From: Eric Rauch (erauch@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Mar 07 2006 - 18:31:58 MST
The Simulation argument is a cheap parlor trick. Here is an email I sent
it's creator showing its obsurdity:
*Dream=simulation?*
------------------------------
* Eric Rauch <erauch@gmail.com> * * Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 10:41 AM * To:
nick.bostrom@philosophy.oxford.ac.uk
Hey Nick,
I read the simulation argument and it seems to apply to dreams. I
have had a dream within a dream so it seems that if I adopted your
reasoning I would have to conclude that my waking life is almost
certainly a dream. Am I interpreting your theory correctly or do I
need to WAKE UP.
Thanks,
Eric
On 3/7/06, Dirk Bruere <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm rather fond of the Simulation Argument (SA) not least because it seems
> the only hypothesis that neatly resolves the Fermi Paradox. However, there
> is inevitably a question as to what this Sim is all about. So, allow me to
> make a suggestion, and I would be pleased if someone could point me to
> previous such discussion.
>
> Given the SA then the Singularity has for all intents and purposes come
> and gone, somewhere, and we did not preceed it.
>
> This is something of a very brief condensation of my writings elsewhere,
> but essentially this Sim is a *dream* or an act of memory retrieval. In our
> own dreams we simulate realities quite convincingly most of the time, and
> people them with entities often quite capable of passing the Turing Test.
> Not bad for a kilo of wetware. Also, our acts of memory are often de facto
> simulations. For example, a question of "what did you do last Thursday" will
> elicit in most people a brief re-run of the events leading up to and into
> Thursday as a method of retrieval. In addition, we often 'fill in' our
> memories with plausible fabrications presumably as a data compression or
> space saving device. Apart from that we have various daydreams and 'what-if'
> scenarios we habitually play out. Indeed, one might argue that the hallmark
> of intelligence is such scenarios.
>
> Anyway, if this is what's happening it does suggest that the Being who is
> doing all this has certain likely features. These are:
> a) It uses data compression and/or is running a maximally efficient
> reversible computing algorithm.
> b) It may be using a QC-like structure to simulate what-ifs as
> proliferating branches.
> c) A Jupiter brain has an inevitably fragmented personality given
> lightspeed restrictions.
> d) It's recalling the events leading up to a Human created Singularity,
> and filling in the gaps. We are here because of the historical record.
> e) The Singularity (from our POV) is the end of the process.
>
> There are a few other implications, but these are presumably off-topic for
> this list.
>
> Dirk
>
>
>
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