--- Niels-Jeroen Vandamme <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >From: Charles D Hixson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Reply-To: [email protected] > >To: [email protected] > >Subject: Re: [singularity] critiques of Eliezer's > views on AI > >Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 09:56:12 -0700 > > > >Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >>On 28/06/07, Niels-Jeroen Vandamme > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >>wrote: > >> > >>>An interesting thought experiment: if the > universe is infinite, according > >>>to > >>>a ballpark estimate there would be an exact copy > of you at a distance of > >>>10^(10^29) m: because of the Bekenstein bound of > the information of > >>>matter, > >>>there are only a limited (though inconceivably > large) number of > >>>configurations your energy can have, so that you > can, in principle, have > >>>an > >>>exact duplicate. In fact, according to the > ergodic hypothesis > >>>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic_hypothesis), > in a universe of > >>>infinite > >>>volume there would be an infinite number of such > exact copies. What would > >>>happen if you'd die? Would you just live on in > one of those copies, as if > >>>uploaded? If so, which one? Is this merely > stochastic? What would this > >>>depend on? If consciousness is nothing else than > patterns, then the > >>>"selection" of this copy is purely random, and > therefore acausal. > >> > >>Yes, you would live on in one of the copies as if > uploaded, and yes > >>the selection of which copy would be purely > random, dependent on the > >>relative frequency of each copy (you can still > define a measure to > >>derive probabilities even though we are talking > infinite subsets of > >>infinite sets). What do you think would happen? > > I've not the slightest idea. Actually, I was really > just trying to show you > that it's sort of pretentious to believe one can > understand something so > enigmatic.
This is a textbook case of what Eliezer calls "worshipping a sacred mystery". People tend to act like a theoretical problem is some kind of God, something above them in the social order, and since it's beaten others before you it would be wise to pay due deference to it. Of course, a theoretical problem doesn't care how many times you attack it, and we have proven as a species that we can understand things that are much more grandiose than we are (eg, General Relativity). By all means ask for an explanation and hard evidence if someone claims to have solved an open problem, to weed out the cranks, but simply declaring that it is "pretentious" to even attempt to understand something is not going to get anyone anywhere. That said, I do not understand how this mysterious thing called "subjective experience" works myself, and as of right now I am not even going to try, because it is liable to go around in centuries-old philosophical fruit loops that go nowhere. > Personally, I do not believe in coincidence. What exactly do you mean by "coincidence"? You seem to be tending towards the idea that "everything that happens happens for a reason", which is used by many religious apologists to handwave away tragedy, and I don't want to get stuck in that black hole due to a misunderstanding. > Everything in the universe > might seem stochastic, but it all has a logical > explanation. I believe the > same applies to quantum chaos, though quantum > mechanics is still far too > recondite for us to understand this phenomenon. Quantum mechanics is an excellent logical explanation in and of itself for the behavior of matter, no philosophical strings required. As to quantum randomness, asking why a nucleus happened to decay at time X instead of time Y seems to me to be as futile as asking why the constant in Einstein's field equation is 25.13 and not .159. > If > something would be purely > random, then there would be no reason at all why it > would be what it is. The second law of thermodynamics alone guarantees that the set of events making up universe cannot be completely causal. If event A has a cause A', A' must have an A'', and so on. Due to the lack of time travel, this can't loop back on itself, and if it went to infinity the universe would already have decayed into a maximum-entropy state. Therefore, there must be some event A in our universe which doesn't have a cause in our universe. > If > you toss a coin, for example, what side it will land > upon depends on the > dynamics of its course, and not of coincidence. > > But if there can be no interaction between the > copies, why would the > consciousness end up in one copy rather than > another, if they are all > exactly alike? What do you mean by "the consciousness"? There's no reason why consciousness should be conserved. If you copy a mind into a computer, and leave the original intact, you don't get one mind which is somehow divided between them- you get two independent minds, each of which has a prior memory of being you. The idea of "uploading into a computer" means, presumably, that you want to experience the glory of VR without all the inconveniences of physical life. Using non-destructive copying will never satisfy this goal, because there's always one individual whose goal hasn't been achieved, just like there was before you started. > >Why in only one of the copies? This is the part of > the argument that I > >don't understand. I accept that over time the > copies would diverge, but > >originally they would be substantially the same, so > why claim that the > >original consciousness would only be present in one > of them? > > Do you mean that the original consciousness would > split up, so as to become > conscious of an infinite number of lives at once? *Two* beings would wake up from the uploading process, one physical and one upload, in the exact same manner that two beings would wake up if you instantly gave birth to identical twins. The upload would go off and have fun, and the physical copy would still be stuck in the real world. Whether that's what you want depends on your utility function, but if a cessation of physical experiences and a commencement of virtual experiences is what you want for your mind state, this goal will never be completely satisfied because there's always one physical copy left over. As for the earlier statement that uploading is "bound to work eventually", note that the two minds can disagree on this; one says it did work while the other says it didn't. There will always be *someone* saying it didn't work, and since he is a sentient being, who are we to ignore him? Nevertheless, both minds anticipate the exact same result if viewed from a third-party perspective. - Tom > _________________________________________________________________ > Looking for an old friend? 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