X-Message-Number: 8100
From: 
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 15:03:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: CRYONICS time & materialism

It seems a bit ironic to me that info folk typically seem to think of
themselves as materialists, yet believe we are essentially immaterial, being
at core just patterns of information and processing of information. An info
person seems to believe that a system that just manipulates symbols in an
appropriate manner (simulating himself) would BE himself. 

How can we put that belief to the test of experiment? The info folk seem to
think it is impossible to test, and rest on their dogma. Well, let's look
again at some problems with time and simulations.

First we acknowledge there are plenty of problems with time in our own
universe, let alone in a simulation; we understand time hardly at all. In the
4-space of Einstein/Minkowski, time is just another "dimension" and the
trajectories of a body can be mapped in 4-space; an event, or sequence of
events, can be associated with a point or points in 4-space. (Some modern
theorists envision a spacetime of several more dimensions.) Some think
universal history could be laid out in an all-inclusive mapping, past and
future on the same footing, with the shifting "present" (or the "flow" of
time) an unsolved mystery. Quanta of time may or may not exist. The past may
or may not be fixed; ditto the future. And so on. Again, it boggles MY mind,
at least, that the info folk are so confident about their assumptions that
they dismiss all our ignorance as not possibly relevant. But let's try to get
just a little more specific. 

Info people say it doesn't matter that the actual procedures in a simulation
(e.g. in a Chinese-like room, with a human operator working with pencil and
paper) are sequential rather than parallel, or that simultaneities are
physically lacking, or that the operator's actions may vary in speed, or halt
for a while, or even cease altogether, or that operator mistakes may create
anomalies or crash the system. 

First, as I understand it, Dr. Perry e.g. believes it isn't enough for
information to be present in order for a simulation to be a person; the
information must also be actively PROCESSED in an appropriate ongoing way.
But "ongoing" means what, exactly?

We are asked to accept that it doesn't matter if the processing is erratic in
rate or has interruptions; the simulated people will not notice--just as we,
supposedly, would not notice if we were repeatedly stopped and started by
some kind of super beam-me-up machine. Nevertheless, with the beam-me-up
machine, presumably we actually have experiences only in the intervals when
we are assembled and functioning. When does a simulation have an experience?

If the simulation is on something like a Turing tape, or other serial
computer, then at a minimum the simulated person cannot have an experience
until all of the relevant changes in the data store have been made. Now try
to picture it in terms of an operator with pencil and paper. All he does,
remember, is look at his instructions and at the current data store, make
calculations (follow an algorithm), and write down the results (modify the
data store). 

At the moment (in the operator's world, our world) that the operator
completes his notations, does the simulation then (according to an observer
in our world) feel the experience? This is difficult to envision, for many
reasons. For one thing, why should it matter whether the last notation is
actually put on paper? The operator knows what that last notation is supposed
to be, whether he writes it down or not. And yet, a mere potential experience
doesn't count--after all, the entire future history of the simulation was
implicit in the original programming and data store; there isn't any actual
simulation until data are physically manipulated, new data derived, programs
modified, marks made on paper etc....Does this help underscore the profound
difference between symbol manipulation and physical activity?

Now look at it slightly differently. The simulation's feeling for time
relationships does not depend on actual time relationships in the operator's
(our) world; it does not depend on when the operator makes his notations; it
only depends on the ESSENTIALLY STATIC symbolic relationships between marks
on paper in the operator's bins of records. It seems to me there is a basic
conflict here. The info folk want the experiences of the simulation to depend
on active processing of information (in the operator's world, our world)
while at the same time, from the simulation's point of view, it is only the
patterns of marks on paper that count.

Again this is turning out annoyingly rambling and disjointed, but nobody is
compelled to read it, and I think I may be learning a little bit from the
exchanges; thanks to those with the patience to defend their views.

Robert Ettinger

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