Eugen Leitl:
>I have trouble alternating between the internal and the external observer
>view. So we have a machine crunching bits, sequentially falling from state
>to
>state. This spans a continous trajectory. We can make a full record of that
>trajectory, eliminating a time axis. When does the subjective observation
>of
>existence assemble into place? The first time the computation was made?
>
>I have trouble seeing my subjective observer experience as a sequence of
>frames, already computed. Is the first run magical, and the static record
>dead meat? I'm confused.
I think the most common theory on this list is that there is nothing special
about the first vs. the second run--rather, the total number of runs helps
determine the measure of that subjective experience. If I scan my brain into
a computer knowing that my first experience after being uploaded will depend
on what environment is created for my simulated brain, I should make sure my
friends do lots of runs where the upload wakes up in an idyllic environment
and that my enemies don't get their hands on the program and do a lot of
runs where the upload is used as a slave or something. If my enemies do
manage to get a copy and do a few of those runs before they are caught and
stopped by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Uploads, my friends
can at least try to minimize the damage by doing so many runs of the idyllic
environment that the probability of having that experience after I wake up
will be much greater than the probability that my first experience after
being uploaded will be waking up as a slave to my enemies (according to this
particular theory of how measure works, anyway).
Jesse Mazer
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Received on Fri Jan 16 2004 - 15:58:50 PST