From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Sep 15 1997 - 06:41:52 MDT
Hal <hal@rain.org> writes:
[Fascinating description of "Time Warp OS" deleted for brevity]
> We assume that the (simulated) neural activity is what gives rise to
> consciousness. Therefore it might be that the simulated "wrong" neural
> activity could give rise to a consciousness which does not match the
> "true" consciousness being determined by the simulation. This false
> consciousness would have no way of interacting with the outside world, or
> of revealing its existence through any overt behavior. The person being
> simulated would steadfastly deny that he had any unusual perceptions
> or sensations due to the time warp simulation (because all the false
> ones would get rolled back and erased). Yet we have reason to think
> that he is wrong, by the principle which identifies mental states with
> (simulated) brain states.
Wow! Sounds lot like the trickery done in Permutation City to
confirm the "dust hypothesis". Of course, in that universe the
backtracking would cause a branching all the time of slightly different
individuals in parallel worlds.
It is not unreasonable to think that similar unrolling happens in
our minds. We already know that consciousness seems to be backdating
itself (the experiments of Libet et al), and I assume Dennets
draft model of consciousness also might include this. We might contain
lots of "attempted persons", and only one becomes actual.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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