From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Jun 22 2002 - 15:39:49 MDT
Eliezer writes
> Here's a stranger and stronger form of the question: What would you do if
> you found out that the world was a simulation and *someone else* was the
> only real person in it? Assume that we subtract from the equation your
> Cartesian knowledge that you are a real person and replace it with the hard
> knowledge that you are a giant look-up table. What would you do?
When I asked people to consult their intuitions about what they'd do
as a VR solipsist, I was implicitly asking that they adopt the first
person viewpoint: they were to imagine that it had happened to them,
and then they were to next imagine what they'd think, what they'd
feel, what they'd plan, and finally what they'd do.
But you've pulled the rug out from all that. There is no first person
anymore in your experiment! So I can only imagine how I look to other
people, and ask how poor Lee would appear to behave. It seems to me
that he would probably vigorous deny that he wasn't conscious. He
would probably start claiming that he had been entirely wrong about
lookup tables!
(By the way, evidently you agree with me that a giant lookup
table would *not* be conscious! I think that we are in the
minority, and this, to me, is an *absolutely* critical issue
that must be revisited soon.)
> I like to think that (the simulated wallpaper version of)
> Eliezer would spend all available mental energy on making
> that one real person's life as pleasant as possible, but
> of course you never really know what you'll do (or the
> simulated wallpaper version of you) until the clinch.
It would be pretty impressive if that version of you were
to be able to act as though it rationally accepted the fact
that it was not conscious. But don't you think that it
would still judge that it *was* conscious, based on its
intuition? After all, life for un-Eliezer would go on
quite as usual until the moment he saw the proof that he
wasn't conscious. That is, he would have still been
engaging in all sorts of the usual discussions about how
this or that feels, and so on.
You, right now in your office, can act as though you accept
the fact---were it proved to you right now---that your brain
is in a jar in California. (Someone got the drop on you, and
you never really made it back from the last nano conference.)
Also, I submit, you believe that this is quite possible, and
all you need is evidence for you to believe it. But could you
believe, right now, that you are not conscious? (This is,
like, telling us something VERY important, IMO.)
Lee
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