From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sun Jun 23 2002 - 11:26:59 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> Mike writes
>
> > > Now an "observer" of our simulation either is vastly more intelligent
> > > than we are or he is not. If he is, then he may look down upon the
> > > events in our brains (or simulated brains) as being sub-whatever-he-is,
> > > and may rightly prove that by his standards we are not conscious,
> > > feeling, etc. But if he is anywhere near our level, then he *MUST*
> > > admit that I'm conscious.
> >
> > S/He/IT might admit you are an AI in this simulation, but is under no
> > compunction to admit anything more, no matter what the comparative
> > intelligence of you and it. It may recognize coding for self awareness
> > if it is that capable, but doesn't necessarily equate self awareness
> > within this simulacra with self awareness within their own. Nor,
> > apparently, have they empowered you, or I, to operate avatars within
> > their own environment, or to even have confirmed evidence of its
> > existence.
>
> You are saying that the beings running our simulation may
> be able to detect that we are self-aware, but that they
> wouldn't necessarily equate it to their own self-awareness?
> Why not? How many different kinds of self-awareness are
> there? I see that you have no difficulty supposing that
> the characters in your dreams and in books have your kind
> of self-awareness.
There need not be differences in self awareness, but the decision is
based more on the ethical system of those creating the simulation. If
they have a concept of Natural Law as a basis for sentient rights, and
if they are willing to posit that sentients have individual rights no
matter what universe/simulation they reside in, then they would resolve
to the sort of conclusions that Samantha was speaking of earlier. The
problem with this is that our current concepts of Natural Rights are
highly dependent upon the physical laws of our universe operating as
they do. This is not necessarily a requirement of every
universe/simulation. We have no idea what the physical laws may be of
the universes simulated in our minds, and those simulated in artificial
computers may operate by laws that are equally arbitrary.
In Egan's Permutation City, the City has created a simulated universe
using CA rules that operate in a subatomic model quite different from
that of our universe. As a result, sentience only develops as a hive
mind in an insect species. It is rather obvious that in a hive species,
concepts of individual rights do not apply to individual insect
organisms, therefore the Natural Law concepts that underpin our
political ideas of sentient rights in this universe do not apply in such
a simulated universe.
In this respect, the gulf between sentient individuals rights in one
simulation versus another may be light years wider than even that
recognised by different cultures or nations here on Earth. We may justly
respect individual rights as we do here in this universe based on
Natural Law arguments, but the concept of Natural Law would apply
entirely differently in a simulation based on different physical laws,
such that sentients in such a simulated universe would have entirely
different evolved principles of what is moral and ethical treatment for
individuals.
We may deplore the bloody violence in Duke Nukem simulations, but if
such violence is SOP under the Natural Law principles evolved from the
physical laws of the Duke Nukem universe type, then we are in error to
apply our ethical standards to behavior within that universe. All we can
do is choose to not run such simulations only to the extent to which we
do not interfere in the Natural Law rights of other individuals in this
universe to run or not run such simulations as they see fit.
>
> Of course they haven't empowered us to operate avatars
> within their own environment, or it would be all over
> the newspapers.
Unless you count the National Enquirer as a newspaper.. ;)
>
> >> Many researchers believe that the whole MPS thing is a fraud.
> >> Year after year CSICOP's Skeptical Inquirer runs articles
> >> debunking it. Since MPS is not a verified phenomenon, your
> >> speculation here is also imaginary.
>
> > Quite so. But then, imagination is the thing, isn't it? One thing I've
> > learned in life is that we make our own demons and angels, trials and
> > tribulations. What anybody else thinks of how we perceive ourselves is
> > really about as useful as a square screw.
>
> So? If MPS is a fraud, then we have exactly zero indication
> that a conscious human can host more than one person. An even
> stronger argument is that it would have been very costly for
> evolution to have endowed us with that capability.
Until we can tap into the human computer like we can to a silicon one,
we have no basis to say yea or nay. I am merely following a line of
logic based on certain premises.
>
> > > Do you have any evidence whatsoever that a "universe" is ever
> > > launched by an exercise of your imagination? Keep in mind
> > > that your brain can in reality support only so much calculation.
> >
> > Our minds are not expected to be matched for another decade or more by
> > man made computers. They are the paramount supercomputers of the day.
> > Looking at our minds thusly, rather than as the fallible, oft mistaken,
> > fanciful, emotive, irrational organs they are regularly ridiculed as,
> > leads one to the inescapable conclusion that if we are in a simulation...
> > then our brains are evanescent generators of other universes.
>
> We come right back to this statement that has bugged more people
> than just me. Doesn't it sound a little high falutin' to claim
> that one's brain generates a universe? A whole universe? Or
> only a *few* galaxies and quasars? Do cats' brains also generate
> universes? You lose me when you talk like this.
Is your brain a computer? Yes, it is. Can a computer run a simulation?
Yes, it can, and the more complex and powerful the computer, the more
'realistic' the simulation. Is an uploaded mind a sentient being while
residing on or in a computer, and experiencing I/O via virtual
interfaces? To an uploaded mind (i.e. the mind currently uploaded to
your meatware brain computer), reality is ONLY the input it receives. If
it only recieves virtual input, then that virtuality is reality to that
mind.
If this universe is a simulation, then sentients in other, similar
universes have exactly the same rights within their own universes as we
have here. The only real question is whether a sentient has any rights
in other universes than their own, and bears any responsibility for the
destruction of or harm to sentients in other universes.
>
> > Does a new universe collapse once you've been distracted or awakened
> > from the dream that created it? Likely not, though likely entropy
> > within it only progresses as you think about it, but this is a rather
> > deep question to ask, isn't it?
>
> Let me try to get a grip on this. Suppose that we go to
> a sleep clinic, and carefully monitor a patient as he
> enters into the five levels of sleep. I am certain that
> no instruments would detect a mass increase, so your
> "universe" must only be a metaphor.
You are thinking so atomically. The existence of another
universe/simulation doesn't add any mass to this one. Try to drop the
whole classical mechanics view of the universe, okay?
> Okay, so there is
> all sorts of weird electrical activity going on that we
> don't exactly know the purpose of. Presumably, the rest
> that the tired brain is getting contributes to waking
> survival. Some parts of the brain during REM evidently
> try to piece together the random inputs their getting
> into a believable interpretation, and so we get fragments
> of images, ideas, and audio that we even can remember.
> This sounds *awfully* thin to describe the way that you
> like to. We should, instead, view the reposing patient
> as undergoing various hallucinations and delusions, and
> to not be actually entirely conscious at all.
I don't know about you, but my dreams are far more lucid and structured
than hallucinations or delusions.
>
> > > Even if you are a tremendously skillful author, and have poured
> > > a great deal of effort into fleshing out a character, that
> > > character does not have an independent consciousness---that is,
> > > a piecemeal examination of the brain of that author will show
> > > only *one* consciousness. The purported character will be found
> > > to be nothing but a bunch of visual and auditory fragments in
> > > the author's imagination. Not a person at all.
> >
> > What is the source of your consciousness? Why is it that characters
> > within your dreams all act as very conscious individuals, often with
> > wills of their own and beyond our control? They may all have only the
> > consciousness that our brains timeshared to them in the dream, but then,
> > where do we all get ours?
>
> Consciousness is evolution's answer to how to generate animal
> behavior most in accord with survival: it was found that giving
> the brain access to recent memory in such a manner that current
> activity could be deeply affected afforded much better survival
> chances.
>
> In dreams, we for the most part project consciousness on to the
> images and voices of people that we imagine, much like we project
> such consciousness onto other people in real life, even though
> we don't, of course, actually generate that consciousness. So
> in a dream we suddenly imagine that we hear someone say something,
> and we don't for some amazing reason remember our own contriving
> of that statement. It still seems like a leap to project a full-
> blown consciousness onto people we think we see and hear in
> dreams.
As much as it is a leap to project full blown conciousness on anybody
else in this universe.
>
> >
> > They have no separate identity within our universe. We have
> > no evidence that they don't have one in theirs.
>
> I'm suggesting that we have no evidence whatsoever that
> there even is any universe but ours.
You are operating under the assumption that there is something 'real'
about this universe that sentients within simulations cannot similarly
claim.
>
> Yes, someday when we mount full blown simulations, we may
> be able to judge with a lot of evidence that it hosts
> self-aware creatures. But that's only because we are
> going to, unlike nature ever has, invest huge amounts
> of resources to create such simulations. Likewise, if
> we are living in a simulation, you can bet that the
> originators sunk a lot of bucks into it.
Yes, as sims go, this one is a nice one. Does the niceness of this
universe make it, and it's inhabitants, for some reason superior to
those inhabiting less well executed simulations?
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