Dear George,
My take of Russell's post is:
Unless the creature had some experience
that was not dismissible as a hallucination (1st person) and/or was witness by
others (a proxy of 3rd person?) that lead him to the conclusion that it existed
within a virtual reality then it would have no ability to make such a
deduction.
Another possibility is to consider the
upper bound on the computational recourses required to generate the totality of
the experience of such a creature and ask if that creature could have a 1st
person experience an event that required more than that upper
bound.
IMHO, this latter situation seem to be what
D. Deutsch proposes as a test for his MWI. If we can create a physical
implementation of a quantum computation that has greater computational power
than that allowed by the classical (as per the Copenhagen Interpretation or
other interpretations) case, then it would verify MWI. A failure of such would
be a falsification.
Kindest regards,
Stephen
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 7:57 PM
Subject: Re: Are we simulated by some
massive computer?
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
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