On Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 10:02:39 PM UTC-5, Bruce wrote: > > On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 12:48 PM John Clark <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> When I was younger I read a lot of science fiction, I don't do it so much >> anymore and technically I didn't do it this time either but I did listen to >> a audio book called "We Are Legion We Are Bob" it's the first book of >> the Bobiverse trilogy and I really enjoyed it. You can get a free 5 minute >> sample of the book here: >> >> We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1 >> <https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse/dp/B01L082SCI/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=> >> >> It tells the story of Bob, a young man who has just sold his software >> company for a crazy amount of money and decides that after a decade of hard >> work he's going to spent the rest of his life just goofing off. On a whim >> he signs with a Cryonics company to have his head frozen after his death >> and then just hours later while crossing the street to go to a science >> fiction convention is hit by a car and dies. Five subjective seconds later >> he wakes up and finds that a century has passed and he's been uploaded into >> a computer. This is all in the opening chapter. >> >> Parts of the story are unrealistic but parts of it are not, I think it >> was Isaac Asimov who said it's OK for a science fiction writer to >> violate the known laws of physics but only if he knows he's doing it, and >> when Dennis Taylor, the creator of Bob universe, does it at one point with >> faster than light communication it's obvious that he knowns it. And I can't >> deny it makes for a story that is more fun to read. I have now read (well >> listened) to all 3 Bob books and, although parts are a little corny and >> parts a little too Star Trek for my taste, on the whole I greatly enjoyed >> them all. They're a lot of fun. >> >> The only other novel I can think of that treats the subject of uploading >> with equal intelligence is "The Silicon Man". >> >> The Silicon Man by Charles Platt >> <https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Man-Cortext-Charles-Platt/dp/1888869143> >> >> John K Clark >> > > Consider any of the earlier novels by Greg Egan, the Australian hard > science fiction write based in Perth, WA: particularly "Permutation City" > (1994). > > Bruce >
I had this idea of a science fiction story of where minds are stored in machines in order to "eternally" punish them. The idea is that if a million seconds in the simulated world is a second in the outer world then one can in effect construct a near version of eternal hell-fire. The setting is a world governed by complete terror. Then Egan came out with Permutation city, which explores a similar set of ideas. The problem with the idea of putting minds into machines is that machines can run recursive functions or algorithms, but in a number system such as Peano's we make the inductive leap that the successor of any number can't be the same number or zero in all (infinite number) cases. We can make an inference from a recursively enumerable set. I would then think that the idea of putting minds into machines, or robotic consciousness, is at this time an unknown, maybe an unknowable, proposition. LC -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/44ed303e-5650-430b-b255-bc28392194ae%40googlegroups.com.
