creative computing

Another sidelight on the simulation and uploading ideas:

If you think a digital, serial computer can simulate an arbitrary system--and 
in particular, people and their environment--and that the simulated people 
will have real feelings and thoughts, then consider the following also.

Anything that such a computer can do, a human mathematician can do also, in 
principle--or could, if he lived long enough and had a very, very large 
supply of pencils and paper, assuming he knew the laws of physics, and if he 
had enough detailed information as a starting point.

Further, he wouldn't have to work with the data pertaining to real people and 
their environment. He could make people up, using the possibilities in DNA 
and in the world. He could "play God," because--if the uploaders are 
right--the mere fact of his writing down these sets of numbers would 
CONSTITUTE the creation of these people and their world. (This is just 
slightly reminiscent of Hubbard's "Typewriter in the Sky.")

Let that soak in. A computer, running a simulation, just generates sets of 
numbers. If they (or some subset of them) are the right numbers, then 
supposedly they not only represent the future history of people and their 
environment, but they CONSTITUTE living, feeling, thinking people in a world 
that is fully real to them.   

Do you believe that, if you write down the right successive sets of numbers 
on yellow foolscap, you will create living, feeling, thinking people?

If this makes any impression on any uploaders, I would be grateful to be 
informed.

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

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