Dear Johathan,
I am trying to address the point of how we consider the interactions and communications between minds, simulated or otherwise. I do not, question the idea that simulated "minds" would be indistinguishable from "real" minds, especially from a 1st person view. I am asking about how such minds can interact such that notions of "cause and effect" and, say, signal to noise ratios" are coherent notions.
Additionally, I still would like to understand how we can continue to wonder about computations without ever considering the costs in resources associated. We can not tacitly assume abstract perpetual motion machines to power our abstract machines, or can we?
Stephen
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Colvin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <everything-list@eskimo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 5:33 PM
Subject: RE: a description of you + a description of billiard ball can bruise you?
Bruno's claim is a straightforward consequence of Strong AI; that a
simulated mind would behave in an identical way to a "real" one, and would
experience the same "qualia". There's no special "interface" required here;
the simulated mind and the simulated billiard ball are in the same "world",
ie. at the same level of simulation. As far as the simulated person is
concerned, the billiard ball is "real". Of course, the simulation can also
contain a simulation of the billiard ball (2nd level simulation), which will
equally be unable to bruise the simulated person, and so on ad infinitum. If
we take Bostrom's simulation argument seriously, we all exist in some Nth
level simulation, while our simulated billiard ball exists at the (N+1)th
level.
Jonathan Colvin
