From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Jun 09 2002 - 22:24:05 MDT
Hal writes
> I once constructed a thought experiment which to me casts doubt on the
> notion that re-running a life is beneficial. More specifically it looks
> at the issue of running the same program on two computers at the same
> time, which arguably should as valuable as running it at two different
> times. Then I try to arrange things so that we have the computers hooked
> up so that they can run as either a single computer or as two separate
> computers, with the hookup such that they can be varied smoothly between
> the two states. I describe one version of the experiment here:
>
> http://www.extropy.org/exi-lists/extropians.3Q98/0753.html
Well, I sure wish that I hadn't dropped off the list in 1996!
You guys really got into it after that. This 1998 experiment
of yours is quite nice. Although I have always easily dealt
with the case of two identical but separate systems executing
the same program, your expedient of having a curtain of variable
conductivity between the elements of the hardware is most
ingenious.
I say that either you have separate causal streams, or you don't.
If two streams of events are causally separated, then they might
as well be in distinct galaxies. So I would retort that as soon
as the variable conductivity begins to occur, the causal streams
can no longer be said to be separate. It does indeed become
tangled as to how to score this, for those of us who maintain that
two runs are better than one. Is this one run, or two? I would
say that your logic forces me to ascribe value to an intermediate
real between one and two: to the degree that people who believe
in causality are going to maintain that it's a mixed but mostly
single system, then benefit is accorded correspondingly. So I
drop this problem in the laps of people who want to debate whether
something constitutes one causal stream, or more than one. (But
that's my lap too :-) )
> The real conclusion of the thought experiment, it seems to me, is that
> there is no well defined notion of the number of implementations of a
> program, and hence of the number of conscious observers. Therefore we
> can't say that it is good to be re-run, since that is fundamentally a
> meaningless concept - there is no well-defined notion of how many runs
> a program gets.
Doesn't the idea of separate causal instantiations work?
> When I brought this up several years ago on Wei's mailing list which
> discusses the possibility that all universes exist,
> http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/everything.html, Wei proposed (as I recall)
> that the thought experiment could be reconciled with notions of the value
> of re-running by expanding these to value increases in size as well as
> increases in frequency. So it would be twice as good either to run on
> a computer twice as big, or to run twice as often (I'm not sure whether
> twice as fast would also be twice as good).
Well, I've never entertained the idea that the *size* of a computer
has anything to do with "the amount of consciousness" it supports or
anything like that, any more than I'd think experiences would be more
intense if our neurons were bigger.
> That is certainly an interesting proposal, and I wish that everyone who
> advocates the value of re-running would also bite the bullet and advocate
> the value of running on big computers.
I remain unconvinced.
> Either way you get more of the universe's resources dedicated
> to running your program, which I think ultimately is what is
> being sought by those who hold this value system.
Nah. I'm still claiming to reduce consciousness to a succession
of causally connected *program* *states*, i.e., as in Turing
Machine states. You have found a way to cast doubt on the
concept of a single causal stream, a single sequence of events
linked though the flow of information. That's where you should
keep trying to nail us IMO :-)
Lee
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