Brent Meeker writes: >What seems to me *not* to be interesting, is which level is "really >real".
I agree. Still we must find some common basic agreement for being able to talk about those levels. >I haven't read "Similacron III", but I have read Egan's "Permutation >City". I enjoyed it very much (as I have enjoyed Egan's other stories) >and I >would not criticze it as a novel. However, at the end Egan cheats > >philosophically. He proposes that whichever mathematical structure >(simulation) is more detailed is the more real one. But "more detailed" >is difficult to define - and besides, what does it mean to be "more" >real, >or even to be "real". Have you seen "the thirteen floor". It's a movie based on Simulacron 3. Unfortunatley it appears at the same moment than MATRIX. The ideas are also very difficult to render through a movie. >I don't think what I have said above is in conflict with your ideas >(although I don't want to put words in your mouth). I only want to make >things clear to myself and to damp what seem to me to be purely semantic >arguments about what's "real" that follow after assertions like "only >this moment exists" and "space-time is an illusion." Well, I think you can say space-time is an illusion when: 1) When you feel it and you say that to yourself, but in that case I think poetry is more appropriate, like Lewis Carroll writing :"life, what is it, but a dream". 2) When you give a description of the "one" which is illusioned and explain in what sense there is an illusion of space-time. (Like when we say that in a movie there is an illusion of movement). I will think about your graphic, at first sight there is conflict! (Hopefully not linguistic conflicts). Bruno
