[extropy-chat] Timeshifting

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

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.

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

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.

For both reasons, then, the statement was a mistaken explanation of those 
phenomena considered by the mind of the person who originally typed it, 
even if the statement is true.

As for the part about living in a Philip K. Dick novel:  Generalization 
from fictional evidence, like assuming that if anyone ever does create 
human-machine hybrids they'll be like the Borg, an invention of 
scientifically illiterate Star Trek scriptwriters.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence