From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri Jun 21 2002 - 18:47:51 MDT
empresstheodora@juno.com wrote:
>
> ---------- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@datamann.com> writes:
>
> "An instance is each time a simulation is run. I run Tomb Raider tonite,
> you run it tomorrow. Two different, nearly identical universes."
>
> But there is a difference between the complex universe which we inhabit and a contrived senario. Especially in Tomb raider. The people don't think and nothing really happens that someone didn't dictate beforehand.
> Everything that is "seen" is nothing but a representation not even how it would actually appear even if it was possible to think of a program in this way.
It was a metaphor, obviously. However, you are making a mistake to think
that a universe must have thinking beings in it to be 'real' to its
occupants. Our universe allegedly had billions of years alone to itself
(or at least a billion or so) before people came along. The Tomb Raider
universe template operates according to the Unified Tomb Raider Field
Theory, and not the rules of our universe. You are being anthropocentric
here.
>
> >
> > What is usually meant is an emulation. (I know that some other
> > threads have been talking about this.) But if we wanted to get
> > really precise about language, I would suggest that a painting
> > of the Earth is a simulation of it, because it matches the
> > appearance of the Earth. In other words, a portrayal of the
> > Earth can count as a simulation.
> >
>
> "An image is not a portrayal, it is a solid record, like a book. It is a
> database. It is not an executable. I may have a kernel in my imagination
> USE that image to imagine such a planet."
>
> I would agree that images are not really simulations. Images are just spatial frames of reference about light illuminating an object nothing more.
>
> > A puppet is a portrayal of a character. The puppet only appears
> > to have experiences and emotions. They're only simulated.
>
> "The physical puppet in the city park is a portrayal. The mental puppet
> in my memory, after watching the performance, having further adventures
> is in a universe of its own, but may or may not be a sentient being."
>
> Pretending you are the pupet and giving him adventures is not giving something sentience. That's why intelligent people don't "play" after they are kids. That's also why pornographic dreams and fantasies are so unfulfilling eventually: you are just gett
ing a contrived experience that dosn't really change at all. Otherwise it could be possible to get rejected in such dreams.
You still don't get it. A things status as 'contrived' is entirely
subjective to the universe of the thing compared to the universe of the
observer. To an observer of our universe simulation, we are merely
contrivances and not 'real', so far as they are concerned.
>
> "The problem with using the term 'puppet' as an example is that puppets are
> under external control with no volition, etc. Thus a puppet without a
> puppet master is nothing but a database. The master is the executable."
>
> And the pupet is nothing. He has nothing and no sentient will. That means I could do something with the puppet and claim that the puppet did it. That dosn't work.
If the puppet is in this universe, it is a puppet and nothing more. When
your mind imagines the puppet acting like a sentient being, it is a
sentient being within the universe you imagined.
>
> >
> > But by common convention here, I think, we'll mean emulation when
> > we say simulation. So what is an emulation? In another thread
> > they said (with more accuracy) than I'm going to do here, that
> > it is necessary for the emulation to re-create every property
> > of whatever it is that's being emulated.
>
> "A simulation is a universe, but I believe we were treating an
> 'emulation' as some sort of character or entity within it."
>
> That's all mathmetical jargon. For all intents and purposes universes reawlly shouldn't be talked of unless we are invoking some sort of physics and the like. Computer programs while they involve the forces of physics don't make universes. Nor for the m
ost part have they (yet is the key word) do much in the way of thinking. I believe that at most becuase we are creating such entities and we are limited in the way we think that they will only be approximations.
A universe's laws of physics are only 'real' in the frame of reference
of the occupants of that universe. Our laws of physics are merely
computer generated contrivances on the system running our simulation,
which has users who are debating whether we are real sentient beings,
emulations, or dummy puppets with no real substance, and whether that
really matters to them.
Tomb Raider has it's own laws of physics, as does X-Plane, Resident
Evil, MSFS, among others. Theirs are as real *within their frame of
reference*, as relativity demands, as our laws are 'real' within our
frame of reference. You are thinking so classically, Ptolmaic, even.
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