hwc comments on Causal Reference - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 October 2012 10:12PM

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Comment author: hwc 22 October 2012 09:06:24PM 1 point [-]

Or, a Boltzmann brain that flickered into existence with memories of a past that never happened.

Comment author: ialdabaoth 23 October 2012 12:54:18AM 2 points [-]

In that particular case, "never happened" has some weird ontological baggage. If a simulated consciousness is still conscious, then isn't its simulated past still a past?

Perhaps "didn't happen" in the sense that its future reality will not conform to its memory-informed expectations, but it seems like, if those memories form a coherent 'past', then in a simulationist sense that past did happen, even if it wasn't simulated with perfect fidelity.