[ExI] simulation as an improvement over reality

[Adrian Tymes]

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 5:39 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> To the flies trapped in amber it will probably look like suicide.
>
> The upload will blink into life and within a few seconds of real time
> blink out again.

Why so?  Why ever seek an end?  Unless you mean, blinking out
of what the outside can perceive.

> Even though they may have lived a thousand lifetimes in those few
> seconds, that cannot be communicated to those left on the outside.

Sure it can.  Spit out output that might take the outside a thousand
years to read in its entirety - but the outside can immediately grasp
that there is output.

I recall a sci-fi story where intelligent life was discovered on a neutron
star.  A crew of human explorers decided to try beaming down
knowledge of human civilization.  The neutron star life forms lived so
fast, they decrypted this during the transmission, and bootstrapped
themselves to beyond human levels before the transmission was
complete.  Then they decided to reverse the process: writing
information into the ship's computer, and when that was not enough,
on convenient moons.  It was mentioned that humanity would need a
long time to fully understand the information that had been given - but
the explorers immediately knew that something had been given back.