Re: When something impossible happens

From: Robin Lee Powell (rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org)
Date: Tue Jan 22 2008 - 15:51:01 MST


On Tue, Jan 22, 2008 at 05:40:59PM -0500, Nick Tarleton wrote:
> On Jan 22, 2008 3:40 PM, Robin Lee Powell
> <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> > Only if you accept certain assumptions that I, for one, do not.
> > In particular, you have to accept that future civilizations will
> > run ancestor simulations. I find it ridiculous that a
> > civilization that advanced would allow simulation of the kind of
> > suffering that goes on here on earth every day. In fact, I'd
> > expect that any reasonable culture would have something
> > equivalent to the death penalty for such actions.
>
> An advanced civilization not sharing our moral system could exist,
> as could an unfriendly AI simulating other civilizations to model
> threats, or for some incomprehensible purpose. I hope such things
> are relatively rare, but have no strong reason to believe they
> are.

Agreed, but none of those would have reason to make simulations *of
us*. The argument that shows that we're probably living in a
simulation relies, IIRC, on ancestor simulations specifically.

-Robin

-- 
Lojban Reason #17: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo
Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://intelligence.org/
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/


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