Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 3/7/07, *Charles D Hixson* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: With so many imponderables, the most reasonable thing to do is to just ignore the possibility, and, after all, that may well be what is desired by the simulation. (

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On 3/8/07, Jeff Medina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 3/7/07, Stathis Papaioannou <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is so if there is a real physical world as distinct from the > mathematical plenitude. Do you have any particular reason(s) for believing in a mathematical plenitude? If so, I wo

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On 3/7/07, Stathis Papaioannou <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: This is so if there is a real physical world as distinct from the mathematical plenitude. Do you have any particular reason(s) for believing in a mathematical plenitude? If so, I would much appreciate an explanation of these reasons or

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On 3/7/07, Mitchell Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >But the problem with ontological type arguments is that they allow you to >conjure up anything you like by simply defining it as existing. If there is >a physical reality, things don't work li

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> But the problem with ontological type arguments is that they allow you to conjure up anything you like by simply defining it as existing. If there is a physical reality, things don't work like that. Statements of mathematics and logic, however,

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On 3/7/07, Charles D Hixson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: With so many imponderables, the most reasonable thing to do is to just ignore the possibility, and, after all, that may well be what is desired by the simulation. ("What would our ancestors lives have been like if Teddy Roosevelt had won th

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

John Ku wrote: On 3/3/07, *Charles D Hixson* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: Yes, I see no valid argument asserting that this is not a simulation fiction that some other entity is experiencing. And there's no guarantee that sometime soon he won't "put down the

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On 3/3/07, Charles D Hixson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Yes, I see no valid argument asserting that this is not a simulation fiction that some other entity is experiencing. And there's no guarantee that sometime soon he won't "put down the book". But this assumption yields no valid guide as to

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On 3/3/07, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: --- Jef Allbright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Matt Mahoney wrote: > > Is it possible to program to program any autonomous agent > > that responds to reinforcement learning (a reward/penalty signal) that > does > > not act as though its environ

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

--- Jef Allbright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Matt Mahoney wrote: > > Is it possible to program to program any autonomous agent > > that responds to reinforcement learning (a reward/penalty signal) that > does > > not act as though its environment were real? How would one test for this > > beli

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

John Ku wrote: I think I am conceiving of the dialectic in a different way from the way you are imagining it. What I think Bostrom and others are doing is arguing that if the world is as our empirical science says it is, then the anthropic principle actually yields the prediction that we are a

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

Matt Mahoney wrote: Is it possible to program to program any autonomous agent that responds to reinforcement learning (a reward/penalty signal) that does not act as though its environment were real? How would one test for this belief? Exactly. Of course an agent could certainly claim that its

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

This discussion on whether the universe exists is interesting, but I think we should be asking a different question: why do we believe that the universe exists? Or more accurately, why do we act as if we believe that the universe exists? I said earlier that humans believe that the universe is rea

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:05:44 -0500, Mitchell Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Platonism has often been viewed as a form of idealism by people That's because it is idealism. In any case, even if it can be debated as to whether platonists were idealists... It cannot be debated whethe

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

Induction, deduction, logic, inference, reasoning, and all the like are a bunch of conflicting and overlapping terms and definitions trying to describe two things, 1) empirical logic which is converging, and 2) rational logic which is diverging. Both of which must sense, collect, question, com

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On 3/3/07, Mitchell Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I also want to say something about theories of plenitude, by which I mean theories according to which all possible Xs exist, or even that all possible Xs *necessarily* exist. Stathis, can you tell me *why* it is that all mathematical structur

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and which is not so muddled as the crypto-idealist suggestions that any 'mathematical structure' or any 'program' defines a possible world. Why that last phrase? There is a great elegance and simplicity in the idea that all mathematical str

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 09:41:28PM +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >You're a hard positivist. There's nothing really wrong with that: if >we had to choose between killing all the scientists and killing all >the metaphysicians, killing the metaphysicians would be the better I'm quite

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On 3/2/07, Eugen Leitl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 07:30:42PM +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >Why that last phrase? There is a great elegance and simplicity in the >idea that all mathematical structures exist necessarily, with the >anthropic principle selec

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 07:30:42PM +1100, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >Why that last phrase? There is a great elegance and simplicity in the >idea that all mathematical structures exist necessarily, with the >anthropic principle selecting out those structures with observers. How is tha

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

On 3/2/07, Mitchell Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >From: "John Ku" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >I actually think there is reason to think we are not living in a computer >simulation. From what I've read, inflationary cosmology seems to be very >well supported. [...] Once you admit that you (and yo

Re: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

I think I am conceiving of the dialectic in a different way from the way you are imagining it. What I think Bostrom and others are doing is arguing that if the world is as our empirical science says it is, then the anthropic principle actually yields the prediction that we are almost certainly liv

RE: [singularity] Why We are Almost Certainly not in a Simulation

From: "John Ku" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I actually think there is reason to think we are not living in a computer simulation. From what I've read, inflationary cosmology seems to be very well supported. [...] Once you admit that you (and your whole species/civilization, assuming that it was real)