X-Message-Number: 8153
From: 
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 22:59:09 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: CRYONICS 8148 etc

Replying again to Metzger, mainly # 8148:

1. A general comment on tone and attitude: Metzger complains that differing
with me doesn't constitute "egregious error." I think a neutral party  who
has had the patience to read all the exchanges will conclude that my tone has
generally been the more restrained and civil. Metzger (a cryonicist!?) has
even tried to argue from "authority," bragging repeatedly about his expertise
in computerese. The issue is not authority; the issue is understanding the
problems and evaluating the evidence.

2. I said that a simulated person in a simulated world with arbitrary "laws"
(axioms) would not be a simulation but just another virtual world, and he
called this "silly semantic games." Not at all. The whole point of the
overall discussion related to the possibility of a particular person (say
you, the reader) being able to carry on with his life as a simulation in a
simulated world. I am nearly certain that "you" would not be you at all, and
probably not alive at all, in such a world (maybe 17 dimensions, newly
invented "forces" etc). You CERTAINLY could not carry on your life in the way
you presumably hoped, since everything would be wildly different from the
outset.

3. Continuing this line, he said your biological brain could be attached to a
"virtual reality system simulating a world that wasn't quite identical to the
one we live in," and you could carry on happily and maybe not notice the
difference. 

Now he has suddenly switched from "17 dimensions" to "not quite identical."
To the latter, of course no full answer is possible because everything
depends on the details of that "not quite identical." But to the situation
actually in question--"you" "living" in a world of grotesquely different
rules, the answer is easy: no way. Of course I know that kids play
interactive computer games with bizarre rules, but that is different by
orders of magnitude.  

4. In a previous post, he asked "WHO CARES" whether someone in a simulated
world could communicate with the programmer (by "prayer"). I answered that,
if you considered there to be a non-negligible probability that you live in a
simulation, you should care very much, and this could hardly be more obvious;
but Metzger just answered, "I invite you to go off and pray to the Great
Programmer, then." This is not responsive nor substantive.

Also, in a later post, I asked how probable it is we actually are living in a
simulation (if simulated people could be real, which I strongly doubt). I
pointed out that, since many people in the original world could produce
simulations, and since simulations could produce sub-simulations in enormous
numbers--and would, for the same reasons we would produce one in the first
place--it appears to follow that we are PROBABLY (make that nearly certainly)
living in a simulation. (If there are a zillion simulated worlds and only one
real one, and you are equally likely to be living in any of them, then you
are almost certainly in a simulation.) His answer was: "So? Who cares?" 

It seems to me that any really convinced uploader should be praying with all
his might.

5. I posed a simulation-overload problem (subsimulations, subsubsimulations,
etc.), and his answer was (a) I don't understand simulations, and (b)
Computers don't crash by accident.

We are (or at least I am) talking about ONE computer that simulates a world
full of people; these simulated people (as hypothesized) can, and will,
produce sub-simulations, etc. But NOTHING happens in ANY of the simulations
unless hardware in the original ("real") computer changes state. Of course we
can have simulations within simulations, etc., but we CANNOT have one limited
computer, working in limited time, produce unlimited numbers of (slightly
different) simulations and sub-simulations without effectively stopping.

(I omit here the complications of postulating that there IS no "real" world,
no real matter, only simulations of other simulations ad infinitum.)  

6. Finally, he thinks that a simulation that omitted natural law not known to
the programmer would still be good enough for the simulated people to live
out their lives in a way that would constitute "survival" of the original--in
particular, that biology does not depend in any signficiant way on any
currently unknown processes. 

Maybe, maybe not. Roger Penrose thinks quantum or sub-quantum biology may
underly consciousness. 

In any case, the bottom line is that it is unreasonable to ASSUME, in the
absence of knowledge or rigorous implication--before we understand the
physical basis of feeling--that even a real-world "brain" of silicon could
have a subjective life.

Robert Ettinger

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