X-Message-Number: 12999 Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 23:14:35 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Simulations, Death Fallacy Bob Ettinger raised some issues in regard to a sequential machine simulating a "parallel"-type process. This involves a thought experiment in which we imagine a very extensive sequential process is involved, one that, for example, might model a person down to the level of subatomic particles. Could such a process (say it is being conducted by a Turing machine working slowly over eons, "emotionlessly" printing and erasing symbols one at a time) exhibit any consciousness? Bob and many others are highly skeptical of this possibility, but I favor it because of what I've called (in my book) a "Principle of Large Quantity." If, say, the number of events of the sequential device is 10^60, and it takes 10^40 of these micro-events to add up to one "significant, subjective event" or macro-event in our modeling of consciousness, that allows us to model 10^20 of these significant events--still a sizable number. Basically, if you allow enough of the micro-events per macro-event, the problems I think diminish, and even become insignificant. As for time-reversals and other such things, I just ask myself what I would think if I learned that I am right now something being modeled in reverse, in some larger, enveloping universe. Then, relative to me, that universe would be time-reversed--strange indeed, but no problem as far as I can see. (I think, therefore I am conscious, even if somebody else won't believe it.) Closer to home, some interesting, simple clinical experiments involve brain events that are experienced, subjectively, in a different temporal order from that in which they actually occur, like the "cutaneous rabbit." I found this in *Time, A Traveler's Guide* by Pickover (sorry I don't have time to comment further here). On the "death advantage fallacy" of Keith Rene Dugue, an interesting line of argument, and I consider myself very anti-deathist, yet I really don't buy the argument. On the face of it, it doesn't seem intuitive that a state of non-existence should be considered "worse" than any state of existence however horrible. (Otherwise it would seem that there are innumerable, potential beings, who are worse off right now than if they were in a perpetual lake of fire. Hell hath no fury like nonexistence!) And here is how I would counter the argument. Consider the statement S, "Jones is suffering inconceivable amounts of intolerable pain." We might say it is better if S is not true than if S is true. If Jones is non-existent it seems reasonable to regard S as "not true," for the simple reason that S can be *true* only if Jones exists. Another way to look at it is that S is really equivalent to the longer statement, "There exists a conscious being named Jones and that being is suffering inconceivable amounts of intolerable pain." So to say "it is not the case that S is true" it is not necessary to presuppose that Jones exists or is conscious in any sense, including that of an afterlife. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12999