Probability of coming into existence again ?
This question has been bothering me for a while now, but I have the nagging feeling that I'm missing something big and that the reasoning is flawed in a very significant way. I'm not well read in philosophy at all, and I'd be really surprised if this particular problem hasn't been addressed many times by more enlightened minds. Please don't hesitate to give reading suggestions if you know more. I don't even know where to start learning about such questions. I have tried the search bar but have failed to find a discussion around this specific topic.
I'll try and explain my train of thought as best as I can but I am not familiar with formal reasoning, so bear with me! (English is not my first language, either)
Based on the information and sensations currently available, I am stuck in a specific point of view and experience specific qualia. So far, it's the only thing that has been available to me; it is the entirety of my reality. I don't know if the cogito ergo sum is well received on Less Wrong, but it seems on the face of it to be a compelling argument for my own existence at least.
Let's assume that there are other conscious beings who "exist" in a similar way, and thus other possible qualia. If we don't assume this, doesn't it mean that we are in a dead end and no further argument is possible? Similar to what happens if there is no free will and thus nothing matters since no change is possible? Again, I am not certain about this reasoning but I can't see the flaw so far.
There doesn't seem to be any reason why I should be experiencing these specific qualia instead of others, that I "popped into existence" as this specific consciousness instead of another, or that I perceive time subjectively. According to what I know, the qualia will probably stop completely at some subjective point in time and I will cease to exist. The qualia are likely to be tied to a physical state of matter (for example colorblindness due to different cells in the eyes) and once the matter does not "function" or is altered, the qualia are gone. It would seem that there could be a link between the subjective and some sort of objective reality, if there is indeed such a thing.
On a side note, I think it's safe to ignore theism and all mentions of a pleasurable afterlife of some sort. I suppose most people on this site have debated this to death elsewhere and there's no real point in bringing it up again. I personally think it's not an adequate solution to this problem.
Based on what I know, and that qualia occur, what is the probability (if any) that I will pop into existence again and again, and experience different qualia each time, with no subjectively perceivable connection with the "previous" consciousness? If it has happened once, if a subjective observer has emerged out of nothing at some point, and is currently observing subjectively (as I think is happening to me), does the subjective observing ever end?
I know it sounds an awful lot like mysticism and reincarnation, but since I am currently existing and observing in a subjective way (or at least I think I am), how can I be certain that it will ever stop?
The only reason why this question matters at all is because suffering is not only possible but quite frequent according to my subjective experience and my intuition of what other possible observers might be experiencing if they do exist in the same way I do. If there were no painful qualia, or no qualia at all, nothing would really matter since there would be no change needed and no concept of suffering. I don't know how to define suffering, but I think it is a valid concept and is contained in qualia, based on my limited subjectivity.
This leads to a second, more disturbing question : does suffering have a limit or is it infinite? Is there a non zero probability to enter into existence as a being that experiences potentially infinite suffering, similar to the main character in I have no mouth and I must scream? Is there no way out of existence? If the answer is no, then how would it be possible to lead a rational life, seeing as it would be a single drop in an infinite ocean?
On a more positive note, this reasoning can serve as a strong deterrent to suicide, since it would be rationally better to prolong your current and familiar existence than to potentially enter a less fortunate one with no way to predict what might happen.
Sadly, these thoughts have shown to be a significant threat to motivation and morale. I feel stuck in this logic and can't see a way out at the moment. If you can identify a flaw here, or know of a solution, then I eagerly await your reply.
kind regards
Truth Tables
Summary: There's a short program that can run all possible programs, OMG
Alternative Summary: Just about any universe that can exist must contain ours, OMG.
I was thinking about diagonalization arguments. Does this make any sense? Can anyone debug it for me?
Self Evident Truths
The universe is computable.
All computations can be performed by Turing Machines.
The mind is made out of atoms.
The name of the empty string is epsilon.
Truths
Binary Strings are enumerable : epsilon, 0, 1, 00, 01, 10, 11, 000, ....
There's a way of converting binary strings to Turing machines and back again. It gets all Turing machines.
Consequence
Consider tables TT(n), which are numbered by binary strings along the top and side, representing turing machines and inputs respectively.
Construct a series of finite triangular tables which are defined iteratively as follows:
TT(1)
To construct the first table, we need one element, the top left, which corresponds to the turing machine epsilon working on the input string epsilon.
Convert the string epsilon to its corresponding turing machine, which has no states and no transition rules, and which therefore halts immediately without accepting.
The value of TT(1)(epsilon,epsilon) is therefore F0 (Fail after no steps).
eps
eps F0
That's it for TT(1).
TT(2)
TT(2) will have three cells, the topleftmost three
To construct the second table, consider again the element at the top left. Since it represents a halted state, copy it verbatim from the last table.
Then consider the element corresponding to (epsilon,0) , or row epsilon, column 0, or (TM(epsilon), "0")
Again TM(epsilon) is either a machine with no states, or an invalid specification, and so it halts immediately on the input 0.
For the third step in constructing the second triangle, consider (TM("0"), epsilon).
TM("0") is another dud. It halts immediately without accepting.
So TT(2) is the table
eps 0
eps F0 F0
0 F0
Towards Infinity...
It should be reasonably clear how to continue the construction of these tables
For instance TT(3) looks like
eps 0 1
eps F0 F0 F0
0 F0 F0
1 F0
Eventually we will reach a row whose string represents a TM which does something other than halt immediately without accepting.
As an example of what to do then, consider the string 1001111, which is the 207th string.
In the usual encoding, this string will represent the TM with start state 0, and transition function delta(0,B)=(0,0,L).
The first time we consider the 207th row will be when we calculate TT(207), the 207th triangular table.
The first cell we consider in that row will be ("1001111", epsilon). Since 1001111 represents a valid machine, we construct the Instantaneous ID (epsilon,0,epsilon), which represents a machine in state 0 with a blank tape.
That's the value of TT(207)("1001111",epsilon).
When we construct TT(208), we take that ID from TT(207), and execute one step. In this case, the machine head moves one step left, writing a zero, and so the instantaneous ID becomes
(epsilon,0,0) (State zero, tape reads ...0...., head just to the left of the zero)
And so on. The values of TT(n)("1001111",epsilon) are undefined for n<206, since the tables are not that large, but for n=207 onwards, they are:
(epsilon,0,epsilon), (epsilon,0,0), (epsilon,0,00), (epsilon,0,000), and so on, with the tape head moving ever leftward, leaving a run of zeros behind it.
Other strings may represent TMs that do things that are even more interesting.
But Not Beyond, (Or Even As Far As)
As we construct the successive tables, they become larger and larger. Some cells
will stabilize after a finite number of steps, either accepting or
rejecting their input strings, at which point their contents become
either F??? or A??? where ??? is the number of steps taken.
Some cells will loop. By comparing the instantaneous state of the table with the state of the cells in all previous tables, loops can be detected. We can mark them as loops, continue computing as before, or re-use the values in the previous tables to avoid performing the computations again.
And some cells, like the ones at ("1001111", epsilon) will keep producing new instantaneous IDs, without looping.
But every TT(n) is a finitely computable object. Indeed the program to compute them all is very short and will run on any computer worthy of the name.
I Find This A Bit Worrying, Because:
As we continue to construct the successive tables, we will perform every conceivable computation.
We will simulate in precise detail every possible world, universe and multiverse. Even though our computer is not quantum, we will simulate all quantum computations.
In particular, if you believe that you are a computation, or that simulation of your brain is equivalent to your existence, then you will be present in the computation, with exactly as much free will, and with your behaviour as precisely determined, as it ever was or will be.
Some of you will live in universes in which artificial intelligences rise and successfully paperclip everything.
Some of you will live in universes where friendly AIs are built, if that is possible.
It will not be possible for these copies to tell which copy they are, and so they will not be able to tell what is about to happen, or what has happened. Any more than you can.
There will be hells and paradises.
In some universes, copies of you will set programs running to calculate the successive triangular tables TT(n), and they will keep adding memory to their computers as needed (only actually one extra storage location per step of computation, at worst).
And so the sequence of finite truth tables will contain itself, as well as everything else. Everything that has ever happened will happen again. You will be reborn and live and possibly die.
You will not know whether you are in the 'base universe', or in the computation. If that even means anything.
And every computation that occurs as part of this great computation is utterly "Beyond the Reach of God".
Exercises
1/ It will take me about a day, a packet of cigars and a machine full of coffee to write this program and start it running. That is what I am doing now. When I start it running, will I have done a bad thing? If someone were to stop me before the program started running, would that make any difference to anything important?
2/ Can anything except what is computed by this program be said to exist in any sense? Continua, and sets of all sets, and so on, are very problematic. And if the human mind is itself a computation , contained in a universe which itself is a computation, how can we think of or interact with any non-computable thing?
3/ Does the ultimate Truth Table, which the finite tables TT(n) approach as the process continues, exist? What does that question mean? The values of many of its cells are determined. Many of them are not computable. The ratio is unclear.
4/ We can perform the initial stages of this computation with a finite computer with finite memory. At no point does the amount of memory required become infinite. If the computational power of the universe is infinite, then it can contain not only itself but every other thing. If the computation power of the universe is finite, where does that number come from?
5/ The program is very short. Any randomly chosen computation has a good chance of being it. It would probably be very hard to construct an interesting universe which did not contain every possible universe and person.
6/ Does it make any sense to talk about 'not being part of this computation'?
Pluralistic Existence in Many Many-Worlds
There are at least ten different conceptions of how the World can be made of many worlds.
But are those just definitional disputes? Or are they separate claims that can be evaluated. If they are distinct, in virtue of what are they distinct. Finally, do we have good grounds to care (morally) about those fine distinctions?
Max Tegmark's taxonomy is well known here.
Brian Greene's is less, and has 9, instead of four, kinds of multiverse, I'll risk conflating the Tegmark ones that are superclasses of these, feel free to correct me:
In his book, Greene discussed nine types of parallel universes:
- (Tegmark 1) The quilted multiverse only works in an infinite universe. With an infinite amount of space, every possible event will occur an infinite amount of times. However, the speed of light prevents us from being aware of these other identical areas.
- (Tegmarks 1 and 2) The inflationary multiverse is composed of various pockets where inflaton fields collapse and form new universes.
- The brane multiverse follows from M-theory and states that each universe is a 3-dimensional brane that exists with many others. Particles are bound to their respective branes except for gravity.
- The cyclic multiverse has multiple branes (each a universe) that collided, causing Big Bangs. The universes bounce back and pass through time, until they are pulled back together and collided again, destroying the old contents and creating them anew.
- (Tegmarks 2) The landscape multiverse relies on string theory's Calabi-Yau shapes. Quantum fluctuations drop the shapes to a lower energy level, creating a pocket with a different set of laws from the surrounding space.
- (Tegmarks 3) The quantum multiverse creates a new universe when a diversion in events occurs, as in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
- The holographic multiverse is derived from the theory that the surface area of a space can simulate the volume of the region.
- (Related to Bostrom's Simulation Hypothesis) The simulated multiverse exists on complex computer systems that simulate entire universes. (for the sake of brevity I'll consider dust theory to be a subset of this)
- (Tegmark's 4) The ultimate multiverse contains every mathematically possible universe under different laws of physics.
I don't understand branes well enough (or at all) to classify the others. The holographic one seems compatible with a multitude, if not all, previous ones.
Besides all those there is David Lewis's Possible Worlds in which all possible worlds exist (in whichever sense the word exist can be significantly applied, if any). For Lewis, when we call our World the Actual World, we think we mean the only one that is there, but what we mean is "the one to which we happen to belong". Notice it is distinct from the Mathematical/Ultimate in that there may be properties of non-mathematical kind.
So Actuallewis= Our world and Actualmost everyone else=Those that obtain, exist, or are real.
The trouble with existence, or reality, is that it is hard to pin down what it is pointing at. Eliezer writes:
The collection of hypothetical mathematical thingies that can be described logically (in terms of relational rules with consistent solutions) looks vastly larger than the collection of causal universes with locally determined, acyclically ordered events. Most mathematical objects aren't like that. When you say, "We live in a causal universe", a universe that can be computed in-order using local and directional rules of determination, you're vastly narrowing down the possibilities relative to all of Math-space.
So it's rather suggestive that we find ourselves in a causal universe rather than a logical universe - it suggests that not all mathematical objects can be real, and the sort of thingies that can be real and have people in them are constrained to somewhere in the vicinity of 'causal universes'. That you can't have consciousness without computing an agent made of causes and effects, or maybe something can't be real at all unless it's a fabric of cause and effect. It suggests that if there is a Tegmark Level IV multiverse, it isn't "all logical universes" but "all causal universes".
and elsewhere
More generally, for me to expect your beliefs to correlate with reality, I have to either think that reality is the cause of your beliefs, expect your beliefs to alter reality, or believe that some third factor is influencing both of them.
Now another interesting way of looking at existence or reality is
Reality=I should care about what takes place there
It is interesting because it is what is residually left after you abandon the all too stringent standard of "causally connected to me", which would leave few or none of the above, and cut the party short.
So Existenceyud and Existencemoral-concern are very different. Reality-fluid, or Measure, in quantum universes is also different, and sometimes described by some as the quantity of existence. Notice though that the Measure is always a ratio - say these universes here are 30% of the successors of that universe, the other 70% are those other ones - not an absolute quantity.
Which of the 10 kinds of multiverses, besides our own, have Existenceyud Existencemoral-concern and which can be split up in reality-fluid ratios?
That is left as an exercise, since I am very confused by the whole thing...
Malthusian copying: mass death of unhappy life-loving uploads
Robin Hanson has done a great job of describing the future world and economy, under the assumption that easily copied "uploads" (whole brain emulations), and the standard laws of economics continue to apply. To oversimplify the conclusion:
- There will be great and rapidly increasing wealth. On the other hand, the uploads will be in Darwinian-like competition with each other and with copies, which will drive their wages down to subsistence levels: whatever is required to run their hardware and keep them working, and nothing more.
The competition will not so much be driven by variation, but by selection: uploads with the required characteristics can be copied again and again, undercutting and literally crowding out any uploads wanting higher wages.
Megadeaths
Some have focused on the possibly troubling aspects voluntary or semi-voluntary death: some uploads would be willing to make copies of themselves for specific tasks, which would then be deleted or killed at the end of the process. This can pose problems, especially if the copy changes its mind about deletion. But much more troubling is the mass death among uploads that always wanted to live.
What the selection process will favour is agents that want to live (if they didn't, they'd die out) and willing to work for an expectation of subsistence level wages. But now add a little risk to the process: not all jobs pay exactly the expected amount, sometimes they pay slightly higher, sometimes they pay slightly lower. That means that half of all jobs will result in a life-loving upload dying (charging extra to pay for insurance will squeeze that upload out of the market). Iterating the process means that the vast majority of the uploads will end up being killed - if not initially, then at some point later. The picture changes somewhat if you consider "super-organisms" of uploads and their copies, but then the issue simply shifts to wage competition between the super-organisms.
The only way this can be considered acceptable is if the killing of a (potentially unique) agent that doesn't want to die, is exactly compensated by the copying of another already existent agent. I don't find myself in the camp arguing that that would be a morally neutral or positive action.
Pain and unhappiness
Non-personal preferences of never-existed people
Some people see never-existed people as moral agents, and claim that we can talk about their preferences. Generally this means their personal preference in existing versus non-existing. Formulations such "it is better for someone to have existed than not" reflect this way of thinking.
But if the preferences of never-existed are relevant, then their non-personal perferences are also relevant. Do they perfer a blue world or a pink one? Would they want us to change our political systems? Would they want us to not bring into existence some never-existent people they don't like?
It seems that those who are advocating bringing never-existent people into being in order to satisfy those people's preferences should be focusing their attention on their non-personal preferences instead. After all, we can only bring into being so many trillions of trillions of trillions; but there is no theoretical limit to the number of never-existent people whose non-personal preferences we can satisfy. Just get some reasonable measure across the preferences of never-existent people, and see if there's anything that sticks out from the mass.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)