Emile comments on Getting Over Dust Theory - Less Wrong

6 Post author: jhuffman 15 December 2009 10:40PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (97)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 11 July 2015 02:26:20PM 0 points [-]

don't think there's a meaningful difference between "the real world" and a perfect simulation of it (at least seen "from the inside") -

What's the meaning of meaningful? Do you mean that you literally cannot understand the opposite of simulationism? Or are using "meaningful" to mean "empirically confirmable"? The empirical indetectability of a simulation follows from simulations premises, right enough....but it cannot be used to argue for them.

Comment author: Emile 13 July 2015 08:48:38AM 1 point [-]

I mean, roughly, that not only are the two empircally indistinguishable, but that I don't even see a reason to care about whether I'm "in a simulation" or not, and it's not even clear what would qualify as a simulation...

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 16 July 2015 01:20:56PM 0 points [-]

I mean, roughly, that not only are the two empircally indistinguishable,

Don't you mean "have been indistinguishable up to time T"

but that I don't even see a reason to care about whether I'm "in a simulation" or not, and it's not even clear what would qualify as a simulation..

Simulations support counterfactuals, such as shutdowns. getting out into the real world, etc.

If we're given assurances that things you might care about, such as being abruptly halted, aren't going to happen, then you might have nothing further to care about....but it is difficult to see what such assurances would consist of,