[extropy-chat] Timeshifting

[Samantha Atkins]

On Sep 2, 2004, at 3:41 PM, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote:

> Charlie Stross wrote:
>> If you bolt all this together and articulate it, you find:
>> * We are probably/we appear to be living close to a singularity
>> * After this singularity, the boundary conditions of human existence 
>> change radically
>> * Ancestor simulation is one of these changes
>> * We are probably living in an ancestor simulation
>> * Our most recent memories are clearest because the technology used 
>> to record them matured between our current time and the singularity; 
>> our earlier memories are hazy and vague because they're largely 
>> interpolated guesswork rather than accurate simulation
>> Can someone please spot some holes in my reasoning before I go mad? 
>> I'm not sure I enjoy living in a Philip K. Dick novel ...
>
> Well, the last item isn't correct because a noticeable differential 
> between early and late memories resulting from a difference of 
> recording technology would be a predictable flaw in the simulation, 
> and an easily correctable one; have the inmates never notice the gaps 
> in their memories.  Also the same phenomenon is adequately explained 
> by other theories of neurology.
>

Since there are neurological reasons binding on the originals to give 
this effect there is no reason the sim should not also contain the 
defect so there is no reason to hide any possible recording flaw.

> So there might be huge gaping gaps in your playback of Charlie Stross, 
> but you would be forbidden to notice.
>

Notice? Compared to what?

> Plus, that the above was posted to the Extropians mailing list implies 
> that it is a known part of history, i.e., the original Stross posted 
> it as well.
>

Why should the sim be exactly like the original?  Wouldn't part of the 
interest in a sim be to explore alternate outcomes?   A simple 
recording doing exactly the same thing would be boring.  I don't see 
how folks with any believe in MWI would also belief that a sim can't 
have anything in it that the original did not.

Is a sim perhaps what happens when a sufficiently powerful mind 
ruminates over the past and possible different branch points?   If so 
lamenting the state of the "inmates" is silly for the same reason 
lamenting the conditions of virtual entities in a computer game is 
silly.

- samantha