X-Message-Number: 8144
From: 
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 19:59:47 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: CRYONICS sim sim etc

Metzger (#8143) again makes several egregious errors.

1. He says a simulated physicist in a simulated world (the
situation in question) could experience any laws of physics the
programmer chooses, e.g. more dimensions and new forces. 

Obviously, this would not be a simulation at all, but just a new
type of virtual world, something very different. The whole
underlying premise of the general discussion relates to the
possibility of real people, and particular people, carrying on
their lives as simulations. You can't do this in a "world" that has
different laws or different geometries etc.

2. He says "WHO CARES" whether, if you are in a simulated world,
you might be able to reach the "programmer" by "prayer." Obviously,
if we think it very long odds that our world is simulated, we may
not be interested in "praying" to a hypothetical programmer. But if
we think the possibility appreciable, we OUGHT to care very much
indeed.

And what are the odds that we are living in a simulation? I suggest
that, if such a simulation is feasible at all, and if simulated
worlds exist, then simulated worlds probably outnumber "real"
worlds by some enormous factor. From this point of view, one might
argue that we PROBABLY are living in a simulation. Of course my own
view is that "computer" type simulations of people would probably
not be people at all, and large scale simulations of the world are
probably not possible, even in principle.

3. He denies the simulation overload problem. Of course you can
have computer simulations within simulations, and you can run a
simulation of one computer on another computer; but if you have
just one, finite set of hardware (the "original" or "real" world),
and if simulated worlds breed sub-simulations (all a bit different)
ad infinitum, then the system will soon, for all practical
purposes, grind to a halt, if it doesn't crash altogether.

4. He says that, even though our limited knowledge of natural law
may prevent a perfect simulation, that still allows a sufficiently
detailed simulation of a person. This is mere conjecture. How can
anyone know all the possible effects of mistakes in simulation?

5. He says a simulated person, in his "lifetime," could not
determine from experiment whether he was in the "real world."

First, if "prayer" is a possibility, this is one way in which he
might indeed find the answer.

Second, his use of the word "lifetime" disregards certain
possibilities; it seems to imply a limit on the simulated person's
available "time." But the simulated people could presumably do what
we could do, including creating faster computers and
subsimulations, which could make discoveries and perform
"experiments" at prodigious rates.

Robert Ettinger

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