On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 01:40:58PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: > On 5/30/2014 11:45 PM, Russell Standish wrote: > > > >Yet it seems to me that CantGoTu environments and other non-virtual > >reality environments have measure one in the space of environments > >hosted by the UD, as UD* has the cardinality of the continuum, whereas > >virtual reality environments are strictly aleph_0. > > But aren't "we" as physically instantiated beings, also of the cardinality of > the continuum? >
Yes, we are, but not the virtual reality environments, which must be countable by virtue of there only being a countable number of programs. With COMP, and via the UDA, the number of "real" environments experienced must be the cardinality of the continuum, and would include all the CantGoTu environments. We could therefore conclude (contra Bostrom), that we are most likely not in a simulation, but that we can never prove it by any finite observation (Deutsch's CantGoTu argument). I agree that sometimes we can know we're in a virtual reality - Deutsch's chess VR example, for instance - but only by it being logically incompatible with our existence as an observer. The question remains - suppose someone finds a physical phenomenon that contradicts the laws of physics derived from COMP. Does that falsify COMP, or does it imply we're in a virtual reality? How can you possibly distinguish those two situations? Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
