[ExI] proto-bitcoin

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Wed Apr 24 10:13:24 UTC 2013


On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 06:54:46PM -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 2:44 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> > You notice I never say virtual worlds, but artificial reality.
> >
> > The reason is that virtual has a specific meaning in CS --
> > it means time-sharing of a given hardware resource, which
> > implies saving and restoring state which only works when
> > there's very little state to keep track of.
> >
> > In case of solid state minds, it's all state, so virtualization
> > buys you nothing in terms of time-sharing hardware but introduces
> > a large number of complications. Which doesn't mean you can't
> > checkpoint, serialize state and reinstantiate on a different
> > chunk of bare computronium iron.
> 
> Please explain in greater detail your distinction between virtual

I'm objecting to virtual in the virtualization layer, as in
VM, hypervisor, and such.

VR (Lem's phantomatics) implies that there's still a physical
monkey in the loop. Whether you're using a HMD with tracker or
direct neural stimulation is merely an issue of rendering
fidelity.

In case of Artificial Reality (sadly, AR now firmly
means Augmented Reality, which is a subset of VR) the
observer is also a part of emulation, an animat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animat albeit one that
formerly used to roam the Great Outdoors.

> world and artificial reality.  For the purpose of computing, I'd treat
> virtual, artificial, simulated, et al. as conceptually isomorphic,

The problem with "virtual" is that it's encrusted with concepts
like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine
and makes people ask nonsensical things about underlying
operating systems or hypervisors. Instead, the mental model should
more resemble FPGA state, evolving onboard. It still
wouldn't be accurate, but it's a start.

This not to say that you don't need a control layer for 
interactions across domains, which needs to be provably secure.
It wouldn't help the hapless animat to be hack-proof by
virtue of running directly on the hardware layer only
if the control plane is wide open to h4x0r shenanigans.

> with any nuance separating them to likely be related to point of view
> / perspective.   In the sense of hosting environment, world and
> reality are similarly similar.  :)   You might call the planet Earth
> our "world" or you could refer to the zeitgeist as our "world" so
> again it's a definition of terms problem.

I try to consistently use the term physical layer for that.
 
> I'm trying to imagine how we might have an artificial reality if
> "artificial" means "fake" and "reality" is the opposite.  If

For an internal observer, artificial reality is supposed to feel 
exactly like the real thing, with modifications like unreal estate and
alternative physics, of course.

> artificial reality is a clever oxymoron, then perhaps I've been _very_
> slow to get the joke?

Any confusion is solely due to terminology fail on my part.



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list