[ExI] Repeated Experience

[Vladimir Nesov]

Wednesday, July 25, 2007, Mike Dougherty wrote:

MD> On 7/25/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     You know (because the computer OS has told you so) that
>>     your life actually consists of one-and-a-half runs. That is, the
>>     original execution of your life was stored, and is/was/will-be
>>     being replayed up to the half way point.  The OS now gleefully
>>     informs you that you are arriving at the one-half point in your
>>     life.
>>
>>     Should you be at all concerned?  After all, clearly the OS told/
>>     is-telling both you and the next run of you (or you and the past
>>     run).  There is the nagging idea that *this* may be the 2nd run,
>>     and you're about to terminate forever (e.g. this will be the last
>>     runtime you ever get).
>>

MD> If I can never have access/knowledge of the iteration counter to detect that
MD> the original experience is different than the second (or thousandth) then it
MD> really doesn't matter, does it?  Where does the nagging idea come from?
MD> That implies some psychic awareness of state.  Now if you tell me that life
MD> is being presented in a similar way to graphic interlacing, such that
MD> further iterations increase the observable resolution - then of course I
MD> would want to observe emergent details past the first iteration.  There must
MD> be some limiting returns on this too though.  Ex: Imagine touring an Art
MD> museum at a detail level where you can see only rectangular blocks of color
MD> on the wall.  On the next trip, the colors reveal shapes.  After several
MD> more visits, you can appreciate that the details available now include
MD> actual brush-strokes.  The computational cost of this detail would be
MD> prohibitive, but your repeated investment of runtime has distributed that
MD> cost over several visits, so the previously "cached" experiences can be
MD> refined for a more linear expense per visit.

MD> "terminate forever" doesn't make any sense to me either.  If you have a
MD> complete transactional record of every moment of your life recorded on some
MD> medium (you know, an ideal chunk of space-time) then random access into any
MD> point in that recording for playback/continuation would be identical
MD> experiential "existence" as any other runtime.  This assumes the playback
MD> machine is constant.  Does a given space-time degrade if accessed too
MD> frequently?  (could you make an "archival" space-time and only replay
MD> clones?)  Is there something unique about the creation/initial render of
MD> space-time recordings?  (like the difference between watching SNL "live" and
MD> watching an episode recorded earlier)

MD> I asked a lot of questions.  I lack Lee's formalism.  I used too many scare
MD> quotes.  I sincerely hope readers see past that and comment on the ideas I
MD> try to express even when I do not communicate them clearly.

This comes around to just another take on quantum immortality.
If universe given observer is embedded in is described by a
set of (mathematical) rules (e.g. initial state, transitions), and these rules are
being followed by some implementation on computer, subjective
experience of observer doesn't depend on implementation or computer.
>From observer's point of view there is no difference between him being
emulated on one computer system or another, his experience from his
point of view is a platonic entity. This subjective experience can as well be
considered to be emulated partially on one implementation, and
partially on another, or on no implementation at all - this doesn't
change anything. Pitfall of such thought experiment is that this
platonic universe can't be modified, modification equals to
picking different platonic universe, so for discussion about
subjective experience of embedded observer it doesn't matter what you do
with implementation.

-- 
 Vladimir Nesov                            mailto:robotact at mail.ru