RE: OMs are events

From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 15:33:51 -0700

Hal writes

> I did mention the question of whether a given calculation
> instantiated a given OM. Maybe "instantiate" is not the
> right word there. I meant to consider the question of whether
> the first calculation added to the measure of the information
> structure corresponding to the OM.

I think that both the word and the meaning are clear.

Consider the following "gentle seduction" approach. One
day instead of artificial hearts, people get---piece by
---piece, artificial brains; and let us, just for the
purpose of clarifying the above, suppose that this happens
without much protest (say in the year 2100). Of course,
*many* here do protest, but let's just imagine that it
becomes accepted anyway.

Then a lot of "people" are walking around with very complicated
programs for minds. Since they act and talk just as we do, let's
inquire as to how they would report on the above discussion.

While someone's body is undergoing repair, it may happen that
he or she can rent a replacement body. It may even happen that
for the duration of the operation, their program (i.e. what we
think of as their mind) is temporarily halted. This too would
seem unobjectionable given the original premise above that in
2100 people have artificial brains made of silicon.

Finally, instead of just being unconscious, that is, absent,
during the operation, it might be that they could download
their program into some small device that furnished only
virtual reality. This too would be equally unobjectionable,
given the aforesaid premise.

So while some very small machine somewhere was "hosting" them,
we could very well say that that particular machine was
*instantiating* them, could we not? This is how I would use
the terms. One could even go further and say that a person
could be instantiated in more than one place at a time.

After all, today we speak of your computer being able to
instantiate a program (give runtime to), while my computer
can do the same thing with a different instance of the
same program.

So the big "Everything" claim, or Schmidhuber conjecture, (or
I don't know what to call it) is that you and I are *already*
being instantiated by abstract mathematical patterns (the
UDist, for Universal Distribution). This conjecture, of course,
is hotly debated, but I think that what is being claimed
is clear. Does anyone disagree with the *clarity* of
what I have written, or can anyone have a problem with any
of the *words* I used?

(We must before anything else make sure that we are communicating.)

Lee
Received on Mon Aug 01 2005 - 18:34:11 PDT