From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Wed May 01 2002 - 04:07:06 MDT
On Tue, 30 Apr 2002, Adrian Tymes wrote:
> This almost exactly duplicates Descartes' infamous musing. If you
> were uploaded into a VR that *perfectly* replicated your current
> reality, in a way that you did not remember the upload, then no, it
> would not matter: by definition, there would be no difference to you.
Of course there would a world of a difference: you wouldn't be in control.
You'd be in teletubbyland, at mercy of whatever entity that is running the
place. Perfect prison, can't even kill yourself.
> The nagging suspicion that it might matter comes from the insistence
> on perfection here: we intuitively know that, no matter what we may
> rationalize, replications (at least from non-digital states like
> "reality as we now know it") are actually rarely perfect, even if done
It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough to fool you. ("Perfect" is
meaningless, anyway).
> by very clever people assisted by the best of modern technology (and
> thus, one suspects despite all rationalization, replications made by
> even very advanced SIs would suffer from the same limitation in
> practice), that one state can often be told from another...and in that
> difference, is what matters.
Huh? You can tell this from *what*? What are you comparing this reality
with?
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