This comment has many good questions. More generally, I suspect that for any given membrane definition, it would be relatively easy to do either or both:
A—specify multiple easily-stated ways to torture or destroy the agent without piercing the membrane; and/or
B—show that the membrane definition is totally unworkable and inconsistent with other similarly-situated agents having similar membranes.
B is there because you could get around A by saying absurd things like ‘well my membrane is my entire state, if nobody pierces that then I will be safe.’ If you do, then people will of course need to pierce that membrane all the time, many agents’ membranes will constantly be overlapping, and the ‘membrane’ framework just reduces to some kind of ‘implied consent’ framework, at which point the ‘membrane’ isn’t doing any work.
I suspect it’s not a coincidence that this post focuses on ‘membranes’ in the abstract rather than committing to any particular conception of what a membrane is and what it means to pierce it. I claim this is because there cannot actually exist any even reasonably precise definition of a ‘membrane’ that both (a) does any useful analytical work; and (b) could come anywhere close to guaranteeing safety.
Maybe for most, but I don’t know if we can confidently say “forall membrane” and make the statement you follow up with. Can we say anything durable and exceptionless about what it looks like for there to be a membrane through which passes no packet of information that will cause a violation, but which allows packets of information which do not cause a violation? Can we say there isn’t? you’re implying there isn’t anything general we can say, but you didn’t make a locally-valid-step-by-step claim, you proposed a statement without a way to show it in the most general, details-erased case.
absurd things like
whether it’s absurd is yet to be shown, imo, though it very well could be
well my membrane is my entire state, if nobody pierces that then I will be safe
well, like, we’re mostly talking about locality here, right? it doesn’t seem to be weird to say it has to be your whole state. but -
people will of course need to pierce that membrane all the time
right, the thing that we have to nail down here is how to derive from a being what their implied ruleset should be about what interactions are acceptable. compare the immune system, for example. I don’t think we get to avoid doing a CEV, but I think boundaries are a necessary type in defining CEVs, because --
many agents’ membranes will constantly be overlapping
this is where I think things get interesting: I suspect that any reasonable use of membranes as a type is going to end up being some sort of integral over possible membrane worldsheets or something. in other words, it’s an in-retrospect-maybe-trivial-but-very-not-optional component of an expression that has several more missing parts.
I realized I might not have been clear above, by “state” I meant “one of the fifty United States”, not “the set of all stored information that influences an an Agent’s actions, when combined with the environment”. I think that is absurd. I agree it hasn’t been shown that the other meaning of “state” is an absurd definition.
This comment has many good questions. More generally, I suspect that for any given membrane definition, it would be relatively easy to do either or both:
A—specify multiple easily-stated ways to torture or destroy the agent without piercing the membrane; and/or
B—show that the membrane definition is totally unworkable and inconsistent with other similarly-situated agents having similar membranes.
B is there because you could get around A by saying absurd things like ‘well my membrane is my entire state, if nobody pierces that then I will be safe.’ If you do, then people will of course need to pierce that membrane all the time, many agents’ membranes will constantly be overlapping, and the ‘membrane’ framework just reduces to some kind of ‘implied consent’ framework, at which point the ‘membrane’ isn’t doing any work.
I suspect it’s not a coincidence that this post focuses on ‘membranes’ in the abstract rather than committing to any particular conception of what a membrane is and what it means to pierce it. I claim this is because there cannot actually exist any even reasonably precise definition of a ‘membrane’ that both (a) does any useful analytical work; and (b) could come anywhere close to guaranteeing safety.
Maybe for most, but I don’t know if we can confidently say “forall membrane” and make the statement you follow up with. Can we say anything durable and exceptionless about what it looks like for there to be a membrane through which passes no packet of information that will cause a violation, but which allows packets of information which do not cause a violation? Can we say there isn’t? you’re implying there isn’t anything general we can say, but you didn’t make a locally-valid-step-by-step claim, you proposed a statement without a way to show it in the most general, details-erased case.
whether it’s absurd is yet to be shown, imo, though it very well could be
well, like, we’re mostly talking about locality here, right? it doesn’t seem to be weird to say it has to be your whole state. but -
right, the thing that we have to nail down here is how to derive from a being what their implied ruleset should be about what interactions are acceptable. compare the immune system, for example. I don’t think we get to avoid doing a CEV, but I think boundaries are a necessary type in defining CEVs, because --
this is where I think things get interesting: I suspect that any reasonable use of membranes as a type is going to end up being some sort of integral over possible membrane worldsheets or something. in other words, it’s an in-retrospect-maybe-trivial-but-very-not-optional component of an expression that has several more missing parts.
I realized I might not have been clear above, by “state” I meant “one of the fifty United States”, not “the set of all stored information that influences an an Agent’s actions, when combined with the environment”. I think that is absurd. I agree it hasn’t been shown that the other meaning of “state” is an absurd definition.