Okay, I had pondered this question for some time and the preliminary conclusions are strange. Either “existance” is physically meaningless or it should be split to at least three terms with slightly different meanings. Or “existance” is purely subjective things and we can’t meaningfully argue about “existance” of things that are causally disconnected from us.
kurokikaze
Karma: 42
Oh, I got what you mean by “Tegmark IV” here from your another answer. Then it’s more complicated and depends on our definition of “existance” (there can be many, I presume).
I think gravity is “real” for any bodies that it affects. For the person running the simulator it’s “real” too, but in some other sense — it’s not affecting the person physically but it produces some information for him that wouldn’t be there without the simulator (so we cannot say they’re entirely causally disconnected). All this requires further thinking :)
Also, english is not my main language so there can be some misunderstanding on my part :)
I don’t get the question, frankly. Simulation, in my opinion, is not a single formula but the means of knowing the state of system at particular time. In this case, we need an “apparatus”, even if it’s only a piece of paper, crayon and our own brain. It will be a very simple simulator, yes.
From inside the simulation, the simulation “reasoning” about phenomenon cannot be distincted from actually causing this phenomenon. From my point of view, gravity inside two-body simulator is real for all bodies inside the simulator.
If you separate “reasoning” from “happening” only because you are able to tell one from another from your point of view, why don’t we say that all working of our world can be “reasoning” instead of real phenomena if there are entities that can separate its “simulated working” from their “real” universe?
Thanks for these links (also, fellow DF player here :)).
Well, he will be intruder (in my opinion). Like, “unwanted child” kind of indtruder. It consumes your time, money, and you can’t just throw it away.
There’s one more aspect to that. You are “morally ok” to turn off only your own computer. Messing with other people stuff is “morally bad”. And I don’t think you can “own” self-aware machine more that you can “own” a human being.
I just made my first donation yesterday. Talk about timing :)
Maybe the most productive variant is just to ignore the offender/offence?
On a slightly unrelated note, one psychologist I know has demonstrated me that sometimes it’s more useful to agree with offence on the spot, whatever it is, and just continue with conversation. So I think in some situations this too may be a viable option.