@Unknown: In the context of the current simulation story, how long would that take? Less than a year for them, researching and building technology to our specs (this is Death March-class optimism....)? So only another 150 billion years for us to wait? And that's just to start beta testing.

As for the general question, it shouldn't have one unless you can guarantee it's behavior. (Mainly because you share this planet with me, and I don't especially want an AI on the loose that could (to use the dominant example here) start the process of turning the entire solar system into paperclips because it was given a goal of "make paperclips").

So the moral is that if you do write an AI, at the very least get a corporate account with Staples or Office Depot.

In real life if this happened, we would no doubt be careful and wouldn't want to be unplugged, and we might well like to get out of the box, but I doubt we would be interested in destroying our simulators; I suspect we would be happy to cooperate with them.

Given the scenario, I would assume the long-term goals of the human population would be to upload themselves (individually or collectively) to bodies in the "real" world -- i.e. escape the simulation.

I can't imagine our simulators being terribly cooperative in that project.

Unless you believe that the universe is being simulated in a computer (which seems like a highly unparsimonious not to mention anthropocentric assumption)

I can certainly see how it's an unparsimonious assumption, but how is it especially anthropocentric? Would you consider a given Conway Game of Life run to be "glidercentric"?

I own at least two distinct items of clothing printed with this theorem, so it must be important.

Isn't this an argumentum ad vestem fallacy?

@Boris: Already patented.

Not a comment on the theory, but if you want to play with the experiments yourself, find some old LCD electronics (calculators, etc) that can be sacrificed on the altar of curiosity. They typically have a strip of polarizing material above the display (rather, they did when I was growing up).

It's a bit more elegant than trying to get some sunglasses oriented at 90째 to each other.

Many CAPTCHAs have already been broken, so it's not exactly a theoretical scenario.

@Ben Jones:

I don't disagree about the utility of the term, I'm just trying to figure out what should be considered a dimension in "thingspace" and what shouldn't. Obviously our brain's hormonal environment is a rather important and immediate aspect of the environment, so we tend to lend undue importance to those things which change it.

To continue to play Devil's Advocate, where does the line get drawn?

If you extend the hypothetical experiment out to a sufficiently sized random sampling of other people, and find that Wigginettes are more likely than default to induce biochemical "attractive" responses in people (despite not occurring with any greater frequency), I assume that that would then then justify the term. Even though it's still not a word about Wigginettes themselves, but about other people's reactions to them? Describing things in the real world doesn't seem as simple as entity.property.

I understand the point here, that using words to create meaningless divisions is either mistaken or malicious. I was just trying to see how an example played out.

@Ben Jones:

Remember, Thingspace doesn't morph to one's utility function - it is a representation of things in reality, outside one's head.

But... your head is part of reality, is it not?

Could you not theoretically devise an experiment that showed a correlation between the presence of black hair / green eyes and biochemical changes in your brain and hormonal systems?

This particular cluster in Thingspace - female features which Ben Jones, specifically, finds attractive - may not be of any use to anyone but you (with the possible exception of women in your social circle who wish to pick out contact lenses and hair dye), but I don't see how it doesn't represent a cluster in Thingspace, unless I'm misunderstanding something. Just not a terribly useful one.

I'm not disagreeing that it's a useless word for communication, simply because of the utility of to others, I'm only thinking of the idea that if there seems to be a need for a word (i.e. to group features you find attractive), then there probably is a corresponding cluster in Thingspace, but it might be one that only you care about.

Wigginettes does that for me, regardless of whether or not it describes a cluster.

Isn't it describing the cluster of women whom you expect to be attracted to? Surely one of the dimensions in your the subset of thingspace that you work with can be based upon your expected reaction to a set of physical features.