[ExI] simulation as an improvement over reality.

[Damien Broderick]

On 1/2/2011 3:50 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

>>> >>  A perfect copy is indistinguishable from the original.
>> >
>> >  Except to the original, marched off to the dungeon.
>
> AARGH. Once and for all, in two synchronized instances
> either two of them are marched off (in lockstep, sharing
> a single point of eyes), or none.
>
> Why is it so difficult to understand synchronized systems?

But this is where any such discussion here keeps going off the rails. 
Who cares about "perfectly synchronized systems"? The only relevance of 
"copying" I can imagine is recovery from cryonic arrest (where you have 
to hope nobody is stupid enough to perfectly copy your vitrified brain 
and leave it at that) or uploading to a computer substrate VR or robot 
body (where by definition the copy does not share the same viewpoint 
with the biological original). Fanciful thought experiments that have 
you stepping into a black box and two of you emerging instantly in 
lockstep are uninteresting and irrelevant to the real world, even if Lem 
or John Varley or Greg Egan or Franz Kafka could write an amusing story 
on such a premise.

Damien Broderick