Re: Are we simulated by some massive computer?

[George Levy]

Russell OK. You are suffering from 3rd person thinking which leads you to these conclusions:     1) As a scientist experimenting with this simulated creature, you have absolutely no evidence that this creature is conscious.      2) You believe that the creature (conscious or unconscious) is stuck in your simulation.     3) You believe that your simulator is the world of the creature. First person thinking leads to other conclusions:     1) You perceives this creature as a different instantation of your own "I." Therefore you believe that the creature has some form of consciousness, maybe not identical to your own, but nevertheless, consciousness.     2)  The world this creature exists in is to some extent indeterminate. It may be your own simulator that you purchased with some government grant, or it could be another almost identical simulator that *&[EMAIL PROTECTED] run on Alpha Centauri 1,000,000 years ago. Or it could be yet another one. Only the creature itself can perform experiments to refine its perception of its world. Should you pull the plug on your simulator, the creature would continue to exist somewhere or somewhen else in the plenitude.     3) The indeterminacy and the experiment that the creature can conduct are limited by its own perception of itself, of its mind, of its body and of its world. Its own mind will shape its own world. George Russell Standish wrote: Sorry, but I fail to see it as self evident. Imagine being a creature immersed in a virtual reality setup its entire life, a virtual reality that does not include a representation (ie a body) of the creature itself. Would that creature deduce that it is in a virtual reality, and that it has a body in another (unobservable to it) reality? Or would it even be conscious? Cheers On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 04:10:15PM -0700, George Levy wrote: Russell wrote However, the mind-body problem doesn't completely disappear - rather it is transformed into "Why the Anthropic Principle?". Once you have accepted that "I" exist and that "I" am capable of logical thinking and capable of following a logical chain, then the Anthropic principle becomes trivial. What "I" am and what "I" observe becomes the initial boundary condition for a logical chain leading to the proof of the existence of the world: "I am therefore the world is." This is the Anthropic Principle. George