From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun Dec 02 2001 - 15:14:10 MST
Nick Bostrom wrote:
>
> Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> >At 10:38 PM 12/1/01 -0500, Nick wrote:
> >
> > >It follows that the
> > > transhumanist dogma that there is a significant chance that we
> >will one day
> > > become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless
> >we are
> > > currently living in a simulation.
> >
> >But that is *not* a `dogma'--an obligatory tenet of an
> >authoritative/authoritarian belief system. It's an opinion or hunch, one
> >held as being of high probability by many transhumanists.
>
> I'm being slightly provocative :-) I will think about changing that term in
> a future version, but the main point is that this commonly held belief
> among transhumanists is false.
>
I don't see any basis for declaring it false so categorically.
Nor do I see any necessity for already being in a simulation if
we expect future descendants (if we are not ourselves immortal)
to run us as simulations or otherwise "resurrect" us. I assume
the falsity hinges on our patterns, once we die, being
irrecoverable unless we are already in a simulation. However,
this is not an airtight argument. Any future highly advanced
intelligence that could time-travel and had the technology to
take snapshots of sentient beings could, in principle, harvest a
recording of great-grandmother and recreate her.
- samantha
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