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Wait a second, this doesn't make sense. If the universe is timeless, then you don't have to actually simulate the universe on a computer. You can just create a detailed model of the universe, put in the neccesery causality structure, stick it in the RAM, and voila! you have conscious beings living out their lives in a universe. You don't even have to put it in the RAM, you can just write out symbols on a piece of paper! Or can this impeccable line of reasoning be invalidated by experimental evidence?
In response to
Timeless Causality
18 months too late, but http://xkcd.com/505/
By Eliezer's line of reasoning above - that the subjective experience is in the causal change between one state and the 'next' then yes, symbols are as good a substrate as any. FWIW, this is how I see things too.
In response to
That Alien Message
Ben Jones @ May 22, 2008 09:16:
stupid TypeKey
... and we're worried about super-intelligent AI?
Ha, never noticed this. What I meant was 'Stupid me forgetting to log in.' So yes, we're worried! ;)
Ben
Actually, I might prefer not to use the term 'Singularity' at all, precisely because it has picked up so many different meanings. If a name is needed for the event we're describing and we can't avoid that, use 'intelligence explosion'.
Seconded. One of the many modern connotations of 'Singularity' is 'Geek Apocalypse'.
Which is happening, like, a good couple of years afterwards.
Intelligence explosion does away with that, and seems to nail the concept much better anyway.
"Don't let yourself unreflectively fall into a routine" and "don't be emotionally uncomfortable with nonconformity" are of course good advice; "be indifferent to PR when you're trying to do something for which PR actually matters" is bad advice.
How about the middle ground - "If constant PR consideration stops you from expressing yourself all the time, maybe it's time to reconsider your priorities"?
Posting stuff on Facebook that might get you in trouble is the archetype these day I suppose, but I really can't bring myself to care about things like that.
Maybe I just don't have a strong enough terminal value to protect right now, but I find it easier to imagine myself thinking, 50 years hence, "I wish I'd just decided 'to hell with it' and said what I thought" than "I wish I'd shut up, gone with the flow and eased my path."
I'll hit you up in late 2059 and let you know how that went.
Ah yes, that works. Fair enough. Although not every proton would interact with the hamster on its first pass, and then you'd likely get a quench on the second.
There's a thesis in there somewhere.
We all know what's really going down. The Dark Lords of the Matrix are currently cacking themselves and coming up with semi-plausible reasons to break the thing until they can decide on a long-term strategy.
In response to
Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Ask Your Questions
Favourite album post-1960?
If one wanted to game the karma system, posting pithy quotes is the way to go.
No, creating multiple accounts with whatever level of investment of effort is sufficient to avoid detection is the way to go. And also too easy to be worth bothering with for a reward of no external value. There are systems to game that pay off in dollars.
Who actually gets off on earning loads of karma across multiple accounts with no-one knowing?
So what I'm supposed to do is make whatever assumptions are necessary to render the questions free of any side-effects, and then consider the question...
So, let me take a stab at answering the question, given my revised understanding.
If you pay me just one penny, I'll replace your 80% chance of living for 10^(10^10) years, with a 79.99992% chance of living 10^(10^(10^10)) years. ...with further shaving-off of survival odds in exchange for life-extension by truly Vast orders of magnitude.
First off, I can't bring myself to care about the difference; both are incomprehensibly long amounts of time.
Also, my natural tendency is to avoid "deal sweeteners", presumably because in the real world this would be the "switch" part of the "bait-and-switch" -- but Omega is 100% trustworthy, so I don't need to worry -- which means I need to specifically override my natural "decision hysteresis" and consider this as an initial choice to be made.
Is it cheating to let the "real world" intrude in the form of the following thought?:
If, by the time 10^^3 years have elapsed, I or my civilization have not developed some more controllable means of might-as-well-be-immortality, then I'm probably not going to care too much how long I live past the end of my civilization, much less the end of the universe.
...or am I simply supposed to think of "years of life" as a commodity, like money? (The ensuing monetary analogies would seem to imply this...) Too much of anything, though -- money or time -- becomes meaningless when multiplied further.:
Time: Do I assume my friends get to come with me, and that together we will find some way to survive the inevitable maximization of entropy?
Money: After I've bought the earth, and the rights to the rest of the solar system and any other planets we're able to find with the infinite improbability drive developed by the laboratories I paid for, what do we do with the other $0.99999 x 10^^whatever? (And how do I spend the first part of that money without causing a global economic crisis that will make this one look like a slow day at the taco stand? Oh, wait, though, I'm probably supposed to assume I earned it legitimately by contributing that much value to the global economy... how??? Mind boggles, scenario fails.)
In other words... Omega can have the penny, because it's totally not about the penny, but I don't see any point in starting down the road of shaving off probability-points in exchange for orders of magnitude, no matter how large.
In fact, I'd be more inclined to go the other way, if that were an option -- reducing the likelihood of death in exchange for a shorter life. (I'm not quite clear on whether this could be reverse-extrapolated from the examples given.) I suspect a thousand years would be enough; give me that, and I can get the rest for myself. (Or am I supposed to assume that I will never be able to extend my life beyond the years Omega gives me? If so, we're getting way too mystical and into premises that seem like they would force me to revise my understanding of reality in some significant way.)
So I guess my primary answer to Eliezer's question is that I don't even start down the garden path because I'm more inclined to walk the other way.
Am I still missing anything?
Please stop allowing your practical considerations get in the way of the pure, beautiful counterfactual!
Seriously though, either you allow yourself to suspend practicalities and consider pure decision theory, or you don't. This is a pure maths problem, you can't equate it to 'John has 4 apples.' John has 3^^^3 apples here, causing your mind to break. Forget the apples and years, consider utility!
In response to
Dying Outside
My commiserations, to the extent that you seem to need them.
I'd like to imagine I'd have a similar reaction, this is an inspiring post. All the best.
<Ben Jones back on OB>
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Quantum immortality seemed to work when I was imagining my consciousness as a thread running through the many worlds, one that couldn't possibly enter a world where I was dead. But if I understand rightly, consciousness is not like this, it is not epiphenominal, it is not a thread that runs through one world and not the others, it is splitting along with the world around me and the rest of my body.
So if I undergo the classic 50/50 decaying radioactive particle + gun experiment, it would seem to me that I have a 50% chance of my consciousness surviving and a 50% of it going *ping* out of existence when the bullet pulverises my brain.
If that even makes sense, then I've managed to understand a lot more of the quantum mechanics and zombie sequences than I thought I had.
I was hoping someone would bring up quantum immortality because that was what came to mind at the end of the post. Shooting myself in the head, on the assumption that quantum immortality will make the gun jam every time, would be a great party piece but it would certainly count as a strange strategy.
Just by the by, it might be a good party piece for you, but it would be a truly horrible party piece for half the people you performed it to.