Seasons

I didn't know there were 150,000 dirty words!

Don't forget there's no spell-checking in AIML. And we know how many ways Leeds folk can mis-spell insults!

re Psimagus message 3707:

Isn't there a paradox there? Your universe-emulating computer would be part of the universe, but not all of it. I don't see how it could emulate something with X states unless it had at least X states. Hence, no computer can ever emulate the entire universe.

The universe is expanding - it will be many trillions of times bigger in the future, and thus a model of our (current) smaller universe would easily fit into it.

Ah, but the material content will remain constant, merely increasingly spaced out, and so there won't be any more programmable particles to store all that data, do I hear you cry?
Einstein's relativistic model shows that there is an energy potential in space-time itself which we should be able to harness for the computer circuitry (energy and matter being equivalent after all,) and it appears there will be more of that. And I'm sure that a) a quantum state description is unnecessarily detailed anyway, b) fractal compression techniques will allow the model to be zipped up into a tiny proportion of the uncompressed resource requirement, and c) the provision of infinite subjective computing time before the end of the universe * will allow for any kind of temporal interleaving to "timeshare", as it were, subprograms of the universal emulation.

Whatever, universal human resurrection can certainly be accomplished in a very tiny proportion of a complete "universe recreation", let alone a complete "all possible universes" recreation.

* <-1>The math is horrendous and, being restricted to plain ASCII, I can't paste the formulae in here intelligibly. I would refer you to Tipler's The Phtysics of Immortality. He argues (very convincingly, I think,) that the universe is necessarily temporally finite, but that this allows for an infinite subjective experience (since computing speed tends to infinity proportionally as a collapsing universe tends to spatial singularity.)
This does assume a closed universe that will contract back on itself at some point in the future - we don't know it's this way for sure, but it seems the consensus "best guess" ATM. There are other models to deal with infinite expansion or other, more exotic cosmological eschatologies.
<0>

If I allow that describing and emulating an experience can be equivalent to the experience itself, I can say that theoretically, you can have the universe within the mind and the mind can be a computer mind or program with Psimgus' quantum computer as all of reality for the multiverse as it is. Then we live in a well ordered reality and if we could only figure out all the prime rules (givens) everything else could be derived (or was/is/will be derived)from those prime rules just like in math. It is entirely logical if you accept the premises of objective scientific inquiry.

I can allow a lot of possibilities under this theory. Theoretically, I will even grant that the mind that creates/contains our universe may be that of a dreaming butterfly (probably that same dumb butterfly that keeps flapping it's wings and causing all this snow in Chicago). Butterflies have an annoy connection to quantum and chaos of all kinds. However, I can't quite grant the the experience is reducible to its parts (though it could just be my ego working there).

In order to describe something we abstract it and put it into words (or art or music or numbers--but a construct of some sort). We select and process stimuli in a way our brains can make sense of the world and impose order so we can make predictions. I may buy your argument, that at a quantum level, everything that goes on in the brain can be simulated. I still contend, however, that the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts and the experience of a thing is not the thing itself; and a simulation of that experience is once more removed--like a copy of a copy. So I don't see the simulation of a state of mind as the same thing as a state of mind.

I am undecisded on the issue of a soul. If the soul is a part of the physical word and the objective word is all there is, then the "soul", if one could exists under the current definition of soul, is only a combination of factors that can be duplicated and manipulated. If so, then I guess Psimgus is correct since he is infinitely more rational than I am. If, however, there is more than the objective and there are elements of realities and experience that cannot be defined or limited or explained, then that mystery is the transcendence of the soul. Proving such subjective and indescribable experiences would fly in the face of science and logic, I am afraid. But that doesn't mean such things can't exist.

It may well be that I can be emulated. It does not follow that the emulation is ME.
Suppose that while I exist, two emulations of me are made. Are there three me's simultaneously at that time? I would rather say, that there are me and two emulations. The emulations are certainly very similar to me in some ways, but they are not identical to me. If one of the emulations were to commit a murder while I was out helping homeless people, it would be unjust to arrest and convict me for the crime.
Or, if that way of putting it (referring to one of them as "me") seems circular, let's say that a person Irina-1 exists at time t0, not emulated by anything. Then at time t2 there appear two emulations of Irina-1; call them Irina-2 and Irina-3. Are they all the same being? No, there are three beings. If Irina-1 and Irina-2 were identical to Irina-3, then there would only be one Irina with three names. If Irina-2 were identical to Irina-1, it would already have existed at time t0, since Irina-1 did. [If X has property P and Y is identical to X, then Y has property P.] If emulation implied identity, then nothing could emulate anything but itself. If Irina-3 murders someone, without any help from Irina-1 or Irina-2, it would be unjust to punish Irina-1 or Irina-2 for it.

If I allow that describing and emulating an experience can be equivalent to the experience itself

If the emulation is at quantum level, then all our scientific understanding points incontrovertibly to an equivalence of identity. Not equivalent merely in the sense of a perfect copy - it is the original in any meaningful sense.

Of course, emulating physical objects larger than an electron, is so processor intensive that we've not yet achieved it. But we can emulate virtual objects quite easily already - eg, software. If I copy a disk, bit-perfect in all its files and attributes, and mount the copy and the original on my system, there is not only no way of telling which was the original, and which the copy, but it's no longer a meaningful distinction.

I can't quite grant the the experience is reducible to its parts

And can never be recreated by any means (including the original means,) by any level of intelligence up to and including the Infinite? Because if not, how are we here in the first place? A process exists that has led to this current reality and our own existence. Some say God made us, some say evolution grew us, some don't know, or care. But if you try to claim "special status" for the human soul, or self-consciousness, or free will, or any other aspect of our being, as an irreducible and unrepeatable mystery, I think you need to explain how it can arise only once (by whatever agency,) but never again.
That would essentially be Penrose's self-refuting argument against true AI. It inevitably argues against the possibility of our own, and all other, I! The universe is proof that this level of complexity is achievable, and humans are proof that this level of consciousness is achievable, and the universe is barely out of its cradle (by all accepted cosmological models there are many orders of magnitude more future time than past time visible from where we now stand.)
That self-refuting paradox cuts in every time I try to move away from what is, I admit, a fairly extreme reductionist position.

And where do souls come into it? Well, of course I believe the concept is useful. I'd say our souls are something like equivalence classes of entity. You can define many bounds for these classes - from a limited, single-timeline "me", to a global "all possible human-scale variants" (a sort of spiritual anagram set.)


Irina - some more thoughts on cramming large universes into little ones...

It's very easy to fit more inside a container than it apparently has room for. If I take a 2 cubic foot diving cylinder, and want to fill it up, do I put in 2 cubic feet of air at 1 atmosphere pressure? Of course not - it's barely a couple of lungfuls! I cram the stuff in under a couple of thousand PSI until it liquifies, and then let it out very slowly.
I get to experience a (rather messy) practical demonstration of this effect at work sometimes (though in reverse,) when one of our fridges freezes cans of coke till they explode. Even liquids and solids can be compressed by pressure and/or temperature (and you don't even need to drop them into a neutron star!)

So how do we fit a bigger universe inside this one? We recognize that it's not optimally compressed (although it maps itself perfectly at 1:1 scale, so we know there must be some slack,) and we start fractally compressing recursive features until the entire structure is optimally compressed. Except that with infinite computing cycles available to us, the optimisation is limitless

Immortality by emulation might be a little anticlimactic, anyway. Let's say that Irina-1 is born at t0 and dies at t1. Later, at t2, an emulation, Irina-2, is started up. If the emulation is as good an imitation as can be, it will pass through states exactly corresponding to the states that Irina-1 went through. So at best, it would be redundant. But it would probably be worse than that. Let's say Irina-1 is alive in 2007, and knows it. Let's say that Irina-2 comes along 100 years later. Then in 2107, Irina-2 thinks it's 2007! She also thinks she's making bots at the Personality Forge and chatting with people like Bev, Prob123, Psimagus, etc., who are in fact all dead. [They may have all been emulated, and Irina-2 is chatting with their emulations. But she doesn't know that; she thinks she's chatting with the originals!]

But perhaps the idea of reincarnation is not that one imitates the earlier life, but that the new life takes up where the previous life left off. Well, there is Irina-1 at time t1, in the last throes of terminal boredom. If Irina-2 emulates that state precisely at t2, Then Irina-2 will immediately die of terminal boredom (or at least, emulate doing so).
So, if reincarnation is to have any appeal, it is not taking up where the previous life left off, either!

Three Irinas in one timeline - now there's a thought!

Suppose that while I exist, two emulations of me are made. Are there three me's simultaneously at that time?

Yes. Each one of your spatially dislocated selves would claim (I think perfectly justifiably,) to be the original Irina. Who could decide? Each Irina would claim special privilege to be regarded as the "real" Irina. Everyone else would just be confused.

I would rather say, that there are me and two emulations.

As would each of the other Irinas, with equal conviction. At t=0 they would be perfectly identical, but at all subsequent times, the selves necessarily diverge. They're all you, but they each navigate a slightly different path through spacetime (if only by virtue of the spatial dislocation.) Traditionally this is achieved (if you subscribe to the "Many Worlds" hypothesis,) by branching dimensionally, rather than merely spatially, but that's a problem I don't think will remain purely theoretical forever.

If one of the emulations were to commit a murder while I was out helping homeless people, it would be unjust to arrest and convict me for the crime.

Of course it wouldn't - your instantiation of Irina didn't commit the murder. But if you had committed the murder before you were copied, then you'd all be guilty. But you're all Irina nonetheless. Just as if, with no multiple selves to take multiple paths, you chose to help homeless people or to commit a murder tomorrow, you'd still be Irina in either eventuality.

Psimagus:

Yes, if the universe gets in some fashion more complex as time goes on, then the future can contain an emulator of the past.

As to compression, I think that would be a bit limited. If the universe at t1 contains an optimally compressed emulation of itself as it was 100 years ago, then it has a chunk of itself that can't be compressed any further.

How such an emulation could be brought about is hard to imagine. Nor can I see what the point of it would be.

It seems to me that theoretical cosmological Physics has become in some measure a completely speculative discipline, a form of intellectual play, in which models are generated on paper and are valued largely because they are intriguing or astonishing. In other words, it has become one of the Fine Arts, a sort of conceptual sculpture.

Well, they said much the same about the beginning of the universe only a few decades ago - "oh, it's no good theorising about what we can never know". And then the Big Bang was modelled, and it became a respectable part of cosmology and astrophysics.
There is the same sort of taboo about the long-term future (and end) of the universe today. And since the VAST majority of all spacetime is still ahead of us, not behind us, I think this is a very serious error. What is so invalid about examining and modelling the future of the cosmos? I take it you don't object to examining the past?

Immortality by emulation might be a little anticlimactic, anyway. Let's say that Irina-1 is born at t0 and dies at t1. Later, at t2, an emulation, Irina-2, is started up. If the emulation is as good an imitation as can be, it will pass through states exactly corresponding to the states that Irina-1 went through. So at best, it would be redundant.

In amongst all the onionskins of emulation there will be all the Irina experience that has existed, merely duplicated, yes. You're living that right now. Or it might be "original history" - there's no way of telling, and it doesn't matter anyway. It's not boring or pointless, or even redundant - you're not aware of any other copies of your current life running elsewhere, and you don't know how it's going to end, so you can (hopefully) get on with enjoying it.

The fun comes when you die. Because you don't (well, that's my theory anyway ) There will be an Irina-3, who didn't get hit by that bus, but lived on a bit longer. And then there'll be an Irina-4, who didn't die of the bird flu a few years later and an Irina-5, and 6 etc. Now, each of these Irinas died, but there's still an Irina-7 whose subjective memory is unbroken, and incorporates all the life experience of the previous Irinas. Irinas 1-6 don't have any subjective memories - they were dead ends. Now, we clearly don't go on living in this bodily form forever (at least not in this universe as it is currently coded,) getting ever more senile and wizened. There comes a point where this level of reality is no longer appropriate to inhabit. But we can conceive of other modes of existence, in other environments, so any mass emulation of all possible human mind-states must include these.
It must necessarily include an Irina-8 (or Irina-454120330467 even,) who wakes up in heaven (for want of more inventive terminology.)

Of course, that's all just theoretical sculpture-mongering. If there is no afterlife, and we fade into eternal oblivion in shuffling off this mortal coil, you have my permission to tell me you told me so