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John_Maxwell_IV comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey: Call For Critiques/Questions - Less Wrong Discussion

20 Post author: Yvain 19 October 2012 01:12AM

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Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 23 October 2012 12:31:04AM *  2 points [-]

Myers writes:

Sure, you can just arbitrarily set the time-scale of the simulation, but then you mess up the inputs from outside the simulation. And you can’t model a human brain in total I/O isolation without it melting down into insanity.

I didn't feel comfortable dismissing his objection out of hand, because I wasn't exactly sure what point he was trying to make. Then I read Carl Shulman's comment, and now I'm thinking it probably just didn't occur to him to simulate the brain in a sped-up virtual environment. Probably he assumed the simulation was expected to interact with the real world as flesh-and-blood humans do, just while thinking faster. If this was the goal, it seems his objection would be valid.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 23 October 2012 02:42:55AM 0 points [-]

Fair enough. His point that a mind works with sense organs is a good one, it's true. Running a double-speed brain with single-speed audio inputs w...o...u...l...d ... n...o...t ... w...o...r...k.