Does this idea of resurrection-through-inference have a commonly used name? Have you written up your thoughts on it in any more detail elsewhere, or is there something you’d recommend I read?
I don’t know of a commonly used name. I haven’t written up anything elsewhere and I haven’t seen anything else written up. I’ve heard some totally awesome thinking on the subject but it’s not and won’t be online. Someday some of the relevant thoughts might be inferred from some aspects of some proposed versions of some future decision theories, but most people don’t pay much attention to most aspects of most decision theories. For now the best argument for its plausibility might be “It’s an effing superintelligence.”. I admit that’s not entirely convincing. In the interim maybe some arguments about how like we can get more information per bit these days with quantum than we thought we could and this might continue for awhile longer, or something, would be convincing, especially if someone posits that “fundamental” limits of computation are actually fundamental or something.
Of note is that debates about personal identity eventually enter into the equation, but there’s still a lot of debate to be had before reaching that point. Many worlds also makes some of the identity debate less relevant because you have to argue about the superintelligence getting the distribution of low-level psychological details wrong and not the presence or absence of individual details. And that process itself happens across many branches. Thinking discretely about continuous things—like thinking timefully about timeless things—is sometimes wrong, and often not even wrong.
Resurrection through inference showed up in Accelerando, although Stross points out that the bits of knowledge obtainable about even prominent historical personages are far fewer than those describing a human mind; so the resimulations are just approximations.
I’m not familiar with the original passage, but the assertion “the bits of knowledge obtainable about even prominent historical personages are far fewer than those describing a human mind” is questionable. If macroscopic decoherence is very reversible then it’s false, among other possible counters. Either way “so the resimulations are just approximations” could still be rather misleading considering many commonsense definitions of “approximation”. (I do not assume that khafra endorses Stross’s observations or that Stross made quite those observations, only that Stross made approximately those observations.)
I’m pretty sure I don’t… Wikipedia: “Viewed in isolation, the system’s dynamics are non-unitary (although the combined system plus environment evolves in a unitary fashion). Thus the dynamics of the system alone, treated in isolation from the environment, are irreversible. As with any coupling, entanglements are generated between the system and environment, which have the effect of sharing quantum information with—or transferring it to—the surroundings.”
If you draw a notional, boundary around a system that is embedded in an environment and consider it in isolation, then you introduce an asymmetry due to the information lost crossing the boundary.
The system+environment evolves in a unitary fashion, but you can’t do anything to reverse the universe.
The only hope of reversing is a system is if it actually is isolated...inot interacting with with an environment.
The environment can be larger than whatever system you drew a notional boundary around and still smaller than the universe, so not being able to reverse the universe isn’t a problem. Here, I’ll make it explicit: imagine it turns out that your “environment” is actually a Laplacian monstrosity! You’re just a subsystem. All concerns about irreversibility are thenceforth questionable.
Em-dashes (minus-sign hyphen, 43-17, American-Indian, 43 − 17 ,) -- in Markup—are possible? This is a test. Double space.
Edit: Dammit. Also testing edit feature. After this will test retract feature.
Edit 2: Retract feature tested. Testing edit feature on retracted comment. Idea: Edited text should be .75 out of 1 on greyscale. Text edited twice should be .5, thrice .25, and then you’re done and should be done, why would you need to edit it that many times anyway? This would only apply to editing/addition of words and characters, not spacing or emphasis.
Edit 3: Apparently you can edit text before or after retraction. Not sure if this is a feature or a bug.
Does this idea of resurrection-through-inference have a commonly used name? Have you written up your thoughts on it in any more detail elsewhere, or is there something you’d recommend I read?
I don’t know of a commonly used name. I haven’t written up anything elsewhere and I haven’t seen anything else written up. I’ve heard some totally awesome thinking on the subject but it’s not and won’t be online. Someday some of the relevant thoughts might be inferred from some aspects of some proposed versions of some future decision theories, but most people don’t pay much attention to most aspects of most decision theories. For now the best argument for its plausibility might be “It’s an effing superintelligence.”. I admit that’s not entirely convincing. In the interim maybe some arguments about how like we can get more information per bit these days with quantum than we thought we could and this might continue for awhile longer, or something, would be convincing, especially if someone posits that “fundamental” limits of computation are actually fundamental or something.
Of note is that debates about personal identity eventually enter into the equation, but there’s still a lot of debate to be had before reaching that point. Many worlds also makes some of the identity debate less relevant because you have to argue about the superintelligence getting the distribution of low-level psychological details wrong and not the presence or absence of individual details. And that process itself happens across many branches. Thinking discretely about continuous things—like thinking timefully about timeless things—is sometimes wrong, and often not even wrong.
Resurrection through inference showed up in Accelerando, although Stross points out that the bits of knowledge obtainable about even prominent historical personages are far fewer than those describing a human mind; so the resimulations are just approximations.
I’m not familiar with the original passage, but the assertion “the bits of knowledge obtainable about even prominent historical personages are far fewer than those describing a human mind” is questionable. If macroscopic decoherence is very reversible then it’s false, among other possible counters. Either way “so the resimulations are just approximations” could still be rather misleading considering many commonsense definitions of “approximation”. (I do not assume that khafra endorses Stross’s observations or that Stross made quite those observations, only that Stross made approximately those observations.)
That’s a very big if. Decoherence is often defined in terms of effective irreversability.
If a system’s dynamics are considered in isolation, then it’s theoretically irreversible, yes.
Don’t you mean reversible?
I’m pretty sure I don’t… Wikipedia: “Viewed in isolation, the system’s dynamics are non-unitary (although the combined system plus environment evolves in a unitary fashion). Thus the dynamics of the system alone, treated in isolation from the environment, are irreversible. As with any coupling, entanglements are generated between the system and environment, which have the effect of sharing quantum information with—or transferring it to—the surroundings.”
If you draw a notional, boundary around a system that is embedded in an environment and consider it in isolation, then you introduce an asymmetry due to the information lost crossing the boundary.
The system+environment evolves in a unitary fashion, but you can’t do anything to reverse the universe.
The only hope of reversing is a system is if it actually is isolated...inot interacting with with an environment.
(relevance to quantum computing)
The environment can be larger than whatever system you drew a notional boundary around and still smaller than the universe, so not being able to reverse the universe isn’t a problem. Here, I’ll make it explicit: imagine it turns out that your “environment” is actually a Laplacian monstrosity! You’re just a subsystem. All concerns about irreversibility are thenceforth questionable.
Em-dashes (minus-sign hyphen, 43-17, American-Indian, 43 − 17 ,) -- in Markup—are possible? This is a test. Double space.
Edit: Dammit. Also testing edit feature. After this will test retract feature.
Edit 2: Retract feature tested. Testing edit feature on retracted comment. Idea: Edited text should be .75 out of 1 on greyscale. Text edited twice should be .5, thrice .25, and then you’re done and should be done, why would you need to edit it that many times anyway? This would only apply to editing/addition of words and characters, not spacing or emphasis.
Edit 3: Apparently you can edit text before or after retraction. Not sure if this is a feature or a bug.