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I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

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Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#21

Post by pulkitsh1234 »

paraknight wrote: post #16
nimbleal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a consensus (or most popular) theory for how mind/consciousness would work in the simulation theory? How do things in a simulation become subjects of experience?

Conciousness is an emergent property of a physical brain firing neurotransmitters between synapses, just as an economy is an emergent property of society buying and selling things, or ant colony behaviour is an emergent property of the behaviour of individual ants for example. It's not somehow "above" the simulation, just a higher order of complexity defined by lower-level rules, similar to a glider in Conway's Game…

That's one view all the reductionists gladly use. I do not disagree with this, but you need to also take into accounts numerous events all throughout the human existence, where this apparent "emergent property" breaks all the realms of so called "reality" and lets one witness something which, subjectively, seems above the simulation.

Maybe it is in an emergent property, but maybe it emerges not just due to the complexities of an individual being, but something else which is just missing from our current understanding and we don't know about.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#22

Post by nimbleal »

_0w8t wrote: post #18
nimbleal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a consensus (or most popular) theory for how mind/consciousness would work in the simulation theory? How do things in a simulation become subjects of experience?

Forget about simulation. We do not have answers to basic questions how consciousness works in real world. For example, we have no idea how what we perceive as time flow appears, we do not know why many/most people feel that they have free will when equations of physics are fully determined.

Of course, it would just seem that (and this is in answer to another of the replies to my question, too) if you don’t find emergentism persuasive, then you also have to reject the simulation theory (?)

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#23

Post by danaliv »

paraknight wrote: post #16
nimbleal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a consensus (or most popular) theory for how mind/consciousness would work in the simulation theory? How do things in a simulation become subjects of experience?

Conciousness is an emergent property of a physical brain firing neurotransmitters between synapses, just as an economy is an emergent property of society buying and selling things, or ant colony behaviour is an emergent property of the behaviour of individual ants for example. It's not somehow "above" the simulation, just a higher order of complexity defined by lower-level rules, similar to a glider in Conway's Game…

Found another p-zombie.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#25

Post by kybernetikos »

tobmlt wrote: post #13

Ian M. Banks novel “surface detail” comes to mind. Please note it is better than the tawdry wiki write up. Somehow, it gets similar points across — similar to this essay, but deeper in feeling. Let me also say the authors here have done really well with so short a format. To paraphrase my toddler son, I want more story!

These guys now have godlike powers. Most stories that start there quickly move to how such power corrupts those who have it, or at the very least separate them from their humanity. Either that or a government agency figure it out (how? That could be interesting) and plays the part of the antagonist / devil.

These guys seem nice, and surprisingly already mentioned ethical implications early, so their corruption might take longer or develop along unexpected paths.

The aspect where exercising various powers requires coding time first could lead to some fun race-against-time scenarios. I do wish the featureless sphere had been a utah teapot instead.

I think leaving it at that point was the right choice for the story. But if I were to speculate what a continuation might look like it would involve Diane having planned all this all along to put right some tremendous wrong that happened to her and she is manipulating Tim in some way.

Ultimately I expect we'd come to the question of whether ten billion human brains in vats experiencing continuous ecstasy was better than something more like the current world or not.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#26

Post by knorker »

necovek wrote: post #19

It's curious that number of (simulated) universes is countable (there was mention if aleph-0): just like human mind has to start from some assumption (witness axioms in the most formal of fields: mathematics), it's hard for a human mind to move from countable numbers to infinity calculus.

In the scenario they are countable. They even imply a finite universe.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#28

Post by _0w8t »

nimbleal wrote: post #22
_0w8t wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget about simulation. We do not have answers to basic questions how consciousness works in real world. For example, we have no idea how what we perceive as time flow appears, we do not know why many/most people feel that they have free will when equations of physics are fully determined.

Of course, it would just seem that (and this is in answer to another of the replies to my question, too) if you don’t find emergentism persuasive, then you also have to reject the simulation theory (?)

A notion of simulation implies control and, as such, free will and time flow. And since we do not know about the latter, the notion of simulation itself is a pure speculation.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#29

Post by rebuilder »

ur-whale wrote: post #27

What if the double-slit experiment is nothing but a bug in the simulator's code ? If so: either we found an exploit or we're building an entire complex theory (QM) to explain a mistake ...

At that point, I'd argue it's not a bug, it's a feature.

Re: I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)

#30

Post by laumars »

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #20

If everything is simulated, and there is infinite number of simulated realities, as simulation is only reflection of possible reality - then maybe what is simulated continues to live in reality regardless of being switched off as just infinite number of realities that exist always at the same time.

A speculative execution bug? I like the sound of that.

Another HN once theorised / joked that the speed of light was the maximum value an integer could store and planks length was the smallest floating point number.

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