From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Jun 18 2002 - 00:05:39 MDT
Since Samantha's taking a break, I'll take up the slack ;-)
Mike writes
> A character in a novel in a book is no more an no less than printed
> words until a person picks it up and reads the book.
Yes, and the printed words may be in Etruscan or some other
unknown language. So, so far, nothing mysterious here.
> At that point [however], the novel becomes a simulation in
> the mind (a wetware computer) of the reader, and the
> characters become as real and sentient *Within the confines
> of that imagined universe* as you and I are in this one,
Perhaps you have a much more vivid imagination than I do,
and perhaps far more capabilities for emulating other
people, but I only get the faintest glimpse of what it
is like to be other people. Ninety-nine point nine percent
of my capacity remains being me while I'm reading or watching
a movie, no matter how engrossed I become.
It seems suspicious to start thinking that because I'm
watching Bruce Willis go through all sorts of terrible
mind-wrenching experiences that any part of me is really
going through terrible mind-wrenching experiences. How
fast is your pulse in these situations, Mike? Do you
really feel pain? Or do you only *imagine* (and faintly
at that) what the pain or fright would be like?
> and as real and sentient as an AI or uploaded personality
> in a hardware computer.
No, I follow many who put emulations of uploaded personalities
as *exactly equivalent* to their former lives in total. That
is, they feel *exactly* as if their heart were racing, their
pulse running fast, and as though the adrenalin were pumping
through their veins.
> Such characters may live on in the minds of the reader. I
> frequently imagine further adventures of characters in novels
> I have read in the past. The characters are as intelligent
> as my mind is able to make them (i.e. as intelligent as I am),
> thus they are as real and sentient as any character, avatar,
> AI, or upload would be in a hardware computer.
We all (or most of us) fantasize like this. But if the phone
rings, or the thought crosses my mind that I should get back
to work, it's all gone in a flash. I'm **never** confused
about what is reality. Are you ever?
> If my first person character (the one whose eyes I see the
> imagined world through) kills another character because
> I willed it to, does that make me a murderer?
Absolutely *not*!! You're just playing. God knows how many
times I've blown up the world or worse, in playing around with
ideas.
> You claim that virtual violence is as unpalatable and abhorrent
> as real violence to you.
Samantha is making a dangerous mistake. She many not realize it,
but by lumping virtual violence, and thought experiments, into
the same bag as real, she is not (as she thinks) increasing
our revulsion towards the fantastical; the effect could be
just as strong as to lessen our true justified horror at actual
events.
> > Then explain it without being [insufferable]
>
> The explanation is that (only if we are living in a simulation)
> we are as fictional as they are.
Living in a simulation *does* *not* mean that one is only
fictional. If one is truly being emulated in a simulation,
then one has experiences every bit as rich as would someone
in a corresponding physical, real world.
> Just as foreigners only have rights like citizens as a matter
> of diplomatic reciprocity, we fictional simulacra can accept
> *on faith*, that entities in other simulations are as sentient
> as we, provided only that we *trust* that they do the same.
I disagree. Rather than accept anything on faith, or by giving
benefit of doubt, we should look for evidence confirming or
disconfirming that real experience is actually taking place.
Let's take a concrete example. Suppose you imagine parachuting
into an enemy camp whereupon the first thing that happens to
Mike Lorrey is that the enemy Ninja warrior flies out of his
tent takes off your left arm with one clean sweep! Halfway
knocked out by shock, you somehow nevertheless get your machine-
pistol out and splatter him across the side of the tent.
All right. Now I just imagined all that. I submit that no matter
how hard anyone tries, the above paragraph will not cause pain in
anyone's neural circuitry (except an incredibly weak and mild
form of attempted empathy). You *cannot* begin to compare your
imagined loss of your left arm with the actual event, were it
(heaven forbid) to occur. No one can.
> At this point in time, if we are living in a simulation, our
> operators/users have not granted us similar rights.
This stupid word "rights" is messing up one other thread that
I'm reading about, causing all sorts of confusion. So here
you must mean that we haven't been given legal rights. So
what?
In a private discussion, Mike also said
> [Lee said]
>> Therefore, anyone who really feels sorry for Oliver Twist
>> is delusional. Samantha (from what little I've read) is
>> delusional to "feel" for portrayed characters.
> It is entirely possible for Oliver Twist to be a fully sentient
> character in the fictional universe imagined by Dickens, just as we may
> be fully sentient characters within a simulation run by somebody else.
No human author has ever ever sketched a character who
actually experiences anything while the book isn't being
read, as you admit. So since you admit that Oliver
Twist can only feel while someone is reading the book,
again, how do you explain the ability of the reader to run
his own life in his skull and Oliver's too?
A careful examination of the solar system for the last
two hundred years would reveal that no human nervous
system underwent the experiences Oliver Twist's is purported
to have. Yes, a few readers got really carried away and had
some *incredibly* weak empathy going while they read the book.
That's all.
> Oliver Twist can be a portrayal from the perspective of this universe,
> while being an emulation from the perspective of the fictional universe
> in which he resides.
There *is* no perspective from within that dry, dusty
book. It's all someone's imagination. It might not
even logically hang together. Proof: Suppose not.
Suppose that you emulate Fagin emulating Oliver
while Oliver is empathising with yet another character.
Just *where* are all these emotions, vivid mental
imagery, palpable sights and sounds, plans and deceits,
and multiple consciousnesses supposed to be taking
place? All in the mind of a reader who might also
be feeling his own real-world hunger and sensing that
the room is a little warm and wondering what's for
dinner all at the same time? It's preposterous.
> This is possible if you treat the novel "Oliver
> Twist" as a printed out simulation program which
> can be run on those computers known as human brains.
Well ;-) it sounds like you *really* get into novels!
Me, I'm just seeing in my minds eye a lot of things
happening to someone (someone I know a little), just
as if I were watching television.
> As a printout on paper, Oliver Twist has no sentience,
> but running in the imaginations of people, he and his
> universe are as real (and unreal) as any simulation
> on a computer.
The simulations most of us are talking about---at least
insofar as they support true emulation and not just
portrayal---are as powerful and as information-processing
heavy as reality is. Not at all like portrayals on TV.
(Even the actors on the set are only pretending those
emotions.)
Lee
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