Chris, Hans's ideas are certainly not vacuous. If you believe MWI then you
believe that anything you imagine exists somewhere - but that has little or
nothing to do wi th the fact of your imagining it. I sometimes imagine that
I don't escape a near brush with death on my motorbike, or that I say
something rude in an e-mail posting. In many universes, that actually
happens. I'm amazed you have any difficulty with this concept - it is a very
basic result of MWI and if we can't agree on this we can't get very far.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christopher Maloney [SMTP:dude.domain.name.hidden]
> Sent: Monday, August 02, 1999 1:16 PM
> To: everything-list
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Implementation/Relativity
>
> Hans' ideas are quaint and curious, but ultimately vacuous, IMHO.
>
> Hans Moravec wrote:
> >
> > A universe I see depicted on the screen of a simulator in front of me
> > has enormous measure of existence (1.0) for me. As do a universes
> > recorded in books that issued from the wet simulator we called
> > Asimov's brain.
>
> Not useful for determining physical laws as seen by the consciousnesses
> within the simulations.
>
>
> > > my own existence is the only thing I can be really sure of
> > > ... trapped inside some sort of universe that I never made, and that
> > > obeys physical laws. How do you explain that?
> >
> > You interpret the universe as real. The universe returns the favor.
>
> Not useful for my own ability to determine physical laws.
>
>
> > Leaving out inessential details is how mathematics generalizes. It is
> > often immensely useful, because with details gone, your results apply
> > to a larger universe of examples.
>
> Here I think Hans has finally revealed what the hell he has been
> talking about. He is talking here in general about a "simulation".
> In this usage, "simulation" can mean just about anything - the dream
> I had last night, a fleeting thought I have about a fictional character,
> an image I have of a teddy bear talking, the text inside a Sherlock
> Holmes book. A simulation is an elided construct representational
> of something else. Hans has said above that the more elided the
> simulation, the more general it is, and the more applicability it can
> have. I agree that that's often immensely useful.
>
> So any simulation encodes some physical laws, perhaps very generally.
> Those physical laws delimit an ensemble of universes which contain
> (by assumption) SAS's. Fine. But Hans seems to go further to submit
> that an elided simulation actually is the reality it is simulating.
> But at the same time, he has said that an implementation is not
> important for existence.
>
> So is a simulation an implementation, or isn't it? If I imagine
> terrible things, like hitting somebody I don't like, have I actually
> generated universes in which injustices have been done? Or did those
> universes exist already, and I've just opened up a window into them?
> >From Hans' disjoint rantings, it's difficult to say which he
> believes.
>
> I don't believe it's an empty question -- it would have consequences
> with regard to the measure of those simulated universes. And I don't
> see the point of saying that the universe I've thought about has
> "measure 1" to me. Do we all agree that there must be some absolute,
> objective measure over universes? If not, I see no hope for ever
> saying anything useful about the AUH, and we might as well all sign
> off now.
>
> The answer to the question would have obvious ethical consequences as
> well. In the former case, where each simulation in one universe
> affects the measure of others, it would be difficult to determine how
> the measure is affected. It might be possible, but I foresee
> problems. Does the amount of elision play a role in the affect?
>
> In the latter case, his view is isomorphic to the view that fictional
> characters are not real.
>
>
> --
> Chris Maloney
> http://www.chrismaloney.com
>
> "Donuts are so sweet and tasty."
> -- Homer Simpson
Received on Mon Aug 02 1999 - 05:34:06 PDT