No, you didn't. You merely asserted: "The PSA statement (that there is a step that reaches the goal) directly violates the premise that any given step gets only halfway to the goal." There is no direct violation. — Relativist

1. A given halfway step cannot reach the goal.
2 There is a specific step that reaches the goal (per PSA)
3 Therefore this final step is not a halfway step (1 & 2)
4 Any given step is halfway (per Zeno)

You don't find this contradictory?

Here's valid logic:
1. A halfway step cannot reach the goal.
2. All steps are halfway
3. Therefore the goal cannot be reached.

This shows that no specific halfway step reaches the goal, which is the same as saying that the goal cannot be reached in a finite number of steps.

It seems that every post seems to attempt finite logic on an unbounded situation. If you accept that motion is possible, there is a flaw in at least one of the premises.
— Relativist

You merely asserted the goal is reached (directly contradicting #3) but didn't explain how the sequence of halfway steps somehow reaches the goal.

Yea, I do, don't I? I'm not enough of the mathematician to regurgitate all the axioms and processes involved in the accepted validity of the value of a convergent series. Attack them if you will. The do require some axioms that are not obvious, so there's a good place to start. Nevertheless, I can do more than just handwave, by several unrelated methods.

Demonstration that immediate contradictions arise from denying either of the premises or presuming your conclusion 3 is also more than just handwaving. For instance, given the usual scenario, where is Achilles at time t=1? If he's not at the goal then, then where else is he?

There are those that deny an object falling past the event horizon of a black hole by suggesting that 'time stops' in a somewhat similar manner that some posting here have suggested. But that's just an abstract coordinate effect (and the leveraging of finite logic). Change the coordinate system to one that isn't singular at the point of contention and the object falls in, no problem. Similarly, Achilles is stuck in an abstract sense due to a deliberate choice of coordinate system that is singular at the goal. The impediment is entirely abstract and not physical at all.

Per modus ponens, empirical observation shows that motion is possible, as is the overtaking of a slower object. One need not accept that empirical evidence (keystone attempted this avenue), but I choose to start with acceptance of empirical evidence. There are a few places where it is inappropriate to do so, and this isn't one of them.

Also, no impediment to the reaching of the goal has been identified, so in a similar way, your stance (what is your stance? Supertasks are nonexistent, even given continuous assumptions?) is also achieved by handwaving when it is not just being flat out contradictory. You do seem to heavily rely on definitions that come only from finite logic. A definition that is being leverage outside its range of applicability is

The process does not continue forever, however there is no end to the process.

There is a temporal end to it, a final moment if not a final step.

But this process has a 1:1 correspondence to the supertask -- for every step taken in one scenario, there's a parallel step taken in the other. This suggests that either they both complete, or neither completes.

There is a bijection yes. It does not imply that both or neither completes.
This reminds me of some of the discussion behind Gabriel's horn, and attempting to suggest that its infinite area implies that it has infinite volume.

Yes, your example here very much illustrates how a deliberate abstraction can be made to be singular at any chosen point, in this case tying infinite time to a finite duration. Yes, this works even in uncountable infinities: There is a bijection between the space from 0 to 1 and the space from 1 on up, by the simple relation of y = 1/x. This in no way implies that 1 meter cannot exist.

The number line in question is an interval that is open on the right: i.e. it includes all points <1, but not including 1. There are infinitely many points in this interval, but the point "1" isn't one of them. So the process cannot reach 1, and 1 is the goal of the process.

The 'process' can go beyond the end of the line despite it ending before the goal. This is sort of a different issue since you're putting an uncountable set of points between 0 and 1. Why not just 1/2, 1/4, ...

The goal is therefore unreachable by the kinematic process.

Disagree. The kinematic process isn't restricted to only points on the number line.

Or the PSA is correct, and the goal can't be met. — Relativist

I showed that for a supertask, the PSA is not correct. So no, this cannot be for a supertask.

Why would it matter if the number of steps is infinite? — Relativist

Because a contradiction results from making that additional assertion. In the example given, it is a very direct contradiction.

What does it even mean for a kinematic process to be infinite? My answer: it means the process continues forever and does not end. What's your answer. — Relativist

If the process continues forever, by definition it isn't a supertask. It's a different process than the one being discussed.
I don't have an answer because I don't understand what 'kinematic' adds to the issue.

Points on a number line exist concurrently (in effect). — Relativist

I don't know what is meant by this. 'Concurrently' means 'at the same time' and there isn't time defined for a number line.
A number line seems to be a set of ordered points represented by a visual line. It can be defined otherwise, but functionally that seems sufficient. It being a visual aid, it seems physical, but a reference to the simultaneity of the positions along the line seems irrelevant to the concept.

Steps in a kinetic process do not: they occur sequentially, separated by durations of time. — Relativist

OK. I buy that. But this works mathematically as well, so 'kinetic' doesn't add anything. I can draw the worldlines of Achilles and the tortoise on some medium and all you get is two lines that cross at some point. The axes on the plot are x and t, so in this mathematical representation, the steps do not occur simultaneously, but are separate durations of time. What did 'kinetic' add to that?
I'm trying to understand your point about how the word somehow is relevant.

the Achilles/tortoise problem ... just clouds the issue with the stairway supertask. — Relativist

OK, this has been about the stairway. There is no objective kinematics about that since it involves a space-like worldline, so the steps are not unambiguously ordered in time. The ordering of the steps becomes ambiguous due to relativity of simultaneity, and it becomes meaningless to use the word 'sequential' in this context.

Hence my always referencing the tortoise example since it hasn't any physical ambiguities like that. There are still frame dependent fact, so for instance in another frame, it is the tortoise trying to overtake Achilles, both of whom are facing backwards.

Those are my thoughts on 'kinematics'.

Show the PSA is false. — Relativist

The PSA statement (that there is a step that reaches the goal) directly violates the premise that any given step gets only halfway to the goal.
Either PSA is wrong or the premise is. In neither case is PSA valid for a supertask.

Simply denying a final step is necessary doesn't make it so

Simply asserting that such a step is necessary doesn't make it so, especially when it being the case directly violates the initial premise. That violation does very much demonstrate not only the lack of necessity of a final step, but the impossibility of it, given the premise.

you have to explain why it's not necessary for a kinetic task to require a final step in order to be completed.

I don't know how the task being 'kinetic' changes the argument. You can phrase it as a n inertial object overtaking a slower one in frictionless space.

Issues that I see: The problem is 1 dimensional as phrased: The position of Achilles is given only in x. To overtake the tortoise, he'd have to collide with it, so he has to be off to the side,. If he's off to the side, there's at least two axes x and y. If they're in 2D+ space, then which of the two is in front is dependent on the chosen orientation of the axes. If you hold the orientation stable throughout the exercise, then the scenario still holds as described.

None of that seems to have any relevance to your reqirement of a rephrasing around 'kinetic'. Why does that word somehow invalidate the premise?

And so it is meaningless to claim that such a supertask can complete. — Michael

The lack of a defined number for the last task does not prevent completion (by the all-tasks definition), so I regard your statement as a non-sequitur.
It does prevent completion if completion is defined as the removal of the green ball in the bag of a dozen non-green balls (see green ball example above), so I agree with you there.

Maybe I've misunderstood what a supertask is. Are there not different kinds of cases? — Ludwig V

Several here have been defining completion effectively as measuring the value of the final task, and that instance I suppose differs from Zeno's that specifies no such requirement.

In the case of Achilles, we know that the task can be completed, but it is presented to us in a form in which it cannot be completed.[/quote]Only because he posits a second premise incompatible with the first. 1) Supertasks are possible (by demonstration). 2) Supertasks are impossible, a second premise that isn't in any way justified.

I mean that we know that Achilles will pass the tortoise

Well, keystone suggested that Zeno denies this, and M-U suggests that time somehow stops due to the offense we've given it. Anyway, I agree with you, but it requires that implied premise that empirical evidence is valid.

But then the same problem, presented in a different way, seems to suggest that it cannot.

This suggests fallacious reasoning in the second presentation. Most of the fallacies I've seen posted seem to be based on the premise of there being a limiting step. It's why I like Bernadete's Paradox of the Gods (see post ~30) which explicitly leverages the lack of there being a limiting step, and drives that to a seemingly paradoxical result. That's a harder one to wave off.

The staircase ... gives us a task (going down the infinite stairs) that cannot be completed

Just not physically. Mathematically it can, but then the story mentions 'the bottom' which implies something final that 'no more stairs' does not. So it lacks rigor.


The Littlewood-Ross Paradox illustrates an interesting way to treat infinities that highlights the dangers of treating infinities as numbers. From the SEP supertask page:
"We have a jar and a countably infinite pile of balls, numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, …. First we drop balls 1–10 into the jar, then remove ball 1. (This adds a total of nine balls to the jar.) Then we drop balls 11–20 in the jar, and remove ball 2. (This brings the total up to eighteen.) Suppose that we continue in this way ad infinitum, and that we do so with ever-increasing speed, so that we will have used up our entire infinite pile of balls in finite time. How many balls will be in the jar when this supertask is over?"

The answer is, as is argued by just about everybody: Zero. At any finite step n, there are n*9 balls in the jar. But after the supertask is complete, there is no final step Z with a state of Z*9 balls. In fact, every ball is numbered, and we know when it went in and when it went out. There is no exceptions to this, so the jar is empty at the end. Totally not intuitive, but not necessarily contradictory. Arguments against it have been attempted.

But I'm making the stronger claim that it is logically impossible. — Relativist

I'm trying to get a justification of that claim without the addition of the necessity of a final step, which would by definition be contradictory.

PSA

Has always meant 'prostate specific antigen' to me. I get my PSA checked at least once a year.

Taking a single step is an act. The acts are performed in a sequence (from step n to step n+1)..

OK, 'act' is a step (go half the remaining way to the goal). 'task' is a goal (pass the tortoise).
It makes sense now, thanks.

Doing successive steps does not get you past the tortoise unless the passing of the tortoise is done by one of the steps. That's the same as suggesting a final step, which suggests that infinity is a number. I cannot buy into that PSA statement. It is just a rewording of the 'do the last step' definition of completion, a definition which only works for tasks requiring a finite number of steps.

My point is that the stairs are countably infinite. — Relativist

Countably infinite means that any step can be assigned a number. It does not in any way mean that there is a meaningful count of steps.

[/quote][The physical process of descending stairs] fits this definition:
"a supertask is a countably infinite sequence of operations that occur sequentially within a finite interval of time."[/quote]Physical (fixed size) stairs are of infinite length, and such a distance cannot be traversed in finite time. If the stairs get smaller as we go, then we get into the physical problem of matter being discreet, not continuous. Hence the steps have a minimum size. That's what I mean about physical stairs not qualifying as a supertask.
We seem to have lost @keystone, and the stairs thing was his. I prefer Zeno's scenario which doesn't seem to be plausibly physical so long as we take a classical continuous view of both time and space.

The article discusses the issue

It does, I'm quite aware. Just not in Zeno's argument.

Max Black (1950) argued that it is nevertheless impossible to complete the Zeno task, since there is no final step in the infinite sequence...

I pretty much quoted exactly Black's remarks just above. Yes, the task is not complete by this finite definition despite every step having been taken, and that final step must be taken for your counter to have a defined value after a minute.

The mathematical series completes, but this is an abstract, mathematical completion. The kinetic activity of descending the stairs does not complete.

Again, the stairs is utterly abstract. There's no kinematics to it. Not so with the tortoise. I can pass the tortoise, thus completing (by the 'all steps' definition) the supertask.

The SEP article leaves it there, but the implication seems clear: the abstract mathematics does not fully account for the kinetic activity.

How does the abstract mathematics not account for the physical ability of me passing the tortoise?

PSA:
The performance of a sequence of successive acts does not complete a particular task unless it is completed by the performance of one of the acts in the sequence.

I cannot parse this. What is an 'act' that is distinct from a 'task'? The word 'sequence' seems to refer to the entire collection.
A 'task' (what, one of the steps??) is not completed by a performance unless 'it' (what, the performance?, the task?) is completed I cannot follow it at all.
I cannot take a bite of an apple unless perhaps the bite taking is completed by the performance of the taking of a bite? Presumably the same bite??

Kindly translate. Perhaps it points out some error I'm making, but only if I can parse it. I can come back to your statement and respond more intelligently.

That's what I see going on with the posters who focus only on the mathematical series.

I'm trying to focus on the completion of all tasks and not on the measurement of a nonexistent value.

I agree we can't treat infinity as a number, and haven't suggested you should.

But I think you have. Your attempted counter (or the color change thing in the recent post) treats it as a number, and suggests taking its modulus relative to base 10 or 3. What is the lowest digit of the number of the final step? If there is no such number, then the output of your scenario is undefined, which is very differnt from the digit counter displaying a value of 'undefined', or an undefined lamp state somehow violating the law of excluded middle by being in some state between on and off.

But for the supertask to be meaningful, you have to identify where infinity fits in the kinetic task description. I'm saying it entails a never-ending sequence of tasks. Identifying the limit doesn't make this disappear.

Infinity means unbounded, which means there is a physical location and time interval.for any task n That's what makes it meaningful, and it only works if physicality is presumed not discreet.
Also, there is no violation of physics like faster-than-light movement as suggested by the OP.

I'll add that supertask scenarios actually are NOT coherent- because they entail a contradiction.

I can pass a tortoise without contradiction. That shows that at least one of three (two explicit, one implicit) premises are false. But it doesn't necessarily have to be the premise you just mentioned there, that supertasks are impossible.

You seem to be avoiding the contradiction by ignoring the incompleteness of the infinitely many kinematic steps. The presence of the contradiction implies supertasks are logically impossible (not merely physically impossible).

I'm ignoring it because those contradictions arise from a 4th premise (that there is a final step), one which I don't accept.

What puzzles me is why they are not dismissed out of hand. — Ludwig V

Why is the passing of a tortoise necessarily not a supertask, as described by Zeno, and given a presumption of continuous physics?

A white box turns red when the Earth completes a half-orbit, turns blue when it completes another quarter-orbit, turns back to white when it completes another eighth-orbit, and so on.

What colour is the box when the Earth completes its orbit around the Sun? — Michael

Undefined by the description. That is to say, the color of the box afterwards is not a defined thing, which is different than it displaying the color of 'undefined'.

If someone would explain to me, in a way which makes sense, a better perspective, then I'd happily switch. — Metaphysician Undercover

Michael did very nicely with his first line in his reply.

Your reading comprehension skills are also off. I never suggested converting you to some opinion other than the one which you hold. I simply suggests that you seem incapable of understanding alternatives, to the point where you don't understand people who presume one of these alternatives.

Your most recent reply demonstrates this, as does the frustration evident in Michael's reply just above.
Yes, it can be explained in a way that makes sense, but apparently only to others.

if a physical process ends, there has to be a final step.
— Relativist
This is equivalent to asserting that 'infinity' is the largest integer.
— noAxioms
Wrong. The statement applies universally to the physical process of descending stairs. — Relativist

The physical process of descending stairs is not a supertask. I couldn't think of a way to make it a supertask, even by making each step smaller. A supertask has no final (or first, respectively) step, so by counterexample, the assertion "there has to be a final step." is incorrect.

A contradiction is introduced when this statement ("a completed step counting entails a final step)

I had not mentioned a completion of a count. The supertask is to complete all steps, not to count them, and not to complete a specific step that is nonexistent.
The series (say the time needed to complete all tasks) converges. The count does not.

Cheap example: You have a bag with a modest quantity of red, blue and yellow marbles in it. The goal is to remove them all. The task is deemed to be complete when the green marble is removed. Such a task cannot be completed by that definition of complete

The SEP article says:
"... From this perspective, Achilles actually does complete all of the supertask steps in the limit as the number of steps goes to infinity"

I notice the SEP article correctly doesn't claim that the last step is taken.

As I noted above, a physical, step-counting process that completes must entail a final step.

Agree. But the only attempted step counting processes are examples like the lamp or Michael's digit counter, and those examples are not physical. The Achilles example can be physical, but it isn't counting anything.

Your preferred perspective ignores this - or pretends there can't be a final step because that introduces a contradiction.

There being a final step leads directly to contradiction, and you say I'm copping out by pretending there isn't a final step?

I agree with this, but this simply ignores the implication of the physical process of step-counting.

Kind of like I ignore the green ball in the bag, yes.

For the scenario to be coherent, BOTH view of completeness have to be true.

I cannot accept this assertion. I cannot accept a view of completeness that treats infinity as a specific number.

No they mustn’t. — Michael

:up:

Once again, M-U cannot comprehend a view outside his own idealistic assumptions.

if a physical process ends, there has to be a final step. — Relativist

This is equivalent to asserting that 'infinity' is the largest integer. Does nobody else see that making such an assertion is going to lead to contradiction? It doesn't mean that there cannot be an unbounded thing.

I'm asserting that an infinite process is necessarily never completed - by definition. — Relativist

This depends on one's definition of completing a process. The SEP article on supertasks has this to say about it:
"But as Thomson (1954) and Earman and Norton (1996) have pointed out, there is a sense in which this objection equivocates on two different meanings of the word “complete.” On the one hand “complete” can refer to the execution of a final action. This sense of completion does not occur in Zeno’s Dichotomy, since for every step in the task there is another step that happens later. On the other hand, “complete” can refer to carrying out every step in the task, which certainly does occur in Zeno’s Dichotomy."
The definition you appear to be using is the former, which is why Michael's one-digit counter doesn't have a defined output after the minute expires.

I've been using Zeno's definition of complete: That every step has been taken. Given that definition, the supertask can be completed.

Good. Then we're on the same page! — keystone

And a different page than me.

(1) We accept Zeno's premise as valid, asserting that in a presentist world where only a single state exists, motion is impossible. — keystone

Zeno's argument is that X is possible, and another that X is not possible.
I see no mention of presentism in his arguments. I cannot follow your arguments here if you don't show how he presumes any such thing, or why it matters. Motion is defined under either view, and the argument can be made in either view of time. By modus ponens, at least one of Zeno's premises must be false unless empirical evidence is entirely dismissed as invalid.

I think you are under the impression that motion is not meaningful under eternalism, and that this somehow absolves Zeno's conclusion, but all his arguments still apply, and are still self contradictory.

The cuts themselves are the points (think Dedekind cuts).

OK, so now we have point cuts separating shorter strings, each with nonzero extension.

One can observe a superposition directly? Please share a link.

Any interpretation that denies wave function collapse has everything in superposition at all times. One simply finds ones self in superposition with the observed state. So I observe both the dead and the live cat, presuming that "I" dong the observing is the same person as the person a moment ago with the closed box.

No, I'm not don't personally accept MWI, but the simplicity of it is elegance itself.

in a block universe where the block itself remains unchanged (i.e., no global motion), yet the entities within it experience change (i.e., local motion).

Moton is change of postion over time. The block universe very much has that for any moving object. The worldline of that object is a different spatial locations at different times. All of Zeno's arguments still apply, and are still contradictory.

Yet again, the only difference between the view is the positing of the preferred moment, which is irrelevant to the subject at hand. Both are effectively block view, but presentism assigns different (at least four kinds of) ontological states to different events based on its relation to the preferred moment, and eternalism assigns identical ontological states to all events.

The kind of motion you are referencing (the changing of the block (over what??)) is not suggested by either view, nor by Zeno.

If the universe is discrete, then Zeno's paradoxes cannot occur as he described them

The first premise would be demonstrably false. The second premise (that supertasks are impossible) would be moot, but arguably true then.

What I'm suggesting is that in a continuous universe, the scenarios depicted in Zeno's paradoxes can indeed unfold precisely as he described them, without necessitating the completion of supertasks.

You seem to do this by reducing the universe to a point (your 'photo'), which is not something that is continuous. A point in time at least, which is the same as denial of time at all.

ZENO'S PARADOX
Instead of presentism vs. eternalism, let's talk about the photo vs. movie reel. For the photo and every frame of the movie reel the characters believe they're in the present. — keystone

There are no empirical differences, agree. Presentism is the movie reel being played (a sort of literal analogy of the moving spotlight version of presentism). The reel by itself is eternalism (even if it still represents a preferred frame, which eternalists typically deny). The photo is just a frame, and not even that, since it is just a mental state since nothing in the present can be detected. If the state is all there is, then all memories are false and do not constitute evidence of anything.
The film analogy is discreet by nature, but doesn't have to be if the 'frames' are stacked instead of arranged side by side.

I suppose that if Zeno actually accepts his (unreasonable) conclusions, then you get something like just that one state.

Reconciling general relativity with presentism is quite challenging.

There is a way to disprove GR, but it is similar to proving/disproving an afterlife: You cannot report the findings in a journal. Both premises of SR contradict presentism, so different premises must be used to take that stance. This has been done, but the theory was generalized about a century after GR came out. It necessarily denies things like black holes and the big bang.

Plus, adopting eternalism helps to render Zeno's Paradoxes largely non-paradoxical.

I beg to differ, but again, the addition of a premise of a preferred moment has nothing to do with the validity of Zeno's assertions. He makes no mention of the present in any of them. If you disagree, then you need to say how the additional premise interferes with Zeno's logic.

Consider reversing this perspective: adopt a parts-from-whole approach. Start with a single continuous line and then, as if it were a string, cut it to create discrete points (which correspond to the gaps). I encourage you to explore this mindset; I'm eager to discuss it more with you.

Not sure of the difference. If I cut a string, I don't get points, I get shorter strings.

While my explanation might differ from how Zeno would phrase it, I believe it aligns with his philosophical approach. He is quoted to have said “My writing is an answer to the partisans of the many and it returns their attack with interest, with a view to showing that the hypothesis of the many, if examined sufficiently in detail, leads to even more ridiculous results than the hypothesis of the One.”

You cannot directly observe a particle in a superposition state

You can under some interpretations.

I bring in QM, not to sound fancy, but there is an analogy here between observed states (which are like points)

I don't think QM states are like points. The analogy is going way off track it seems.

I believe you are discussing whether time is discrete or continuous.

It's one of the things I'm discussing. Zeno's arguments are of the form (quoted from the Supertask Wiki page):
"1 Motion is a supertask, because the completion of motion over any set distance involves an infinite number of steps
2 Supertasks are impossible
3 Therefore, motion is impossible"

If motion is discreet, then premise 1 is demonstrably wrong. If it isn't, then premise 2 is demonstrably wrong, unless one just begs the conclusion and adopts the 'photo' interpretation.

In the context of Zeno's Paradoxes, it's necessary to consider space and time as continuous (as you later noted).

Necessary only if the first premise is to be accepted.

I'm not sure what you're referring to with time being continuous or discrete from a presentist perspective, especially since Zeno's arguments suggest that time does not progress in a presentist's view of the world.

Yet again, one's interpretation of time isn't relevant to the above analysis.

I explicitly wrote abstract string.

Fine, Then it's a mathematical line segment.

let’s say that adopting an eternalist perspective allows someone to reframe the impossibility of supertasks, turning it's non-existence from having unacceptable consequences to acceptable consequences.

You're going to have to spell out exactly how an eternalist stance makes a difference here. All I see is an assertion that it makes a difference, but I don't see how.

Additionally, none of the paradoxes explicitly rule out (experience of each task) as a possible solution.

It takes some minimum time to explicitly comprehend/experience a step in a series of steps. Hence the explicit experience of each step of a supertask cannot be completed in finite time.

If there is a continuous film reel capturing the ticking counter, the limits of observation dictate that there are just some frames that we cannot see.

Hence needing to see them being irrelevant.

Zeno contends that change is impossible, leading to stark implications depending on one's philosophical stance on time. Under presentism, this translates to an unchanging, static present—life as nothing more than a photograph. — keystone

That sounds like a Boltzmann Brain, a mere state from which all is fiction and nothing can be known. Under this sort of presentism, there is nothing but a mental state and no experience at all, so no Achilles, Tortoise, stairs, or whatever. Just a mental state with memories of unverifiable lies.
This is not the usual presentism where that state was caused by prior ones, and will cause subsequent states. I don't think what you describe can be validly categorized under the term 'presentism'.

In contrast, the eternalist perspective views this as a static block universe, a continuous timeline that encompasses past, present, and future

There is no 'past, present. future' defined under eternalism. All events share equal ontology. The view differs fundamentally from presentism only in that the latter posits a preferred location in time, relative to which those words have meaning.

So there is still motion and change over time under eternalism, and the 'paradox', as worded, works under either since no reference to the present is made. Hence my suggestion that the topic has nothing to do with whether or not one posits a preferred moment in time.

Which view do you think is more reasonable?

Irrelevant, but I prefer the one that doesn't posit the additional thing for which there is zero empirical evidence. This is my rational side making that statement.

Consider whether it is easier to draw a one-dimensional line by assembling zero-dimensional points consecutively or to cut a string (akin to dividing a line into segments).

That sounds like Zeno's arrow thing, a attempted demonstration that a nonzero thing cannot be the sum of zeroes, a sort of analysis of discreet vs continuous. Under the discreet interpretation, there are a finite number of points making up a finite length line segment. Under the continuous interpretation, no finite number of points can make up a line segment, but a line segment can still be defined as (informally) all points from here to there.
About the only practical difference is that for two non-identical points, they can be said to be adjacent only in the discreet view.

Zeno would argue that the first option is impossible: a timeline cannot be constructed from mere points in time.

But he cannot indicate a time that isn't represented by such a point, so I don't think he's shown this.

Instead, modern Zeno would suggest that the entire timeline already exists as a block universe

Irrelevant, per above. The block universe can still be interpreted as discreet or not, just like the presentist view. The difference between the two has nothing to do with any of the scenarios Zeno is describing.

However, there's a twist: abstract strings, like time, are infinitely divisible. No matter how many cuts we make (one after another), we never actually reduce the string to mere points.

You do if it is discreet. A physical string is very much discreet, but that is neither space nor time. Zeno seems to favor the continuous model since all his paradoxes seem to presume it. E.g: "That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal", a statement that simply isn't true under a discreet view.

the eternalist perspective reframes the impossibility of supertasks from an unacceptable notion—that motion itself is impossible

Nonsense. It says no such thing. It is only a difference in the ontology of events.

that observing every instant in history is impossible.

This also seems irrelevant since none of his paradoxes seem to reference observation or comprehension. Surely it would take forever to comprehend the counting from 1 on up. Michael's digital counter runs into this: the positing of something attempting to measure the number of steps at a place where the thing being measured is singular.

If there is a parallel staircase where the steps start at 1 and increase as you go up, then there must be a point where the step numbers on both staircases align. — keystone

Non sequitur. It presumes the length of the staircase is a number, which is contradictory.


Everybody here seems to be attempting to introduce a premise that there is a number that represents the number of steps, despite the immediate contradiction with the premise to which it leads.

Presumable it would be at (the number of steps in the first staircase divided by 2) — Ludwig V

Case in point.

But the last step down is not defined, which means it can't be reached. — Ludwig V

Doesn't follow, since clearly I can overtake the tortoise in a universe that is continuous.
I can also do the reverse (the dichotomy version), which is the equivalent of counting down from infinite steps.

So instead of the assertions, show formally how this contradictory conclusion follows from the premise. Nobody has done that.

It does follow that the journey cannot start. — Michael

This seems to be an assertion, not a logical consequence of the premise. In fact it leads to a contradiction of the premise, hence demonstrating that the journey being able to start very much does follow from the premise, unless you can also drive that to contradiction, in which case the premise has been shown to be false.

Therefore given that the journey can start then the premise that there is no first division is false.

I swear you changed this. You had something that logically followed from your assertion. The conclusion that movement is discreet contradicts Zeno's premise that "That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal". So by contradiction, the journey not being able to start doesn't follow from the premise.

If movement is discreet, there is a finite number of steps. The first (smallest possible) step cannot be divided, and the inability to do so violates Zeno's premise.
As for Bernadete's Gods, there would be a first God and there would actually be a barrier preventing motion. No paradox at least. That is decent evidence that Zeno's premise is false. But suppose space and time is continuous. Then the journey can start without contradiction, unless you can find one. You say above that it implies a first division, but nobody has suggested that such a journey must begin with a first segment. It only needs to take finite time (1 unit in this case). The simple example is me going from here to there, which you apparently assert is impossible if space/time is continuous. A bold assertion.

Given that each division is some 1/n then such a movement is akin to counting all the real numbers from 0 to 1 in ascending ordering. Such a count cannot start because there is no first number to count after 0. — Michael

No, the reals are not countable. The example we've been using is. There is no final count of steps in Zeno's dichotomy, so there is no demonstrated requirement of a 'first step' or any kind of final count of steps. Insistence otherwise seems to be leading to contradictions.

As for the OP, its triad of premises are inconsistent. For only two of the three following premises can be true of a sequence

i) The length of the sequence is infinite.
ii) The sequence is countable
iii) The sequence is exhaustible — sime

Applying this to Zeno's cases, or to the OP: All three seem to be true. I disagree that only two can be.

OK, the OP has infinite length to deal with, but finite time to do it, which is just a different way of expressing the same mathematics, totally discarding physics.
Zeno doesn't violate physics. If space/time is continuous, then the number of steps is countably infinite, and it is exhausted in finite time, as illustrated by my ability to move and/or to overtake something slower. Zeno makes no mention of 'point at infinity'. The OP kind of does ('bottom of it'), but also doesn't since there's no 'bottom step' apparent from the post-1-minute state. The poetry obfuscates what's actually going on, so I mostly am in denial of Zeno's conclusions.

If I overtake the tortoise, I have also reached the 'bottom of the supertask', so I don't find the wording necessarily contradictory.


What am I missing? A formal proof that it leads to contradiction would be nice, but all I seem to get is assertions.

Bernadete's Paradox of the Gods: — Michael

Ah, thank you for that. I sort of remembered the story but not the name/author.
It seems far more paradoxical than Zeno's thing since motion is prevented despite the lack of any actual barrier.

It's the same principle as Zeno's dichotomy, albeit Zeno uses distance markers rather than barriers. Given that each division must be passed before any subsequent division, and given that there is no first division, the sequence of events cannot start.

But I've been arguing that the above reasoning is fallacious. Yes, each division must be passed, and each division is preceded by other divisions (infinitely many), and yes, from that it can be shown that there is no first division. All that is true even in a physical journey (at least if distance is continuous).
But it doesn't follow that the journey thus cannot start, since clearly it can. By such a method, one can count from negative infinity to zero. You just need to not take some minimum time to do a given count.

The solution, similar to my proposed solution above, is that movement is not infinitely divisible

Mathematically it is, and mathematics seems to have no problem with it. Yes, I believe certain axioms must be accepted, but I'm no expert there.
As for physics, the assertion that motion is infinitely divisible seems to be a counterfactual assertion, not necessarily false, but unjustifiable. Such is the nature of quantum mechanics. But a journey can begin in either case, whether or not motion is continuous. Zeno does not illustrate otherwise in my assessment.
Zeno did his thing well before QM made us all question our classical notions of motion, so we can for the sake of argument make classical assumptions for this topic. If there's a limit to divisibility, then the problem goes away since there are finite steps.

If movement is continuous then an object in motion passes through every marker in sequential order, but there is no first marker, so this is a contradiction. — Michael

I don't find that to be a contradiction.

The false premise for Zeno is that each distance, and each time period will always be divisible. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK, if you deny the continuous nature of both space and time, then the number of iterations is finite, and the argument falls apart. My arguments presume a more mathematical interpretation: the continuous nature of both. If space is discreet, Achilles passes the tortoise after finite iterations. There would be a last one, after which the tortoise is passed. The conclusion of the inability to overtake doesn't follow because the premise upon which it is based becomes false.

Your assumption of discrete space is interesting, given that space (and everything else) is abstract to you, and thus any abstract space can be halved.

In his era, the dominant philosophical view was presentism, which posits that only the present moment is real, and it unfolds sequentially, moment by moment. — keystone

Presentism is still presentism even if time is continuous. You seem to describe a discreet view there, which runs into problems.
I don't see how Zeno's paradoxes work any differently under presentism than under eternalism. Eternalism doesn't resolve the problems with any of them.
I was unaware of Zeno's 'eternalist' leaning. Yes, the term didn't exist back then (not until perhaps the 11th century)

n this comprehensive perspective, motion is impossible. — keystone

Block view also defines motion as change in position over time, and thus motion is very much meaningful under the view.

rip from 0 to 1-I don't get it. — keystone

All these are trips from beginning to end. Zeno's initial state (0) to the point where the tortoise is passed (1). In your OP, 0 is time zero, and 1 is time 1-minute.

Yes, that is the point. Your expressed conceptualization "60 seconds will pass in the universe" is not consistent with the conceptualization prescribed by the OP. But this conceptualization — Metaphysician Undercover

This seems to contradict yourlelf. You say time is discreet, in which case the number of digit changes is finite, and there is an answer. You also seem to deny that the sum of the converging series is not 1, or that time somehow is obligated to stop, which is the same thing.

Michael: The output of the counter is undefined. I can think of no better answer than that.

Surely even if halfing the time with every step, a minute will still eventually be exceeded somewhere along the infinite steps and before this so called "finite bottom" to an infinite staircase?!? Doesn't make sense mathematically either. — Benj96

The mathematics is clear. The sum of the infinite series 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... is 1, not more, not less. Nobody has claimed 'under a minute'.

The most interesting thing I found about this is the unidirectional counting. You can count from 1 toward infinity but you can't begin counting from infinity toward 1. — Benj96

Well, the counterexamples have shown otherwise. I can subdivide the trip from 0 to 1 the other way around, with the smallest steps coming first, thus showing that it can be physically traversed in either direction.

What's not defined in either case is a last or first step respectively, just like there is no highest integer.

From the description there is always further distance for Achilles to move before he overtakes the tortoise. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is not true. Perhaps you are reading a different account of the story than I did, which is the one on wiki, which says simply:
"In a race, the quickest runner can never over­take the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead". The 2nd bolded part is the non-sequitur, and the first bolded part follows from the 2nd. None of it makes the assertion you claim. The non-sequitur makes the argument invalid. There are ways (such as with the light switch) that make it seem more paradoxical.

In the OP [...] the premises imply that a minute cannot pass for Icarus, who always has to take more steps before a minute can pass.

Same non-sequitur. It is not true that Icarus always has more steps to take, only that he does while still on a step, but the time to complete all the remaining steps always fits in the time remaining in his minute.

So, in the OP, the false premise is the description of acceleration.

Sort of. I agree It has no basis in physical reality like Zeno's examples do. The OP poetry is only mathematical in nature and isn't meaningfully translated into physics. No amount of physical acceleration can traverse an infinite physical distance in finite coordinate time.

there cannot be an end to pi.

Then it concludes, that after a minute has passed, the end has been reached.[/quote]No. It concludes that all of the steps have been traversed. It does not assert that there is a last one. In this suggestion, the OP at least does not commit the fallacy that Zeno does.

Zeno on the other hand, concludes that Achilles cannot overtake the tortoise, which is the valid conclusion. And the absurd conclusion reveals the falsity of the premises.

OK, which premise then is false in the Zeno case? The statement is really short. One premise that I see: "the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started", which seems pretty true to me.

I don't think that this is representative of the OP at all.

No, it is more the reverse of Michael's digit counter, just like Zeno's dichotomy scenario is the Achilles/tortoise thing in reverse.

What digit does the counter show after 60 seconds? — Michael

You have changed the divisibility of time in the OP to a divisibility of space in your interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, my example is more on par with Zeno dividing space than the OP dividing time. It has the same problem as Michael's counter: Measuring something where the thing being measured is singular, which makes the whole thing invalid.

it's actually a variation of Thomson's lamp. — Michael

I'm interested in your take on the nonexistent 'barrier' thing described at the lower half of my prior post in this topic. It also is a variation on something somebody else authored, but I cannot remember what it was originally called.
Side note: Would be awful nice if the site put numbers on the posts.

Is there another source for this paradox? Or did you just invent this yourself? — flannel jesus

It was unclear if this was addressed to the OP, or to me since this question was asked immediately after I posted the thing about the barriers. Anyway, not mine, but I can't find a link.

However, I recommend that Icarus stops looking for the last step down and starts looking for the first step up. He should find that as easily as he found the first step down. — Ludwig V

It is indeed unexplained why the guy, after taking the first step, is somehow compelled to continue his journey after 30 seconds and not just turn around. Mathematically it has some meaning, but it never has physical meaning, as several have pointed out.

How is it possible for him to ascend the stairs if there isn't a first step? — keystone

This is nicely illustrated by Zeno's 'dichotomy paradox'. Per wiki:
"Suppose Atalanta wishes to walk to the end of a path. Before she can get there, she must get halfway there. Before she can get halfway there, she must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, she must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on."

Each 'step' of the path from here to there must be preceded by a prior step. The fallacious conclusion is that no journey can be taken anywhere since there can be no first step when they're set up as you have done. Likewise, Zeno fallaciously concludes that Achilles cannot overtake the Tortoise due to the journey being divided into infinite steps. Both are a non-sequitur fallacy since it simply does not follow that the goal cannot be reached just because there exists a way to slice it into an unbounded quantity of segments.

The specifications do not allow for a minute to pass, — Metaphysician Undercover

By what is stipulated, yes, Achilles cannot surpass the tortoise. — Metaphysician Undercover

What do you mean stipulated? That Achilles cannot overtake is a non-sequitur. It simply doesn't follow from there being a way to divide the journey into infinite segments. This isn't a stipulation, it is merely a fallacious conclusion. Time not being allowed to pass was never a specification in the OP. Of course the lack of the stairs back up was actually a specification, and I find that contradictory.


The dichotomy thing was better illustrated by something that actually seems to be a paradox.
You are at location x < 0. The goal is to traverse the space between x=0 and x=1.
Thing is, a magic barrier appears at x=1/2 if you are at x <= 1/2, but x > 1/4.
A second barrier appears at x=1/4 if you are at x <= 1/4, but x > 1/8.
And so on. Each barrier appears only if you're past the prior one.
Furthermore, for fun, the last barrier is red. The prior one blue, then green, then red again. Three colors in rotation, all the way up the line.

Per the dichotomy thing (and Keystone's stairs), there can be no first barrier. So you walk up to x=0 and are stopped, despite there not being anything there to stop you. I mean, if there's a barrier, you'd see it and know its color, which is like suggesting a remainder if you divide infinity by three.

So paradoxically, you are prevented from advancing despite a total lack of a first barrier. You can see the goal. But you can't move.

That's a far better wording, and less fallacious than the way Zeno is reported to have worded it.

Each step takes a discernible amount of time which is a different time from the prior step. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly. Step n takes 60/2**n seconds. That's very much a nonzero duration for any n.

You say he reaches the bottom

After a minute, yes. Do you contend otherwise, that the sum of 60/2**n is not 60?

yet there is not "last step".

Just like there is no last natural number, yes. There is no last step to 'be' at.

How do you think it is possible that he got finished with all the steps, in the described order, yet there was no last step?

It's pretty clear from the mathematics. Where do you expect him to be then at 61 seconds if not 'past them all'?

according to the prescribed formula for figuring the increments, there can be no finish time — Metaphysician Undercover

OK, so mathematics is not your forte. The sum of this infinite series is not 60 according to you.

The infinite staircase appears to only allow one to traverse it in one direction. — keystone

Your poetry asserts this, but the reverse can be done There is simply no first step in the process, just like there wasn't a last step on the way down. The sum of the same series in reverse order is also 60 seconds.

I get shades of Zeno's paradox going on here, except Zeno get's there.

Despite the staircase being endless, he reached the bottom of it in just a minute. — keystone

He reaches the bottom of something with no bottom. It taking a minute is fine, but there being a bottom is contradictory. Hence I think resolution. Just as there is no first step to take back up, there is no last step to reach, even if it is all reached in a minute.

By sentient I mean conscious. Philosophical zombies behave as if they are conscious but are not actually. — Truth Seeker

Then you seem to define 'conscious' as having one of those 'self' thingys as defined by the quoted book.
I don't consider myself to be conscious then, in the same way that a roomba isn't. Sure, it reacts to its enviroment, but it's only an automaton and lacks the external control that would give it the free will that actual consciousness would.

an internal individual who resides inside our bodies, making decisions, authoring actions and possessing free will — Quoting the description of the book

That seems to be a straight assertion of dualism, but a non-dualist can also have a sense of self, so I must disagree with the book's definition.

I am sentient but I can't prove to you — Truth Seeker

You can react to external stimuli, which is perception, and sentience is perception or feelings. Perhaps you cannot prove qualia (what you might designate as feelings), but it's hard to deny that you have perception. Perhaps a different definition of sentience is being referenced. It wasn't given.


I suppose I consider the self to be an illusion (I did not vote since I'm using a different definition of self) since there is no way to demonstrate the persistent identity of anything, be it sentient or not. It is a very pragmatic illusion, without which any complex biological being would not be fit, so the illusion goes incredibly far back in our evolutionary history. I make choices (like draw breath) for the benefit of some future material state, which I consider to be my self. The choice yields no benefit to that which actually makes the choice. It's a sort of pay-it-forward system, and it works.

Firstly, I am NOT referring to linguistic definitions: I am referring to conceptual definitions. — Bob Ross

OK, I accept that,and retract the bit about the dictionary.

Firstly, not all definitions are about causality.

In general,no,but I gave an alternate definition that is very much about causality. It solves the circularity problem. It is analyzable,and it works for how most people use the word, even if the typical person would reach for the circular definition you reference.

Secondly, I don't see how this would provide non-circular definitions for concepts like 'being'.

I didn't define 'exists' in terms of 'being'. I used something far less circular. 'Being' is just a synonym, and can be defined similarly if you choose.

I'm not saying it's the correct definition. It's just one that I find far more useful, and avoids a lot of the problems that arise with the more circular definition.

First of all, all definitions are essentially circular, as evidence by somebody not being able to immediately glean a language simply by by being handed a dictionary. But with some ideas, the circularity of the definition becomes very short, such as in your example.

Do you have others? The one you selected is so very loaded with opinions and varying but valid interpretations, as illustrated below.

This pecularity indicates, by my lights, that ‘being’ is a primitive concept and, as such, is absolutely simple, unanalyzable, and (yet) still perfectly valid. — Bob Ross

That peculiarity renders the chosen definition rather empty in my opinion. I shy from such definitions and prefer something more pragmatic such as a relational definition. A exists to B if A in any way has a causal effect on B. Hence the nonexistence of unicorns because no unicorn seems to have a causal effect on humans, despite the legends to the contrary.

I've seen several articles about interesting ways to do logic and computation. Scientific American had one that designed a Turing machine consisting of only tracks and one train. Being a Turing machine, it could compute anything. Same with the domino computer. I'm pretty sure one can be built from dominoes, but unlike the tracks, no path can be taken twice, so time needs to be a spatial dimension.

As for the question in the stackexchange post:

Why did the last domino fall?
Answer 1: Because the penultimate domino made it fall.
Answer 2: Because the number 7 is prime

Both correct answers of course, which simply illustrates that there is never just one correct answer to 'what caused X to happen?"
But 2 is debatable. It requires the assignment of meaning to the input, and that meaning can in theory only come from whatever set up the dominoes for this particular purpose. In the absence of the meaning that the purpose gives, the last domino falls only because of it being a causal outcome of some prior state.

Why was my house destroyed?
1) because a hurricane swept through
2) because the strain capacity of pine is below a certain threshold
3) because a butterfly in the Amazon wiggled its wings 6 months ago

How can a physical system, in which each piece is truly only following local physical rules, be said to produce a certain output "because the number 7 is prime"? — flannel jesus

Well, because the physical system produces that output for certain input values, which in this case happens to correspond to only inputs that, when represented by some standard, happen to encode prime numbers.

Then there is a bigger question: Given the domino computer that lets the last domino fall only if the input is prime, suppose no input is ever made to it. The thing sits in its unfallen state awaiting the initial push. It is already determined that the last domino will fall if the encoding of 7 is entered. It being deterministic, the actual falling of the dominoes need not happen for the result to be determined, which means instantiation of the computation is not necessary for 7 to be prime.

Dominos can make logic gates, which means the domino system is turing complete. — flannel jesus

I agree that it can be Turing complete, but it's hard to implement a normal gate since the domino one can only be used once, and gates need to be used multiple times. So it gets complicated, but I think it can be done anyway. The train track thing was easier since the same track and switch could be traversed multiple times.

We already have algorithms to calculate if a particular position is check mate, so it's possible, in principle, to set up a series of dominos such that the last domino will only fall over if, say, Queen to D4 is checkmate.

Yes, that's just like the prime detector. There's no need even to describe the move. It matters not from whence the queen came, only that the board position includes it being at D4 as part of the state to be evaluated. Apparently you envision the prior state as the fixed setup, and the move in question as the input to be tested.

You've seen it fall, so you say "that domino fell because queen to D4 is checkmate".

Yes, just like 'because 7 is prime'. You don't need to see it fall. You need only to realize that it would fall if Q-D4 is entered to know that the move would be checkmate. And if you take epistemology away, Q-D4 is still checkmate even though no move is ever entered and nobody knows about the dominoes. It is still checkmate because the last domino would fall if that input were entered.

And yet... how computers work already is not too far removed from that, don't you think?

Turing machines are deliciously inefficient. Computers are simply far more optimized than these deliberately inefficient devices that accomplish the same thing.

You never asked if the domino setup can be conscious. Answer: Depends who you ask.

I didn't vote on the poll since 'none of the above' wasn't a choice.

Is determinism true? How can we know for sure? — Truth Seeker

Contrary to the popular belief, determinism has nothing to do with this. It has to do with the physics of our universe being causally closed. If it is (deterministic or random), then there can be no objective morality, or as 180 puts it:

There cannot be a vantage point for us outside of this causal nexus to differentiate right or wrong about assigning "actual moral culpability — 180 Proof

:100:

I don't take it for granted that determinism means you shouldn't hold someone culpable. — flannel jesus

That's the common mistake. Determinism (or any closed physics) means that one cannot be held objectively culpable, which is very different from being held culpable.

So while there are valid interpretations of physics that are deterministic and ones that are not, the difference is moot. The question is if physics is causally closed. Those that posit objective morality require the cause of one's choices to come from elsewhere than physics, hence the need for physics to not be causally closed.


I find all this a side track to what moral culpability is. Morals are a product of a society with expectations on its members. If something is not a member of such a society, then moral culpability is meaningless. If you disagree (which I'm sure many do), then provide a counterexample.

If morals are objective, then the rules of all societies anywhere must be based on these objective rules. So say you're playing dungeons and dragons. The dungeon is not closed. The choices made are made by people outside. There is a moral code that you don't betray your team members. That can only be meaningful if the player has some control over his character in the game. Else the character's actions are determined by the closed physics of the game and those outside the game cannot hold him moral culpable.

couldn't one adopt the kind of approach that the weather forecasters (and, I believe, physicists trying to work out fluid dynamics, which is probably the same problem) have adopted? — Ludwig V

The weather is closer. Fluid dynamics of a system in stable state (say water moving through a pipe, dam spillway) needs a description of that state, a calculus task. If it is dynamic (simulation of water waves), then it's more complicated, closer to the weather.

No simulation of the weather will produce an accurate forcast a month away, no matter how accurate the initial state is measured. Trends can be predicted, but actual weather at location X at time T is not going to happen. Similarly, no simulation of people is going to predict them doing what history says actually happened, no matter how accurate the initial state.

One does not improve weather forecasting by simulating the formation of individual rain drops, but nothing else at that level of detail, yet Bostrom is suggesting that such an inefficient choice would be made on a regular basis, for seemingly no purpose except that his argument depends on it. He clearly isn't a programmer.

Comment - this possibility high-lights for me a question about Bostrom's first two hypotheses.

The entire paper is one hypothesis. There are not more that I am aware of.
Your following description doesn't help in me trying to figure out what you're considering to be 'the first two of presumably more than two hypotheses'.

That would require us to define what is meant by "post-human" and "extinction".

I posted his definition of 'posthuman', which is, in short, a level of technology capable of running the numbers he underestimates, and far worse, capable of simulating a posthuman set of machines doing similar simulations.
As for extinct, there would only be two possible definitions: 1) No being in the universe is biologically descended from what is the Human species today. This of course is totally undefined, since if we're simulated, the actual humans of 2024 may not appear human at all to us. Much depends on what era the simulation uses for its initial state.
2) The other definition is that no entity in the universe has the human race of today as a significant part of the causal history of its existence. In short, if there are human-created machines that have replaced us, then humans are technically still not extinct. This is very consistent with his choice of the term 'posthuman'. One can imagine the machine race actually getting curious about their origins, and knowing about humans and presumably having some DNA still around, they might run simulations in attempt to see how machines might emerge from that. Of course, the simulations would produce a different outcome every time, sometimes with humans going extinct quickly, or losing all technology and reverting essentially to a smart animal, much like how things were before people started digging metals out of the ground.

Then we would have to deal with the difference between two different possibilities. We may go extinct and be replaced (or ousted) by some other form of life or we may evolve into something else (and replace or oust our evolutionary predecessors).

There you go. You seem to see both routes. The third path is extinction, or simple permanent loss of technology.

Given that inheritance is not exact copy and the feed-back loop of survival to reproduction works on us just as surely as on everything else, can we exactly define the difference between these two possibilities?

What two possibilitie? Humans that evolve into something we'd not consider human by today's standard? Many species do that all the time. Other possibility is 'ousted' as you put it. Our biological line is severed, as happens to nearly all biological lines given time.

They say that birds evolved from dinosaurs, and that mammals took over as dominant species from dinosaurs.

Good example. There are no dinosaurs (which, unlike humans, is a collection of species). The vast majority of those species were simply ousted. They have no descendants. But some do, and the alligators and birds are their descendants. They are not dinosaurs because none of them is sexually compatible with any species that was around when the asteroid hit. They are postdinosaur.

Which possibility was realized for dinosaurs?

It depends on the species, or the individual. Mom has 2 kids. One of those has children of his own, and the other is ousted, a terminal point in the family tree.

Another problem. Given that a feed-back loop is at work on these phenomena, can prediction ever be reliable?

Prediction of what? A simulation of history makes no predictions. A simulation of the future is needed for that, hence the weather predictors.
To guess at the question, no simulation of any past Earth state will produce 'what actually happens', especially if that simulation is of evolutionary history. There is for instance no way to predict what children anybody will have, or when, so none of the famous people we know will appear in any simulation. Again, Bostrom seems entirely ignorant of such things, and of chaos theory in general.

The third hypothesis suffers, for me

You really need to tell me what these hypotheses are, because I know of only the one. Two if you count the VR suggestion, but that doesn't come from Bostrom. i know of several that support a VR view, but none that has attempted a formal hypothesis around it.

Anyway, Bostrom posits nothing that is equivalent to a brain in a vat. That is more appropriate to a VR discussion.

The second premise - any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof) - seems obviously true to me. — wonderer1

It the second possibility. He says one of the three must be true. It's not a list of three premises.
I agree that granted this super-improbable posthuman state, that indeed, nobody is going to run a simulation of the history that actually took place. It just cannot be done, even with the impossible technology required.

The simulator would need to consist of more particles than the system which is being simulated.

If it is simulating at the particle level, yes. I can run an easy simulation of the planetary motions without simulating each bit. Each planet/moon/asteroid can effectively be treated as a point object, at least until they collide.

That's a rather fundamental problem. In practice, only things that are simpler than the simulator (or things treated simplistically) can be simulated.

Yes, and Bostrom claims several levels of depth, meaning the simulation is simulating the machines doing simulations.

It seems to me that the person who would seek to disprove the second premise would need to prove that consciousness can arise in a simulation of something much more simplistic than the world we find ourselves in,

Yes. If the goal was to simulate consciousness, they'd probably do one person, or a small isolated community (a closed system). And it wouldn't be a simulation of anybody real, but rather just a learning tool to show that a simulated person behaves like we do. If it worked, it would be a big blow to the dualists, but I'm sure they'd find a way to explain the results away.
The dualists can similarly deal a pretty fatal blow to the physicalists, but they choose not to pursue such avenues of investigation, which to me sounds like they don't buy their own schtick.

So I wanted to address the Simulation Hypothesis from Bostrom directly.
I quote only the abstract and a few parts of the intro.

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:
(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);
(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor‐simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed. — BostromSimHypothesis

Posthuman is defined here:

The simulation argument works equally well for those who think that it will take hundreds of thousands of years to reach a “posthuman” stage of civilization, where humankind has acquired most of the technological capabilities that one can currently show to be consistent with physical laws and with material and energy constraints. — BostromSimHypothesis

The trichotomy is reasonable, but worded in a misleading way. Point 1 makes it sound like this preposterous posthuman state is somehow inevitable if the human race doesn't meet an untimely demise along the way. This is nonsense since the posthuman state described is totally unreasonable, and human technology seems heavily dependent on non-renewable resources upon which this gilded age depends.
The computer envisioned is a molecular machine that isn't electronic, but works with levers and gears and such, very small. But it needs a huge structure to supply energy and dissipate heat. The latter isn't problem, but a mechanical computer made of individually placed atoms would be phenomenally unreliable, and would be very size constrained. How does one fetch data from distant locations, using levers and shafts and such? The data set required by the description would require far more molecules than the described device would have.

The third point seems to suggest that all this fictional processing power would be regularly pressed into service doing what he calls 'evolutionary history', a simulation of our ancestors. This is not just unlikely, but actually impossible.
Say the people from 100 centuries in the future wants to simulate the world of today. To do that, they'd need to know the exact state of the world today, down to almost the molecular level, and I know for a fact that nobody has taken such a scan. Furthermore, any simulation of that state would last a few minutes/hours at best and then diverge significantly from what actually happened. So a simulation of one's own history cannot be done. At best, to simulate 'evolutionary history', one might set the world to the state of 20 million years ago with many of the species known to exist at that time, and see what evolves. It won't be themselves, but if those running the simulation are not human, then we're the unexpected things that evolves instead of them. That's plausible, but it isn't a simulation of their own history.

More problems when they claim to simulate the high performance machines that run the simulations later in time. He is after all claiming that there are simulations being run by the simulations. He seem to have no idea how inefficient this would be, that it takes millions of instructions to simulate a single interaction, coupled with all the side effects. I've written code to simulate the running of code (for profiling purposes). It didn't simulate transistors or anything, it just needed to assume that the processor works correctly and simulate at the intstruction level. It still took thousands of instructions to simulate one instruction.

That's just me tearing apart the abstract. The article goes on to suggest impossilbe future computer speeds, and tasks that are more than even that fictional processor could handle. There's a section specifically about substrate independence, with which I agree. It essentially says that doing it with paper and pencil, electronics, mechanical, etc all work the same. The outcome of the simualtion in no way depends on what substrate is used.


He does an estimation of 10³³-10³⁶ instructions needed to do one of his simulations of human history. Apparently only the people are simulated, and the rest (animals, plants, geology, and much worse, all the computers) are only imitated, not simulated. He justifies this small number with 100 billion humans, 50 years per human, 30M seconds per year, 10¹⁴-10¹⁷ brain ops per second, which comes to 15 times the figure stated above.

OK, it takes a lot of instructions to simulate all that goes on during a single brain op, and all that goes on between them. To simulate world history, it seems far more than just brains need to be simulated. At 100 billion people, only about a century or so of history can be simulated, nowhere near enough to get to the point of them running such simulations of their own.
Why 50 years? Is life expectancy expected to go down? What's the point of simulating minds at all when imitating people (as is done for everything else) is so much more efficient? The only reason is that Bostrom's idea doesn't hold water if you don't presume this needless complication.

Given future technology, simulation of a small closed system (maybe a person, or an island village) can be done. Actual world history? No actual history of any person, let alone all of them, can be done. Why does Bostrom choose to ignore this?

So I have to imagine myself as being a sim and not knowing it? — Ludwig V

Yes. That's Bostrom's whole point. He says we're probably all simulated, but it's based on the anthropic reasoning above, which makes many many unreasonable assumptions.
~

Regarding the question "are we in a simulation?" I interpret this as similar to "is solipsism true?" It's impossible to prove one way or another, but nevertheless - it's rational to believe we are not. — Relativist

In that sense, the two are similar. Also, quite often, in both VR and a true sim, solipsism is true, but you know it because there are clues. We here are envisioning a scenario where the simulated reality is good enough that those clues get harder and harder to find.

Regarding the Turing test: it has been passed - to a degree.

Cool. I wasn't aware. Nice controlled test, and kind of pre-chat-bot, which is maybe a good thing. I wonder how trained the judges were; where was the focus of their questioning? To pass today with tools like chatGTP around, you'd have to dumb down the machine answers since it 'knows' more than any human, even if the majority of what it knows is wrong.

Conversely, humans have "failed" the Turing test (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna163206) -- observers inferred that a human's responses were not humans.

It would seem fairly easy to pretend to be an unintelligent machine, but I presume these people were not attempting to appear nonhuman.
I administer a small Turing test all the time for unsolicited callers on the phone. Most phone bots record, but don't parse, any of your responses, so usually one small question is enough. That will change soon.
The voice-response ones (with limited options to traverse a menu) comprehend profanity, the use of which is often the fastest way to get a human online.

Regarding "true" AI: IMO, it would entail a machine engaging in thoughts, learning as we do, processing information as we do, and producing novel "ideas" as we do.

Agree. The game playing AI does all that, even if it is confined to game playing. Early chess or go playing machines were like self-driving cars, programmed by the experts, using the best known strategies. Then they came up with a general AI (like AlphaZero) that wasn't programmed at all to play anything specific. There was only a way to convey the rules of the game to it, and it would learn on its own from there. After a few days of practice, it could beat anybody and any of the specifically programmed machines. That definitely meets all your criteria.
It doesn't pass the Turing test, but given enough practice, something like it might, but you can't gain a human experience through introspection, no via training data from the web. It would have to actually 'live' a life of sorts, and questions to test it should focus on life experiences and not educational facts.

Progress would not be measured by fooling people, but by showing there are processes that work like our brains do.

Totally agree. Progress by imitation has its limits, but since a computer is not a human, to pass a Turing test it will always have to pretend to be something it isn't, which is hard to do even well after it has surpassed us in intelligence.

Benefits include confirming our theories about some of the ways our brains work.

That is more relevant to this topic. To demonstrate how our brains work, you (probably) have to simulate it. To simulate it, you need to give it state and an environment (all this was brought up in prior posts). The state in particular is not exacty something you can make up. It needs to have grown that way through experience, which means a quick sim won't do. You have to start it from well before birth and run this really complicated simulation through at least years of life, providing it with a convincing environment all the while. Tall order. It would presumably take centuries for a single test to run, during which the hardware on which it is running will be obsoleted multiple times

Thanks for joining the topic.

My argument is that if one starts the Turing test by specifying that the subject is a machine — Ludwig V

Then the test is invalid, I agree. If you click the link about the test being passed, the judges did not know which conversations were machines and which were people. They did know that there were five of each. Everybody (judges, machines, human subjects) knew it was a test.

That's why the attempt to distinguish between the two on the basis of empirical evidence (Turing test) is hopeless.

The Turing test was never intended as a test of consciousness.

But it might turn out that the machine is more successful than human beings at [medical diagnosis]

True. Machines can detect skin cancer better than any human, and that's worth paying for (but there's probably a free app). In my case, the non-doctor tech that saw me googled my symptoms and read back to be verbatim the same information google gave me at home, but leaving off the part where it said "see your doctor if you have these symptoms". Obviously no actual doctor was consulted.

I think that a machine can diagnose some medical conditions. Whether it can imitate diagnosing any medical conditions is not at all clear to me.

A 3 year old can imitate giving a diagnosis. Its how daddy gets covered by 20 bandaids. And if a machine can give a diagnosis (they can), then why would they have to imitate the ability that they actually have?

Do you get confirmation about whether your "spots" are correct or not?

A few are false positives, which are often confirmed by a simple PM to them. The bots don't hold conversations, but rather give single replies to a question, and no more. Short, and often correct but obvious and not particularly helpful. If you reply to a bot-post, the bot will probably not notice it.

Some are real easy, and can be spotted before they ever submit a single post. Russia was very big on bots that created sometimes hundreds of sleeper accounts that never posted anything. I banned many of them en-masse. Those have dried up since I think Russia closed the internet connection to the world so the public cannot see how the rest of the world views their war.

Parrots imitate talking. Are they smarter than human beings?

No more than is a tape recorder. Parrots don't pass a Turing test.

I thought you said that there were people inside the system. Now I'm really confused.

In the Simulation Hypothesis, we are the simulated people, the ones inside the system. Do not confuse this with the VR hypothesis where the people are real and only their experience is artificial. Read the OP if you don't get this distinction.

On the Turing test discussion:

I think that you are not talking about the same question as Relativist. (See below). — Ludwig V

Indeed. I dragged in Relativist since the topic of Turing test came up, and he suggests that the test is insufficient to determine intelligence.
The Turning test has nothing to do with a simulated reality, but rather with a device that imitates a human's text responses, as a test of intelligence.

And if a machine passes the test (it's a text test, so there's no robot body that also has to be convincing), then it exhibits intelligent behavior. The test is not too weak.
— noAxioms
Here, you are positing that you are starting with a machine. In that case, the question is whether the behaviour is really intelligent or merely seems to be intelligent. — Ludwig V

Here again, the quoted comment concerns the Turing test, not the simulation hypothesis.

even if the response was intelligent, it does not follow that the machine is conscious or sentient. — Ludwig V

The Turning test is not a test for either of those. There's not even a test that can tell if your neighbor is conscious/sentient. If there was, much of the p-zombie argument would be immediately settled by some empirical test. The whole point of the term 'conscious' is that it is always defined in such a way that is immune from empirical evidence.

The fundamental point is whether we can even formulate the question without begging it.

The question is simple. I am communicating with some unknown entity via text messages, much like we do on this forum. The question is, is that with which I am communicating a human or not?

I don't see begging in that wording. I am a moderator on a different forum, and one job is to spot new members that are not human. They're not allowed. I've spotted several, but it's getting harder.
I've even been charged human health insurance rates for a diagnosis provided by a machine, and I protested it at the time. They provided no service at all to me, but they charged me anyway.

The Turing Test is passed by fooling people into believing there's a human giving responses in a conversation. — Relativist

In a text conversation, yes. That's pretty hard to do, and we're not there yet.

This is feasible today at least within a limited range of conversation topics.

Well, one of the ideas is to go outside those topics. I mean, none of the chat bots have long term memory, so one of their traits is that they don't ask any questions of their own since they cannot learn. I suppose clarification requests of questions posed to it might count as asking something.

If the entity was to pass the test, then nothing is off limits. Be insulting to it, or annoying. It should react accordingly. If it doesn't, it's not passing the test. If it does, it is probably already considerably more intelligent than humans, since it requires far more smarts to imitate something you are not that it does to just be yourself. The entity is not human, and to imitate human responses, especially those involving human emotions, would require superior ability. It doesn't require the entity to actually have human emotions. It is not a test of 'is it human?', but rather 'is it intelligent?'.

What more are you looking for?

You claimed the test is too weak. I claim otherwise. If it passes, it has long since surpassed us in intelligence. As a test of human-level intelligence, it is more than enough.

a computer can produce words that sound like it's expressing empathy - but it actually is not.

It's not empathy, but it very much is expressing empathy. People are also quite capable of expressing empathy where there is no actual empathy, such as the politicians that send their 'thoughts and prayers' to mass-shooting families, but do nothing about the problem.


On the Simulation discussion:

You are positing that it is people who are "in" the sim - i.e. (I assume) being fed the data. — Ludwig V

In a VR, yes, exactly that. People are real, and are fed experience of a simulated reality. Every video RPG does this.
It the simulation case, there is no experiencer in the world running the sim. There are only fully simulated people inside 'the system', and if that system is not closed, the system needs to be fed artificially generated causes from outside. So for instance, if you look up, you see imitation stars, not fully simulated stars.

This is one of the reasons Tomb-Raider is less abusive of the processing power of your gaming machine than is something like Minecraft. The former is in a tomb, a very confined limited region in need of simulation. Minecraft on the other hand is outdoors, and my son needs to limit his render distance, else the computer can't generate the background as fast as it needs to. So distant things suddenly appear when you get close enough to them, very unlike reality where there is unlimited sight distance. This is only a problem for a VR where speed of computation matters.

Plus, if I've understood you, you are positing that the subjects cannot communicate with whatever is running the sim

No. If you can do that, you very much are aware of the creator/creation status. It would be like talking to a god. In a VR, you can talk to the other players, and you can talk to the NPCs if the NPCs have enough intelligence to talk, but you can't talk to anybody outside the simulated universe.

So how does this question differ from the brain in a vat, from Descartes' demon or from the supposed possibility that we are all dreaming? — Ludwig V

Nothing like dreaming.
VR has many of the same issues as the first two. The actual simulation hypothesis does not suggest an artificial sensory stream, except necessarily at system boundaries.

So how does this topic differ from the question what it's like to be a bat?

We are not bats. It's not about what it's like to be something we're not. We know what it is like to be a human. The question is, how might we (being the subject of simulation) detect that fact?

I'm afraid I didn't realize what the philosophical background is (essentially, Bostrom).

Bostrom is half the story. Most popular fictions depict VR, not a sim. Matrix is a good example of a VR, however implausible.

I don't find the question interesting, because if we posit that there is no way of telling, then there is no way of telling.

I didn't posit no ways ot testing. But depending on the quality of the simulation, it might get difficult. The best test is probably to recognize that there must be limits, and to test those limits.

The interesting question is under what circumstances we would accept that something we designed and built is a conscious being, i.e. a (non-human) person.

The 'can a computer think' topic was sort of about that. I suppose we could copy our own design and build an actual biological human, but in something other than by the normal way. Anything else is going to be trivially detectable. Not sure how that 'built' person would get loaded with experience. It's not like you can just upload software to a human. Doesn't work that way.

From that topic:

The Turing Test is too weak, because it can be passed with a simulation. Simulating intelligent behavior is not actually behaving intelligently. — Relativist

There is mention of the Turing test in earlier posts here. Passing it with a simulation is doing it the hard way. We're getting close to something that can pass the test now, but nowhere close to actually simulating the way a human does it. Perhaps you, like Ludwig here, mean 'imitation', which anything that passes the Turing test is doing by definition.

And if a machine passes the test (it's a text test, so there's no robot body that also has to be convincing), then it exhibits intelligent behavior. The test is not too weak. What they have arguably already does this, since a machine can exhibit intelligent behavior (even more so than us) long before it can successfully imitate something that it isn't. I mean, I cannot convince a squirrel that I am one of them, but that doesn't mean they're more intelligent than me. I've done it to birds, speaking their language well enough for them to treat me like one of their own kind. It's not hard with some birds.

This is the traditional problem of evil. — Ludwig V

Pain is not evil. I'd never want to change myself to be immune from pain. It serves an important purpose, and not an evil one.
The problem of evil argument against God only has teeth if you posit a God that has and follows the same moral values as we envision, such as it being an act of evil to create something humans deem evil.

I wish I knew what the difference is between a simulation and an imitation, a simulation and a mimicry, a simulation and an analogy, and a simulation and a model.

A statue, puppet, or a speaker blaring bird-of-prey noises to scare away geese, or a wooden duck lure, are all imitations/mimicry.

A video game is a VR, which, by definition, feeds artificial sensory input to the real player.

Conway's game of life (the description of it) is a dynamic model. The execution of the rules of that model (on a computer, paper, pebbles on a go-board, whatever) is a simulation.
They make computer models of cars. The model is a description of the physical car, what parts are where, and what they're made of, how they're connected. The simulation of that model might throw it into a solid wall, or another car at some high speed, to learn how the initial state in the model deforms by the stresses of that collision. Simulations typically serve some sort of purpose of the runner of the simulation.

I describe human beings, in contexts like this, as our paradigm of a person. — Ludwig V

Remember, we're not worrying about what those running the simulation are calling the simulated things. We're supposing that we are the subjects here, the ones being simulated, and we (and only we) call ourselves human beings or people. That's the only definition that matters.
It is the people in the simulation that are tasked with finding evidence that they are the subject of a simulation. What we're called by the occupants of the reality running the simulation is irrelevant.

I have to say, if these beings are to be conscious, I wish you luck in getting your project through your research ethics committee.

That's kind of like suggesting that God is unethical to have created a universe that has beings that feel bad, and yes, there are those that suggest exactly that.

My question now, is why not just talk about people living in a different universe?

I wanted a universe that is simulated, instead of being instantiated in some other way. I do suppose that the simulated universe is a part of the container universe, but it's still a separate universe. That's questionable if it's an open simulation, but not all of them are. Much depends on the goal of running the simulation. Bostrom actually posits what that purpose would be, even if it is a totally naive one.

the sims you are describing are clearly in the same universe as we are.

It is the same universe as we are, because I posit that we are the simulated ones. How would be tell if that were true? The topic isn't about how to run a sim. The topic is about what it's like to be one.

Talking of sims, do you regard chess or (American) football as a simulation of war?

There are definitely war elements in both, but that makes it more an analogy than a simulation. The do run simulations of war all the time, pretty much continuously. Yay cold war. Those simulations don't simulate the consciousness of anybody, and I don't think they even have people beyond statistical counts.

I know human consciousness is a fairly hotly contested issue. But does anyone disagree that it involves multiple processes taking place simultaneously? — Patterner

It is a parallel process, yes. Per relativity, simultaneous is an ambiguous term for events, and no, nothing in a any physical system requires spatially separated components of any process to be simultaneous in any frame. Per the principle of locality, one cannot depend on the other (they are outside each other's causal light cone), and thus the interactions can be simulated in any order, serially.
The computer would likely do the same thing, but a truly serial process would be much like a Turing machine, and incredibly inefficient design, but performance was never the point.

If we agreed that a process can take place in the scenario you're describing, you cannot write multiple things simultaneously.

Granted, but there's no need to, per the above comment. Any such transactions can be computed in any order without altering the outcome. Per the principle of locality, no spatially extended process can have a requirement of simultaneous operation.

A regular computer would do it that way as well, but the big weather simulation machines are often very parallel, operating on large vector quantities rather than single numbers (technically refered to as SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) machines). The cray supercomputers worked that way, but not sure how much modern high-end machines use SIMD architectures. Point is, doing it serially is just slower, but it doesn't produce a different outcome.

At no time, in no sense, is everything needed for human consciousness happening at the same time in the paper and pencil scenario.

On the contrary, time in the simulation has nothing to do with time for the guy with the pencil. Our pencil guy can set everything aside for a year and get back to it later. The simulated guy will not notice. No doubt each transaction will have a location/timestamp, and there's nothing preventing multiple transactions (all the transactions in a single iteration of the data) from having the same recorded timestamp. That is pretty much how simulations are done. Here is the state at time X, and then it uses that state to compute the next state at X+<increment> where the increment might be a microsecond or something. It might take a minute for a machine to simulate all the transactions to generate the next state. It might take the pencil guy several lifetimes to do the same thing, so we're going to need that society to train his replacements each time he retires.

At risk of opening a can of worms, how does 'modern physics' come into it?
I joined this and other forums to find out how the prominent philosophers (the ones you learn of in class) dealt with modern physics (narrowing the search to recent ones of course) and found that for the most part, they either didn't know their physics, or didn't care about it.
So I learned physics, or at least the parts of it relevant to the subjects I cared about.

Relativity threw significant doubt to Newtonian absolutism where there was one preferred frame and time was posited to be something that flows or progresses, that there was a preferred moment in time, and the universe was static, and either infinite age or somehow set in motion from some initial state at some point. Much of religious myths (especially the creation parts) requires the universe to be contained by time instead of the other way around, and this did not become apparent until about 110 years ago. The universe having a finite age is about a century old, and some religious teachings did at least bend with that one and put the creation event there.

Quantum mechanics really threw a spanner into the gears with suggestions that ontology might work backwards (that existence depends on interaction with future things), that identity of anything (electrons, rocks, people) is not at all persistent and thus I am not the same I as a second ago.

One can of course pick an interpretation consistent with your preferences and avoid the implications of the ones you don't like, but if doubt is to be eradicated, all the alternative interpretations contradicting the thing of which you are certain must be falsified.


And who knows what else might get discovered. Nobody saw QM coming, so all these people who held certain beliefs with certainty found themselves to be wrong or at least potentially wrong. So a declaration of 100% certainty is irrational. I mean, my certainty rests on the sum of two numbers (a pair of arbitrary real numbers say) being exactly one other real number, always and anywhere. I don't significantly doubt that, but I still question it. What if it's only a property of this universe that such a sum comes to that one solution and not a different one elsewhere?
— Wayfarer

Persistence of self-identity over time is not discussed in Descartes

Indeed it isn't, but the assumption is implicit. It's too obvious to bother calling out explicitly, or at least it was obvious until ~50 years ago.

Beings are not objects or things

Your opinion. The opinion of others may vary.

I was thinking of philosophical zombies — Ludwig V

I knew what you meant, even if Wayfarer chose to reply to what you said instead of what you meant.

My point is that there is no easy and clear way to state what the Turing hypothesis is trying to articulate.

The Turing test (The closest 'Turing Hypothesis gets is the Chuch-Turing thesis, concerning what is computable, and is oddly relevant below) is an intelligence test for when a machine's written behavior is indistinguishable from that of a human. The large language models are getting close, and the easy way to tell the difference is to not ask them questions with factual answers. They also are not designed to pass the Turing test, so all one has to do is ask it what it is.

Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct).
For me, a conscious being is a person and a simulated person is not a person, so this confuses me. Can you perhaps clarify?

A simulated person would be a person, just in a different universe (the simulated one). It's likely quite a small universe. You seem to define 'person' as a human in this universe, and no, the simulated person would not be that.

why isn't 'dubit' a word? It ought to be.
— noAxioms
Well, since you have now used it, and I understand it (roughly, I think), it is a word now.

And it was already used in somebody else's reply.

It seems to me you cannot simulate with paper and pencil, because it is not an active medium. — Patterner

Not sure what the term 'active medium' means. Googling it didn't help. I can implement a Turing machine armed with nothing but paper and pencil. Per the Church-Turing Thesis mentioned by mistake above, that means I can do anything that is computable, including the running of the simulation.

The papers hold not a description of how the simulation works, nor a novel about the lives of the characters simulated, but rather are utilized as memory in the execution of the algorithm, which is doing exactly what the high-power computer is doing. Sure, some of the paper needs to hold the algorithm itself, just like the computer memory is divided into code space and data space.
The pencil exists to write new memory contents, to change what a paper says to something else, exactly as a computer rewrites memory location.

If you program everything necessary to simulate consciousness into a computer**, but never hit Run

But I am hitting 'run'. I wouldn't need the pencil if I didn't 'run' it.

a person is a human being, i.e. an animal. ... Some physical structures are machines, and hence not animals, but I don't see why such structures cannot possibly constitute people. — Ludwig V

There's a contradiction here. People is animal. A machine is not animal. But a machine can be people? That means a machine is animal and not animal.

But if they are to constitute people

I think you are again envisioning imitation people, like Replicants. That's a very different thing than the simulation hypothesis which does not involve machines pretending to be people.
If you're going for an empirical test, it doesn't work. If a convincing replicant is possible in a sim but not in reality, the runners of the sim can see that and know that their simulation isn't very accurate, and the people in the sim don't know that replicants should be different, so they have no test.

Secondly, where do you get this assertion that machines must lack spontaneity? I mean, deep down, you're a machine as well running under the same physics. I think you're confusing determinism with predictability.

So I think you are right to argue that some such process as this would be necessary to create a machine person.

No. The simulation is creating a biological person, not a machine person. Try to get that. Replicants are not grown from a zygote. A replicant can be trivially tested by an x-ray or just by sawing it in half, or so I suggest. Apparently in Blade runner, it was very hard to tell the difference, but that's also a fiction.

Calculating is widely recognized as a rational activity.

That's right. Physics doesn't do spontaneous things (quantum mechanics excepted, which is a big problem if you want to simulate that). But classical physics isn't spontaneous, and yet spontaneity emerges from it, or at least the appearance of it. Anything in the simulation would have to behave just like that.

To me, it makes no sense to deny that computers can calculate. The catch is that such rational activities are not sufficient to be recognized as a person.

Yet again, no computer is pretending to be a person, so it isn't a problem.

If you call it a rationalization, you have already decided the argument is invalid or unsound.

Probably invalid in this case, and yes, I've decided that, but on weak grounds since I have never followed the argument from beginning to a preselected improbable conclusion.

Would a simulation of agonising pain be actually painful?

If the simulation is any good at all, and presuming monism, then yes, it would be painful to the subject in question. No, the computer running the sim would not feel pain, nor would the people responsible for the creation of the simulation, despite suggestions from Kastrup that they apparently should.

The logic of cogito ergo sum is neither rationalisation nor myth, it is the indubitable fact — Wayfarer

I didn't say that was the rationalization. I even accepted it since it was a reasonable statement in the absence of modern physics. It is him building on that foundation to his later conclusions that is the rationalization, which I clearly spelled out in my post.
As for it being indubitable, well, I dubit it, as I do everything *. The Latin phrase translates roughly to 'there is thinking, therefore thinker" which suggests process, a state that evolves over time, but presumes (without doubt) that all said states are states of the same thing, which is for instance in contradiction with quantum interpretations like MWI, which you probably deny because it is fairly incompatible with the dualistic view of persisting identity. That denial is fine since nobody can force your opinion, but absent a falsification of the interpretation, the assertion is hardly indubitable.
And no, I don't accept MWI either, but I don't claim it has been falsified.


* why isn't 'dubit' a word? It ought to be.

That it is another universe, is one of hte ridiculous premises required for its probability to be an effective argument. This is what I'm getting - on it's face, its mathematically almost certain we are in a simulation set up by future generations. — AmadeusD

I agree that the logic presented is completely valid, but the premises are outrageous, and the conclusion is only as sound as those premises.

But the invocations required to actually, practically, in real life take that seriously are unnerving to say the least, and perhaps the sign one is not being honest with themself.. if the theory convinces one.

I don't take the argument seriously due to the faulty premises. I see no reason to actually suspect that I am a product of simulation, but I also don't rule it out, nor would I personally find it unnerving to actually find evidence that such is the case.
I do my best to be open minded to any possibility, or at least possibilities where knowledge can be had. So if I'm for instance in a VR being fed fiction, then I have no choice but to make sense of the fiction being fed to me, and to not worry about the inaccessible nature of whatever feeds it to me.

But you did not go further into the argument. That is the opening argument for the BIV. But Putnam continues on to counter-argue that premises or claims above are necessarily false. If you're a BIV then to say "I am a brain in a vat" is false because you wouldn't be referring to a brain and to a vat. There's no reference at all! There is no causal link to make the argument sound. — L'éléphant

OK. I admit to not reading the whole thing because I was only trying to point out similarities in the issues of BiV and VR, which are often aligned.

If either has memory of being put in the vat, then the arguments become more sound. Any video game is like that. You have memory of starting the game, and have evidence that you've not spent your life there (although close with some of my kids).

If it is indeed just a black-box or non-human mind being fed false information, anything that comes out of its mouth referring to anything about the physical world is false. — L'éléphant

I don't follow that. If it says (without evidence) that it is a BiV, then the utterance is true if that is indeed the fact. It's just not something justifiable, at least not if the lies being fed to it are quality lies. So it isn't knowledge, but not all utterances are necessarily false. What about 2+2=4? Is that also one of the lies?

The simulation hypothesis is a pitfall -- it looks attractive because it allows us to make arguments like "how do you prove we're not in a doll house?" but we fail to recognize the contradiction of the utterance.

OK, I haven't brought this up, but if it is a true sim (not a VR), the sim is computing the values of a mathematical structure (this universe), which is sort of presuming something like Tegmark's MUH.

If I am a part of a mathematical structure, somebody computing that structure doesn't enact the creation of that structure, but rather just works out details of that structure that already is, sort of like Pi is (supposedly) a constant that is not just a property of this universe. It can be known in any universe independently, and the ratio of circumference of a circle to its diameter is pi even if nothing knows that. Computing ii is like the simulation. It doesn't create pi, it just makes the approximate value of it known to whatever is running the computation. The sim may work similarly, making this universe known to the runner of the simulation, but doesn't constitute an act of creation of the universe, which doesn't need to be simulated in order for parts of it (us) to be what we are, which is conscious of the parts of the universe to which we relate.

You said you would start the sim as a zygote. I am asking: what is the difference between this zygote and a zygote in reality? — NotAristotle

Several differences. The sim is run at some finite level of detail. Does it have mitochondria? Depends on the level of detail, if it matters to the entity running the sim. The sim probably cannot run at the quantum level, and the real zygote does, and even deeper if there is a deeper.

The sim zygote is an open system, and the real zygote is part of a close system. That is a second major difference. Something has to imitate the interactions with the parts external to the system, and that requires making up fiction now and then, and one can attempt to catch contradictions in that fiction. Of course it helps a lot to know where the system boundary is.

Or is the zygote you are postulating a mere simulation of a zygote?

Yes, that. You don't need to pre-load the simulated thing with memory of a past consistent with the fake initial state of the simulation. That's the problem we're trying to get around. Don't know why you find this problematic. The system simulated then grows up into a conscious human with real memories of its upbringing, not fake memories planted by an initial state that probably doesn't know how memories are stored. The whole point of the sim after all is to learn these things.

Per Descartes, I hold that the fact of one's own existence, that one is a subject of experience, is apodictic, it cannot plausibly denied. — Wayfarer

And here I go doing exactly that, not denying it, but having doubts about it to the point of abandoning the realism it fails to explicitly posit.

Funny that right after I go on about humans not being rational, but being very good at rationalizing. Conclusion first, then an argument that leads to it. Descartes starts with all this skepticism, and builds up from this simple state that, lacking any knowledge of modern physics, leaves him with something he decides can be known with certainty. I'm fine with that, and I'm admittedly not very familiar with his work, but he goes from there to conclude, surprise, surprise, the exact mythological teachings of his own culture and not any of the other thousand choices of other cultures. That's a great example of rationalization. It was his target all along. A more rational progression from those beginnings leads to idealism/solipsism.

So, you don't think there's any criterion by which we can discern the difference. — Wayfarer

I do think there are ways, but most of the posters are using fallacious methods to justify their assertions.
I can think of ways, albeit technologically unrealistic, to falsify a VR with multiple people (non-solipsism) in the VR. If there's just one, other methods need to be used.
For instance, put me under anethesia. To me, I appear to awaken after only a little time has passed. The only way a VR could do that is to put the real person similarly to sleep, and not just pipe in the sensation of awakening after a short time. That fake 'moving the clocks forward' trick only works under solipsism.

You admit the possibility that you're not actually a real being. — Wayfarer

The possibility that I am a real being already is contingent on the definition of 'real', and not being a realist, perhaps my not believing that has nothing to do with any suspicion of being a product of a simulation.

Bottom line still is, per my chosen handle: Don't hold any beliefs that are beyond questioning. The worst things to accept unquestioned are the intuitive ones.

What is the difference between the simulation and reality if you are constructing "simulated people" based on the same historical states that result in non-simulated people? If the physicalness of both systems is identical in all respects, what is the difference? — NotAristotle

Unclear on the question. The difference between reality (which doesn't supervene on something higher) and the sim (which does) is just that. Reality is supposedly a closed system, and the simulation (either kind) is not, and there is one of the places to look for empirical differences between the two.
As for the 'historical states', I need clarification. I propose a 'system' that is smaller, with one or a few people say who are actually simulated, and the rest are outside the system, not simulated, but are rather imitation appearance (sensory input to the simulated ones) of other people. AI controls these sensory inputs, and if it is good enough, nobody can tell the difference.
Bostrom gets into this, except all people are in the system, so there are no imitation people, but most other things are imitation. A wall is not particularly simulated, but it still needs to show wear after time. Paint needs to peel. Dead things need to rot, or at least need to appear to. Physics of simple things is often simple, but changes upon close inspection. That's really hard to do in a simulation, but Bostrom is apparently not a software person and has many naive ideas about it.

I agree, generally. The paper, on it's face, is fairly convincing but it requires such a ridiculous set of premises (similar to the Fermi Paradox) that it doesn't seem all that apt to the Universe we actually inhabit. — AmadeusD

Bostrom assumes otherwise, but whatever realm is running his simulation doesn't need to be a universe like our own.
As to the Fermi thing, I have opinions, but they're only opinions.

I’m sure simulations of kidney functions, like other organic functions, may be extremely useful for medical research and pharmacology, without literally producing urine. — Wayfarer

If you or Kastrup expect a kidney in one universe to produce urine in another, then you don't really know what a simulation does.

That’s the point - simulations may be useful and accurate, but they’re still simulations, not real things.

But the question asked is how we might know (and not just suspect) that we are not the product of a simulation. A detailed simulation of you would likely deny his own unreality (as you use the word here), and would also deny that his consciousness is the product of his underlying physics. If he does this, he would be wrong about both. I'm not sure what you'd expect that simulation to yield.

Regarding your objection re: physicalism. The problem with conscious people within/part of a simulation has to do, in my opinion, with the historical necessities of consciousness. That is to say a simulated person does not have the requisite history to be conscious. — NotAristotle

The simulation needs to provide an initial state that provides that history. History is, after all, just state. Hence my suggestion of starting the sim of a human as a zygote since there is no need to provide it with prior experience. But then you have to simulate years of experience to give it that history, but at least you don't need to presume what the mature brain state might be.

and someone alive must come from someone else who is alive

It has to start somewhere, so the womb would be outside the system, an imitation womb, empirically (to the child) indistinguishable from a real mother, in every way. I suppose the placenta would be included in the system since it is, after all, the child and not the mother, but when it is severed, the sim needs to remember which half to keep as part of the system.

People and inanimate objects are not in the same category — Ludwig V

To a simulation of low level physics, they pretty much are the exact same category, and both have the same problem of needing to exert some kind of effort to keep track of what is the system and what isn't, a problem that real physics doesn't have since it operates on a closed system.

What keeps the house warm, (not too hot and not too cold) is the entire system including the water, the pump and the radiators, with its feedback loops and not any one component.

Similarly, a person (and not a brain) is what is conscious. Not even that, because an environment is also needed.

A computer is arguably more like a conscious being, that it is probably too rational to count as one.

Irrationality is required for consciousness? A computer is rational? I question both. Deterministic is not not rationality. I do agree that irrationality is a trait of any living creature, and a necessary one.

If that's the point, we don't need the theory. We all experience dreams from time to time. And we know how to tell the difference.

Any sim would be distinguishable from a dream state.

But we can't tell the difference while we are dreaming.

Sometimes. One is often reft of rational thought while dreaming, but not always. I can tell sometimes, and react to knowing so.

The weather event would need to be wet and windy, and not just appear to be wet and windy." — bongo fury

Yes, Wayfarer just below quotes Kastrup suggesting exactly that.

Bernardo Kastrup says you can get a computer to run an exquisitely-detailed simulation of kidney function, but you wouldn't expect it to urinate. — Wayfarer

It would be a piss-poor kidney simulation (pun very intended) if it didn't.

It doesn't have to be "at any time", it can just be at the start. And presumably a baby could be hooked up to the machine anyway, without any concern for their memories, no? — flannel jesus

Well, the Sim hypothesis (all versions) as how we might know we are or are not in a sim or VR. You're speaking of a VR in this case. Your memories define who you are, and if those are totally wiped, it's somebody else in the VR, not the person who entered it.

This VR is portraying a world of 2024 to me, a world in which the technology for such a setup isn't going to exist for at least a century. So if I've been put into it some time in say 2200, then all my memories have been wiped, and they're just running somebody else on what's left of my hardware, rewriting it into a new person that thinks it is 2024. Who would volunteer for that?

Sure, it could be done to a baby who doesn't question the change in environment, but why would anyone take a baby and subject it to indefinite VR? How does anybody in a VR not just atrophy away from disuse of all limbs? People permanently paralyzed have pretty short life expectancies, regardless of how much fun their brain might be having.

Might such a machine invariably force users to voluntarily exit the machine (provided exit is possible)? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I echo NotAristotle's sentiments. If the guy knows he is in a simulation, he also knows that the virtue he is practicing is wasted, benefiting nothing but shadows of people. Knowing this, he happiness would hardly be maximized. The experience machine, to maximize his happiness, would in short order exit him from it to allow him to practice actual virtue that benefits actual people.

If he doesn't know he's in the sim, then he cannot choose an option of which he doesn't have knowledge.

I don't think so. If someone made such a machine, that someone could know enough about a brain to manipulate memories too. They can manipulate your entire experience of your world, why not your memory? — flannel jesus

This would be a violation of the premise, that only the inputs and outputs are artificial, and the experiencing entity itself is left to itself. If you posit that even your memories are open to direct manipulation at any time, then you end up in the Boltzmann Brain scenario, where,such a hypothesis, as Carroll put it, "cannot simultaneously be true and justifiably believed".


This does bring up a very relevant point though. Let's dumb down Bostrom's scenario (A Sim this time, not a VR). Instead of simulating a planet, we do just one person Bob, born in say 1870. How does one go about setting the initial state of such a simulation? The machine only knows how to do physics at some specific level of detail. It knows what we do: how cells grow, get nutrients, split, neuron and axon interactions and network changes. But it doesn't know how consciousness emerges from that. It doesn't know what it's like to be the person. It cannot set a state if it doesn't know how the memory works, and what memories to give our subject. The only way to plausibly start such a simulation is from a zygote. From there it evolves as an open system, with all Bob's inputs and outputs faked by plausible but not fully simulated surroundings. His mother for instance would be an imitation, one good enough to fool our subject.
This is what I mean by two kinds of people in a Sim (and three in a VR). Mom is an imitation, outside the open system. Bob is simulated, being the open system.

The computing capability to do this is possibly something that can be done in the foreseeable future, but running a simulation of a life all the way from a zygote is a long time to wait, and takes an incredible amount of AI to give Bob a realistic and believable environment in which he gets raised.

A pencil is not an information processing system. A pencil may be part of an information processing system which includes a person and a pencil and piece of paper, but the brain of the person is playing the key role in whatever information processing occurs. — wonderer1

The one (at a time) person operating the pencil and paper was implied. Also not explicitly missing is a society to breed, train, feed, and otherwise support the efforts of the series of people doing the primary task. A big part of that support is replacement of paper/parchment as it decay into unreadability before it is actuall needed as input for a subsequent step. But the computer also needs to do this, and a lot more frequently than every few centuries or so. Computer memory rots and needs to be refreshed a few hundred times per second.
Point is, all these implicit additions not being explicitly stated doesn't make the statement false.

To answer your question, a pencil can't process the video file found here.

That's right. As you point out it would need a person operating the pencil, which, based on your protest above, is something you feel needs to be explicitly specified.
The video is digital so not even an A->D conversion is needed to get to the part where the video can be digitally processed. I do admit that a pencil is a poor tool for analog signal processing.

I disagree with this. In the BIV, the brain is a given. That is, human brain. — L'éléphant

Well, to quote the BiV IEP page, very close to the top:

Or, to put it in terms of knowledge claims, we can construct the following skeptical argument. Let “P” stand for any belief or claim about the external world, say, that snow is white.

[1] If I know that P, then I know that I am not a brain in a vat
[2] I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat
[3] Thus, I do not know that P. — iep BiV

https://iep.utm.edu/brain-in-a-vat-argument/#:~:text=The%20Brain%20in%20a%20Vat%20thought%2Dexperiment%20is%20most%20commonly,experiences%20of%20the%20outside%20world.

So if P happens to be "the nature of that doing my experiencing is a human brain", then that cannot be known. Sure, the BiV does originally posit a human brain in a vat, but for purposes of the relevance to VR scenario, anything in a VR cannot know the true nature of its own mind, especially if it can prove that the physics that the VR is conveying cannot be the cause of your actions.

Because the point of the theory is skepticism

Yes, that's exactly the point, and yet most VR discussions (say the thing that Musk suggests is almost certainly true) fail to be skeptical about his true nature, something for which he has pretty much zero empirical evidence if his skepticism is true.

If I could experience the real world, then be hooked up to a machine that simulates the same thing I have experienced, seamlessly, that I would not be able to tell the difference, then theory has made its point.

Why wouldn't you then remember being hooked up to the machine? You only have memories of a world where such a machine is not possible (yet), so an actual transition from reality to VR is not plausible.

I remember raging arguments at the International Skeptics Society years ago about whether enough monks writing down 1's and 0's could simulate consciousness, like the guy in the comic I posted moving rocks around and simulating this universe. — RogueAI

And did the nay-sayers actually come up with a reason why it could not? The only reason I can think of is that of dualism: Total denial that consciousness can be a physical process at all. It needs magic to fill what are seen as gaps, and a simulation (both computer or paper) for some reason is denied access to that same magic.

Both you and B-F have yet to justify why a sim on paper is fundamentally different from the exact same computation done by transistors. But it seems a third person is joining the ranks:

A computer can process information in ways that a pencil cannot. Why think consciousness can exist without the occurrence of information processing? — wonderer1

Same question then: What information can a computer possibly process that a pencil cannot? Time of computation seems to be the only difference, and time of computation is not a factor at all with the Sim hypothesis, even if it is absolutely critical to the VR hypothesis.
I do very much agree that a VR cannot be done by paper & pencil, but I never suggested otherwise,

It is unclear to me why there would be more leaf worlds, could you spell that out for me? — NotAristotle

Picture 'reality' R0 as the trunk of a tree. It has 9 boughs (S1-S9) coming out of it, the simulations being run on R. Each of those has 10 branches, labeled S10-S99. Those each in turn have 10 sticks (next level simulations (S100-S999), Then the twigs (S1000-S9999) and the leaves (S10000-S99999). Every one of those simulation has say 10 billion people in it, so a given person is likely to be simulated (all except the ones in R0), and most of those (90%) find themselves in the leaves, the non-posthuman state as defined by Bostrom. So finding yourself in a state where such simulations are not possible is most likely. And this is presuming only 10 simulations per world, whereas Bostrom posits far more, so the numbers get even more silly.

This argument is a gross simplification, and presumes some outrageous things, for instance, that one world can be simulating trillions of consciousnesses at once, and there are motivations that people would want to run such a thing at all. It also presumes fate: that all initial random states with people in it will almost certainly eventually progress to this posthuman state. It also preposterously presumes the continuation of Moore's law for millennia, and posits no end to non-renewable resources. Those are many of the reasons Bostrom's proposal falls flat.
How about simulating a quantum universe with a classical machine? That's been proven impossible. I notice Bostrom suggests shortcuts, where the brute simulation needs to know what it's particles are doing and notice when intent emerges from the atoms so that it can actually change physics when one looks closely enough at something. The comedy never ends with that proposal.

Empirical methods of falsification are also interesting to explore.

A running process isn't just a succession of maps? — bongo fury

A description of a running process is a map. The process itself is not.

Do you mean that some part of the computer running the game would need the detail? — bongo fury

It would need to simulate the NPC down to the biochemical level. The NPC would need to be conscious to believe anything, and not just appear to believe stuff. Heck, Elon Musk 'appears' to believe he's in a VR (as a player presumably, not an NPC), but it is questionable if he actually holds this belief. Ditto for a few other notable celebrities that make heavy claims but seem to have ulterior motives.

Then you're talking about an AI

An AI is needed to make a convincing NPC that doesn't do its own thinking. It is far more efficient for the actions to come from an AI than it is to actually simulate the character's thoughts and other processes. A pure closed simulation (Sim or VR) needs no AI at all, just brute capacity. No current game has any character do its own thinking, and the NPC are really obviously an NPC since barely any processing power is budgeted to doing the AI better. It's getting better, but has a long way to go before the line between players and NPCs begins to fade.

Or do you mean that a fictional character described and depicted in the game would need the detail?

Heck no. A game need only simulate my sensory stream, nothing else. There's no reason to make the characters appear to ponder about what their nature is.

Have you ever seen this? — RogueAI

I've seen the xkcd thing, yes. I'm not the first to see it. There's lots of references to 1D and 2D simulations in that, but how else are you going to depict it in a comic?

I think I have heard it said that if a future people decided to make a simulation, they would make A LOT of such simulations. And these simulations would be nested -- simulations within simulations. — NotAristotle

That's pretty much Bostrom's argument, a sort of anthropic reasoned hypothesis that demonstrates a complete ignorance of how simulations work.

If there are a huge number of simulations within simulations, that means only a small number of these simulations will be simulations that do not have a simulation that they are themselves running. But if we are living in a simulation, we must be living in one of the simulations that is not itself running a simulation. In that case, the odds that we are living in a simulation would be astronomically small.

That was one of the counterarguments that I think itself fails to hold much water. If each simulation runs several internal simulations, the leaf ones (us) would be exponentially more in number than the base levels. Of course this exponential simulations that are simulating other machines running simulations is a big part of the reason the premises fall apart.

On the other hand, I do not think we would be conscious if we were "in" what you are calling an actual simulation.

Why not? I mean, if you deny that consciousness emerges from physical process, then it falls right out of the gate, but presuming physicalism, the simulated person wouldn't act correct if the simulation got the physics wrong.

For that matter, even under dualism, what prevents the simulated person from gaining access to this supernatural woo like the physical human does?

In any case, I know I am not living in a simulation.

How? Incredulity? I'm trying to gather actual evidence for both sides. Lots of people 'know' things for sure, and lots of what people 'know' contradicts what other people 'know'. Humans are quite good at being certain about things for which there is no hard evidence.
I mean, I don't buy the hypothesis either, but to declare to 'know' such a fact without any logical/empirical backing reduces it to a mere belief, rationalized, but not rational.

I won't seriously consider the possibility that I'm living in a simulation, or a simulation myself, or a Boltzman brain, or whatever else. — Patterner

This is better worded. It's an extraordinary claim and it requires extraordinary evidence to be taken seriously. The various proponents seem to to use very fallacious arguments in an attempt to demonstrate that evidence.

Being a Boltzmann Brain thing isn't a proposed hypothesis by anybody. It's simply an obstacle in the way of the validity of various proposed theories explaining how physics actually works. Very few people understand the significance of a BB. Sean Carroll sums it up:

A theory in which most observers are of the Boltzmann Brain type is ... unacceptable: ...
The issue is not that the existence of such observers is ruled out by data, but that the theories that predict them are cognitively unstable: they cannot simultaneously be true and justifiably believed. — SCarroll

That means that no observer can have knowledge of the workings of such a universe.

I am not familiar with any arguments for how physical processes provide an account of the first-person nature of consciousness. — Patterner

I didn't say it did, any more than does the alternative view. The topic surely is discussed in more relevant topics on this forum or on SEP pages. It is a digression here. The Sim hypothesis presumes, as does the last 5 centuries of science, a form of physical monism. There's no hard problem to be solved. There's nothing 'experiencing' you first person.

.. that the thing simulated is conscious.
— noAxioms

Which is to say that a collection of electronic switches is conscious. — RogueAI

Well, if you simulating a collection of electronic switches (which a human is, in addition to a lot of other supporting hardware), and you consider that such a collection (the human) is conscious, then yes, the simulated thing will be conscious.

So, a simulation as a description or theoretical model, distinct from any real or imaginary structure satisfying the description. — bongo fury

The model is perhaps a design of a simulation. The simulation itself is the execution of it, the running of code on a computer for instance being one way to implement it, but paper and pencil also suffices. A simulation is a running process, not just a map.

Gosh. This? — bongo fury

This is absurd. You're not going to be able to simulate a conscious person with paper and pencil. — RogueAI

You both seem to balk at the paper/pencil thing, but what can a computer do that the pencil cannot? If you cannot answer that, then how is your denial of it justified?

A novel or a computer game can perfectly well describe or depict a conscious human that doesn't know he is being imagined, and it can equally well describe or depict a conscious being that does know. Detail is neither here nor there. — bongo fury

The NPC in the computer game would need that amazing level of detail to actually believe stuff (like the fact that he's not being simulated), and not just appear (to an actual player) to believe stuff.

ChatGPT certainly simulates mental processes (or seems to. More about that in a second). — RogueAI

It simulates no mental processes at all. It answers on its own, not by simulating something that it is not. It is an imitation, not a simulation of anything.

Do you think it might be conscious?

That of course depends on your definition of 'conscious'. Most of the opponents of machine consciousness simply refuse to use the word to describe a machine doing the same thing a human is doing.

Dictionaries define it as 'aware' of and responding to its surroundings, so in a crude way, a thermostat is more conscious than chatGPT. A chat bot has no sensory feed except a network connection from which queries appear, and might possibly not be aware at all of where it actually is, not having any of the external senses that humans do. So by that definition, it isn't very conscious, and it probably isn't one thing, but rather a multitude of processes that run independently on many different servers.

A true machine intelligence would likely qualify as being conscious (except by those that refuse to apply the word), but it would be a very different kind, since humans cannot spawn off independent process, and cannot distribute their thinking to multiple sites far enough apart that quick communication isn't practical. Biological consciousness is thus far always confined to one 'device' that is forever confined within one head (sort of). Bees exhibit a more distributed collective hive consciousness. An octopus is quite intelligent but has its consciousness spread all out, most of it being in its arms. Machine intelligence would be a little closer to octopuses, but even an octopus cannot temporarily detach an arm and have it act independently until reattached.

On topic: No machine is going to get smarter than us by doing a simulation. Those are by nature incredibly inefficient.

Now, when you drill down on "simulate mental processes", what does that ultimately mean?

It probably means creating a map of brain neurons and synapses organization and running that in a dynamic simulation that not only follows neural activity (and input), but also simulates changes to the map, the creation/deletion of neural connections.

think that sounds like magic, but everyone else is taking it seriously, so you also have to take seriously the idea that it might not take a whole lot of switching operations to generate consciousness. — RogueAI

I don't think it takes very many, but to me, consciousness is a gradient, so the question is not if you're conscious, but how conscious. It is more of an on/off thing with a definition like Wayfarer uses, of having first person subjectivity or not. I don't really understand that since I don't see how an device with local sensory input doesn't have first person subjectivity.
Does my finger have subjectivity? It has first person sensory input, but all it does is send the taken measurement up a wire to be dealt with elsewhere. Ditto for the thermostat. It doesn't react any more to the sensory input other than to convey a signal. So maybe my boiler is crudely conscious because it processes the input of its senses.

Again, all this is pretty off topic. My boiler doesn't work by simulating a biological nerve system. I don't have the budget to have one that does it in such an expensive, inefficient, and unreliable way.

So it seems that if we're going to take simulation theory seriously, we should be equally open to the idea that some of the simulations we're running now are conscious.

... that the thing simulated is conscious. The simulation itself is no more conscious than is real physics. As I said just above, a sufficiently good simulation of a bat would not know what it is like to be a bat, but the simulated bat would.

Maybe some of the "creatures" in Conway's Game of Life are conscious. Why not?

I suppose it would require one to identify a construct as a creature. One can I think implement a Turing machine in GoL, so one you have that, there's little it cannot do.

Surely the problem is the one frequently pointed out, with the word "simulate" being ambiguous between "describe or theoretically model" and "physically replicate or approximate". — bongo fury

The simulation hypothesis does not suggest that any physical planet (Earth) was created as an approximation of some design/model/real-planet. It is nothing but a hypothesis of something akin to software being run that computes subsequent states from prior states. A VR is a little simpler and more complicated than that because the subsequent states are computed not only from prior states, but also from external input. Sim is deterministic. VR is not.

So the question occurs, are you holding this

That means that yes, even the paper and pencil method, done to sufficient detail, would simulate a conscious human who would not obviously know he is being simulated.
— noAxioms

up for ridicule, or serious consideration?

That was very serious. Sim is simply a computation, and any computation that can be done by computer can also be done by pencil and paper, albeit a lot slower and a lot more wasteful of resources. But time is simply not an object. One might consume 50 sheets of paper and one pencil a day, and the only reason it wouldn't work is because Earth would die before you got very far in a simulation of something as complicated as a person in a room.

A VR cannot be done this way.

I think [physical processes producing consciousness] sounds like magic, but everyone else is taking it seriously — RogueAI

For the last 5 centuries or so, science has operated under methodological naturalism which presumes exactly this, that everything has natural (physical) causes. Before that, it operated under rmethodological supernaturalism where supernatural (magic) was the cause of anything inexplicable, such as consciousness, the motion of the planets, etc. Presuming magic for the gaps contributed to keeping humanity in the dark ages. The other big cause was general illiteracy, but that continued until far more recently.
My point is, be careful what you label as the magic in that debate. The Sim hypothesis presumes naturalism, and if you don't at least understand that view, then you're not in a position to critique the SH.

So if I miniaturized the AI hardware and grafted it into the frog, it becomes a simulation instead of a VR? — Ludwig V

No. If you miniturize the VR set (the device that feeds fake sensory input to you, and conveys your responses to the VR) to fit a frog, then a frog can enter the VR just like the human does.
A simulated frog is just that. There's no real frog running it. It runs on its own. An imitation frog is even worse, and only appears to be a frog to something looking at it, but its actions are faked since it is outside the system being simulated.

But it is an abstraction from the world in which Conway - and you and I - live.

From this world yes, but it isn't a simulation of this world.

I thought we were using "world" in the first sense.

I'm using 'world' in many ways. There's the world that we experience. If it's a simulation/VR, then there is another world running that simulation, upon which this world supervenes. Maybe that world also supervenes on an ever deeper world, and (as Bostrom hints), it is turtles all the way down.

Well, I would say that those films are simulations of a fantasy scenario/world.

I would not say that. They are not 'simulations' as the word is being used in this topic. Those films (any film) are mere depictions of those fantasy worlds, not simulations of them.

But the idea that VR might be used to deceive people itself presupposes that what is presented by the VR is not real. What might be more troublesome is a VR that re-presented the actual world around the wearer. Pointless...

Good point, that VR need not involve deceit. One can use a VR setup to say control an avatar in some hostile environment. The military uses this quite a bit, but those are not simulations. Not all VR is a simulation, but this topic is only to discuss the ones that are. I cannot think of a VR into a simulated world that doesn't involve the deceit of making that simulated world appear real to the subject. It actually being real or not depends on your definition of 'real'.

Are you an idealist?

No, but their reasoning made a nice counterexample to your assertion that other people are necessarily as real as yourself. In a VR, and even in a Sim, this isn't necessarily true. I enumerated three different kinds of people, each of which operates differently. I suppose I should give them names for easy reference.