1) If we ask whether the entities embedded in strings watched over by the self-consistent universe detector really have experiences, aren’t we violating the anti-zombie principle?
We’re not asking if they have experiences; obviously if they exist, they have experiences. Rather we’re asking if their entire universe gains any magical reality-fluid from our universe simulating it (e.g., that mysterious stuff which, in our universe, manifests in proportion to the integrated squared modulus in the Born probabilities) which will then flow into any conscious agents embedded within.
Sadly, my usual toolbox for dissolving questions about consciousness does not seem to yield results on reality-fluid as yet—all thought experiments about “What if I simulate / what if I see...” either don’t vary with the amount of reality-fluid, or presume that the simulating universe exists in the first place.
There are people who claim to be less confused about this than I am. They appear to me to be jumping the gun on what constitutes lack of confusion, and ought to be able to answer questions like e.g. “Would straightforwardly simulating the quantum wavefunction in sufficient detail automatically give rise to sentients experiencing outcomes in proportion to the Born probabilities, i.e., reproduce our current experience?” by something other than e.g. “But people in branches like ours will have utility functions that go by squared modulus” which I consider to be blatantly silly for reasons I may need to talk about further at some point.
“Would straightforwardly simulating the quantum wavefunction in sufficient detail automatically give rise to sentients experiencing outcomes in proportion to the Born probabilities, i.e., reproduce our current experience?”
I suspect I’m misunderstanding the question, because I notice that I’m not confused, and that’s usually a bad sign when dealing with a question which is supposed to be complicated.
Is this not equivalent to asking “If one were to simulated our entire universe, would it be exactly like ours? Could we use it to predict the future (or at least the possible space of futures) in our own universe with complete accuracy?”
If so, the immediate answer that comes to mind is “yes...why not?”
It captures my feelings on the matter pretty well, although it also seems like an unnecessarily rude way of summarizing the opinions of any qualiaphiles I might be debating. Like if a Christian self-deprecatingly said that yes, he believes the reason for akrasia is a magic snake, that seems (a) reasonable (description), whereas if an atheist described a Christian’s positions in those terms she’s just an asshole.
I don’t feel confused about this at all, and your entire concept of reality fluid looks confused. Keywords here are “look” and “feel”, I don’t have any actual justification and thus despite feeling lots of confidence-the-emotion I probably (hopefully) wouldn’t bet on it.
It sure looks a lot like “reality fluid” is just what extrapolated priors over universes feel like from the inside when they have been excluded from feeling like probabilities for one reason or another.
in response to the actual test thou: it seem that depends on what exactly you mean by “straightforwardly”, as well as on actual physics. There are basically 3 main classes of possibilities: Either something akin to Mangled Worlds automatically falls out of the equations, in which case they do with most types of simulation method. Or that doesn’t happen and you simulate in the forwards direction way with a number attached to each point in configuration space (aka, what’d happen automatically if you did it in C++), in which case they don’t. Or you “simulate” it functional programming style where history is traced backwards in a more particle like way from the point you are trying to look at (aka, what would happen automatically if you did it in Haskell), in which case they sort of do, but probably with some bias. In all cases, the “reason” for the simulations “realness” turning out like it did is in some sense the same one as for ours. This information probably does not make sense since it’s a 5 second intuition haphazardly translated from visual metaphor as well as some other noise source I forgot about.
Oh, and I don’t really know anything about quantum mechanics and there’s probably some catch specific to them that precludes one or more of these alternatives, possibly all of them. I’m fully aware most of what I’m saying is probably nonsense, I’m just hoping it’s surprising nonsense and ironmaning it might yield something useful.
I downvoted because this seems to be a case of “I don’t know, but I don’t happen to feel confused.” It does not, at least, seem to be “I don’t know, but I don’t feel confused, therefore I know,” which can occasionally happen :D
It’s more of a case of not knowing if I know or not, nor even if I’m confused or not. I do know that thus I’m meta-confused, but that does not necessarily imply object level confusion. It’s a black boxes and lack of introspective access thing.
We’re not asking if they have experiences; obviously if they exist, they have experiences. Rather we’re asking if their entire universe gains any magical reality-fluid from our universe simulating it (e.g., that mysterious stuff which, in our universe, manifests in proportion to the integrated squared modulus in the Born probabilities) which will then flow into any conscious agents embedded within.
Sadly, my usual toolbox for dissolving questions about consciousness does not seem to yield results on reality-fluid as yet—all thought experiments about “What if I simulate / what if I see...” either don’t vary with the amount of reality-fluid, or presume that the simulating universe exists in the first place.
There are people who claim to be less confused about this than I am. They appear to me to be jumping the gun on what constitutes lack of confusion, and ought to be able to answer questions like e.g. “Would straightforwardly simulating the quantum wavefunction in sufficient detail automatically give rise to sentients experiencing outcomes in proportion to the Born probabilities, i.e., reproduce our current experience?” by something other than e.g. “But people in branches like ours will have utility functions that go by squared modulus” which I consider to be blatantly silly for reasons I may need to talk about further at some point.
I suspect I’m misunderstanding the question, because I notice that I’m not confused, and that’s usually a bad sign when dealing with a question which is supposed to be complicated.
Is this not equivalent to asking “If one were to simulated our entire universe, would it be exactly like ours? Could we use it to predict the future (or at least the possible space of futures) in our own universe with complete accuracy?”
If so, the immediate answer that comes to mind is “yes...why not?”
I’m not convinced “reality fluid” is an improvement over “qualia”.
“Magical reality fluid” highlights the fact that it’s still mysterious, and so seems to be a fairly honest phrasing.
So what would you think of “magical qualia”?
It captures my feelings on the matter pretty well, although it also seems like an unnecessarily rude way of summarizing the opinions of any qualiaphiles I might be debating. Like if a Christian self-deprecatingly said that yes, he believes the reason for akrasia is a magic snake, that seems (a) reasonable (description), whereas if an atheist described a Christian’s positions in those terms she’s just an asshole.
Solipsists should be able to dissolve the whole thing easily.
I don’t feel confused about this at all, and your entire concept of reality fluid looks confused. Keywords here are “look” and “feel”, I don’t have any actual justification and thus despite feeling lots of confidence-the-emotion I probably (hopefully) wouldn’t bet on it.
It sure looks a lot like “reality fluid” is just what extrapolated priors over universes feel like from the inside when they have been excluded from feeling like probabilities for one reason or another.
in response to the actual test thou: it seem that depends on what exactly you mean by “straightforwardly”, as well as on actual physics. There are basically 3 main classes of possibilities: Either something akin to Mangled Worlds automatically falls out of the equations, in which case they do with most types of simulation method. Or that doesn’t happen and you simulate in the forwards direction way with a number attached to each point in configuration space (aka, what’d happen automatically if you did it in C++), in which case they don’t. Or you “simulate” it functional programming style where history is traced backwards in a more particle like way from the point you are trying to look at (aka, what would happen automatically if you did it in Haskell), in which case they sort of do, but probably with some bias. In all cases, the “reason” for the simulations “realness” turning out like it did is in some sense the same one as for ours. This information probably does not make sense since it’s a 5 second intuition haphazardly translated from visual metaphor as well as some other noise source I forgot about.
Oh, and I don’t really know anything about quantum mechanics and there’s probably some catch specific to them that precludes one or more of these alternatives, possibly all of them. I’m fully aware most of what I’m saying is probably nonsense, I’m just hoping it’s surprising nonsense and ironmaning it might yield something useful.
I downvoted because this seems to be a case of “I don’t know, but I don’t happen to feel confused.” It does not, at least, seem to be “I don’t know, but I don’t feel confused, therefore I know,” which can occasionally happen :D
It’s more of a case of not knowing if I know or not, nor even if I’m confused or not. I do know that thus I’m meta-confused, but that does not necessarily imply object level confusion. It’s a black boxes and lack of introspective access thing.