From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Wed Mar 14 2001 - 13:24:27 MST
At 1:49 PM -0500 3/13/01, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>http://hanson.gmu.edu/lifeinsim.html
>
>Of course, this becomes *especially* problematic for AI researchers, but
>it makes a great argument in the Interstellar Solipsist Tournament finals.
This makes me wonder: if we are living in a simulation (which, of
course, we can't really prove), then maybe it's not for entertainment
but a way to generate new intelligences with different experiences
that think in different ways about problems and in finding their
solutions. The plan could be to have the simulation reach the
Singularity and create some SIs. Then, the SIs are moved up into the
real world, the simulation is killed off (how interesting can an
Amish society that lasts for thousands of years be?). The essay
doesn't mention this, but I thought that it was a bit more optimistic
for the future than "well, we're in this simulation and it's going to
end as soon as it gets boring, so let's forget about tomorrow and die
for today".
Of course, there is always the chance that this is the real world,
but we'd always want to believe that, no matter how poor of a
simulation this is. :-)
-- Gordon Worley http://www.rbisland.cx/ mailto:redbird@rbisland.cx PGP Fingerprint: C462 FA84 B811 3501 9010 20D2 6EF3 77F7 BBD3 B003
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