On Feb 20, 10:32 am, acw <a...@lavabit.com> wrote: > On 2/20/2012 13:45, Craig Weinberg wrote:> On Feb 19, 11:57 pm, > 1Z<peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> On Feb 20, 4:41 am, Craig Weinberg<whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > .. > >> Believable falsehoods are falsehoods and convincing illusions > >> still aren't reality > > > It doesn't matter if they believe in the simulation or not, the belief > > itself is only possible because of the particular reality generated by > > the program. Comp precludes the possibility of contacting any truer > > reality than the simulation. > > If those observers are generally intelligent and capable of > Turing-equivalent computation, they might theorize about many things, > true or not. Just like we do, and just like we can't know if we're right.
Right, but true = a true reflection of the simulation. If I make a simulation where I regularly stop the program and make miraculous changes, then the most intelligent observers might rightly conclude that there is an omnipotent entity capable of performing miracles. That would be the truth of that simulation. > Our Gods may know better too. What I am saying is that Comp + MWI + > > Anthropic principle guarantees an infinite number of universes in > > which some entity can program machines to worship them *correctly* as > > *their* Gods. > > That's more difficult than you'd think. In COMP, you identify local > physics and your body with an infinity of lower-level machines which > happen to be simulating *you* correctly (where *you* would be the > structures required for your mind to work consistently). A simulation of > a digital physics universe may implement some such observers *once* or > maybe multiple times if you go for the extra effort, but never in *all* > the cases (which are infinite). As long as it happens in any universe under MWI, then there must be an infinity of variations stemming from that universe, and under the anthropic principle, there is always a chance that you are living in a simulation within one such universe. > If such a programmer decides to > intervene in his simulation, that wouldn't affect all the other machines > implementing said simulation and said observers(for example in > arithmetic or in some UD running somewhere), That depends entirely on what kind of intervention the programmer chooses. If she wants to make half of the population turn blue, she can, and then when the sim is turned back on, everyone gasps and proclaims a miracle of Biblical proportions. > however a small part of the > simulations containing observers will now be only implemented by the > physics of the upper programmer's universe (and become entangled with > them), Not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting that the programmer of Pac Man can't reprogram it for zero gravity? Or for a Non-Euclidean Salvador Dali melting clock wormhole version? What effect would a physical universe have on a simulated universe if comp were true, beyond impacting the ability of the simulation to function as intended? > possibly meaning a reduction in measure, however the probability > of ending up in such a simulation is very low and as time passes it > becomes less and less likely that said observers would keep on remaining > in that simulation - if they die or malfunction (that's just one > example), there will be continuations for them which are no longer > supported by the upper programmer's physics. The observers would have no capacity to detect continuity errors unless they were given that functionality. Pac Man doesn't know if I hack in there and turn the cherries to a turnip. > There can never be correct > worship of some "Matrix Lord"/"Administrator"/... as they are not what > is responsible for such observers being conscious, at best such > programmers are only responsible for finding some particular program and > increasing its measure with respect to the programmer's universe. Of > course, if such a programmer wants to "lift" some beings from his > simulation to run in his universe, he could do that and those would be > valid continuations for the being living in that simulation. Running a > physics simulation is akin to looking into a window, not to an act of > universe creation, even if it may look like that from the simulator's > perspective. With the right tools and drugs, your brain will prove to you that you are a shoe, and you will believe it. If had the capacity to stop, start, and edit your experience, I could make that belief last the rest of your life and make the universe you experience validate that belief. It would therefore be as true for you as anything has ever been true for anyone.This is the unavoidable implication of comp. I of course think it's false because experience cannot be simulated. Computation supervenes on experience, not the other way around. We use computation, our brains use computation, but it is experiences they are computing, not numbers. > > >>>> "Did say those mushrooms were nutiritios? Silly me, i mean > >>>> poisonous". > > >>> Poisonous is a term with a more literal meaning. 'Natural' has no > >>> place in MWI, comp, or the anthropic principle. I'm surprised that you > >>> would use it. I thought most people here were on board with comp's > >>> view that silicon machines could be no less natural as conscious > >>> agents than living organisms. > > >> What we are arguing about is the supernatural. > > > No. What you are arguing about is the supernatural. What I am arguing > > about are gods (entities with absolute superiority or omnipotence over > > the subordinate entities who inhabit the simulations they create) and > > their inevitability in MWI. > > Except there is no omnipotence. Why not? In what way is the Administrator not omnipotent over the content of the simulation? >The default meaning of the word is > inconsistent, thus it's an impossible property. You can't change the > truth of mathematical sentences. You don't need to change the truth of mathematical sentences to be omnipotent over a program. I can make whatever program I want without having to break arithmetic. If comp were true and I wrote Pac Man, then I am God to Pac Man. I can change his universe whenever I want. I can make him believe that 2+2=80 if I want, just as you could have a dream where that seems to be true. > Physical omnipotence? Possible, but as > I said before, it's very low probability to find yourself in an universe > ruled by an interventionist "god", at least in COMP, due to > 1p-indeterminacy. For such a god to have complete control over you, he'd > have toto handle all counterfactuals, which is not possible due to > Rice's theorem. You could build other Turing machines that scan for counterfactuals and stop and edit the tape continuously. It doesn't have to make sense if your observer's brains are telling them that everything makes perfect sense. > The only thing such a being can do is feel like he is in > control when he modifies a simulation, he can't control all possible > continuations observers in his simulation can take. If he wants to more > directly affect them, he'd have to be on an even footing them with - in > the same universe or in a simulation in which he has more direct > participation, and then he'd no longer be omnipotent. If he controls even one observers experience, then he is omnipotent to that observer. >> You > >> do not rescue the supernatural by rendering the natural > >> meaningless. > > > Why not? Besides, as I keep saying, I am not trying to rescue the > > supernatural, I am pointing out that God is not supernatural at all, > > it is an accurate description of the relationship between the > > programmer and the programmed. > > Yes, but for a 'programmed' to have an 1p, it has to be an ensemble of > computations, yours being just a few finite ones in an infinite > ensemble. Even if one can be confused/tricked for a finite amount of > time about this, you can never be confused forever. Can't you can stop the program and loop it forever? > > > > > Why do you think the programmer's reality is any more real? Maybe he > > is a program running in another sim. Comp is the very idea that it > > would be impossible to tell the difference. The bottom line is that in > > the sim reality, anyone who programs the sim is God. > > Except, you can't have the SIM just do everything you want it and > nothing more, it would hardly be generally intelligent then. The Administrator is omnipotent from the point of view of the sim observer there is nothing that the Administrator can't do as far as they know. There is no way to escape or fight their power. > Even if you > inject false beliefs or goals, you'd end up in an exponentially > increasing in complexity race of faking evidence, a race you're bound to > lose (due to Rice's theorem among others) - you'll end up with a case > where you don't even know *everything* about what's contained in your > simulation. Initial conditions may be simple, but the complete trace may > very well be unpredictable if you're dealing with anything containing UMs. You don't need to worry about any of that. As as you can control the sim, you can stop it for as long as you need or run it for as short a time as you want. We run virtual servers and have to reboot them every night. >> You are conflating the levels (as Bruno always tells me). The > > simulation has no access to extra-simulatory information, it is a > > complete sub-universe. It's logic is the whole truth which the > > inhabitants can only believe in or disbelieve to the extent which the > > simulation allows them that capacity. If the programmer wants all of > > his avatars to believe with all their hearts that there is a cosmic > > muffin controlling their universe, she has only to set the cosmic > > muffin belief subroutine = true for all her subjects. > > Injecting false beliefs or making your machines incorrect They wouldn't be false beliefs, they would be true beliefs about a partially unpredictable simulation. > while giving > them means to general computation means they can correct their false > beliefs and biases. You'll find yourself in an unwinnable race trying to > make generally intelligent observers believe false things. You can just do enough miracles so that they write a book about it and then you are good for a 50 centuries or so. > Quite a waste > of effort too. Also, "the cosmic muffin belief subroutine" implies that > the minds are very high-level, which isn't the case for us, but I > suppose it could be the case for some resource-efficient AGIs, however > even then, either they're correct machines or they're self-correcting > machines, in which case your attempt would be futile (they'll fix > themselves) or pointless (they won't be smart or conscious). They can only fix themselves to the extent that the continuity of the sim allows them to. If I part the Red Sea, then they would be correct in thinking it was a miracle. >> If MWI is a complete theory of the universe, their opinions > >> is wrong too. > > > Opinions can be right or wrong but the reality is that a programmer > > has omnipotent power over the conditions within the program. She may > > be a programmer, but she can make her simulation subjects think or > > experience whatever she wants them to. She may think of herself as > > their goddess, but she can appear to them as anything or nothing. Her > > power over them remains true and factually real. > > Only for a limited amount of time and for a very small part of the > measures of some observers. Any amount of time is an eternity in simulation time. > Unless of course, those observers' goals > were directly programmed by you and they are incapable of > self-correcting and so on - already explained the issue with that. > You're trying to make puppets out of machines, but they are not what you > think they are. If I can put you on the moon at will, then it doesn't matter whether you are a puppet or not. I am still omnipotent to you. If I can reprogram your brain...hell, we can even do this ourselves now with hypnosis. It doesn't mean I have to control every aspect of your existence at all times, it just means that I *can* control any particular aspect of your experience or your universe at any given time. > > >>> There would also > >>> be infinite MWI UM sub-universes where God is supernatural, sub- > >>> universes where Gods are aliens, pirates, beercans, Pokemon, etc. > > >> There can;t be any supernatural entities in a physics-based > >> multiverse. > > > I'm not talking about the physics-based multiverse level, I'm talking > > about the computational (read what I wrote again please) "UM sub- > > universes". MWI alone does not make gods inevitable but MWI+ Comp > > does. Add the anthropic principle levels any objections about > > probability. This seems iron clad and straightforward to me. > > Not gods, merely programmers looking into some computations, not the > cause of the 1p of those machines, If I put you on the moon, I indirectly change your 1p experience. Nobody needs to know the cause. > and if you want to affect their > reality directly and consistently, you'll have to share their reality Not necessary. One or two miracles every few thousand years is enough. The fact that I am watching and can intervene on the sim makes me omnipotent within the sim. > (either at your level or insert yourself at their level)...> The opinion of > the programmer *is* truth to the programmed. That's > > what makes them God. > > There are countless ways of defining God, but to be sure, that doesn't > fit Bruno's definition of God. That's like saying that if you made a > protocell and put it on some world and you came back a few billion years > later and there are now generally intelligent beings on that world, > you're their god A programmer administrator has hands on control of the simulation. She is not an absentee Deist god. Unless she wants to be. > - you couldn't have known how the evolution would have > turned out or the entire histories that would have happened from that > point after you placed that protocell. It's a false equivalence. If it were a comp sim, I could restore from a backup and start it over and over, tweaking it until I get the result I want. > This is your argument, not mine. My whole point is that God becomes > > natural, and inevitable under MWI + Comp. That God has to be > > supernatural is your opinion. The reality is that God need only be > > meta-programmatic from the perspective inside a simulation. I don't > > know that I can make it much clearer. > > Sure, the programmer is natural, although it's hardly a deity. At best > it's only worth some respect *if such a belief is correct*, not worship > or any other weird stuff. How do you know? You are speculating on the machine's 1p. Worship may not seem like weird stuff at all. Isn't that the case for believers in our own universe? > The notion of supernatural seems like > non-sense to me - the supernatural has to work by some rules too, thus > it also becomes natural - calling something supernatural means your > model of reality is incomplete, nothing more. And since by definition no model can be complete, the supernatural is inevitable. > > >> You might have artificial something-or-others, > >> but we should invent a new word for them. > > > We can invent as many words for it as we want, but none will be any > > more or less appropriate than God. Call it Administrator if you want. > > The functionality is the same. > > I like the term "Matrix Lord" for such programmers, although I can't > remember where I first heard it. Sure, that works too. I kind of like Administrator though because can remind us that the consequences of assuming comp are not just science fiction, our society is going to be increasingly running on them. I am an Administrator in my actual work, and I watch people try to hack in every day with scripts looking to crack admin passwords. Why are they doing that? Because they want to become God of our customers digital universe. > I don't think it matters. Any form of comp + MWI = inevitable all > > powerful (relative to some simulation) Administrators. > > Not all powerful. They're as powerful as one can possibly be (if they > have access to unbounded computational resources), but they are no more > or less powerful than any other generally intelligent being that can > possibly exist within a COMP ontology. No amount of intelligence can give a being in a simulation the power to stop the simulation, step out of it and edit it. > I already said that the chance of > them affecting the observers in the simulation is low, but let's > consider the case where they do succeed (with some low measure), are > they more powerful than the ones they've simulated? No, they can even be > less powerful. The beings in the inner universe could very well end up > in a continuation where they become substrate independent themselves, > then they can launch a continuation by putting themselves in an inner > simulation which contains themselves, then find themselves somewhere in > the UD, outside of the original programmer's control. Now in that new > world, they could try looking at the programs ran within the UD and try > to find their original digital physics world (which they could try to do > if they recorded enough data from it) using some heuristics. This sounds to me like you are suggesting that if Pac Man can become self aware and step out of the arcade onto the street. > If their > original programmer left enough evidence that identifies the physics he > was running on, his "creations" may very well be able to simulate (now > from a separate "physics") his world and thus end up having a (very low) > chance of playing interventionist "god" like he did. As I said before - > all beings in COMP are on equal footing - they are all as powerful as > they can be and any such Matrix Lord-like abilities are only temporary > and shouldn't be abused. They don't have to be temporary. Reboot. Restart. Loop. > > The moral of this is that from the 1p of any being living in a world > where COMP is true, they are already as powerful as is possible and this > power shouldn't be abused lest you may end up others abusing it on you - > the golden rule. > > Unfortunately, even if observers in worlds where COMP is true have the > potential to become as "powerful" as is logically possible for a finite > being to be, they will never have perfect or complete knowledge - > Godel's theorems and the halting problem being generally unsolvable > prevent this. > Of course, all of this assumes that our arithmetic is universally true and not just the synchronized 1p which our simulation necessitates. How do we know that isn't solvable in the 'real universe'? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
