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Disappearing Santa Hat

arthwollipot said:
I don't care what Elon Musk is talking about.
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OK. Elon Musk was talking about real humans in virtual reality. We are now talking about created software humans in a created software environment.

arthwollipot said:
What matters is that the simulation is sufficiently powerful to convince the simulated conscious beings - us - that it is real.
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Easy. The programmer writes a program line "You will always believe this simulation is real" for the software humans. End of story.

You can't pretend fictional created software humans are the same as random genetically evolving real humans. The software writer can write anything he wants.

That was the tragedy in the film "A.I." where the robot boy "had to find his mother" over thousands of years because he was programmed that way.
 
Matthew Ellard said:
OK. Elon Musk was talking about real humans in virtual reality. We are now talking about created software humans in a created software environment.
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That's what I was always talking about, because I have been talking about the Simulation Hypothesis. Virtual reality is not the Simulation Hypothesis.

Matthew Ellard said:
Easy. The programmer writes a program line "You will always believe this simulation is real" for the software humans. End of story.

You can't pretend fictional created software humans are the same as random genetically evolving real humans. The software writer can write anything he wants.
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...Including an entire hyper-detailed universe that contains random genetically evolving simulated humans. Remember, the premise of the hypothesis is that the computing power already exists. It is assumed that the simulation is so complex and powerful that it is indistinguishable from what we perceive to be what we call "real".

Matthew Ellard said:
That was the tragedy in the film "A.I." where the robot boy "had to find his mother" over thousands of years because he was programmed that way.
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Haven't seen it. But I once wrote a fantasy story in which a hero was repeatedly resurrected by a cult of necromancers so that he could continue doing their evil bidding, until one day an adventurer killed him, raised his corpse as a zombie, and ordered the zombie to avoid all contact with other beings and bury itself as deep as possible in a snowdrift.
 
arthwollipot said:
...Including an entire hyper-detailed universe that contains random genetically evolving simulated humans. Remember, the premise of the hypothesis is that the computing power already exists. It is assumed that the simulation is so complex and powerful that it is indistinguishable from what we perceive to be what we call "real".
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But "we" real humans aren't in the software. A fake human software character written by someone is in the software and you can't have genetically evolving humans if it is software. This means I can write any command line I want for the software humans including "You will never perceive that you are just software".

Isn't this just a circular position, in that the software can't be distinguished from real, but there is no "real" to compare it to, and secondly the software can write any innate behaviour into the software humans it wants, including "you will never perceive it is software"

Weird Concepts from the Arts
"A.I." is a good movie. Stanley Kubrick started it, then died and Spielberg finished it. It is about torturing robots including programming that can never be satisfied.

As for breaking the simulation, Kurt Vonnegut, has a character going insane in Breakfast of Champions, who thinks he is the only real human and everyone else is a simulation robot. Bruce Willis and Nick Nolte costarred in a film version of the book.
 
Matthew Ellard said:
But "we" real humans aren't in the software. A fake human software character written by someone is in the software and you can't have genetically evolving humans if it is software. This means I can write any command line I want for the software humans including "You will never perceive that you are just software".
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You're missing the point. The premise of the Simulation Hypothesis is that we "real" humans are the simulations. It's right there in the title of Bostrom's paper - Are you living in a computer simulation. YOU - not a simulation of you, but YOU.

Anything else you may be rambling on about is not the Simulation Hypothesis.
 
arthwollipot said:
You're missing the point. The premise of the Simulation Hypothesis is that we "real" humans are the simulations. It's right there in the title of Bostrom's paper - Are you living in a computer simulation. YOU - not a simulation of you, but YOU.
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An advanced future race came to earth and found an uninhabited wasteland. They scan for evidence of past life and the artifacts of civilization. With the data collected they create a simulation.

Sound right?
 
Nakani said:
An advanced future race came to earth and found an uninhabited wasteland. They scan for evidence of past life and the artifacts of civilization. With the data collected they create a simulation.

Sound right?
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The original conception is that a far future human civilisation simulates its own past. I posted the relevant quote from the paper upthread.
 
arthwollipot said:
Anything else you may be rambling on about is not the Simulation Hypothesis.
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The OP was the one discussing Elon Musk's claim concerning simulation theory. That's why I quoted Elon Musk in his article.

That Elon Musk put real humans in his claim is not my problem.
 
arthwollipot said:
You're missing the point. The premise of the Simulation Hypothesis is that we "real" humans are the simulations.
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Simulations of what? A constructed software package is not simulating anything. It is it's own thing.

I can see that Paul Davies then agrees with what I said earlier. Unless the simulation restricts perceptions (itself a give away), the constructed software humans will reach a technology which will indicate mathematically that the environment they are in is only a simulation and not real. That's why the simulation would have to be the size of the universe and will always suffer from controlled quantum events which won't make sense, mathematically.
 
Matthew Ellard said:
The OP was the one discussing Elon Musk's claim concerning simulation theory. That's why I quoted Elon Musk in his article.

That Elon Musk put real humans in his claim is not my problem.
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I put Musk into his context as an unreliable reporter of the actual Simulation Hypothesis and what it says and implies.

Honestly, this is nothing new. The Simulation Hypothesis says one thing, and one thing only - that if an advanced future civilisation wanted to simulate its past, and had sufficient computing power to do so, then we must expect to be among the simulations. All sorts of people come out of the woodwork to claim that the Simulation Hypothesis says a whole pile of things that it doesn't, including Musk. There is a good deal of work in the area that is derived from the Simulation Hypothesis, but Musk isn't doing any of it.

The OP was concerned that the so-called "glitches in the Matrix" that they thought they were experiencing might have been evidence that they were a simulation. The good news is that they aren't.
 
Matthew Ellard said:
Simulations of what? A constructed software package is not simulating anything. It is it's own thing.

I can see that Paul Davies then agrees with what I said earlier. Unless the simulation restricts perceptions (itself a give away), the constructed software humans will reach a technology which will indicate mathematically that the environment they are in is only a simulation and not real. That's why the simulation would have to be the size of the universe and will always suffer from controlled quantum events which won't make sense, mathematically.
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*looks up from jelly wrestling with nymphos*

Black type? Glitch.
 
Matthew Ellard said:
Simulations of what? A constructed software package is not simulating anything. It is it's own thing.
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Simulations of actual sentient beings, of course.

Matthew Ellard said:
I can see that Paul Davies then agrees with what I said earlier. Unless the simulation restricts perceptions (itself a give away), the constructed software humans will reach a technology which will indicate mathematically that the environment they are in is only a simulation and not real. That's why the simulation would have to be the size of the universe and will always suffer from controlled quantum events which won't make sense, mathematically.
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Yes, well, no-one said that it was an airtight scientific prediction. It is, at best, a thought experiment. Do we know for certain that in principle our mathematics would be capable of detecting that we are in a simulation? What if the Simulators, being ultra-powerful beings that build and operate computers capable of simulating an entire universe, predicted that we would be able to do that and programmed safeguards into the simulation that closed all those loopholes? That's probably how the simulation became so complex and detailed.
 
arthwollipot said:
Simulations of actual sentient beings, of course.
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I feel as though we have to go back to establish what a sentient being is, and that's where, I admit, I have weaker understanding. Roger Penrose had this argument in the Emperor's New Mind, that a human consciousness could be set out as thousands of lines of code that get prioritised through experience, innate controls and random reasons. I don't know if that is the same as a P-Zombie. However if it is true, then why can't a simulation programmer simply write that program and add a line "you can't ever see this is a simulation"?

arthwollipot said:
Yes, well, no-one said that it was an airtight scientific prediction. It is, at best, a thought experiment.
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That's OK.

arthwollipot said:
Do we know for certain that in principle our mathematics would be capable of detecting that we are in a simulation?
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No, but the programmer has to establish rules, now, that won't be broken in future simulated discoveries. That suggests eventually holes should appear. I believe that is Paul Davies' counter argument.


arthwollipot said:
What if the Simulators, being ultra-powerful beings that build and operate computers capable of simulating an entire universe, predicted that we would be able to do that and programmed safeguards into the simulation that closed all those loopholes? .
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Well if its a simulation the programmer can change the code any time they want to hide problems. That's why my consciousness runs on Windows 10 and its updates. (cough cough)
 
Matthew Ellard said:
I feel as though we have to go back to establish what a sentient being is, and that's where, I admit, I have weaker understanding. Roger Penrose had this argument in the Emperor's New Mind, that a human consciousness could be set out as thousands of lines of code that get prioritised through experience, innate controls and random reasons. I don't know if that is the same as a P-Zombie. However if it is true, then why can't a simulation programmer simply write that program and add a line "you can't ever see this is a simulation"?
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For the purpose of the Simulation Hypothesis, the definition of a sentient being is very simple: you. You are the subject of the thought experiment. Yes, you personally - your real self.

Matthew Ellard said:
No, but the programmer has to establish rules, now, that won't be broken in future simulated discoveries. That suggests eventually holes should appear. I believe that is Paul Davies' counter argument.

Well if its a simulation the programmer can change the code any time they want to hide problems. That's why my consciousness runs on Windows 10 and its updates. (cough cough)
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I believe that was the whole idea behind the original "glitch in the Matrix" scene in the (fictional) movie The Matrix. The glitch occurred when the machines had to change the code to account for an anomaly in the simulation.

But again, the premise of the Simulation Hypothesis is that the simulation is indistinguishable from what we call "reality". No glitches. The only way we could know we were simulations is through reason.
 
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