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A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory

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Re: A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory

#111

Post by a1369209993 »

codethief wrote: post #21
db48x wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He states it in the previous sentence: > If you think experience is simulatable, [and] you buy computational or “patternist” theories of identity… Basically, the inner experience of any sapient computation (aka "person") is subjective.

I would counter that by saying that: 1) this has nothing to do with computation. 2) my subjective experience is objectively there. No one questions what I am thinking. (That is, no one else looks inside my brain and claims: This is not what your thinking! ) My thoughts might be my own personal view and differ from other people's thoughts but their existence is not up for debate.

> my subjective experience is objectively there.

Nitpick: you (or anyone else) don't actually have subjective experience; you have objective experience that some people mistakenly call subjective due to the practical difficulty of fully communicating it.

Compare, eg someone claiming there is no objective truth about the[0] text of the Illiad on the basis that there are multiple equally valid ways of translating it into English.

I don't think that has anything directly to do with the point you were making, though.

0: they neglect to mention: original, Greek

Re: A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory

#112

Post by NineStarPoint »

3pt14159 wrote: post #57
sxp wrote: post #6

This article doesn't actually explain Dust Theory to someone who hasn't read the book. I haven't found a good standalone explanation of the theory that explains it in a compact manner so my recommendation to people is to read the book. Permutation City is among my top 5 favorite books because I found Dust Theory so mind blowingly amazing from a philosophical standpoint. I haven't seen it discussed elsewhere outside t…

Almost a decade ago I independently invented the same idea. Discussion was here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2727750 It's a pretty simple theory, which I ultimately reject even to this day. If it were true, however, the expanse of existence is truly terrifying. This theory leads to any possible existence existing, short of maybe self-contradiction[0]. Well, so if that is true, then there exists a relation of…

By that argument there would also be beings that are incredibly powerful and have motives purely beneficial to others. No reason to think either hell or heaven would be the more likely outcome without more knowledge.

Re: A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory

#114

Post by atoav »

NineStarPoint wrote: post #112
3pt14159 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost a decade ago I independently invented the same idea. Discussion was here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2727750 It's a pretty simple theory, which I ultimately reject even to this day. If it were true, however, the expanse of existence is truly terrifying. This theory leads to any possible existence existing, short of maybe self-contradiction[0]. Well, so if that is true, then there exists a relation of…

By that argument there would also be beings that are incredibly powerful and have motives purely beneficial to others. No reason to think either hell or heaven would be the more likely outcome without more knowledge.

Also there would be infinite worlds in which these all powerful entities wouldn't give a damn about human emotion or morals anyways.

Re: A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory

#115

Post by drdeca »

guscost wrote: post #72

All formal systems are incomplete or inconsistent. There is zero evidence that the universe is either.

There is a difference between a mathematical object and a formal system. Surely you would not call a differential equation with a given initial condition describing a simple harmonic oscillator along with an initial condition “inconsistent”. Would you call it incomplete? Doing so would seem rather odd seeing as there is exactly one solution (given the initial condition). And the sense of “incomplete” that the incompleteness theorems are about doesn’t apply to this. I don’t just mean that it isn’t true of it. I mean that it is not an applicable idea. It is like asking what the northernmost point of the color blue is.

People should be careful when trying to apply Gödel’s incompleteness theorems to philosophical questions, as people often do so without really understanding what they say, and, importantly, what they do not say.

Something that may help is to familiarize oneself with Gödel’s _completeness_ theorem.

Re: A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory

#116

Post by namanyayg »

croissants wrote: post #28
aaron-santos wrote: post #20

The article really ought to close the loop by tying it back to the final 10% of the book. The big point in the book is that you can craft arbitrary surjections and have an infinite set of justifications for your subjective experience. A physical substrate is just as good as a computational/mathematical substrate. In this sense you can bootstrap your simulated existence into the immortal world of forms.

The part I don't understand about this, which is the same as the part I don't understand about dust theory, is that it seems to ignore the distinction between an abstract representation of an object and the object itself. By the logic of dust theory, I can walk into a bank and say "give me the money, or else I'll throw this handful of sand into the air, and it might encode a universe where you're tortured for a billi…

A version of the banker in the "real" world will continue to exist, and the sand you throw might also encode a virtual copy of the banker later.

If the sand flies just right, the copy might feel that it actually arose into it's tortorous existence because of your action of throwing the sand. In that case, the copy feels pain.

The original banker continues existing unaffected (and calls the cops).

Re: A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory

#117

Post by namanyayg »

scarmig wrote: post #93

I've not read the book, but I'm trying to digest this. For someone who has a good grasp of Dust Theory, if you answer from its perspective... 1) Does believing that consciousness is simulateable commit you to thinking of consciousness as a purely mathematical object, apart from any physical process it might model? 2) If the universe were just an infinite space filled with dust in a wild zoo of different configuration…

1. Yes, what physical processes? It's just signals.

2. I can postulate that to be true, but unless I have hard proof I cannot say it to be true. If that isomorphic consciousness finds _itself_ to have a subjective experience... Then it knows that dust theory exist, no one else does.

3. I do not understand this question

Re: A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory

#118

Post by boxed »

xwdv wrote: post #29
boxed wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be because the entire thing is nonsense. Entropy shoots a hole in the entire thing as far as I can tell. The problem is that the information can never be retrieved, so if it exists or not is really pointless.

If you are the information though then you have retrieved it.

Not really. Brains don't exist and cannot exist without a medium to work in. It's the old idea that we have souls that are independent from our bodies and underlying reality. This is nonsense.

Re: A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory

#119

Post by guscost »

drdeca wrote: post #115
guscost wrote: post #72

All formal systems are incomplete or inconsistent. There is zero evidence that the universe is either.

There is a difference between a mathematical object and a formal system. Surely you would not call a differential equation with a given initial condition describing a simple harmonic oscillator along with an initial condition “inconsistent”. Would you call it incomplete? Doing so would seem rather odd seeing as there is exactly one solution (given the initial condition). And the sense of “incomplete” that the incompl…

> Surely you would not call a differential equation with a given initial condition describing a simple harmonic oscillator along with an initial condition “inconsistent”.

No, certainly not.

> Would you call it incomplete?

Yes, absolutely. There is no such thing as a harmonic oscillator that exactly follows an equation like that. Show me one. Either the formal system has nothing to do with the real world, or it is an incomplete approximation of it. All other known physical theories are the same way.

Can even a part of the universe be described completely by any (incomplete) formal system? Is it even meaningful to talk about a “part” of the universe in this sense? Well, there’s exactly zero evidence either way. That’s what I’m implying when I say “the universe may not be incomplete.”

Re: A Brief Explanation of Greg Egan’s Dust Theory

#120

Post by tgvaughan »

sxp wrote: post #6

This article doesn't actually explain Dust Theory to someone who hasn't read the book. I haven't found a good standalone explanation of the theory that explains it in a compact manner so my recommendation to people is to read the book. Permutation City is among my top 5 favorite books because I found Dust Theory so mind blowingly amazing from a philosophical standpoint. I haven't seen it discussed elsewhere outside t…

Permission City is grand. It made me realise just how silly the standard "are we living in a simulated reality?" questions are. Max Tegmark took these ideas further, and iirc cites Egan as partial inspiration for his type 4 multiverse. (I'm sure philosophers will groan and say that none of this is new, but it doesn't stop these from being incredibly fun and compelling ideas!)
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