A question for those who think it is worthwhile to consider the possibility that we are living in a simulation:
I spend a lot of time and mental energy thinking about my best friend. Is it worthwhile for my best friend to consider the possibility that she is not a person, but rather a mental model of a person inside my mind?
And if not, can you say what is the difference that makes the one worth considering and the other not (tabooing the word “simulation”, please)?
She probably already knows that you are incapable of modelling her to anywhere near the same fidelity that she is capable of perceiving herself and her environment. That makes it pointless for either her, or your model of her, to consider whether she is a mental model of a person within your mind.
That differs from the case where we are doing things like running artificial intelligence candidates in an environment that is already known to be capable of being completely controlled, or considering hypothetical beings that can model us and our environment to the same fidelity as we can perceive.
I could, right now as I type this, be a completely artificial entity that is being modelled by something/someone else and provided with sensory data that is entirely consistent with being a human on Earth. So could you. I don’t have much reason to expect this to be true, but I do recognize it as being something that could be happening. To me, at the moment, it doesn’t matter much though. In such a scenario I have no way of knowing what purpose my existence is serving, nor of how my thoughts and actions influence anything in the external reality, so I may as well just take everything at face value. Maybe if it were some superintelligence “in the box”, it could deduce some clues about what’s outside, but I can’t.
If I apparently had some super intelligence or other powers that allow me to kill off all other known beings in the universe to achieve my own goals, I might take such considerations more seriously. That sort of scenario looks a lot more likely to be an artificial test than anything I have experienced yet.
A question for those who think it is worthwhile to consider the possibility that we are living in a simulation:
I spend a lot of time and mental energy thinking about my best friend. Is it worthwhile for my best friend to consider the possibility that she is not a person, but rather a mental model of a person inside my mind?
And if not, can you say what is the difference that makes the one worth considering and the other not (tabooing the word “simulation”, please)?
She probably already knows that you are incapable of modelling her to anywhere near the same fidelity that she is capable of perceiving herself and her environment. That makes it pointless for either her, or your model of her, to consider whether she is a mental model of a person within your mind.
That differs from the case where we are doing things like running artificial intelligence candidates in an environment that is already known to be capable of being completely controlled, or considering hypothetical beings that can model us and our environment to the same fidelity as we can perceive.
I could, right now as I type this, be a completely artificial entity that is being modelled by something/someone else and provided with sensory data that is entirely consistent with being a human on Earth. So could you. I don’t have much reason to expect this to be true, but I do recognize it as being something that could be happening. To me, at the moment, it doesn’t matter much though. In such a scenario I have no way of knowing what purpose my existence is serving, nor of how my thoughts and actions influence anything in the external reality, so I may as well just take everything at face value. Maybe if it were some superintelligence “in the box”, it could deduce some clues about what’s outside, but I can’t.
If I apparently had some super intelligence or other powers that allow me to kill off all other known beings in the universe to achieve my own goals, I might take such considerations more seriously. That sort of scenario looks a lot more likely to be an artificial test than anything I have experienced yet.
Thanks for your reply—and for avoiding “simulate” and “simulation” in your reply!