[extropy-chat] Fragmentation of computations

[Mike Dougherty]

On 3/26/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
> > Simulator flips a switch to turn off the Hash Life
> > optimization and change the program to straight
> > linear computation.
>
> Oh, good.  More genuine runtime for me!

  I get the image of a LeeCorbin worm infecting every processing node
in the universe and causing such an intense storm of internode
communication that the entire simulation machine simply gets turned
off and state is restored from backup.

> any conscious experience. Neither Rick nor Humphrey
> Bogart is either saddened or exhilerated at all when
> reruns of Casablanca are shown.
>
> So how can you be so *sure* that in the lookup vs.
> causal computation process, the lookup process is
> not akin to simply playing back a perfect 3D movie?
> You must entertain the possibility that this is so, and
> that if you are enjoying your life then you will equally
> enjoy repeat computations, but won't enjoy or
> experience at all any repeat movies of your life.

I think being completely sure of anything is impossible without also
removing the part of the brain that logically measures "sure-ness"  As
absurd as that sounds, people seem inherently able to do this more
frequently than they seem able to maintain logically constructed
arguments.  (this is a commentary on the current state of meat-bot
computing)

> to you, then. Suppose that there are infinitely many
> galaxies (so that numbers don't cramp my style here)
...
> And that between G3 and G4 there is another
> unmistakable image of Russell, this time 1 billionth
> of a second past that same time.
...
> So the universe is exhibiting a succession of images
> of you over that five minute part of your life.  Is there
> or is there not any experience taking place out there
> in that sequence of patterns?

Are you assuming some mundane arbitrarily large number of galaxies
within a single space-time coordinate system (universe) ?

given each spec occurs simultaneously within a given temporal moment,
then it is a series of pictures you describe and the Casablanca/movie
is analogous.  I would agree that the computation of the universe at
this moment has already been done, so the perspective of any spatial
distance to each spec does not bring new experience (using your
definition of computation-as-experiential life)  If a change in
resolution fires some kind of recalculation event to compute a higher
degree of detail, then maybe there is some new experience to be
gained.  Once the lazy cache of image data is completely rendered
across each region, the change in perspective is once again 'just' a
table lookup (cache hit) without computation.

If there is only one spatial coordinate system, but multiple time are
used to record the state of each spec at G1, G2, etc. then we
(observers) must be able to change our perspective outside the time
dimension as easily as we changed spatial dimension above.  I think
this is more difficult to imagine since we seem to be bound to moving
positively through time, but it's really not that much different after
the initial dis-intuition wears off.   I'm not sure the next step
makes much sense talking about someone else's 'light cone' (for lack
of a better term)

So imagine we do possess the degree of freedom required to visit any
space-time in our lives.  The ghost of Christmas past is invoked to
show us any moment of our life up to the moment it appears.  Somehow
our ghost-enabled self is able to observe the earlier state.
Thoroughly searching our memory does not provide comparable detail
because our brain's recording media was too slow and small to record
everything in high definition - so the "lifelike" resolution proves
that we are not merely recalling a memory, but observing a fully
computed earlier moment of existence.  Now observe all the way up to
the moment the ghost enabled your enhanced observation.  I suggest
there is an unexpected limitation due to the recursion of
ghost-enabled observation of ghost-enabled observation (the mirror in
a mirror, or camera viewing the output monitor feedback) or God Over
Djinni infinite stack overflow (from  Godel, Escher Bach)

Every time you solve this problem by allowing an extra dimension of
freedom in which to change the observation point, you arbitrarily
create a new context in which the original spec (G1) can be observed
or related to.  So in that respect, a new computation or experience is
gained.

BTW, is your reference universe granular such that there exists a
smallest unit of space-time (analogous to the set of integers Z) or
smooth (comparable to the set of Real numbers R)  Are there universes
modelled on the set of complex numbers?