Re: The consciousness singularity
On 24 Nov 2011, at 23:00, Jason Resch wrote: On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 2:44 PM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: Jason Resch-2 wrote: On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 1:17 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 11/23/2011 4:27 AM, Jason Resch wrote: The simulation argument: http://www.simulation-**argument.com/simulation.htmlhttp://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html If any civilization in this universe or others has reached the point where they choose to explore consciousness (rather than or in addition to exploring their environment) then there are super-intelligences which may chooses to see what it is like to be you, or any other human, or any other species. After they generate this experience, they may integrate its memories into the larger super-mind, and therefore there are continuations where you become one with god. Alternate post-singularity civilizations may maintain individuality, in which case, any one person choosing to experience another being's life will after experiencing that life awaken to find themselves in a type of heaven or nirvana offering unlimited freedom, from which they can come back to earth or other physical worlds as they choose (via simulation). Therefore, even for those that don't survive to see the human race become a trans-humanist, omega-point civilization, and for those that don't upload their brain, there remain paths to these other realities. I think this can address the eternal aging implied by many-worlds: eventually, the probability that you survive by other means, e.g., waking up as a being in a post-singularity existence, exceeds the probability of continued survival through certain paths in the wave function. Jason Why stop there. Carrying the argument to it's natural conclusion the above has already happened (infinitely many) times and we are now all in the simulation of the super-intelligent beings who long ago discovered that nirvana is too boring. Brent Brent, I agree. About 10% of all humans who have ever lived are alive today. With a silicon-based brain, we could experience things about 1,000,000 times the rate our biological brains do. If the humans that uploaded themselves spend just 1 day (real time) experiencing other human lives that is equivalent to 40 human lifetimes worth of experience, and thus 80% of all human lives experienced would be simulated ones. (After that 1 day) This is after just one day, but such a civilization could thrive in this universe for trillions of years. Isn't uploading somewhat superflous if we are already simulated? If everyone were to think like that, then nothing would be simulated. It is like deciding not to put on a seat belt when you go in a car because you believe in other branches you won't get in an accident in the first place. The decisions we make affect the relative proportions and frequencies of events. Yes, all simulations exist, no matter what. For example they exist in UD*, which belongs to a tiny part of arithmetical truth. But we cannot effectively recognize ourselves in UD* (even if we knew our substitution level!, by the theorem of Rice in computer science), so it makes sense to change the probabilities of our first person extensions by personal decisions. We can influence our first person future experiences, in the mundane life and in the many possible form of after-life. This is related with the existence of local, terrestrial, free will in the determinist frame. So uploading is not necessarily superfluous. It is vein if the abstract goal is immortality, but full of sense if the goal consists in seeing the next soccer cup and your brain is too much ill to do it 'naturally'. Bruno It seems this whole argument more plausibly means that there is no simulation needed in the first place (it already there anyway). It seems that ultimately we all will inveitably get lost in our simulations and all the others that we could be a part of (how would we avoid this?), so no one knows anymore what is simulated and what not, and who simulates and who is simluating (and how it is simulated), what is past and what is future, who is who, etc... So ultimately, there are not really concrete simulations going on at all, since there are so intermingled with each other and with reality that we can't distinguish different simulations and simulations from reality (in an absolute way). I mostly agree with the above. Reality and paths through it are very complex, and what is simulated vs. what isn't may be impossible to distinguish. Everything occurs that subjectively can occur. Subjectivity orders the space of infinite possibilities, and learns to navigate it (creating a subjective future). Normal, material reality is just the ordering mechanism to avoid getting lost over and over again in
Re: The consciousness singularity
Jason Resch-2 wrote: On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 2:44 PM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.comwrote: Jason Resch-2 wrote: On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 1:17 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 11/23/2011 4:27 AM, Jason Resch wrote: The simulation argument: http://www.simulation-**argument.com/simulation.html http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html If any civilization in this universe or others has reached the point where they choose to explore consciousness (rather than or in addition to exploring their environment) then there are super-intelligences which may chooses to see what it is like to be you, or any other human, or any other species. After they generate this experience, they may integrate its memories into the larger super-mind, and therefore there are continuations where you become one with god. Alternate post-singularity civilizations may maintain individuality, in which case, any one person choosing to experience another being's life will after experiencing that life awaken to find themselves in a type of heaven or nirvana offering unlimited freedom, from which they can come back to earth or other physical worlds as they choose (via simulation). Therefore, even for those that don't survive to see the human race become a trans-humanist, omega-point civilization, and for those that don't upload their brain, there remain paths to these other realities. I think this can address the eternal aging implied by many-worlds: eventually, the probability that you survive by other means, e.g., waking up as a being in a post-singularity existence, exceeds the probability of continued survival through certain paths in the wave function. Jason Why stop there. Carrying the argument to it's natural conclusion the above has already happened (infinitely many) times and we are now all in the simulation of the super-intelligent beings who long ago discovered that nirvana is too boring. Brent Brent, I agree. About 10% of all humans who have ever lived are alive today. With a silicon-based brain, we could experience things about 1,000,000 times the rate our biological brains do. If the humans that uploaded themselves spend just 1 day (real time) experiencing other human lives that is equivalent to 40 human lifetimes worth of experience, and thus 80% of all human lives experienced would be simulated ones. (After that 1 day) This is after just one day, but such a civilization could thrive in this universe for trillions of years. Isn't uploading somewhat superflous if we are already simulated? If everyone were to think like that, then nothing would be simulated. It is like deciding not to put on a seat belt when you go in a car because you believe in other branches you won't get in an accident in the first place. The decisions we make affect the relative proportions and frequencies of events. We may already have simulated ourselves an infinite number of times. If we decide to simulate ourselves over and over again, we will get in an infinite cycle of getting lost in our simulations over and over again. When we just stop, we realize there is already infinite simulations of everything possible going on. This is just the most natural conclusion (like Brent said). We don't have to simulate anything, because we can't avoid that everything is already being simulated. The only reason to simulate somehing is if the experience of simulating something is useful (beyond the benefit of transcending physical limitations, you can do that in dreams as well - just learn lucid dreaming, it seems to be more rich than any virtual reality could be and it has the benefit we seemingly don't get lost and addicted to it, like with games), and we should only do that while making sure there is a clear difference between simulation and reality (no universal uploading) - otherwise we have achieved nothing whatsoever, we'll just join the usual dreamscape. I am not sure under what circumstances very big and involving simulations would be useful. It might very well turn out the main reason for simulating anything is discovering the relationship of simulations and real reality in general. Getting very involved in a simulation may be impossible (let alone uploading) , since we inevitably will lose contact to reality (and not just temporarily) quite quickly if we do this. We already can get dangerously much lost in computer games (often a whole youth is wasted this way), which are comparitively extremely uninvolving (they are just pictures on a screen and sound, you don't physically feel anything and there is a clear sperating barrier between you and the game). In my youth my main activity was playing computer games, and even though now I seldomly play games now, and in a casual way, my unconscious was very polluted by it for a long time and still is to some extent. I
Re: The consciousness singularity
Bruno Marchal wrote: So uploading is not necessarily superfluous. It is vein if the abstract goal is immortality, but full of sense if the goal consists in seeing the next soccer cup and your brain is too much ill to do it 'naturally'. But as soon as we upload ourselves, we can't make sure we uniquely interact with our usual physical reality, since an uploaded digital mind could also be part of a lot of dreamy realities (/simulations/virtual words) - except if we assume materialism, which postulates there is an objective physical wold (in which case we have no computational reason to suspect substitutions will work, we would have to rely on blind faith). Our brain avoids that by being a structure with a quite unique instantiation, and a quite clear subjective dividing barrier to virtual realities (I am not a/ in a computer). That's why I don't buy COMP: As soon as we substitute ourselves, we will inevitably change our subjective relative environment, making the substitution fail. If we are a computer, we can subjectively interface much more strongly with all the computers that our computational instantiation is (could be) a part of and interfere with all the simulations that are hard to dinstinguish from what goes on your computer. It's harder to dinstinguish yourself from other simulated selfes than from other biological selves, because of the natural biological barriers that we have, that computers lack. And we can't assume we are able to find the right world we would like to be in, without subjectively developing a brain (which will make the substitution seem to never have happened). We can only say YES if we assume there is no self-referential loop between my instantiation and my environment (my instantiation influences what world I am in, the world I am in influences my instantiation, etc...). But we really have to assume such a loop exists if we are already part of the matrix (since everything in the matrix is connected). It matters how our computations are instantiated because of subjective self-reference. OK, we could say YES based on the faith that subjective self-reference will develop a world for the digital brain that is similar to the old world (though that seems very unlikely to me), but this is not YES qua computatio. benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/The-consciousness-singularity-tp32803353p32876158.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- 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.
