Only That Which Came About By Itself Is Real

[YesNo]

If the consciousness of individuals can be temporarily integrated with the simulators.

I don't think this is possible. I would reference John Searle's Chinese Room argument to eliminate algorithmic simulators. You would need a non-algorithmic simulator. The first challenge is to describe what such a device would be.

No, I do not forget subjectivity. How can artificial beings be anything but subjective? An objective being of any kind is an impossibility, it seems to me, because an objective being has no sense of self, it does not differentiate between itself and what is outside. It does not see itself. Anyway, the beings in the simulation have to be as close to us as they can be created, subjectivity and all.

I somewhat agree with this only because it is vague enough to find possible places of agreement. However, I do not agree with the idea that subjectivity can be created as an objective reality. True we can create children and these have subjectivity but their subjectivity comes from their own lived creativity. It is not something we create.

It makes sense to me to see the objective or "artificial" as the illusory Hindu "maya". I don't think that is how you view it.

Also it seems you are working from a deterministic view of reality that I reject based on my own lived experience and evidence from quantum physics.

[desiresjab]

I don't think this is possible. I would reference John Searle's Chinese Room argument to eliminate algorithmic simulators. You would need a non-algorithmic simulator. The first challenge is to describe what such a device would be.



I somewhat agree with this only because it is vague enough to find possible places of agreement. However, I do not agree with the idea that subjectivity can be created as an objective reality. True we can create children and these have subjectivity but their subjectivity comes from their own lived creativity. It is not something we create.

It makes sense to me to see the objective or "artificial" as the illusory Hindu "maya". I don't think that is how you view it.

Also it seems you are working from a deterministic view of reality that I reject based on my own lived experience and evidence from quantum physics.

In fact maya is a word I often use. To me, of religious figures Buddah got closest to the truth of human reality by equating it with illusion..

I don't care much for the subjective/objective side of the theory. It is technical and sounds like sentence diagramming. There is no doubt one can pick and prod into every corner and find leaks here and there. It has been done with every philosophy that took the highest powered human minds a liftime to compose and consider and revise, so it can be done with my partially borrowed idea as well, I have every confidence. In fact I have sat here and done it. I have picked little quibbling holes in it. But that really does not matter, because I can do that with literally any theory I can grasp. I think we all could.

I have to interrupt. Was just called for prawns.

[desiresjab]

I do not worry about how they will construct their simulations. That is way beyond us all. They will do it. They have already done it, if I am right, since we are here. The level of success they will attain can be debated, but we all know they will try.

I want to compliment you and all the members of the forum for being excellent simulations of consciousness.

True consciousness would be what God has and what God promises to us in the Christian religion. We cannot in any way show that we are truly conscious and not some simulation that is asymptotically close.

Our old friend the asymptote again. We are good fakes, aren't we? Out in the physical world (a fine simulation of a physical world) you only come so close to the ideal behind any effort. You can idealize a perfect circle, but you cannot cut a perfect one.

The same with other difficult propositions and phenomena to formulate. We do not need to be conscious, we only need to be asymptotically close, and I think we are.

This has all kinds of wonderful philosophical, religious and fictional ramifications. It is a fun ball to run with.

[YesNo]

I estimate your chance of being right at about 0%. But life is short. We all have to handle cognitive dissonance as best we can. The most amazing cognitive dissonance is that we are here at all talking to each other. We have to make sense out of that. If "simulations of consciousness" works for you, fine. I prefer to cut to the chase, skip the needless addition of "simulations" and focus on consciousness itself.

[desiresjab]

If the first man to walk on the martian surface finds a perfect camera sitting on a rock, he will be forced to conclude that it did not come about by itself. This is a classic argument from design. Camera is even the traditional example. It could have been a microscope or a microwave oven, the astronaut would still conclude the same thing. Or, the point is, instead of any of these, perhaps he sees a spohisticated artificial universe. He will conclude the same thing in all cases--it did not come about by itself. Not a strong philosophical argument, but an ironclad indication of what our assumption will always be.

All evidence of whether the universe is real or artificial is indirect and heavily philosophic. It is a question not yet seriously considered by science, and may likewise only be considered obliquely.

The more evidence for design in nature the modern evangelist sees, the more imbued with visible artificiality he pronounces nature to be, usually without knowing it or thinking about that aspect of it. He would prefer another name for it.

* * * * *

It sounds to me like God later felt sorry for us. One could find paralells to the bible, I am not interested in doing that. Once in a while an example stands out and demands to be heard from anyway.

The story of our creator and of his developving relationship with his creation in the Bible, may be a paralell of what happened with our real creators, our distant descendants. God only had empathy with us later. The God of the old testament is not very empathic or caring, despite that God's own constant proclamations otherwise, but the God of the new testament is caring and empathic, in comparison to the older one.

God later became empathic and less punitive, just like our actual creators, our distant descendants. Our descendants are still humans. They can compatmentalize and deny with the best of us. It probably took a grass roots campaign and legislation to finally get a mandatory afterlife built for all those pour souls in the simulations suffering from the fear of death.

And it only made good scientific sense, too, since mankind will be busily engaged in building simulated afterlives they can hook into and integrate with in case there is no real afterlife for consciousness to go to. All the research relates. That is why it will happen.

Whether we are simulated or real, exactly the same thing happens down the road for us--we look for a real afterlife and try to build an artificial one.

In our hearts we would rather have a real afterlife than an artificial one. There could be a real one, plus the artificial one we build. We could find the artificial one better than the one that is natural to the universe.

[YesNo]

Instead of believing in future descendants somehow being able to recreate us so we can have an artificial afterlife, why don't you just assume that consciousness is larger than our own and can create this universe?

What do you think of those people who discuss near-death experiences and claim they are evidence of an afterlife?

[Danik 2016]

I think what we mostly have today, are narratives, religious and scientific narratives. And we need them to be reassuring, because too little is known about afterlife.

As for the future inventions I think they are difficult to predict now because they probably depend on a technology that is still going to be created.
This story was written in 1975 by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges
http://anagrammatically.com/2010/03/...es-translated/
Only forty years ago it was an uncanny tale. Today to open the "Book of Sand" you have only to access the internet.
When you again access the page you were looking at, it will have changed.
And even Borges wildest imagination wouldn´t be able to foresee these virtual every day echanges with people of all corners of the world.

[YesNo]

Nice haunting story especially with sentences like this: “Study the page well. You will never see it again.”

[desiresjab]

Instead of believing in future descendants somehow being able to recreate us so we can have an artificial afterlife, why don't you just assume that consciousness is larger than our own and can create this universe?

I cannot assume something just because that is how I might like it to be. What you just said means you are not listening carefully. What does it seem I have been assuming created the universe? A consciousness, if it is created rather than having just happened by itself. Only a consciousness can consciously create something, lad.

What do you think of those people who discuss near-death experiences and claim they are evidence of an afterlife?

When a star dies there is some extended fireworks, too, as it becomes a red giant and then finally a white dwarf.

I have never looked into the phenomenon with more than a passing glance. I suspect there is probably something to their experiences, but establishing a connection between them and the afterlife is out of our league for the moment. It is entirely plausible that only those who are coming back and are not going to die anyway, have these near death experiences. Perhaps no one who died actually had one of these experiences, but we could never prove it. A great subject. I believe that someday it will be an extremely fruitful orchard for science. Our dreams and our near death experiences are two places we shall boldy go, perhaps only to discover they are the same place.

I hate to leave this earth before life is discovered elsewhere. I would like to watch old paradigms tremble and collapse. About a decade is what I reasonably have left, and that is not going to do it.

[YesNo]

I cannot assume something just because that is how I might like it to be. What you just said means you are not listening carefully. What does it seem I have been assuming created the universe? A consciousness, if it is created rather than having just happened by itself. Only a consciousness can consciously create something, lad.

You are assuming that our descendants will be able to simulate our consciousness.

[desiresjab]

You are assuming that our descendants will be able to simulate our consciousness.

We can already simulate consciousness. We are not asymptotically close yet but are making continual progress. You know the simulations will not get worse. Since we ourselves are simulations which are, for all we can tell, asymptotically close to consciousness without being God conscious, I fail to see the problem in believing we will someday get there. It can only be the Man will never fly syndrome. You have a bad case of it with your friend Searls.

[desiresjab]

We will become more and more adapted to and dependent upon our helpers with their ersatz consciousness long before anyone believes they are asymptotically close to actual consciousness. We talk to our pets. too. The anthropomorphesizing (sp.) of our helpers will take place naturally in spite of public education campaigns. By the time they do become anything close to conscious, we will already have accepted them as our confidants long ago.

* * * * *

I foresee nested simulations that could become endless. As we are a simulation (something artificial), someday someone in one of our own simulations will create an artificial intelligence and artificial universe, and this should not seem frightening to us, since we must already accept ourselves as artificial if we believe in God as creator.

[desiresjab]

Time for us to ask ourselves some questions, reader. If such realistic simulations were available to us, would we run them? Could you justify running the civil war over trillions of times, to see if on average the U.S. did a poor job, an average job or a great job in terms of elapsed time before equal rights became a reality, when you know that circa 600,000 simulated beings with feelings and famlies and the belief that they are real, are going to die prematurely, many of them in great pain?

Yes, we would justify it. At first our justification is that they are only simulated and none of it is real. Later, these simulated beings will earn some rights, thanks to an educational system currently geared toward turning out activists. Maybe then you will need a permit.

As God changed its mind about us in the new testament, we will change our minds with regard to our own simulated creatures, adopting a more empathic approach. A God hound would think our own experience reflects God's in every way, and this is one interpretation. I love making these biblical connections and analogies--it is part of my heritage, and does not mean I take them more seriously than the other notions I contemplate. Actually, I take them less seriously, but provide them for those who might see things that way, and because they are a playful part of my cultural heritage. It comes natural to make such speculations, having grown up around Christian doctine.

[YesNo]

We can already simulate consciousness. We are not asymptotically close yet but are making continual progress. You know the simulations will not get worse. Since we ourselves are simulations which are, for all we can tell, asymptotically close to consciousness without being God conscious, I fail to see the problem in believing we will someday get there. It can only be the Man will never fly syndrome. You have a bad case of it with your friend Searls.

We can create beings with consciousness. It is called reproduction. There is no need to simulate consciousness except to try to show that consciousness is not "real" to use your term. But if it is real then no artificial approximation ever gets close enough to it since every approximation is artificial. By your own argument what is artificial is not real.

I think part of the problem with such theories is they view what is artificial as real even though they claim it is not real. When they look at a table they believe whatever it is made out of that makes it "objective" is real but unconscious. Then they take this fantasy reality they believe exists and try to reduce the real subjective reality to the objective unconscious fantasy. That is where they fail. In particular using algorithms they fail based on Searle's Chinese Room argument.

[desiresjab]

There are many ways around Searle's argument, which is not established fact anyway, but wildly controversial. The easiest way is to step out of the computing paradigm we are familiar with. Searles admits the possibility of biological systems different from our own that might be able to simulate consciousness.

It does not have to be a direct assault. The problem can be come at obliquely. Various combinations of organic and inorganic components should produce biological systems "different from our own." Brains integrated with internal quantum computers will be one unified system that can be said to be conscious. This is not different from ourselves. We do not require that our spinal columns and toenails be conscious to name ourselves conscious. The internal computer will be in perfect harmony with the firing synapses of the human brain that for sure is conscious. These internal quantum computers may be constructed out of our own junk DNA.

The argument against this would be take away the brain and the computer is no longer conscious, if it ever was, but take away the computer and the brain is still conscious. It is not the same integrated system of consciousness, though. The consciousness we simulate will not be copies of our own. It will be a new kind.

I expect the manufacture of brains in isolation late this century. Any "experience" whatsoever may be imprinted on these manufactured brains. Their imprinted experiences will not be human experiences but computational and organizational ones. The nature of computational science will undergo a revolution, and will at that point be far beyond the reaches of Searle's objections to strong AI.

Even under the current paradigm, many of earth's technical philosophers are concerned with the rise of AI. I think they can see beyond Searle's horizon as well. He has a compelling argument for the short term, but that is all it is to me.