X-Message-Number: 17410
From: 
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 08:52:33 EDT
Subject: Freeman's fatalism

Tim Freeman (#17404) wrote in part:

> In situations where nothing I can do makes any difference, it doesn't 
matter what I >plan to do, so I can ignore those possibilities when I make my 
plans.

>If I'm living in a simulated universe, and the entities running the
>simulation have chosen to give me no clues about what's going on in
>the real universe, then there's no way for me to get any traction on
>the problem of making a difference in the real universe.  Thus nothing
>I do makes any difference, so I don't have to consider this
>possibility when I'm making my plans.

>Thus, the situations I'm willing to plan for are a real universe, or a
>simulated universe with a communicative God.  I haven't received any
>credible communications from God, so at the moment I choose to treat
>the universe as real.

I'm afraid Dr. Freeman is confused.

In the second place, the nomenclature is inappropriate. A simulation lacks 
originality, but does not lack reality. If we assume (big assumptions) that a 
simulated person can be conscious and can feel he has choices (free will at 
the conscious level), then there is no difference whatsoever between the 
motivations of an original or of a simulation.

In the first place, we see the tired old "fatalism" fallacy. Free will exists 
only at the conscious level; at a basic level it is not even a concept, just 
gibberish. At the conscious level, we can and do influence outcomes, in the 
small and in the large. Things happen not in spite of what we do, but because 
of what we do. What we do obviously makes a difference, to a simulation or an 
original. 

As to clues to our being in a simulation or not, I won't repeat myself now, 
but just note again that such clues may exist.

Finally, there are no "situations where nothing I can do makes any 
difference." You can ALWAYS make a difference--at a minimum, a difference in 
the way you feel.

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

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