X-Message-Number: 22377
From: 
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:02:44 EDT
Subject: reverse sims, magic

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Mike Perry has some interesting thoughts, as usual. I'll just make a couple 
of partial responses here (see his remarks one day previous):

Reverse simulation. Mike points out that if a computer models a brain, the 

brain could also be said to model the computer, so which is simulated and which
simulation is arbitrary. 

First, there is no full isomorphism. Both systems include elements lacking in 
the other, which should be obvious. Second, we don't yet know for sure that 
nature is discrete in all respects, but we do know that our present knowledge 
of nature is incomplete and therefore any computer of the foreseeable future 

will be of only limited fidelity to nature, and therefore necessarily unfaithful
to the original in some degree and possibly in some important qualitative 
fashion.

Second, there is a fundamental gap of enormous potential significance, 

namely, the possibility of magic in a simulation, as follows. The simulation 
must, I 
think, allow for the self-modification of its program. This probably means 
that not only the programmer by physical intervention, but even the simulated 
people "inside" the computer could use the program to modify itself in such a 
way as to correspond to changes in the laws of nature. (This has been done in 
science fiction stories--teleportation for example.) If this could happen, 
clearly all bets are off.

Robert Ettinger 

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