Re: New website: The Simulation Argument

From: Jeff Bone (jbone@jump.net)
Date: Mon Dec 03 2001 - 00:05:59 MST


To be more clear: while Friendly scenarios are one "singleton" outcome that
supports the simulation stats, strictly speaking simulation (second order) is
apparently out-of-scope for Eli's def. of Friendly. (I would argue that Friendly
is in some sense neccessarily a de novo or first-order simulation.) Regardless,
even for loose defs of Friendly, it would seem that the majority of singleton
outcomes are non-Friendly.

This isn't a particularly ominous thing, IMO --- it speaks to something inherently
at odds between the current canonical definition of "Friendly" and the actual
survival imperatives of a transhumanist civilization. It's interesting to
consider Tipler --- however "whacked" he may be --- and ask how one would
reconstitute civilization in order to perpetually enable the required activities
needed to achieve effective immortality in a Tipler-esque universe.

jb

Jeff Bone wrote:

> Nick Bostrom wrote:
>
> > Eliezer wrote:
> >
> > >I can't say that I recall ancestral simulations playing any
> > >significant part in most transhumanist scenarios. Personally I always
> > >thought it would be a horrible thing to do even if possible and
> > >permitted. A Friendly SI outcome does not allow for nonconsensual
> > >simulations, and most ancestral simulations would presumably fall into
> > >that category.
>
> Perhaps the fact that the numbers favor simulation speaks to the likelihood of
> a Friendly SI outcome.
>
> jb



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:37 MDT