Sure, if you run your computation unstructured at the level of quarks and leptons, then you cannot tell what happens in the minds of simulated humans. This would be silly, and no one does any non-trivial bit of programming this way. There are always multi-level structures, like modules. classes, interfaces… Some of these can be created on the fly as needed (admittedly, this is a tricky part, though by no means impossible). So after a time you end up with a module that represents, say, a human, with sub-modules representing beliefs and interfaces representing communication with other humans, etc. And now you are well equipped to set up an alert.
If the Great Psychicator uses triggers on a level of reality less precise than the atomic or subatomic ones, then I believe its triggers could not possibly be precise enough to A. prevent science from discovering psychic powers and simultaneously B. allow normal people not doing science access to its psychic powers.
If there’s a flaw in its model of the universe, we can exploit that and use the flaw do to science (this would probably involve some VERY complex work arounds, but the universe is self consistent so it seems possible in theory). So the relevant question is whether or not its model of the universe is better than ours, which is why I concede that a sufficiently complex Great Psychicator would be able to trick us.
If the Great Psychicator uses triggers on a level of reality less precise than the atomic or subatomic ones, then I believe its triggers could not possibly be precise enough to A. prevent science from discovering psychic powers and simultaneously B. allow normal people not doing science access to its psychic powers.
No, it just needs to be better at optimizing than we are.
I don’t know exactly what you mean by “optimizing”, but if your main point is that it’s an issue of comparative advantage then I agree. Or, if your point is that it’s not sufficient for humans to have a better model of reality in the abstract, we’d also need to be able to apply that model in such a way as to trick the GP and that might not be possible depending on the nature of the GP’s intervention, I can agree with that as well.
Sure, if you run your computation unstructured at the level of quarks and leptons, then you cannot tell what happens in the minds of simulated humans. This would be silly, and no one does any non-trivial bit of programming this way. There are always multi-level structures, like modules. classes, interfaces… Some of these can be created on the fly as needed (admittedly, this is a tricky part, though by no means impossible). So after a time you end up with a module that represents, say, a human, with sub-modules representing beliefs and interfaces representing communication with other humans, etc. And now you are well equipped to set up an alert.
If the Great Psychicator uses triggers on a level of reality less precise than the atomic or subatomic ones, then I believe its triggers could not possibly be precise enough to A. prevent science from discovering psychic powers and simultaneously B. allow normal people not doing science access to its psychic powers.
If there’s a flaw in its model of the universe, we can exploit that and use the flaw do to science (this would probably involve some VERY complex work arounds, but the universe is self consistent so it seems possible in theory). So the relevant question is whether or not its model of the universe is better than ours, which is why I concede that a sufficiently complex Great Psychicator would be able to trick us.
No, it just needs to be better at optimizing than we are.
I don’t know exactly what you mean by “optimizing”, but if your main point is that it’s an issue of comparative advantage then I agree. Or, if your point is that it’s not sufficient for humans to have a better model of reality in the abstract, we’d also need to be able to apply that model in such a way as to trick the GP and that might not be possible depending on the nature of the GP’s intervention, I can agree with that as well.