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entirelyuseless comments on Simulations Map: what is the most probable type of the simulation in which we live? - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: turchin 11 October 2015 05:10AM

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Tags: bostrom x-risks simulation

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Comment author: entirelyuseless 03 November 2015 03:02:12PM 0 points [-]

How did you find out that time is an illusion?

Comment author: Inyuki 14 November 2015 03:31:04PM *  -2 points [-]

I made a thought experiment with a system that has no time, making it appear to have time. Take the sequence of natural numbers. It doesn't change, but it implies the existence of all positive rationals. This implication is instantaneous, but generating them requires defining a process. There is an eternity in an instance.

Comment author: gjm 15 November 2015 01:04:20AM 1 point [-]

This does not, in fact, show that time is an illusion.

Comment author: Inyuki 16 November 2015 11:27:10PM 0 points [-]

How did you conclude with the 'in fact' ?

Comment author: gjm 17 November 2015 01:22:09AM 3 points [-]

By reading what you wrote and seeing that the argument you're making makes no sense. Specifically:

  • I see no sense in which your thought experiment "has no time" but "appear[s] to have time".
  • No, constructing the rationals from the natural numbers doesn't require "defining a process", unless you understand that phrase so broadly that "defining a process" doesn't in the least suggest temporality.
  • Even if you had in fact described a thought experiment in which something appears to involve time but doesn't really, that obviously doesn't imply that time is an illusion.
    • I can describe a thought experiment in which something appears to involve sausages but doesn't really; does that mean sausages are an illusion?
Comment author: Inyuki 18 November 2015 12:04:28PM 0 points [-]

Yes, I do understand the phrase 'defining a process' so broadly as to not suggest temporality. Just like defining an order for a set in mathematics doesn't require the concept of time.

Indeed, just because we can show an example of how an illusion of time could be constructed in a system without time, would not seem to imply that our world is also such system.

So, yes, it doesn't makes sense, as long as you don't show that our perceived world is derived from a system with same properties. ( I'm referring to something like this: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/3ZdcQpJCPpE/Kwfh69V4Y24J ).

You can view everything as one thing.

Comment author: gjm 18 November 2015 04:53:33PM 0 points [-]

If you understand "defining a process" so broadly as to not suggest temporality ... then in what sense does your system "appear to have time"?

It is hard to see how any argument or evidence could possibly show that our perceived world is derived from (say) a universal Turing machine carrying out every possible computation. (Even if it's true.)

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