[extropy-chat] Is simulation recursion a problem?

[Robert Bradbury]

On 9/18/06, George Dvorsky <george at betterhumans.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry if this is has been discussed in the past, but....


George, it is true that we have discussed many things in the past.  Part of
the fun around this campfire is handing out light bulbs and explaining how
electricity works. :-;

What is the latest thinking in regards to the problem of simulation
> stacking (i.e. the prospect of endless simulations emerging within
> simulations).


This is no problem from a theoretical standpoint.  The only reason I could
see to want to do it is from the perspective of universe (future) pathway
analysis one is unwilling or unable to make some approximations or
generalizations within the current (simulated?) reality.  Imagining some of
these is easy [1] but others are quite hard.  One might want to do it for
security reasons, i.e. better that the "Friendly AI" becomes unfriendly in a
simulated universe than a real one.  I.e. one wants sandboxes within
sandboxes.

Is there merit to the suggestion that this is a problem and that historical
> simulations are thus set to be terminated at the time that advanced
> simulation technologies emerge?


Only if  the entire purpose of the simulation could be to watch it evolve up
until the point where they become capable of creating such simulations.  But
simulation stopping points could be entirely arbitrary.  This one might be
running until George Bush decides to pull the U.S. out of Iraq.  If that
happens to be the case I'm not particularly worried about it ending.  I
don't see why "simulation creation capacity" would always be the primary
termination criteria.  Speculating why "gods" do things is probably an
exercise in making ones head hurt.

Or, are there computational options that could conceivably result in a
> virtually endless array of simulations (e.g. agonizingly slow
> clockspeeds, quantum computation, etc.)


Simulated realities will run slower than the host reality.  But since one
can presumably distribute resources among them and prioritize them at will
(even suspending them for trillions of years) it isn't clear that the rates
at which the simulations runs are very important.  If we happen to be the
basement reality, then the universe has the resources and time to run
trillions of trillions of trillions (at least) of simulations of our
perceived local reality (at least up until the point where we have uplifted
the entire universe to KT-III level).  If we aren't in the basement reality
then speculations are pointless because everything from clock speed to
quantum mechanics could be nothing but an invention for the experiment [2].

Going back to my question of whether "thoughts" have rights to exist, it is
interesting to note that many thoughts, particularly those of a creative
nature, involve limited future simulations.  One is creating different
futures in ones imagination and selecting those which have the most
desirable characteristics to attempt to implement in this reality.  The
non-selected futures are generally ruthlessly discarded.

Robert

1. For example it could be considered immoral to do certain things in this
reality but quite acceptable to make simulated realities where nature is
much more ruthless and much greater pain and suffering is experienced by the
simulated entities.
2. One might expect that bored "gods" would entertain themselves by
designing and simulating "weird" universes.
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