From: Petter Wingren-Rasmussen (petterwr@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Jan 02 2009 - 01:30:55 MST
On 1/1/09, Gwern Branwen <gwern0@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Perhaps this is nitpicking, but I disagree. Any Universal Turing
> Machine can, by definition, simulate any Turing machine, but that is a
> formalism that may not necessarily obtain. I believe one can learn a
> fair bit about the simulator. Here's an example. Suppose I am in a
> simulation, and I begin counting upwards. 1,2,3...
>
> What have I learned when I reach 2? That I am not being simulated by
> the simplest possible Turing machine, as the busy beaver for that is
> 1. What have I learned when I reach 7? That I am not being simulated
> by anything as weak as a 2-state 2-symbol Turing machine. What have I
> learned when I reach 15? ...3-state 2-symbol... What have I learned
> when I reach 47,176,871? That I am not being 5-state 2-symbol Turing
> machine.
Good point, but fairly easily circumvented. The possibly simulated RAI has
no way of knowing if the simulated universe is the same size as the real one
and at what time it is simulated.
If the FAI wait to do the simulation till its large enough to make a
plausible simulated universe that is smaller than the sum of its own
computronium assigned to doing the simulation, the simulated RAI has no way
of figuring out if its a simulation or not.
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