Re: Continuing Evolution in Humans (was: A very surreal day)

From: Byrne Hobart (sometimesfunnyalwaysright@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 14 2007 - 11:34:49 MDT


> It is feeding your sensory inputs with data simulating the universe you
> now
> experience. You don't know it is there because it has total control over
> your
> thoughts. Does anyone else know? The question assumes that other people
> exist.

I'm reduced to the "So what?" defense. If I can't interact with the entity,
and can't test a theory of the entity's existence, it's as real as Zeus.

How do you know? All we know is that the universe is consistent with a
> simulation. For example, AIXI theory predicts that if the universe is
> Turing
> computable, then the algorithmically simplest models consistent with past
> observations will be the best predictors of future results, regardless of
> the
> experiment. This is in agreement with our observation of Occam's Razor.

I'd need to know more about this theory to respond. Do you have a link? My
first question would be: how do you define algorithmic simplicity? It can't
be Kolmogorov Complexity, because the simplest algorithm will be the one
that discards inputs and returns nil.

Suppose we create superhuman intelligence and upload? What would you want
> it
> to do? You could live in any simulated universe you wanted, limited only
> by
> its computing power. What would your universe be like? Would you choose
> to
> remember that the singularity has already happened, or would you choose
> the
> appearance of realism?
>

This is a good rephrasing of Nietzsche (or Groundhog Day
http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2007/06/nietzsche_and_t_1.html ).
Assume you are a post-singularity entity living in a simulation: how does
this affect your behavior? If you'd act differently in that case -- why?

If I'm an upload-created sim, I'm here is a bit player, because I spend far
too much time doing relatively boring stuff. If the upload is running at
faster than real time, this amounts to saying that, after the Singularity,
some entity will spend a subjective millennium watching me clip my toenails.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:58 MDT