From: Timothy Jennings (timothyjennings@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Dec 20 2004 - 02:50:33 MST
Maybe Tom has hit on the solution with talk of spliiting up in dreams.
All actors in the sim are drawn from copies of the initiator of the
sim, and all their memories are reintegrated into the initiator at the
end. You would experience the lobster's fate, and either learn to
love it or live without it. It would be the "Golden Rule" with
consequences. You would likely end up with some very moral entities.
Timothy Jennings
On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 23:04:01 -0800 (PST), Thomas Buckner
<tcbevolver@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On Dec 19, 2004, at 12:13 PM, Thomas Buckner
> > wrote:
> > > I call this the lobster dinner problem. Let's
> > say
> > > you have just proposed to your significant
> > other
> > > over a delicious lobster dinner in a lovely
> > > restaurant overlooking the ocean, washed your
> > > food down whith the best champagne, kissed
> > > passionately, etc., etc. It's a very good
> > day,
> > > yes?
> > > Not for the lobsters.
> > > Can a stable world exist which is all
> > proposal
> > > dinners and no lobster deaths?
> >
> > Sure.
> >
> > In the limit, each sim might consist of so few
> > actual persons that each can have whatever they
> > need for contentment without interacting with
> > any others (except the sim operator(s)).
> > However,
> > the only situation in which this would even be
> > a
> > problem would be a sim in which there were
> > people
> > who would be in pain in the absence of others'
> > suffering, and such a need could simply be
> > edited
> > out of the possibilities for minds in that sim,
> > or
> > simulacrums could be provided to satisfy such
> > an
> > odd need.
>
> Okay, but you see, I am not necessarily referring
> to a stable sim world, but to any stable world,
> and even if I were, it would exist as a component
> of some 'more real' world. You refer to a sim
> where no sufferers exist who can pass a Turing
> test. Either it's pretty unpopulated in that sim
> or else the PC's are interacting with NPC's who,
> regardless of their sophistication, do not pass
> the Turing test. If the NPC's can pass the Turing
> test, who can still say they are not PC's? If I
> recall, Hofstadter noted that we accord other
> people the same Turing status as ourselves even
> though we could insist that their agency is a
> illusion; if we do not, we are deemed rude or
> sociopathic. The lobster dinner problem speaks to
> the 'argument from evil' and our very crowded
> world of agents, even agents so lowly as the
> lobster.
>
> Your 'solitary sim', actually, is a common
> experience. We dream, and in dreams we can be as
> reckless as we wish. We are the PC, we are the
> sim operator, and even the NPC's are part of us,
> and in the morning we are still whole.
>
> Tom Buckner
>
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