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Wild Ideas

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Re: Wild Ideas

#131

Post by gd1 »

clamprecht wrote: post #5

I have a "science-fictiony" idea that I haven't seen anywhere else yet. The idea is this: If we can see light from planets thousands of light years away, then we can see the past. Once our telescopes are good enough to basically do a "google maps" zoom-in on other planets, we will be able to watche the past on other planets. But then, if we can ever watch our own Earth from a thousand light years away, then we can se…

Black holes are capable of bending light back towards us:

http://rein.pk/gravitational-lensing-to-observe-ancient-eart...

Re: Wild Ideas

#132

Post by wikiburner »

randallsquared wrote: post #126
wikiburner wrote: post #17

Soul Extraction - Assuming that there is a technological singularity at some point in the future, and assuming that time travel is possible[1], but that we've seen no evidence of it because it must be mostly observational in nature in order to prevent disruptions that would create time paradoxes, humanity adopts the practice of extracting the brain/nervous systems (and then replacing w/ equivalent matter) of every hu…

All the time machines that seem possible in current physics require massive objects and must exist before the earliest point in time to which you can travel. So, the simplest explanation for why there are no time travelers is that we haven't constructed a time machine for them to use to visit us, yet. Also, see "massive object".

I've heard that argument before, but people much more knowledgeable on the issue than you or I (no offense) always seem to obsess on the time paradox issue, and to a lesser extent the radiation feedback loop that could be created from an expanded wormhole, as the only stopping blocks:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269288/STEP...

I've never really heard that argument from any heavyweight physicists, but who knows, you could be right.

Re: Wild Ideas

#133

Post by dhimes »

danabramov wrote: post #105
Nux wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, the swampman! I always thought of this problem when watching characters in StarTrek using teleportation, didn't know it was an existing, famous problem. IMHO the teleported person ceases to exist at some point and a _new_ , identical person is being "created" by the transporter device. It's more of a gut feeling, hard to explain in words why I feel this way.

It's kinda intuitive, but I'm pretty sure it's wrong. Imagine you fall in coma and sleep long enough that all your body cells have been changed. Do you wake up a different person? I don't think so. What you perceive as yourself is the experience of being aware of everything you have learned in the world. An identical brain, whether created by teleport or running in simulation, is you just as much. So yes, both simula…

Imagine you fall in coma and sleep long enough that all your body cells have been changed. Do you wake up a different person?

I believe you do. In fact I believe you are a different person moment-to-moment. The concept of 'you' is simply a mental convenience. This is exactly why Buddhists deny the 'self.' It's not that you don't exist- it's just that there is no single thing that remains unchanging, and the idea of a 'you' that exists through time is illusory.

Re: Wild Ideas

#134

Post by rtkwe »

bumbledraven wrote: post #19

1. Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions that live in different worlds. True. 2. If medicine were taxed so much that people only bought half as much, they would be just as healthy. False. The "extra" spending in medicine drives innovations so we have better drugs & procedures etc. than we would otherwise. 3. If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make comput…

> 6. There's a five percent chance I live in a "future" computer simulation as I write this. False - to run simulate sentient beings with so much suffering would be cruel.

This, along with most arguments based on morality just doesn't hold water, it assumes both that the Simulators (those running the simulation) hold the same moral values as us and that our suffering is deemed unnecessary.

The first also assumes that every member of a Simulator level race is perfectly moral on top of assuming they share the 'suffering = cruel' moral bullet point because at some point all member of a society would likely have the ability to create and run UniverseSimulator.exe.

Today we do tons of cruel things for science or to learn who's to say that the Simulator runners wouldn't make a similar valuation or draw a distinction between their real existence and our simulated existence?

Re: Wild Ideas

#135

Post by gbog »

Mine:

In fifty years ecology will seem as ridicule as we see the middle age crusades now.

The only allowed porn will be animal documentaries.

Economy will be replaced by something that actually works, the same way alchemy has been replaced with chemistry.

High buildings will be considered as dangerous paper castles and cities will be flat.

Having to sit on a desk at work will be considered as belonging to the lowest end of the social scale.

We will run on highways with special shoes and cars will make us laugh at their utter discomfort.

Re: Wild Ideas

#136

Post by rtkwe »

mhitza wrote: post #130
asgard1024 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? Since version 1, they can recognize themselves in a mirror.

We are programmers here, let's not attribute simple tricks to sentience.

What ever civilization that runs our simulation could have drawn a distinction culturally/legally between their real sentience and sentience in their simulation. Linking and granting rights to a simulated sentience isn't a guaranteed step after all.

Re: Wild Ideas

#137

Post by wikiburner »

gbog wrote: post #135

Mine: In fifty years ecology will seem as ridicule as we see the middle age crusades now. The only allowed porn will be animal documentaries. Economy will be replaced by something that actually works, the same way alchemy has been replaced with chemistry. High buildings will be considered as dangerous paper castles and cities will be flat. Having to sit on a desk at work will be considered as belonging to the lowest…

Wow, it's like Ed Wood has been reincarnated as an HNer. :)

Re: Wild Ideas

#138

Post by mrow84 »

1_player wrote: post #107
derleth wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so. And we call that system a government. Seriously. Every time an anarchist seriously gets down to brass tacks about how their world would work, there's some agency by 'the people' which does things which have to be done, and it's indistinguishable from a govern…

> Seriously. Every time an anarchist seriously gets down to brass tacks about how their world would work, there's some agency by 'the people' which does things which have to be done, and it's indistinguishable from a government. It's just a Good Government, a Responsible Government, and, really, an Ideal Government. Which are these "things which have to be done" that only a government could take care of? Crime preven…

> Crime prevention? Does our government police prevent crime, or just punish criminals? I can argue that without any state-established law criminals would be punished, in some way or another.

Sure, criminals would be punished, but in a much more arbitrary manner. Do you really think that would be an improvement?

> Medical services? I think that some people really enjoy being doctors and nurses, and they would associate even without state-mandated organization.

Yes they would, but as people get richer they start to want there to be standards, at which point you need some kind of group to codify and enforce those standards. Over time, these thousands of different groups that are setting rules for their own little domains end up being grouped together, for a range of reasons, and then you have a dreaded 'government'.

Formality offers protection. In all the cases I can think of, weaker government corresponds to an increase in either the arbitrariness or the corruption of justice. This applies both to criminal justice and to the wider sense of an equitable (not equal) distribution of resources.

Re: Wild Ideas

#139

Post by dragonwriter »

1_player wrote: post #107
derleth wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so. And we call that system a government. Seriously. Every time an anarchist seriously gets down to brass tacks about how their world would work, there's some agency by 'the people' which does things which have to be done, and it's indistinguishable from a govern…

> Seriously. Every time an anarchist seriously gets down to brass tacks about how their world would work, there's some agency by 'the people' which does things which have to be done, and it's indistinguishable from a government. It's just a Good Government, a Responsible Government, and, really, an Ideal Government. Which are these "things which have to be done" that only a government could take care of? Crime preven…

> Crime prevention? Does our government police prevent crime, or just punish criminals?

Both.

> I can argue that without any state-established law criminals would be punished, in some way or another.

Without any state-established law there would be no criminals, just the much broader category of people that other people don't like. Quite arguably, the whole purpose of state-established law is to limit the scope and severity of punishment compared to what happens in the absence of central authority, and to provide clear rules. This aids in deterrence, since, to the extent that antisocial behavior is rational and deterrable, there needs not merely be an expectation of punishment if you do 'wrong', but a clear idea of what 'wrong' is in the context, and a clear expectation that punishment will not be imposed if you do not do 'wrong'.

Certainly, one can argue that modern states are less than ideal in each aspect of this, but that's very different than arguing that they are worse than the absence of a state would be.

> Medical services? I think that some people really enjoy being doctors and nurses, and they would associate even without state-mandated organization.

The problem here isn't that there would be no medical practitioners apart from a mandate to provide them (after all, most states that provide medical services don't compel people to become doctors and nurses), but that medical services lack features that make it the kind of service modeled well by econ 101 rational choice assumptions, with (among other things) a very high and uncorrectable cost of bad (or even merely incompetent) suppliers.

> But we're (slowly) solving scarsity through science and technology.

We may be reducing the resource costs of some goods and services, but that doesn't solve scarcity (it reduces the opportunity cost of some while increasing the opportunity cost of others, since it is unequal progress, and opportunity cost is what else you could have gotten for the resources you put into getting what you chose.)

Suggesting that we are "solving scarcity" demonstrates a lack of understanding of what "scarcity" means.

Re: Wild Ideas

#140

Post by asgard1024 »

mhitza wrote: post #130
asgard1024 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? Since version 1, they can recognize themselves in a mirror.

We are programmers here, let's not attribute simple tricks to sentience.

First of all, sentience of beings is not a necessary condition for the simulation to be borderline unethical. No other species on our planet is sentient, yet many people don't consider hurting these for fun to be moral.

I was joking of course, the joke being that ability to recognize itself in the mirror is a common test of self-awareness used by biologists. And Sims can (sort of) do that.

But! You mention "simple tricks", and it reminded me of Dan Dennett lecture on "Magic and Consciousness": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jBUtKYRxnA

His point is exactly that maybe the consciousness is just a collection of "simple tricks", which, to us, give the illusion they are not so simple.

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