Obviously, people do recognize things like pumpkins and even cultures that developed largely in isolation from one another make distinctions that are far more similar than dissimilar. Presumably, the causes behind the emergence and development distinctions are physical. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're still reaching for human meaning, when I'm trying to avoid it. I am in no way suggesting that the concept of objects is meaningless to us.

Admittedly one can argue for a fruit being an object. Apples, like leaves and other termporary structures, will detach at predictable boundaries when 'ready'. Not so sure about the pumpkin, which for all I know rots with the rest of the plant if left to its own. and hence is harder to describe as physically distinct from the vine from which it grows.
Such examples are still from biology, not an intellect, but much of biology has some kind of notion of independently existing units, which make nice objects. By 'physics', I was hoping for something more fundamental than biology. Even chemistry has crude 'objects' which are distinct, with collections of similar objects constituting a 'substance', but not a bounded larger object.

None of my OP examples seem to work at the chemical level.

Take for example a typical free body diagram. Such a diagram is a human construct depicting hypothetical physical objects connected in various ways and applying forces to each other. Take away the human semiotics, and all that is left is a classical physical system of particles, the motion of each being determined by the net forces acting upon them. No part of that description demarks object boundaries, except at the 'particle' level.

See: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/912501

From that post then

Yes, exactly. That's s the way it is for things. You could know the exact make-up and location of every particle in a sheep and this, taken by itself, would not tell you that it is a sheep or what a sheep is. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your description has already demarked the sheep by selecting "the exact make-up and location of every particle in a sheep". The object at that point has already been defined, despite not stating that the object constitutes a sheep.

Asking for objects to be defined in terms of sets of particles is like trying to figure out what the letter "a" is, what it does, and how it should be distinguished from other letters/the background, by only looking at the shape of the letter, the pixels that make it up, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that. It's just perhaps ink particles on parhaps paper particles. There's two 'kinds' of substances there that can more or less be sorted, but at best you can say of this system is that here's where the particles of the one substance are, and here's where the particles of the other substance are, and perhaps each of those subsets constitutes an 'object', since there's at least one way to determine their approximate bounds. Other information is missing, such as that it is the darker substance that is more of interest, and that it can contain meaning, but it's more meaningful when considered from a limited set of view points.

I'd argue that the question: "why should anything from physics prefer this particular subset of particles which humans collectively describe as 'pumpkin'?" is simply the wrong sort of question and itself presumes things that I don't think are true, namely that "what things are" is completely a function of "what they are made of."

Remember that I'm more interested in where the pumpkin stops than what it is. My wording (that you quoted there) attempts to convey that. "What things are" does not, and such wording already presumes the preferred grouping of this particular subset of particles.

But something has totally different properties, how is it "the same substance?"

There's no convention for comparing materials from different universes, where 'is the same substance' can meaningfully be assessed. It is on the list of things requiring a convention, and in this case, not having one.

Non-relational properties, the properties things have when they interact with nothing else and with no parts of themselves, are, at the very least, epistemicaly inaccessible.

Such as the property of 'existence', just to name one.
The only property I'm interested in is "is a member of this one preferred subset of particles/substances": Particles not in that set are members of different (disjoint?) preferred subsets of substances. I think a contradiction is reached if the sets are not disjoint.

I believe demonstrates that the conventions surrounding objects are determined by their properties.

I believe the conventions are determined from consideration by the intellect that finds the utility in the convention.

I mean, what is the alternative, that conventions re objects don't have anything to do with objects themselves?

Without the convention, there are no 'objects themselves'.

Likewise, you can encode an MP3 song into all sorts of media: — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's encoded in the digital expansion of Pi. Can't get rid of that one, but does that mean that any song, recorded or not, is 'out there'? Why does its existence in Pi not matter? Because it doesn't.

The fact that those equations can be taught and learned and put to use means there’s at least something intelligible about them, doesn’t it? — Wayfarer

Sure, I'm not saying that physics isn't intelligible. I'm saying that it doesn't seem to supervene on comprehension by some intellect. Some say it does. I'm just not one of them.

Maybe the mathematics that the universe seems to follow/obey is descriptive. Maybe it is proscriptive. Those are different views, but neither view seems to have object bounds as something independent of the intellect.

Your ‘non-standard view’ is very much like the definition of being that is offered in this post from one of the protagonists in a Platonic dialogue:

I could not follow the gist of the dialog, sorry.

Are we outside the language game within the realm of Kant’s noumena? — ucarr

I believe that the principal way which we distinguish objects is with the sense of sight. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you read the OP, I'm not asking how we distinguish objects. I'm asking how such distinctions are physical, not just ideals.
I give many examples illustrating what I'm after.

My point being the fact you mention the "physical" means you acknowledge there is a "non-physical" that stands guard just over the boundary of what you (or presumably, the majority) consider physicality. — Outlander

I'm using 'physics' here to mean 'more fundamental than the comprehension of an intellect'.

Basically, my statement is though you in intent ask one question, three questions are in fact begged of the viewer.

What is physicality? What is a basis? Determined by who? Is said basis justified? By or denounced by what? What is constitution? The sub-questions are truly endless.

Kindly apply some of these questions to some of my examples, that I can glean what you mean by them. I always try to be open to having begging logic and biases identified.

you can just implement a particular kind of control where you can ostensively point at things and say a word — Apustimelogist

Trick is to do it without saying the word. Any word immediately invokes a convention.
There's no 'importance to survival' since the question is being asked in absence of anything which can meaningfully assign 'importance', salience, or which can meaningfully 'survive'.

This topic was called the problem of 'natural kinds' when I was at university. — bert1

I looked that up, and it seems to be a different problem, about kinds, not the objective limits of a thing's extension.

But then surely the concept of an object as an objective thing would be incoherent? — Apustimelogist

Kind of looks that way, doesn't it?

'Connected' means to be joined to something else. — javi2541997

But [ object, connected, joined, touching ] all seem to be restricted to mere concepts, having similar lack of physical basis. OK, touching sort of has some physical basis since electricity passes through circuits that are everywhere 'touching', except this isn't true in say a transistor, so it still gets fuzzy.
Still, there is no actual touching of a pair of particles. There is only 'sufficient proximity'.

I can't see how the air or the clouds could be golden too, according to your argument.

My argument just follows somebody's definition of 'connected'. I don't think it was yours. You've not really provided a rigorous one that would allow the existence of multiple objects, a distninction where say the twig would turn to gold, but not the moon.

"what constitutes an 'object' is entirely a matter of language/convention. There's no physical basis for it."
— noAxioms

Is this the premise you're examining? — ucarr

Yes.

I would only quibble with the topic of a "physical basis". Does that mean a basis in physics? — Manuel

It means a basis in something other than semiotics/language/convention. That doesn't leave much except for physics.
I mean, there is quantum physics, where there are these fundamental particles/field-disturbances. Those are pretty dang objective 'things'. It's when you start collecting them together into sets of multiple particles, where physics has little if anything to say about where the set of particles is bounded. Mathematically, any subset is as good as another, so there's no correct answer to 'what one subset of particles is this particle a member?'. Absent a correct answer to that, there doesn't seem to be an objective 'object'.

Note that I switched to 'objective' there instead of 'physical', which is dangerous because the word has connotations of 'not subjective' and has little implication of 'not subject to convention'.

Look at the visual field that includes the pumpkin. Feel of the pumpkin with your hand. Smell the pumpkin. Where in any of this data is pumpkin? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Don't care. The question is, why should anything from physics prefer this particular subset of particles which humans collectively describe as 'pumpkin'?
When a kid points to it, the convention is implied. It's obvious to most humans that the object of attention is this fruit that the kid wants to know the name of.
I have an autistic son, and such conventions are not so obvious. You point to something, and he's not considering the thing being pointed to. He's looking at the end of your finger, wondering what's there that you're talking about. Not all conventions we find so natural come naturally to someone not neural-normal.

But when a toddler points towards a pumpkin and asks what it is, you know they mean the pumpkin, not "half the pumpkin plus some random parts of the particular background it is set against."

But the phaser beam (the beam itself) does not know this.

I've been puzzling over, and reading up on, the basic dictum of Plato's metaphysics, which is 'to be, is to be intelligible'. — Wayfarer

Quite the epistemological definition, but there is no 'intelligible' in physics.
I took a very nonstandard view when crafting my definition of 'to be', which is more along the lines of 'being part of the cause of a given event/state'. I avoided epistemology with that one at least since I wanted 'being' to be prior to awareness.

And didn't my comment elaborate on that very idea? — Wayfarer

Indirectly. The comment talked about even bugs having gestalts, but a bug has no pragmatic use for a concept of a foot.
All kind of off topic, since I am looking for an 'object' that is independent of a gestalt, even if discussion of it necessarily isn't.

If Midas touches one of the elements, the set turns gold. However, because 'everything' is connected, we may believe that the ground and then the earth will become golden as well. I disagree with the latter. — javi2541997

Doesn't stop with Earth either.
So what changes along the way? In the absence of semiotics, why demarks the border between what turns to gold and what doesn't? It isn't being 'connected' because there's no border to that. If that was the definition, the universe would contain exactly one object, rendering the term essentially meaningless.

There are no trees in the desert, thus I don't understand how it is dependant on the first set of twig + tree + forest.

I don't understand how it got from twig to tree. The word 'connected' was floated around, but no finite physical definition of that was supplied. If it means particles that interact by fields of force, then the twig is connected to the desert because there's force between the two subsets. There's no finite limit to that.

Several people made similar comments. The concept of 'twig is part of a tree, but not part of a continent' is pretty intuitive for a human, but when you take away the human convention, it's not so easy to pin down.

Everything is not necessarily connected. — javi2541997

Then come up with a definition of 'connected' that doesn't make everything into one connected thing.

In order for everything to be connected, you have to have separate things that connect. — Fire Ologist

Or there is but one thing. By the only definition of 'connected' I've seen, it implies one universal object, one that Midas cannot avoid touching.

Otherwise you are saying all is one thing and nothing else.

So come up with a better definition of 'thing' that still doesn't involve human convention. How is a device, to which the convention has not been communicated, able to perform its function on the object indicated, and not on just a part of it, or on more than what was indicated.

My liver is connected to my brain but my liver is separated from my brain.

By what definition is this true? Sure, by language, 'liver' and 'brain' demark a region of certain biological life forms. But in the absence of that language, is 'this' the same thing as 'that'? Perhaps this and that are the same life form. Perhaps this and that each refer to only a cell wall and not an organ or organism at all. Only with language/semiotics does it become demarked, which is what this topic asserts.

I say 'semiotics' because it isn't just language. A seagull might pick out the eyes of some fresh dead thing it finds. It doesn't have words for that, but it knows that eyes are the best part.

I don't think so. — frank

You don't think so what? My comment that you quoted was a reply to your suggestion of communicating the convention to the device, and then you say "I don't think so", which makes it sound like either programming the device isn't a form of communication, or maybe denying your earlier suggestion of making the device 'smart'.

There's no physical evidence behind the way we divide the world up.

I pretty much said that in my OP, yes.

The sci-fi examples or the Midas Touch I think are unanswerable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But that's an answer isn't it? — noAxioms

Certainly.
...
But we could consider that an AI or machine could distinguish things based on form. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course. A machine has access to the same conventions and language as biological things. An AI would often be able to utilize the appropriate convention if there is language involved, but there still isn't language involved in shooting a gun, so it must rely on typical conventions and guesswork. Worse, it isn't the gun that needs to decide, but rather the energy beam that it shoots that needs to figure this stuff out.

A machine charged with eliminating White Snake's "Lonely Road,"

Sounds like somebody communicated with it, demarking the boundaries, however arduous the task might be.

Note too that you're treating data like an object, not a particular, but all patterns that meets a certain criteria. Your question then becomes, where it that line drawn between something that matches sufficiently and something that isn't. The boundaries are demarked, but not clearly, so judgment must be employed.

Same logic can be used with a gun: "Kill Bob", which can be interpreted as "eliminate the existence of the current state of Bob" which is effortless since Bob is continuously changing. So it becomes 'make a sufficiently significant change to Bob, which may leave a life form behind that no longer qualifies as Bob.

Ok thanks. I was wondering if perhaps my last post was so far off the mark that you gave up on me (possible); or so brilliant that I thoroughly refuted your argument (unlikely); or you just got bored (also possible. I'm simulated out myself). — fishfry

I'll sign off if I feel I'm done. Don't like to ghost a conversation. Your post was way off the mark, which made it very easy to keep the reply short.

The last thing I remember is that you said the sims have actual bodies, made in the sim factory operated by the simulators. If I understood you correctly, that has massive implications and I find it hard to believe this is what Bostrom had in mind.

No factory anywhere. No bodies in the GS world. The bodies are in this world. I, like most people, Bostrom included, presume I have a body.

By simulated to you mean manufactured?

You're thinking of an android. A simulated anything is the product of a computer simulation. A storm simulator has one simulated storm. The storm is probably not created, but is rather already there, part of the initial state. The purpose of simulating it is to see where it goes, and how strong it gets, and which areas need to evacuate.

I do not know what that means.

Then we're pretty stuck. Most people can at least get that much out of Bostrom's abstract. If you can't, but rather insist on this weird replicant track, I don't know how to unmire you.

You said the sims have bodies.

You don't think you have a body then? You think perhaps you were created in a factory instead of being born of your mother? I said that nobody (but you) suggests this, but you persist.

Where are you?

At my keyboard. Both it and I are in this world, the world that I experience. You seem to find that to be an odd answer.

A gestalt is a meaningful whole - basically, an object, but an object as perceived by a cognising subject, which distinguishes the object from its sorroundings and sees it as a unit. — Wayfarer

But I suspect that nothing 100 million years ago envisioned a foot as a distinct object. That was the point of my comment. Maybe I don't give the being of that age enough credit. It's all just either 'me', 'not me', or perhaps bulk goods.

Is object just not a coherent concept? — Apustimelogist

Question is, it is anything more than a concept? Nobody is suggesting that as a concept, it is incoherent. Well, mostly nobody.

Still, an inanimate object can make distinctions you program it to recognize — frank

Then you've communicated the convention to it. The question is if 'object' is defined in the absence of that communication.

The phaser doesn't have any motives that aren't given to it. — frank

Are the motives given to the beam itself? Because the phaser doesn't pick what disappears, the beam does. It also doesn't shoot past the thing it just disintegrated, a strange side effect for something that emits a beam for a full half second or so.

THEN one can look closer at the two things touching and learn they are so connected they might be one thing — Fire Ologist

But I believe the essential point is that it only impacts things that are connected to one another. — javi2541997

But everything is connected, or nothing is. I mean, everything interacts via fields of force (as jkop put it). What is a connection if not that?

I thought you said Midas touched a twig, not a forest. Why do you think the entire forest becomes golden? By this logic, wouldn't literally everything on Earth become golden when a twig is touched. — NotAristotle

Not just Earth. So the logic (from 'twig' to 'tree') doesn't work.

how do we know the gun doesn't know ... — ucarr

Because the gun 'knowing' anything violates the OP.

Apologies for slow reply fishfry, but another topic has consumed much of my attention and I didn't even see your notify in my mention list.

We're simulated biological beings

Do you mean to say that? It's revelatory. If your position is that the simulators are creating androids or robots, as in Data from Star Trek but perfectly biological. — fishfry

I meant to say that 'we are 'simulated (biological beings)'. Your interpretation of those words was 'we are (simulated biological) beings', which is perhaps what Data is. Data is an imitation human in the same world as its creator. The sim hypothesis is that we're biological beings in a different (simulated) world. I've said this over and over, included in the very statement you quoted above your response there.
No, it's not Blade runner. No robots/replicants. You seem quite determined to paint a very different picture from the one Bostrom posits. Your running with this idea for most of the post seems more designed to disengage than to communicate.

I say your mind is just your own subjective experiences and thoughts.

This works.

I mean, you do have subjective experiences, right? You don't just eat breakfast.

In my world, I do both. I am not in the GS world, so I don't do either there.

No mind object. Disagree. There IS a mind object.

I find 'process' not to fall under the term 'object'. It's not an assertion of ontology, just how I use the language.

Thus there was a time dinosaurs weren't conditioned by the human understanding. But they still had properties and stuff. Like they had teeth and bowel movements. They had feet. — fdrake

Did they have feet? Did anything (back then) treat dinosaur feet as a particular? To the dinosaur, probably not. If it steps on something sharp, it might perceive that it hurts down there and to back off the further bearing of weight, but that's it. There's no no reason to draw a line where 'foot' is no longer applicable and 'rest of leg' comes into play. That's a complex model of a body with distinct parts all hooked together, and the dinos probably didn't work with such needlessly complex models. Maybe I'm wrong about this.
They likely did have concepts of some parts. There's this stegosaurus over there and one wants to maintain awareness of the Thaginator, the most dangerous end of it. That's a particular that both of them might model as a particular thing.

The chemistry examples are good. Chemistry, at a basic level, treats molecules as objects. At least small molecules. For big ones, the objects become more like receptor sites and such, and we start getting into semiotics when working at that level.

Or I suppose you bite the bullet and make all of natures' processes effectively arbitrarily demarcated from each other. Even when they have different laws and levels.

Another good point. Demarcation where the rules change. That's better than just 'if I pull here, the object is what all comes along with it', which is a difficult definition to apply. I cannot define a tree that way, because who knows where it will break when I pull hard enough. I might get an entire stand of trees if I pull in the right place, or I might get only a twig.

The process there is a collision, and in terms of momentum transfer the truck+load is the relevant object.

Sort of. The momentum transfer there is almost the same whether the truck is empty, or loaded with double its unladen mass. It can almost be modelled as a car hitting a somewhat malleable brick wall.

But for the process of unloading the truck, the truck+load behaves as a truck with a load in it.

Yes. There's purpose to that activity, making it normative.

One of the books I was singing the praises of a couple of years back was Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter. He’s a maths emeritus (now deceased although he lived until a ripe old age. I wrote to him about his book in 2022 and got a nice reply.) It’s not a fringe or new-age book, it’s firmly grounded in cognitive science and empiricism. A glance at the chapter abstracts in the link will convey something of its gist. — Wayfarer

I will try to find this one. Yes, it seems relevant. I looked at the table of contents, if not chapter abstracts. First try: trip to the library.

It’s about the fact that science is conducted by humans, who are subjects of experience, who are attempting to arrive at the purported ‘view from nowhere’ which is believed to be something approaching complete objectivity — Wayfarer

I don't think 'a view from nowhere' is particularly coherent in our physics. An objective description may well be coherent, but it isn't a view. A picture cannot be drawn from it. Such seems to be the nature of our physics. I think this objective description is what is being sought, but anybody who calls it a view is going down the wrong path.

That's an easy one; it would be the tree in its entirety that turns to gold. — NotAristotle

These explanations are sufficient. To touch a branch of a tree is to touch a tree. No confusion there. — L'éléphant

Why is that the answer? Why is it easy that the other answers are wrong? What if the twig was the intent? How did Midas not touch the forest?

The twig is a portion of the tree, and the set of the latter is the density that makes up a forest. If Midas touches a twig, everything turns gold unintentionally because each element is interdependent. It would be different if Midas cut a twig with another object (like an axe) and then touched it. Once an element has been lost, the chain of turning into gold is no longer present. — javi2541997

OK, so it's an attachment thing, but the tree is attached to the ground, and thus to the other trees, no? It wouldn't break if I lifted it by the trunk if it wasn't attached so.

I am beginning to believe that you are contriving, intentionally or unintentionally, a difficulty that is not there. — L'éléphant

Well, the difficulty isn't there for us because we have language and conventions. It isn't difficulty for physics because physics doesn't care. It has not need for it. It seems only a difficulty for fictions, and it's no problem of mine that not all fictions correspond to a meaningful reality. It's a problem for me only as an illustration of how people accept such impossibilities as sufficiently plausible that they're not even questioned.

Right. Just because everything is touching, like the tree touches the Forrest floor, etc, doesn’t mean you lose sight of the separate things that are touching, you can’t lose site of the trees because of the forest either. — Fire Ologist

We lost sight of the twig because of the tree. How is that different?

It could do that with AI directed actuation. Just tell the AI what you want to shoot — frank

Again, that evades the question by using language to convey the demarcation to the device.

You've just designed a gun that emits a destructive heat ray. Your IC board supports three settings for the temperature of the emitted heat ray. In order to test your settings, you turn a dial to the middle setting. This setting maxes out at the combustion threshold for common notebook paper. Pointing your gun, you fire at a notebook paper poster framed within the boundary of an iron rectangle. Will your gun make a discrimination, thus destroying only the paper? Success! The poster bursts into flame, burns up to gossamer black carbon and stops at the edge of the iron frame. — ucarr

The poster doesn't burst into flames. It ignites only where the gun is pointed, and spreads from there. So the gun hasn't defined any definition of demarcation, the metal frame has.

Glad you're reaching for real examples though. They're hard to find outside of fiction.

I meant in the sense that for humans, there existed objects - stuff, placeholders, particulars, whatevs you wanna call it - prior to our purposes and conceptualisations. — fdrake

I don't understand this comment. If these things are prior to our purposes and conceptualisations, then how is this relationship 'for humans'?

Regardless I think you're making a distinction between purposive/normative and physical, whereas there's other graduations - like you might think of chemical, biological, systemic, ecological, intentional etc strata as other strata of existence in which nonarbitrarily individuated objects may exist.

I am kind of looking for specific examples. Chemical seems more concerned with 'bulk goods' rather than objects. Biology can work. It is a living thing, so it kind of has 'bounds', but I attacked those bounds in my OP. A tree can distinguish between the life form itself and the parts it sheds (leaves) every autumn, which thus arguably construe objects even while still on the tree.
A bacteria cell (brought up by somebody above) chasing down another is closer to chemical: It has evolved to react to chemical signals and absorb nutrients: follow its nose so to speak. This is definitely biosemiotics, brought up by Wayfarer. Not much 'object' about that until it has to absorb all of some other 'thing' and not just take 'bites' as it can.

Though you might want to say that such things still have a physical basis, because they relate to distinctions in physical processes. Bodies stuff is still star stuff. But then the ascription of a physical basis to a distinction means nothing other than a distinction. If you think everything's physical anyway. In other words, if there is a distinction drawable between two terms, in that analysis, it must be done in terms of physical properties since all properties would be stipulated to be physical.

and you may need to clarify what you would pre-theoretically count as an object.

For purposes of this discussion, "All of whatever is indicated (e.g. 'this', 'that over there'), and not more than what is indicated". How said thing is indicated is not entirely defined, but pointing, touch, and semi-enveloping are good places to start. Yes, it depends on context, but the context is usually absent in the cases I care about. A phaser set to 'kill' (and not just disintegrate) implies a single biological context, and probably not meant as a way to dispose of a container of toxic waste, despite the wonderful utility of using it that way.

The arche-fossil serves as the linch-pin for Meillassoux to assert that there is a reality independent of human perception and cognition. — Wayfarer

This seems to presume a non-epistemological definition of 'real'. I'm all for that, but not all are (notably those holding that being is fundamentally tied to our experience), and I don't use a 'realist' definition of 'real' myself, but I state the definition it if I need to use it.

A counter-argument to that, is that any meaningful conception of existence just is a human conception.

Sort of. What if something nonhuman has a meaningful concept of existence? How is that different from a human that isn't you having a meaningful concept of existence? Secondly, a meaningful concept of existence may be dependent on conceptions, but existence itself need not be.

I think we are meandering away from the question in the OP. — L'éléphant

Thank you for your contribution to the thread. I am enjoying the wider discussion this has inspired. No need to throw water on it yet.

The question is:
Is there any physical basis for what constitutes a 'thing' or 'object'?
— noAxioms
Object, of course, here, is the "thing" that philosophical theories have been trying to explain.

Best defined through the numerous examples in the OP, plus also the 'Midas' one that I thought of later. I'm sure there are more, but most examples are fictional since fiction can use a convention that the consumer of the fiction can presume, but that physics cannot.

Yes, there is a physical basis for what constitute a thing: it has to be finite, it is complete in our conception of it, and we have a coherent idea of what this thing is.
That is why we will never call the universe a thing.

Off topic, but agree, that would be a category error. A 'thing' is created in time, essentially assembled from pre-existing stuff into its thingness for a duration.
My OP is more concerned about the boundary of a given thing. What all is included? What isn't? What is the physical basis for whatever answer is given for those questions.

We don't call consciousness or the mind a thing

Some do.

We call the trees things.

I mentioned a tree in the Midas example a ways up, which illustrates the ambiguity of what exactly was indicated.

The sci-fi examples or the Midas Touch I think are unanswerable. There is no one canonical dividing line for entities to refer to when dividing objects. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But that's an answer isn't it? There's no one line, and yet a line is shown to be in the fiction, as more or less expected by the consumer of the fiction. The answer is, the fiction cannot ever be real unless we either missed something, or there's a way to convey the convention to the 'device'.

Real world examples here might be instructive. If we want to delineate the boundaries of something for a machine using ultrasound, radar, etc., we might have it calibrated "just-so" as to have returns only come on the sort of thing we want to delineate.

That's a pretty good example. We want it to ignore uninteresting stuff, but cannot always. We want it to convey discreet interesting 'objects' but it doesn't always. A fetal ultrasound is going to see some of Mom's guts, but the range and aim is designed to minimize this. The navy sonar picks up whales when it wants subs, and it maybe misses some of the subs. Heck, do they have sonar-resistant subs like they do for ships with minimal radar profies? Don't see how that is easily done without making them a lot less quiet moving through the water, which would defeat the purpose.

Another good example might be using a specific sort of solvent so that only the thing you wish to dissolve ends up being washed away. Draino, for instance, is going to interact with hair, soap scum, etc. in a way different from how it interacts with a metal pipe, and this difference essentially delineates between "pipe" and "clog."

Both bulk substances, not 'objects', but still another very relevant example.

Am I understanding you to be saying that you are unsure of whether trees are "things" or "objects?" — NotAristotle

Well, once the word 'tree' is used, the convention has been stated. We know what a tree is, and it may or may not cover the underground parts, but it is definitely separate from some other tree.
But the question abou the tree was illustrated in my Midas example when I first brough that up. Midas touches a twig. What turns to gold? The twig, branch, tree, forest? The word 'tree' was never conveyed. The intent might not even be there. The touch may have been unintended.
Answer of course is that it's fiction, so there's no requirement for there to be a correct answer. There never seems to be an answer, which seems to support my suggestion of the lack of physical basis for what constitutes all of the 'thing' indicated.

whereas "half a dog" is clearly a half. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's why the phaser set to 'kill' is somewhat clearly defined. Life forms usually have reasonably clear boundaries, but we still have trouble shooting the spider off Kirk's chest. A phaser set to 'disintegrate' (same function) has far more trouble delimiting its job.

To say that we know things only as they appear ‘to us’ is indeed to fall into scepticism and relativism. — Wayfarer

Not, relativism, no!!! Don't fall down into that wretched pit of scum and villainy (with me).

So tying this back to the OP noAxioms, it means that if we question the makeup of a human (does it include the clothes or bugs on the sleeve) — frank

I was partly asking what all is part of a human, but I'm also asking what all is included in 'that ->' when pointing at a human, but I'm actually pointing to the bug.

we'll find that however we approach the question, the conclusion will be an exercise in pragmatism.

This presumes that the physical device (which artificially made to serve a pragmatic purpose) will be able to glean the pragmatic intent when being used. Bottom line, don't use a big gun to shoot a bug off your buddy's chest.

Another fictional example to add to my list, an older one this time: The Midas touch.
King Midas touches a twig. No convention/intention is conveyed. Does the bark change to gold? The twig/branch/tree/forest? How does the curse know where to demark the effect?

Well, we do have machines that do this sort of thing, e.g., autonomous spotter drones that can distinguish tanks and IFVs from other objects. Less excitingly, there are license plate readers with can distinguish discrete characters on a moving vehicle. — Count Timothy von Icarus

All examples of something for which intent has been conveyed by some sort of language. These things aren't required to 'do your function to' 'that', all without language. The function is clear enough, but the 'that' part isn't if the 'object' in question hasn't in any way been described. A license plate reader cannot function if it doesn't know to only process 'license platey' sorts of portions of images.
I worked on a early version of such software, implementing a bin-picking algorithm to have a robot arm pull objects out of a 3D jumble in a bin, always grasping it at certain places regardless of how it was in there. At some point you've pulled all the easy ones and have to either reach too deep, or reorient the remaining ones around in order to get ones with the correct side up, which takes longer. But at least the device knew the bounds of the object in question, and pretty much how to recognize its orientation from any presented angle. We didn't get it working with all types. We had these water pumps that defied the ability of the machine doing the picking.

Your license plate reader likely needs to recognize 'vehicle' and know where to look for the plates. I live by a toll road and all the toll booths have now been replaced by plate and/or transponder readers. It gets really hard in winter weather when the plates (front and back) can become unreadable. I have a transponder, so it isn't an issue with me.
Three different toll rates: Transponder is cheapest. Pay proactively on the web is next cheapest. If they have to bill you, that is considerably more.

The Problem of the Many is, to my mind, a problem that only shows up if we accept the starting presuppositions of a substance metaphysics, where objects properties inhere in their constituent parts—a building block view where "things are what they are made of." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is more in line with the topic. A part is indicated. The question is, is it a part, or is it the 'object' in question? It might be part of something larger, and that larger thing may itself be designated to be part of something even larger, with no obvious end to the game. Hence, the convention is needed. There is no physical way to resolve this without the convention, and the convention isn't physical.

The article you linked used a cloud as its example. Two statements said that there was one and only one cloud. That convention, having been stated, left all the other premises (eight in all) consistent with each other despite the article saying that they were mutually exclusive. I didn't understand that.

On such a view, it's a serious problem that objects can't be identified in terms of discrete ensembles of building blocks.

Yes, which is why the discussion of the problem is relevant.

Process views, which are often inspired by information theory or semiotics, or the marriage of the two (Shannon's model helpfully recreated the Augustine/Piercean semiotic triad) don't have this issue.[/quote]How would it solve some of the problems I've used in examples? I have a device that yields the mass of whatever I indicate. I indicate the ground. Does it give the mass of a molecule, pebble, hill, tectonic plate? Does it include the moon since the moon is matter "bound to Earth by physical fields of force" as @jkop puts it.

Ultimately, I do think Locke's view of "real essences" having to be defined in terms of "mental essences" gets something right here. Without minds, without the plurality of phenomenological horizons, you have a world of complete unity.

Agree, so long as 'minds' is not anthropocentrically defined.

There's a good definition - a thing is a phenomenon that holds interest for people. — T Clark

So since there's no people holding interest in my examples, you seem to agree with my views? There is no 'thing' outside of intent/convention.

If there was nothing there until we perform the convention of constructing an object, our objects would be in total disarray, incommunicable, unspeakable to another object-maker — Fire Ologist

Same comment. In the absence of the convention, there is only disarray, no objects. My topic is about the absence of convention, not how the convention might come to be by that which finds use for it.

If I call a ball an object — Philosophim

Then you've used language to invoke a convention. I can't do that with any of tools I mentioned. I cannot explain to my device what my intent is when using it.

Some objects are socially constructed and exist only by conventions, other objects are physical and exist regardless of conventions. — jkop

I contest this.

Talk of a gutter is conventional, but what it refers to consists of physical parts bound by fields of force into a recognizable whole.

All particles anywhere are parts, bound by fields of force and such. Earth's mass pulls on planets in the Andromeda galaxy Does that mean that Earth and some other planet are one object? Where does the influence end?

Sure, it's pretty intuitive for a human to consider a pipe section in isolation to be an 'object', but that's the convention doing its thing. Consider the railing mentioned in the OP. I've already used a convention by calling it a railing. I've strapped a tool to it, and it needs to move 'this'. What does it move? What does it leave behind? The tool has no easier time doing the task for a pipe section or a ball. There's no reason beyond human convention as to where 'that thing' is delimited.

A number of people seem to have conceded my point that the demarcation of an object is strictly an ideal, a mental convention.

By late 23rd C, phasers are smart. — ENOAH

Phaser work because they're at least as smart as humans. The object is demarked by knowing the intent of the shot.

It allows them to eliminate whatever, and only whatever, the writer desires. — Banno

This also reduces the issue to an ideal, that of the writer instead of the smart gun. This applies to all the fictional examples.

The biggest hurdle to this this task is fundamentally you are trying to find object in the absence of language, but you have to use language as an instrument to do it. — Fire Ologist

Using language to do it is no problem. The physical device is what cannot use language to do it.

As someone remarked in a philosophical essay I once read, ‘there’s no such thing as a thing.’ Things or objects are designated as such by a subject for a purpose — Wayfarer

I guess I'm reproducing that effort with this post. I totally agree, but I've not seen the paper in question, which is no doubt worded better.
I didn't see the relevance of Arche-fossils. Had to look it up.

Dinosaurs. — fdrake

Dinosaurs have intent. Predator and prey both need to recognize each other as distinct objects/threats/kin etc. Their convention is sufficiently pragmatic for their needs.

A human being "raised by wolves" without language would still experience objects, no? — Count Timothy von Icarus

At least as well as the dinosaurs, yes. The fictional wrist teleporter on the other hand doesn't experience objects since there's no physical definition of it, and we're presuming that it isn't an AI device which attempts to glean the intent of whatever is using the device. The device isn't in any way 'interested in' any specific interpretation of what it's being required to do.

Like face recognition. A device that sets boundaries. — Fire Ologist

Meaning definitely needs to be conveyed (via programming, huge database, etc) to perform such a task. I'm looking for an example where one need not communicate with the device for it to work.

The boundaries of such a device are loosely 'face'. Hair possibly inhibits its function. Don't know if a new hairstyle would fool it.

Anyhow, you might be interested in the Problem of the Many, which is closely related: — Count Timothy von Icarus

The top half of your post concerned the foundations of language, which seems not particularly relevant since I am trying to find object in the absence of language. The problem of the many is very relevant, and I have not yet read all of the article, but it seems to hit on many of my points.

The linked article lists 8 'mutually inconsistent' claims about what a cloud is, but I don't find the list necessarily mutually consistent without additional premises, if one starts out by accepting that there is but the one cloud and all subsets of it are not a cloud at all, but a mere portion. Maybe I didn't read it carefully enough. The cloud thing is very much like the tornado, except that from a distance the tornado's boundary is still kind of vague, especially where it's upper bound is.

You post has caused much of the delay in making this reply. Too much reading to do, a good thing.

The problem here is that fundemental particles increasingly don't seem so fundemental, having beginnings and ends, as well as only being definable in terms of completely universal fields (i.e., the whole) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I was going to bring something like that up. Quantization of field excitements has an awful lot of objectness to it, but even it fails to have identity and clear boundaries.

Wittgenstein had supposed a form of logical atomism, the notion that there were elementary facts - simples - from which a complete description of the world might be constructed. — Banno

Does this help? I'm trying to get a classical device like the fictional phaser to apply its function to a classical object without using language to convey intent. A person getting shot might be a collection of simples, but the physical device needs to select which simples to disintegrate, and which to leave be. What does it do if the shooter's aim is off, or he pans it around?

I shoot at a chessboard. Does it take out a piece, a square and whatever's on it? The whole game? Table too? How to design the gun to do the right thing? Can't be done of course.
Anything indicated is likely composite, and the physical is required to glean which simples are members of the composite without any conveying of intended composite. When put that way, the problem is simple and unsolvable, requiring information that is nonexistent, or at least unavailable.

What constitutes an object is not to be found in physics or in the physical structures around us, but in what we are doing with our language and what we are doing with the objects involved in those activities. We give consideration to the broom if we are sweeping, but perhaps only to the broomstick if we are using it to move something that is out of our reach, or to the brush if we are looking for hair for a scarecrow... — Banno

Agree to all of this. I am trying to figure out how something that isn't a person (or a device with intent) can do the same thing.

One can see that I am sort of flailing around here. I'm getting likes to all sorts of stuff I've not read before (for which I am grateful), and having that already under my belt would have helped, if only to let me reply more promptly.

But how does the phaser beam know this convention?
— noAxioms

Because the phaser beam is designed by an advanced civilization with, say, quantum computing powers, even the phaser beam has been uploaded with enough that it knows what a reasonable person of reasonable intelligence knows. — ENOAH

OK, the reasonable premise is that it is a smart device. You set it to kill (disintegrate), so it's going to work on a biological being as previously defined by its makers. So what if I shoot a teapot? What if I want to kill the scary spider on Kirk's chest without killing Kirk? How does the device handle that without needing to explain it at length first, something nobody has time for in combat?

I should post this on a trekkie site. Star Trek cannot be wrong, so they are obligated to pony up an answer, just like the star wars guys needed a plausible explanation for the "Kessel Run in Less Than 12 Parsecs" fiasco.

Same goes for that object "me". And that's the real point. "I" am a convention. What the body really is is accessed only in its is-ing. — ENOAH

Yes, it seems clear, even to animals that not only have concepts of critter, stick, whatever, but also of ownership of the object in question, such as 'my eggs', as opposed to 'no, my (food) eggs now, sorry'. But in the end, it is only convention, with apparently no physical basis.

Give the two halves a new Signifier; suddenly the ontology has changed! — ENOAH

Yes again. Suddenly a broken pipe is two unbroken gutters.
It's metaphysical since it's about what it is. Is it ontology?

You know what happens if a fly gets into the teleportation chamber! — fishfry

Any chamber, like a DeLorean time machine, is a demarked volume, so what is affected is fairly unambiguous.

Are non-climbers failing to see real things that are really there, even apart from the practice of climbing? — petrichor

They're failing to see what is relevant. Names are given to relevant things. A novice hasn't the sight, so hasn't the names.


Again, thanks to all for your responses.

Thank you all for your replies. My topic was mostly an observation. If you can think of exceptions to my 'it isn't physics' assertion, such counterarguments would be especiallywelcome.

one could decide to cut a pipe into two halves either by cutting across its length, so you get two shorter pipes — Ludwig V

What if it isn't at the center? A what point does it cease to be two pipes rather than one pipe and a scrap resulting from me getting the length of it just right. Probably the line is somewhere around where the scrap is no longer useful as a short pipe elsewhere. The distinction comes from language and purpose, and is not physical, which is the point of me posting all this.

or by cutting along its length

Or in a double spiral, resulting in a pair of very difficult to disentangle Slinkys.

When I posited painting the pipe, I did not consider painting the gutters.

The painting helps get the mental concept across. It in no way helps the phaser gun which you intended to only disintegrate the blue gutter.

Depends on what you mean by thing/object — SophistiCat

My point exactly. Nobody has explained to the phaser gun what was meant. It just magically seems to know the intent of the wielder, as is also the case with all the other fictional examples.

If you mean something like "moderate-sized specimens of dry goods,"

What if I mean 'that tornado over there'? It's a physical thing of sorts, or rather a vaguely localaized effect that emerges from non-tornado matter, which is mostly air, something hard to point to. Where are the boundaries of a tornado? The ground is a reasonably decent lower bound, at least the part of the ground that remains stationary. The rest? All a matter of convention, and the convention doesn't care in that case.

We all can’t start or have a conversation without making distinctions and understanding what these distinctions refer to. — Fire Ologist

Agree, but the point is that I cannot have a conversation with my physical device (such as the examples in the OP), so I can't convey meaning to it. All I can convey to it is 'this' (in the case of the teleport wristband), or 'that' (in the case of anything that can be pointed).

I said Terminator franchise solved the problem, but it didn't. In T2, the liquid terminator can imitate anything it touches, which means there is some kind of physical definition of 'what it touches'. So what if it touches the red gutter? Can it now imitate a gutter, or can it imitate the pipe, or perhaps the entire plumbing system of a city? Somehow meaning is conveyed through mere contact, and it can be driven to contradiction.

we can’t speak without standing on some basis that grounds the function of those words.

I'm asking if something that to which meaning cannot be conveyed still perform as designed. How does the gun know the boundaries of what it is to disintegrate? You say words can do this, but I can't tell it. Sure, I can build an AI device that can parse verbal language so as to convey intent, but that just puts the device into conceptual territory. It ceases to be physical anymore if it's done that way.

There is only one world, that of the simulators. — fishfry

We see things differently then. I have my world, and they have theirs. It's how I use the term 'world'. You don't seem to have a use for the term at all since you don't seem to see two different things to distinguish.

What world are you referencing? I believe you are imagining a world that does not exist

I'm referencing the world that I see when I open my eyes. Whether it exists or not depends on one's definition of 'exists'. To be honest, I don't thing Bostrom quibbled on ontology enough to bother giving his own definition of 'exist'. My dreams seem to exist, else I'd not be aware of them. But again, that's using my definition of 'exists', which is not, BTW, an epistemological definition.

Ok, so you are speaking as if your dream world is the world.

I said neither 'dream world' (which implies a sort of idealism, a very different ontological status) nor 'the world' which implies there's only one.

In dualism, the simulated mind lives in some spiritual realm someone linked to the computation. If I reject dualism, as you prefer me to do, then the mind must live inside the computer somehow. Maybe you can explain that to me?

There is no separate entity called a mind under naturalism. It isn't an object at all. At best, it is a process. Under dualism, the simulation probably fails because the simulated people have no way of connecting to a mind, or at least so say the dualism proponents that insist that a machine cannot summon one, despite their inability to explain how a biological thing accomplishes that.

I pretty much think of myself as the automaton, doing what physics dictates. The arrangement works for the most simple device, and it seems to not need improvement beyond that.

But I have already said that I reject dualism for sake of discussion

Good. Then there's no 'mind' object, in a computer or in a person. Just process, a simulation process in the computer, and mental process in the matter of the simulated people. The word 'mind' has strong dualistic connotations.

Feel free to convince me you have a coherent argument that a real storm and a dreamed or hallucinated storm have the same ontological status.

I never claimed a dream or hallucination. I am talking about a computer simulation, which is neither. It simulates wetness among other things. A dream or hallucination is something a person does, not a computer running a simulation, neither is it something a storm does, simulated or otherwise.

WE are the AGIs in the simulators' world. You don't follow that?

No, that's not what an AGI is. We're simulated biological beings, not a native machine intelligence (a vastly simpler thing to implement).

isn’t it extremely likely, no, inevitable, that you could/would instantly find yourself inside of a solid object of some sort and instantly die? — Mp202020

No. The interface in the video always shows the user rotating in place, so where he is does not change, only things at a distance as the cross section rotates through different things. The rotation never changes the user's coordinates, only walking does, and one does not walk into solid things.
The 2D frog cannot rotate into the interior of a 3D object since it stays put when only rotating.

The same way objects appear in thin air can happen right where you are standing

Again, no. Anywhere else, but not where you're standing. You're always at the axis of (actually plane of) rotation, so rotating does not put you somewhere else (into a solid object say).

You can literally be standing in the same place another object in a separate 3rd dimensional cross section is currently standing at the same time but you are separated by the different 4D location you are at.

The 'other object' is at a different location per your description. At least one of its four coordinates is different than the one where you are.

This is the concept of “parallel” dimensions

Not really what most are talking about when speaking of 'parallel dimensions',

2- I do not understand why burrowing underground in your current 3D cross section would protect you any more than the 3D four-wall structure you built?

I see no need for protection at all.

The game simulates being able to perceive a 4th dimension as a 3-dimensional observer, essentially perceiving a 4th dimension, one 3-dimensional plane at a time. — Tzeentch

Just so, yes. Wonderful implementation done too. His (very capable) computer seems to have a rough time trying to keep up. Mine (not so capable) does even for a 3D world, and I have to turn the resolution and rendering distance down to keep the frame rate reasonable.

your lengthy post — fishfry

It was over 40% shorter than the post to which I was replying. I do try to trend downward when the posts get long.
This one for instance is also about 25% shorter.

I lost the whole damn thing in the forum software.

Funny, because my compose window survives crashes and such. I've had a few power failures, all without loss of the post. Still, I sometimes compose in a word document to prevent such loss.

I do not live in a physical world. I am a mind, instantiated by a computation running in the simulators' computer.

Sound like you're asserting that you exist in a physical world (the one with the computer), just a different world than the one I reference.

I find your choice to not be particularly pragmatic. One end of my house is in this computer, and so is the other end. Since both are at the same location, my house doesn't have any meaningful size. All pragmatic use of size, time, identity, etc is all lost if you say everything is in some device in the base world. This is not confusion, we just use language in apparently very different ways. My saying that you (the sim) are at your computer is a pragmatic way of looking at things. It identifies the simulated location of you relative to the simulated location of your computer, which has far more pragmatic utility than saying that everything that either of us knows about is located at some vaguely random locations in the cloud where the networked simulation is potentially taking place.

If we reject dualism, then ...
...
Our bodies and our world are not being created by the simulation. Only our minds.

That the two are not treated the same seems to be dualism to me. How is your 2nd statement consistent with a rejection of dualism?

I think if we could agree on this

I'm not going to agree that a dualistic view is relevant when Bostrom assumes a different view. Doing so would invalidate any criticism of his proposal.

If I simulate a storm, nothing gets wet.

Nothing in your world gets wet. Things in the simulated world very much get wet, since that wetness is an important part of what affects the storm.

We are not simulations in the sense of the storm. If we were, then there would be a me, and there would be a simulation of me

I don't get any of this comment. The proposal is that we are a product of a simulation just like a simulated storm is also a product of the simulation. There's no difference, no equivocation. Neither creates both a not-simulated thing and also a simulated thing. I don't know where you get that.

We are not being simulated separately from our actual existence.

And yet your comment above seems to suggest something just like that. Nobody but you seems to be proposing both a simulated and actual existence of the same thing.

We have no independent existence outside of the simulation.

Great, we actually agree on some things.

Perhaps you can help me to understand why you believe that, under simulation theory, I am typing on a computer; when in fact by assumption, I am a mind created by a computation executing in the world of the simulators.

Bostrom does not propose a mind separate from the world it experiences. That would be the dualistic assumption that you are dragging in. The simulation just moves mater around, and both the person and the computer in similar proximity are such matter. No demon, no lies being fed to a separate vatted mind.

What is our moral obligation to any AGIs we may happen to create?

An AGI usually refers to a machine intelligence in this world, not a human in a simulated world that cannot interact with ours.

that is, the thoughts and feelings and experiences of humans such as you and I -- are as opaque to our simulators, as they are to us! So in the end, we are a great mystery to our simulators. They probably watch the stuff we humans do and go Wow, that doesn't make ANY sense! — fishfry

If they're human, and they watch what we do and we don't act human, then their simulation is missing critical things. Watching us should be indistinguishable from watching people in their own world, placed in our time.
The thoughts may be opaque to those running the simulation, but not to the simulation itself since the physics Bostrom describes depends on those thoughts. Of course the implementers of the 'future' simulation need not implement it the way Bostrom describes, but Bostrom is looking for optimizations without removing the consciousness part (the most obvious optimization to make).

So the simulators can't read our minds. That means they don't have control over us.

Even if they could read our minds, they still have no control. If they had control, it wouldn't be a simulation.

They're like a God who gives us free will, just to see if we'll choose the righteous path.

The program is deterministic. Real physics might or might not be. But if simulated people have free will, that free will has a different definition than the usual one.
I do agree that given naturalism, they have the same free will that 'real' humans do. Physics being deterministic or not is irrelevant to that.

Once again, simulation theory is more like theological speculation than science.

Pretty much, yes, except theological theory isn't bounded by physical limits, making theological theory more plausible.

Can the simulators read our minds or not?

The simulation can, so it is free to include that as part of the output. Text form perhaps. 'Bob is contemplating cheating on his homework'.

can their computer scientists just look at the code and figure out what we'll do?

No, not from the code, which only moves particles around.

In which case they could ... simulate the sim, could they not.

Bostrom posits that the simulation runs far enough into our future that it starts simulating our creation of such simulations, so most people actually end up multiple levels from the base reality. He does not posit that humans can run quintillions (understatement) of instructions per second, which they could if they and the simulation were the same thing.

You could never have a 100% perfect geographical simulation. It must have a resolution, and reality is always more fine grained.

He suggests that the resolution changes when you look close. Not when the observers look close, but when the simulated people (us) look close. So the simulators might look at a forest with no humans in it, and find themselves unable to observe details going on there. What details are omitted is TBD.

How can you watch the rats if there's no light?

It's an output viewing program. You can add false light that isn't actually in the simulation, so you can see the rats. But the rats probably aren't fully simulated if humans are not watching them. They might be hearing them in the walls, so the sound at least needs to be realistic.

Visual recording devices require light, that's a basic principle of physics.

We need that to see our rats. The simulators don't need a camera to look at computer data, which can be colorized with pink stripes if that's what you want.

The sims are us. I have in the past said the the process (forgive me if I ever said program, I know better) instantiates us.

The processes might instantiate us, but they're not us. They exist in two different universe. So the term 'the sims' needs to refer to one or the other, because they're very different things. You've used the term to describe the running process, but I think you mean the people.

I wonder if Bostrom explains how any of this works? The simulators write a program. They run the program. Somehow, you and I and the world all around us comes into being.

Not sure what you mean by this. I simulate a storm. That doesn't bring a storm into being in my universe. It only brings a computer process into being, and it ceases to exist when I terminate the process. I can pause it for a month and then continue it again. Nothing in the storm will be able to detect the pause.

If it's true, then where am I right now?

Typing at your computer?? Where else? You're in this universe, and have a location in this universe. You seem to be asking where some other 'you' is in the simulating universe, but there isn't one there. Just some computer process, which arguably doesn't have a meaningful location.

I'm an abstract consciousness floating above or around some physical piece of computing hardware. How is this magic trick supposed to work?

Not my story, so whoever suggests that is free to attempt to explain it.

What does Bostrom say in his introduction? It's a "quite widely-accepted position in the philosophy of mind." As if that explains anything.

He says there's no 'consciousness floating above' anything. That's part of the widely accepted view to which he is referring.

But if, for the sake of argument, I grant you this trick: The sims are the minds that arise out of executing the computation.

It's the same trick that ordinary matter does. Wiggle atoms this way and that, and consciousness results. It's the non-naturalists that are trying to make something magic of that.

Our world isn't real.

It is to me, but I probably have a different definition of what is real than 'is the base world, the GS'. Given the latter definition, I agree. Our world is not real, but the simulation process is real, at least if we're only 1 level deep into it.

We live in the spirit-space adjacent to their computer.

Bostrom makes no such suggestion, no do I find that statement meaningful at all. It is simply a statement that comes from a belief system significantly different than the one Bostrom presumes.

this is my statement:

A computation is executed on physical hardware operated by the simulators. As it executes, it instantiates, by some unknown mechanism, a mind. That mind is me.

Under naturalism, 'you' are a complete person, not just a mind. Your wording makes it sound like you are just the mind, something separate from the physical part of you, instead of being simply part of the dynamics of the matter of which you are comprised. There is no separate spirit/mind/woo. The simulation argument holds no water under alternate views.

Simulation programs tend to be very simple, endlessly running the same relatively small list of instructions again and again over a relatively large data set.
— noAxioms

That's not even true. When you run a simulation of the weather or of the early universe or of general relativity, you are doing massive amounts of numeric computation and approximation.

I think I said exactly that in my statement. That's what 'large data set' means. It means a massive amount of work to do.

I don't know why you think simulation programs are simple. That's not true.

I've written several. A simulation of Conway's game of life (GoL) can be done in a few hundred lines of code, but potentially involves trillions of operations being performed. OK, the weather is more complicated than GoL, but there's still a huge data-to-instructions ratio.

We don't have to waste time trying to define ancestor simulation versus AI.

Not vs. They're both ancestor simulations, just implemented in different ways, one far more efficient than the other. I'm talking about how the simulation software is designed. Why run 10000 instructions where one will do for your purposes. Of course, we don't know those purposes, so I could be full of shit here.

what is the moral obligation of the simulators to us?

Lacking any input from their world to ours, there doesn't seem to be much room for a moral code. They're incapable of torturing us. At best, they can erase the data and just end our world just like that. Morals in the other direction would be interesting. Are we obligated to entertain them? Depends on the simulation purpose, and since that purpose hasn't been conveyed to us, we don't seem to be under any obligation to them.

Keep in mind that I see morals as a social contract, a sort of legal agreement. It's why, in European WWII conflict, it wasn't moral to kill a soldier carrying a white flag, but in the Pacific theater of the same war, it was OK (for either side) to kill a soldier doing the same thing. Different contracts.
I see no contracts in either direction between us and our simulating world.

By the same token, we can ask why our simulators, who art in Heaven, have cursed us with war, famine, pestilence, and death.

They have not thus cursed us. The simulation has no inputs, so they (unlike an interfering god) have no way to impart calamities on us. A simulation of perpetual paradise would not be an ancestor simulation.

I assume you're a fellow sentient human because I'm programmed to.

That argument is also true of the GS world. It isn't specific to a simulated world.

the programmers coded us up to accept each other as sentient humans.

That would be the imitation method of running the simulation. Far more efficient to do it that way, but Bostrom suggests that it be done the way where nobody is programmed to follow the will of the simulation or programmers.

I don't care about the resource argument.

You should, because he's proposing more resource usage than exists in our solar system, so he has to find ways to bring that requirement down to something more than one person could have. Optimizations are apparently not on his list of ways to do that.
The resource problem is not just power. Where do you put all the yottabytes of data?

Aren't those NPCs?

Yes, in the context of a simulation (as opposed to a VR), shadow people are the same as NPCs. He just doesn't use the term, perhaps because of the VR connotations. Philosophical-zombie is something else, a term not meaningful under naturalism.

I said that Bostrom suggests many different kinds of physical law going on, as opposed to the base world with (supposedly) one kind of physics. So a shadow person is simply a person that operates under a different kind of physics, one with more code but far less data to crunch.

Maybe everything is in big pixellated blocks, and we are just programmed to think it's all smooth and detailed?

He kind of says it IS big pixellated blocks when nobody is looking, but that crude physics changes when you look close, so you never notice. The big blocks still need to keep track of time so aging can occur. Paint needs to peel even when crudely simulated. Trees might not fall in the forest, but they still need to be found fallen when a human goes in there. How much detail is needed to simulate the magma or Earth? Not at the atomic level for sure, but the dynamics still need to be there. Plausible layers need to be found when a deep hole is dug by a human.

It's back to Bishop Berkeley. Since our experience is mediated by our senses, there doesn't need to be anything "out there" at all. Just the program running in the simulators' computer that instantiates our minds.

Much closer to what he proposes, yes. The stuff 'out there' needs to be simulated to sufficient accuracy of shared experience: The same fallen tree that nobody heard falling. The same coffee temperature. It's still a very inefficient way to run an ancestor simulation.

Bostrom clearly thinks the simulators live in (our) future

No, he never says 'our future'. The simulators supposedly exist in some other world, and 'our future' is some later time in this universe. He talks about where our technology might eventually go as an exploration of what might be possible, but he never suggests that the simulation is being done in our world, which would be a circular ontology.

So we're being run by people who invented these super-duper computers and mind-instantiating algorithms, but their society has not evolved past, say, the medieval period.

Nobody said that. They perhaps staged their initial state in simulated medieval times, sure, but the simulation is not being run by entities with only medieval technology.
I thought of a way to not have to create perfect people for the initial state: Make everybody shadow people, and only those conceived after the initial state are fully simulated. That way there's no need to create a person with a full set of false memories of times prior to the simulation start.

Where do these minds live?

This questi0on presumes dualism, or if it doesn't, then I have no idea what you're asking.

The sims (us) don't have to know how it works. The simulators do.

Why? Atoms don't know how consciousness works, so neither does something that only simulates atoms.

If you accept Bostrom's assumptions at face value, we live in an ant farm owned by a sociopathic child.

The model is apt so long as the child cannot interfere with the ant farm.

But it somehow gives rise to a mind. Did I ask you where these minds exist? I think I did.

Most people assuming the 'commonly held philosophy of mind' consider mental process to take place in one's head (and not 'hovering nearby'). Hence Bostrom suggests simulation of heads to a higher (but not highest) degree than most other places.

Nor did I ever claim that. This was a real strawman post. You put many words and ideas in my mouth.

I misinterpreted your words then. Apologies.

The sims are programs. — fishfry

Quotes like that threw me off.

BTW Google maps is not a simulation, — fishfry

No, but it has an interface which is the beginnings of what one might look like for viewing simulation states. Yes, the controls to the tool constitute input to the tool, but since viewing simulation results has zero effect on the simulation itself, it doesn't count as input to the simulation, only input to one of many read-only tools to view the data produced by the simulation.

Google maps can only show you specific places. You can go into a few select buildings, but your view is mostly confined to streets. With the simulation, there is no restriction of views only where the van was, taking a picture every 10 meters or so. You can go inside walls and watch the rats eat the wiring if you want, even if it's totally dark in there.

You define 'the sims' below to be the programs in the GS world.
— noAxioms
Yes, what else could we be talking about?

I thought they were the people, not the programs.
But you defined it earlier to mean 'the simulation processes", of which there may be many running at once, each simulating a different world.

Note: You yet again redefine 'sims' to be the people below. Using the word in both ways is the source of so much of our disconnect.

Bostrom: "Are YOU living in a computer simulation?" My emphasis. Me. You. Each of us. We are a program being run by the simulators.

'Living in a computer simulation" is different from being that computer simulation. The two exist in different worlds. They're not the same thing. The simulation runs in the GS world. We exist in this (simulated) world. That's the distinction I've been trying to stress. I'd try to use your meaning, but all sorts of strawman conclusions can be drawn when one equates the two very distinct things, such as "the simulation program is conscious'" which it isn't even though you and I are. Simulation programs tend to be very simple, endlessly running the same relatively small list of instructions again and again over a relatively large data set.

I meant executing program.

I know. It is still a mistake to say you are an executing program, for the reasons stated just above and in prior posts.

It's odd that Bostrom thinks the computers instantiate self-awareness in the sims, yet show little interest in it.

Presuming 'sims' is the people with this comment, else it makes no sense.

It's a very weak point in his argument in my opinion, so he avoids it. To run a good ancestor simulation like this, it would require far less resources to have a good AI imitate (rather than simulate) each of the people. We're talking about something far better than passing a Turing test since each person needs to not just type like a human, but to act and defecate and bleed like a human. Now your ancestor sim can go on at perhaps a thousandth of the resources needed to do it at the level of simulation of consciousness of each person. But his hypothesis requires this, so he's forced to posit this implausible way of achieving the goal he's made up. The ratio is likely waaaay more than 1000-1.

He tries to address this by waving away my '1/1000th' guess with 'we don't know the real number'. He calls the imitation people (as opposed to fully simulated ones) 'shadow people', and discounts this strategy, and yet gives every simulated person a shadow body and populates the world with shadow animals and plants and such, none of which is actually simulated like the brains are. Go figure.

Bostrom clearly thinks the simulators live in (our) future and we are simulations of their ancestors.

The initial state of the sim had perhaps some real ancestors (depends what date they selected), but we (the descendants of those initial people) are not in any way their ancestors, and thus the simulators are not in our future, only the future of some past year they selected for their initial state.

Yes, I agree with you that Bostrom seems to imply that history would play out more or less the same, in which case he's just fooling himself, or, if there's a script, it's not a simulation at all, but just a CG effect for a movie script, which doesn't involve people that need to make their own choices.

Bostrom says that. That's the one great revelation I had from this thread. Bostrom explicitly states that the sims are self-aware, and blithely justified is as "it's widely believed."

And I buy that. Yes, the simulated people (and not the simulation processes) are self aware. But he doesn't explicitly say that anybody knows how 'consciousness works'. You don't have to. You put matter together like this, and the thing is conscious. That's what the sim does. It just moves matter. It doesn't need to know how the emergent effects work.

That's more likely than that the history majors are running ancestor simulations.

Agree. Or the biologists, which is a history major of sorts. What will they get from a sim that starts at a state resembling some past state, but evolves in a completely different direction? Not much. What if you run a thousand of them, all with different outcomes. Now you have statistics, and that's useful. Output would look like a history book. 'Watching' specific events from a selected point of view probably won't be too useful for that, but such a view would be useful to find the initial cause of some avoidable calamity (like a war) which helps our future people know what to look for to prevent their own calamities.

Point is, that's a good starting point to resolve the 'why would such a sim be run'? I also still say that imitation, not full simulation, would be a far less costly way to achieve any of the goals mentioned. Only Bostrom requires it, but he can't force the 'future' people to do it an inefficient way.

You can map all the neurons and you would not know what someone's thinking.

But they kind of already do. They can put a thing on your head, measuring only external EM effects on your scalp (like an EEG) and they can see you make a decision before you're aware of it yourself. Point is, one doesn't need to know 'how consciousness works' in order to gean what the sim needs, which is mostly focus and intent. What is our guy paying attention to? Why? The sim needs to know because the physics of that thing is dependent on it., It changes from when nobody is paying attention to it. This is done for optimization purposes, and for faking non-classical effects in a classical simulation.

The sims are programs. — fishfry

ARGHHHHHH! The sims are conscious. That's on page one of Bostrom's paper. We are the sims. — fishfry

Aaand the definition changes again. You said the sims are the programs. The programs are processes running in the GS world. We are humans living in this simulated world. Maybe we should stop using 'sims' as shorthand for this ever moving target.
Be explicit. Use either 'simulated people' (us) or simulation process (the program running in a different world).

Bostrom does not use the word 'sims', so it isn't on any page of his paper.
He says on page 1 (the only reference to 'conscious' on that page): "Suppose that these simulated people are conscious". He is proposing that the people in the simulated world, and not the program running in the simulating 'future' world, is what is conscious. This is consistent with what I've been saying.

He goes on later to presume substrate independence, which is that consciousness is not necessarily confined to carbon based biological forms. But the simualted people in his proposal are based on simulated carbon-based simulated biological forms. But he must say this to emphasize the standard objection that by definition, no computer can instantiate something conscious.
Nowhere does he state that something as simple as a simulation process is itself conscious.

That's the funny thing. You have said you don't agree w/Bostrom. And for some reason, that makes you want to put great effort into explaining his wrong position to me.

Yea, that's right. There's indeed not much point in this since your personal beliefs conflict, so you won't consider it on its own grounds.

Bostrom speculates that WE are sims.
Surely we agree on that, at least, yes? No?

You keep changing what 'the sims' means, and Bostrom doesn't use the word, so I cannot say yes or no.
Bostrom does indeed speculate that it is more likely than not that we are simulated people: that we are composed of simulated matter being manipulated by a simulation process running in some other world. He nowhere speculates that we are that simulation process itself.

I asked WHAT is the output. — fishfry

We can only speculate as to the purpose of running this kind of simulation, and thenature of the output depends on that purpose. Maybe it is a sort of detailed history book. Maybe it is pictures. Maybe it's just a stored database. Maybe the purpose is simply to see how long humanity lasts until it goes extinct, in which case a simple number might be the output.
I did mention the nature of the output later in the post above, such as the example of the output of google maps for instance, a very useful interface for display of simulation results.

So the sims have an inner life (one of Bostrom's hidden assumptions)

You define 'the sims' below to be the programs in the GS world. I see no assertion that either a program (a static chunk of software on perhaps a disk somewhere) or a computer process (the execution of said program on some capable device) with no inputs would have what you might consider to be an 'inner life'. Bostrom doesn't say this, and neither do I.

but the simuilators have no knowledge of it?

They have knowledge of it in the same way that I have knowledge of my wife having an inner life. If that's going out on a limb, then one is presuming solipsism. But my presumption of my wife having inner life does not let me know what it's like to be her.
The simulation can report what each person thinks and feels. The simulation has to have access to this because physics is dependent on what people are thinking. So it can report that Bob at time X is paying attention to his laser experiment and is feeling frustrated that he cannot get the setup just right, and his bladder is getting full. It can show his point of view if that helps. Make up your story. What interface tech exists for them is speculation on our part. Humans are notoriously bad at predicting 'future'/higher tech.

I put 'future' in scare quote because maybe the simulation is being run in the year we call 1224 or something. Maybe in the GS world, advancements came much sooner, and in our simulated world, things happened much slower, and we're far behind them despite 8 more centuries to learn. If that is the case, the Gregorian calendar is only meaningful in our world, and they number their years differently.

So YOU know how consciousness works.

Geez, another strawman. I make no such claim. Bostrom presumes that consciousness is physical/computational. That assumption is no more an explanation of how consciousness works than is the non-explanation by anybody else.

So step one, they figure out how to implement consciousness using computers; and step two, they entirely ignore that and focus on behavior.

I didn't say they figured out how consciousness works, nor did I say they focus only on behavior. The simulation needs to know what each persons mental focus is, what his intent is, because physics as he describes it depends on it. One doesn't need to know how consciousness works to do this.

And again, how is that behavior communicated to them?

There's no 'them' to communicate to. OK, observers in the GS world can watch, (very similar to the google map interface), but they don't affect anything since that would constitute external input. The running of any sim doesn't require observation of any kind, but why run it if nobody's going to pay attention to the outcome? Yet again, the output is dependent on the purpose of running the thing, and we can only speculate on the purpose.

An MRI does not provide access to internal mental states. You know that.

A full classical scan of a person provides access to internal physical states, and that's all that's needed to simulate the person, per naturalism. But such a simple simulation would not have physics supervening on mental states like the sim Bostrom proposes, so the one he speculates is far more complicated and requires access to mental states, not just physical states.

You're just speculating

Yes, with that quote, I was. I don't know the purpose of the sim, and I don't know what tech is available to the entities running the sim, so I can only speculate as to how they would choose to 'observe' it.

The sims are programs.

Ah, not us, but the program in the GS world. Apologies for getting that wrong. Sims then typically not conscious, especially since it typically lacks input.

Could you accept that you can't answer any of these questions except by making stuff up?

Me saying what the output would be is definitely making stuff up. Me knowing what a simulation is and how it typically works is not making stuff up, since I did it regularly.

Our opinions definitely differ, but I'm trying not to assert opinions. I'm trying to interpret what Bostrom's opinion is, and how he attempts to back it.

So the humans are entities created by the software? — Ludwig V

I would say the humans are entities created by rearrangement of matter, and that the matter in this case happens to be simulated by the running process in the supervening world. It's a choice of how to word things is all.

Then how are they not real people and not simulations of anything?

They are (hypothesized as being) you, and you are real, per your definition:

If I'm experiencing fear, the fear is real. — Ludwig V

But my experience is real experience, not a simulation of experience.

You seem to be inconsistent with your usage of 'real'. Have you switched to a different definition?

So the people "inside" your software are real people.

It's not my software. It's the software of the entities running the simulation, which isn't me. I am hypothesized to be the product of that simulation, not hypothesized to be creating or running one.

I don't see that. Isn't a simulation of a person without a will exactly what they call a philosophical zombie? It would literally be a terrific chatbot operating inside a highly realistic flesh and bone bot. Your neighbor, for instance. What makes you think they have a will? — fishfry

You seem to have a dualistic definition of 'will'. All of your examples (pacman, p-zombies) are dualist/VR references. Bostrom's hypothesis is not. He's not proposing we're in a video game. All this has been said before.

The simulation program has no input. You write the code, then you execute the code and it does what it does.

That's what a simulation is, yes. It has an initial state conveyed to it, and that is input of sorts, but once the simulation begins, there is no further input of any kind. If there was, it ceases to be a simulation. I've run plenty of these myself. It was my job for a while. The sims would run without any I/O at all for perhaps a week, and I don't think results were available until the end, but they could be reported as they happen.

What is its output?

Output (state of system at any given time) can be had any time, often at the end, but it doesn't have to be. A weather sim is a single simulation of a storm, and it could output the stats of the storm at regular intervals, or it could wait until the end and output the whole thing in a lump. It has to complete in hours, not days, to be useful. My chip sims were a little difference since each chip was run through a series of discreet tests, mostly designed to see how fast you could clock it before it started misbehaving, but also to check the design for bugs. Those sims still output everything at the end, but they didn't have to.

How exactly do the Simulators examine its inner life?

They don't. It makes no more sense than asking what it is like for a human to be a bat.

In other words, they run the program, and inside the program I come into existence. Me with my subjective experience. (How does that happen? Remind me please).

Same way it happens in the real (materialist) world: Particles interact and do their thing. Your experience is a function of matter interactions (not so according to someone like Chalmers, whom you referenced with the p-zombie mention above).

Clearly they are interested in what I'm thinking and experiencing

The simulation itself cares about what you're thinking, but only because it needs to change physics due to it. The runners of the simulation may or may not care. Certainly they don't have enough people to care about every single individual. It's an ancestor simulation of the whole human race. They perhaps want to see what history unfolds, and they care no more about what anybody is thinking than you do about what anybody is thinking. You only care about what they say to you, what they do. You may wonder what goes on inside, but that's a motive for a single-person simulation, not a planetary scale one.

1) Do the simulators have access to my internal mental states, and if so, how? Copious log files of everything I'm thinking? and

If 'the simulators' are those that put together the simulation, who want the ancestor sim, then they have perhaps access to the same data as we do with a pimped-out MRI scan: A picture of where the matter is. You're not getting thoughts from that. To log thoughts, something needs to interpret that matter state and render it into language for readable by the simulators. I suppose such log files are possible, but much of thoughts are not in language form.
And per above, if this is the sort of detail one wants, it makes far more sense to simulate one or a very small number of people. So the motives are probably different for the ancestor sim.

2) How do I perform actions for the Simulators to watch? They're running ancestor simulations, so they must want to see what I'm going to do next. How do they "watch" me? What are the outputs?

Up to them to design a way to do it that is useful for their purposes. I suppose one could insert a sort of point of view interface that lets one look from any event anywhere (much like the little guy you can steer around in google maps), and lets it move at the observers control. The sim would need to save all state (and not just current state) for this to work since it probably wouldn't be useful if it was 'live', displaying only what constitutes the current state of the sim.

You are avoiding the question of whether the sims are self-aware?

I presume that 'the sims' are the humans in the simulation.
The hypothesis is that the sims are us, so tautologically they're as self-aware as you are.

If 'the sims' is a reference to the simulation software, program, or process, well that's a different answer since people are not hypothesized to be any of those things.

Nobody is claiming that a simulation of X creates an X in the simulating world
— noAxioms

That's exactly what's claimed. — fishfry

Who makes that claim? Quote it please. If you can't do that, then you're making a strawman assertion.

simulations of brains do not necessarily implement minds

Not minds/people in the GS world, no. The claim is that we (the simulated people with yes, simulated minds) are in this simulated universe, and not in the universe running the simulation.

you admit I have will! Therefore I am NOT likely to be a computer simulation.

A simulation of a person without will would be a simulation of a body in a vegitative state.

After all this you have to accuse me of bad will?

What, my saying 'deliberate'? You seem to be putting words in people's mouths that they didn't say, and I don't find you to be an ignorant person.

A program isn't conscious,

Not the simulation being discussed here, correct. A running computer process forever without inputs by definition cannot be conscious any more than you would be without inputs ever.

unless you think chatbots simulate consciousness. Many people believe that these days.

I have a very loose definition that you would not like, but my opinion there is irrelevant. The chatbots (which perhaps imitate, but not simulate anything) at least have input, but so does a thermostat. The simulation in question does not.

I have no limbic system. Only a simulation of a limbic system in a computer, — fishfry

You sound like Arkady, but no, that statement is misleading. It makes it sound like the limbic system is simulated but you are not. So either "I have a limbic system", or "The simulated 'I' has a simulated limbic system". Either of those wordings is at least consistent. Your opinion (and mine, but for very different reasons) of course is that neither you nor your limbic system are the product of a simulation.
Nobody is claiming that a simulation of X creates an X in the simulating world, which is the strawman you seem to use in your gravity example every time where you deny an equivalent straw claim that simulation of gravity would create gravity in the GS world. That you persist in this suggestion means that yes, you're not getting it right, perhaps deliberately so.
So no, a simulation in the GS world of a limbic system does not create emotion in the GS world. I agree with that. It is exactly for that reason that the program running the simulation isn't conscious.

If we're in a simulation, what does "actually" flying mean? We're merely simulating the flying experience, making it simply a hyper-advanced flight sim. Pilots in flight sims aren't actually flying, after all. — Arkady

You seem to be referring to a virtual reality. The simulation hypothesis is not a virtual reality. The people (us) are simulated. In a VR, we would be real, and only our experiential feed is artificial.

So in the simulation hypothesis, everything in our universe is as real as we are, and therefore it is meaningful for them to say that they actually fly. From the point of view of those running the simulation (if they're paying any attention to it at all), they might say that the simulation is simulating the flying of some of the simulated people, but that seems a needlessly wordy way to put it.

perhaps they're advanced aliens which at some point in cosmic history made contact with humans, perhaps they're advanced AI like in the Matrix, and so forth.

The Matrix is also an example of a VR, not an example of the simulation hypothesis.
Aliens (or our robot successors) might indeed be running the simulation, but the simulated history (especially an initial state) would then likely not bear much resemblance to actual history.
The robots would have perhaps some DNA evidence of mythical humans, and to demonstrate that humans might have been responsible for the genesis of the earliest machines, they run simulations of human evolution from primitive state to eventually creating their successors. They'd probably have to run it thousands of times to get one where it works before we go extinct.
I have no idea how something robot/alien could create an initial state if they don't have a real human to copy. Perhaps they grow one from the DNA, and then populate their sim with what they learn from that.

Where is the will that initiates the process? — fishfry

I can't answer for your view, but for the naturalists, it comes from different places, depending on what sort of thing is wanted.
Most will comes from subconscious places (Limbic system), such as choices as to which way to swerve around the tree or to cheat on your spouse. But the will to choose option C in a multiple choice test comes from higher up (Cerebrum for instance).

Ok. My reasons are irrational.

I said that because the reasons seem backwards: Conclusion first, then selection of premises to support that conclusion. This is rationalization, something humans are very good at. I don't consider humans (myself included) to be very rational creatures.

You sound like I said something that annoyed you.

Not at all, but I apologize if my words annoyed you. The effect was not intentional.

But if this is indeed a simulation, then anything we purport to know about our present levels of technology (and thus any extrapolation therefrom) is illusory, because we don't actually possess that technology: such technology is simulated. — Arkady

Take airplanes. If the simulation initial state was set in the 20th century, then it includes airplane technology. It is 'given' so to speak. If the initial state is started before that, then airplanes are our own invention.. Either way, we possess the technology. It isn't illusory. We actually can make airplanes that fly. If you crash in one, you really die, as opposed to say a video game where if you 'die', you simply exit the game. Getting shot in a video game is indeed an illusion.

Perhaps given that it's supposed to be an "ancestor" simulation specifically, he would say that such a simulation would by definition closely (if not necessarily exactly) resemble the ancestral state of the civilization doing the simulating. — Arkady

@RogueAI correctly pointed out that only somebody who knows about humans would want to simulate them, so it is presumably our decedents, be they human anymore or not.

The initial state would presumably resemble some factual state in the past of 'reality', as best they can estimate it, but it would subsequently evolve in a totally different path, regardless of what you define the term 'ancestor simulation' to mean. You're indeed not the first to bring this up.

So why would they want to run such a simulation? It won't reproduce 'what really happened', so there must be some other reason to simulate an entire planet at the level of full consciousness. I can't think of one. Not with those requirements.

How does Searle say [the arm] goes up in the TED transcript? — fishfry

"we know the basic part of the answer — and that is, there are sequences of neuron firings and they terminate where the acetylcholine is secreted at the axon end-plates of the motor neurons, sorry to use philosophical terminology here. But when it is secreted at the axon end-plates of the motor neurons, a whole lot of wonderful things happen in the ion channels and the damned arm goes up."
That's a wordy version of what I said, which is "there's wires connecting the parts where the will is implemented, to the parts where the motor control is implemented". Under Chalmers, there isn't such a wire, hence the magic.

Because I can't believe that a computer program of any complexity, running at any speed, could ever be conscious.

Nobody ever said the program was conscious. It's dumb as rocks, implementing a fairly small program that simply knows how to move the particles around. It implements physics and is no more conscious than is physical law. It has no external input, so right there it doesn't qualify as being conscious. Some programs do have such input, but not most simulations.

Anyway, you don't believe a simulated person could be conscious, so you make up an arbitrary rule that forbids it. I think that's what you're saying, but personal belief isn't evidence against somebody's hypothesis. It's only an irrational reason that you don't accept the hypothesis.

Programs play chess and drive cars, and I'm duly impressed. Not same as being conscious.

I say the car wouldn't be able to do its thing if it wasn't conscious of what's going on around it. Not the same as human consciousness, sure, but it's still a form of consciousness. A car stays conscious even when it's off, a sort of security feature that has caught vandals and thiefs.
So maybe you have more of a Searle definition of 'conscious' which is 'only if a genuine human is doing it'. He actually defines the word early in his talk, but it's just 'awake' as opposed to 'asleep', something that regularly comes and goes with a human.

What would constitute evidence of what might be possible in the future?

Mathematics. Known physical limits. Psychology. Fermi paradox. All vague things, I admit, but at least not empty.

The ultimate argument against my position is that some configurations of atoms are self-aware, and someday we may figure out what those configurations are.

The computer doesn't need to know which configurations. It only has to simulate physical law. It means that if they successfully simulate a conscious being, they still won't know how consciousness works.

This referred to the claim that everything physical is computational. If you agree with me that you don't assert this, then we're in complete agreement. In fact I think we might be in a lot of agreement in general.

Both the physics community and I are in general agreement in that our physics does not appear to be computational. Bell's theorem even 'proves' this, but it is based on empirical evidence, and one has to accept empirical evidence for the proof to hold.

Programs don't have souls, don't have life energy, aren't alive.

OK, but naturalism is in contrast with concepts like souls, life energy, vitalism, etc. None of these things is necessary to be alive, and indeed, a running program is no more alive than is your brain processes.
They do have a hard time defining 'life'. I mean, given one example of Earth life, it's pretty easy: Anything that trances its ancestry to the earliest life form. But that definition fails as a metric to decide if something alien is alive or not.

Our theory of gravity works, but we know it's not quite right.

It's 'right' enough to know where the moon will be 17 years from now, but the physics is chaotic enough that we don't know where it will be 17 millennia from now.

Oh no, that's chaos theory. Even if we had all the details of the initial state, we can't necessarily predict the future.

Indeed, but we can for a limited time. For the rolling lumpy rock, yes, that's a chaotic function, but with sufficient precision, we can predict its brief path until it stops, with arbitrary precision. Same with the weather. Our current precision gets us maybe 6 days of what that storm will do, and much of that error is due to lack of perfect model, and lack of detailed initial state.

Tiny rounding errors add up to great differences in output. Nearby points in the initial state space lead to vastly different outcomes. We know this.

Which is exactly why there's no point in doing an ancestor simulation. It will show an alternate history that bears little resemblance to what the books say. If started far enough back, it will not evolve humans.

He says that in the future, computations will instantiate consciousness.

That's very different than us being a program.
It is "I am a human" vs "I am that on which the laws of physics supervene". The program can't be conscious because it has zero sensory input. It has nothing to be conscious of.

Very distinct. The universe, or God, instantiates all the stuff around us. It is the stuff around us. It's the exact ultimate laws of the universe. The execution of a model is just that. It lets us predict, to sufficient accuracy, how the galaxies will move. It doesn't move the galaxies and it's not exact.

This is Searle's language game again. Instantiation if an anthropomorphic god does it, and 'execution of a model' if anything else does the exact same thing. The model may be a map, but the execution of it is territory.

Gravity simulations do not attract nearby bowling balls. They do not instantiate gravity.

Nonsense. If they didn't instantiate gravity, then the simulated moon would not orbit the simulated Earth. That's what you defined instantiation to be. Are we changing the definition now of 'instantiation' to be 'not simulated'?


My reply is half the size of your post, in an effort to stem the tendency to growth.

triggered exactly by recognition of something that can be characterized by danger
— noAxioms
Could we just say "recognition of something as dangerous" or "recognition of a danger"? — Ludwig V

I tried to be more precise than that. Something not actually dangerous at all (say most spiders), can trigger a fear reflex. Some actually dangerous things don't trigger it if it isn't thus characterized. But yes, essentially, your wording is fine.

Anyway, if I've understood what a simulation is supposed to be, it involves feeding me information that is false.

No, that sounds like a VR. I say that, but since Bostrom posits the changing of physics when you pay attention to the thing, his vision of a simulation does feed the simulated humans lies, in particular, that the universe is non-computational, when in fact it is a computation.

False information can easily trigger real or genuine fear.

It can't be genuine since the person experiencing the fear is not genuine. The fear of being bit by the dog is very real and not false information, but the dog is apparently an NPC per Bostrom, just a mindless object controlled by AI, at least until you look closer, which most people don't.

So the fear is not actually appropriate in that situation, but it would be misleading to call it simulated because that suggests that I am not really afraid.

You are really afraid. If the dog bits you, it will hurt. You might bleed. You might get a permanent scar.
Happened to me. Friendliest Pitt Bull I ever saw, and we played with it a while. There was danger but no fear. It had previously been romping through the poison ivy which covered me with the stuff, and I didn't know it until way too late. Lost vision in one eye, fixed by cataract surgery, my 'permanent scar'.

I do care about the difference between reality and a simulation of it.

By your definition of 'real', the simulation IS reality to the people in it. It simply isn't real to the people running the simulation, but Bostrom doesn't posit that we're the ones running it. We're not 'posthuman', as he puts it.

Well, I don't really think that determinism is just hand-waving. It is much more serious than that.

That's just a version of Laplace's demon. Hand-waving.

Laplace's demon is a story illustrating/presuming determinism, which you declared to be hand waving, and now declaring it to not be just hand waving.

Perhaps I misunderstand how you interpret the Laplace's demon story. Anyway, I agree that determinism is not hand waving. It doesn't appear to be falsifiable.

Well, at least we are agreed that Laplace's demon is out of date.

Very much so, yes. It just doesn't mean that determinism has died with the demon.

I used to know [ what determinism is]

Determinism says that subsequent states of a closed system is fixed, given an exact initial state. It means that a system will evolve the same way, every time, from the same initial state. It implies all effects have a cause.
This is the case for a computer program running a simulation, unless the program has some kind of randomness instruction it can access.

Determinism does not imply that one can subjectively predict subsequent states, since knowledge of the initial state is impossible, per Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Laplace's demon is an objective observer (whatever that means), not a subjective one.

A simple example of uncaused phenomena is the decay of some unstable particle. It's half-life is known, which yields a time after which it is 50% likely to have already decayed, but it is completely unpredictable when the actual decay will occur.
An interpretation like Bohmian mechanics asserts that there are hidden variables that cause this, and if they could be consistently replicated, the exact time of the decay would be fully determined. If they could be consistently set, then 20 particles all with the same hidden variable states would all decay at once.
MWI is also fully deterministic, but says only that the wave function evolves according to Schrodinger's equation. All solutions to this equations are valid, which means that the particle in question decays at all possible time intervals, each in a 'different world'.
Under Bohm, Laplace's demon could predict future states if it had access to these hidden variables.
Under MWI, Laplace's demon could not predict a future state of anything since all possibilities are equally real.
Many other valid interpretations have true randomness going on (God 'rolling dice' as Einstein put it), meaning the demon cannot predict at all.

Genuine=Not simulated. If I'm experiencing fear, the fear is real. — Ludwig V

OK, by those two strangely unaligned definitions, if Bostrom's hypothesis is true, then your experience of fear is real, but not genuine.

[determinism] would need an insane amount of power and memory, but a relatively trivial code base.

I don't see that. For one, there is no power requirement for a simulation at all, except the impatience of the runners of the simulation. As for memory, why would a deterministic simulation need any more memory than a non-deterministic one? They would seem to have similar requirements as far as I can see. Do you know what determinism is? I suspect otherwise.

How would one implement a non-deterministic simulation? It would have to employ a real random number generator somewhere, something that does say a quantum amplification,. No current CPU has such an instruction, but one could be implemented.

Finally, determinism isn't an interpretation of simulations. It is part of interpretations of physics. Relativity theory for instance is deterministic, but also incomplete.

So does Laplace's description of his demon. In addition, his thought-experiment describes predictability as opposed to determinism.

That experiment has been shown to be wrong.
Per wiki:

[Per Laplace], According to determinism, if someone (the demon) knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics. — wiki

This is completely false. 1, I have shown an example just above (Norton) where classical mechanics does not do this. 2, Our universe is not classical

None of the interpretations of physics, not even the fully deterministic ones, are consistent with the claim made above by Laplace.

I have stipulated that I am not quoting Searle;
...
Can we just start from what I also said, that I am willing to make this maxim my own. — fishfry

I'll do better. I retract much of what I said of Searle. I read the transcript of his Ted talk, and yes, he seems to attempt to stay physical. I perhaps have mixed up some assertions from Chalmers, It is Chalmers that needs to explain how the arm goes up, not Searle, who seems to have a consistent story about this.

The Ted talk seemed to play the language game. If two things are doing the exact same thing, it is 'X' if a human does it, and it is not X if a machine does it. That's what I got from it.
I got nothing from him that suggests that human consciousness cannot be simulated, that it isn't computational. That bit seems to be your assertion.


My apologies if I seem to respond to most of your comments. We both tend to do that, which makes the replies lengthy. I try to edit out repetitive replies.

Consciousness is physical but not computational.

Why do you want this to be the case? It doesn't seem to be just a random assertion.

LOTS of things are physical but not computational.

I've said as much, but it doesn't prevent the running of simulations of parts of the universe. Why can all the other parts be simulated, but a human cannot? It's not like the simulated human has a different reality to compare, and say "Hey, this consciousness feels different than a genuine consciousness does!". Maybe it 'feels' totally different from one person to the next, and not just from one universe to the next.

I have no proof of that either

None of it is about proof. But a shred of evidence always helps. I have no proof that the universe isn't computational, but the evidence suggests that. If we're 'in a sim', the sim has to go out of its way to fake that evidence. Bostrom addresses this problem.

If you have proof that everything physical is computational

You seem to think I assert this, or even that it's my opinion. It isn't. Evidence suggests otherwise. There's no proof either way.

There is no demonstration of the proposition or its negation.

OK, so we're back to zero evidence for your opinion, which doesn't make the opinion wrong, but it also isn't evidence against the SH. It only renders SH something you won't believe because it conflicts with your opinion.

That's where we differ. I don't reject something because of conflicts with my opinions. I don't consider my opinion to count as evidence one way or another.

Wait, now you're agreeing with me. If a rock rolling down a hill hasn't been shown to be computational, then you admit that you claim that "everything physical is computational" has no proof.

Science is not about proof. I've always agreed with you on this point. Evidence suggests physics is noncomputatinal, and a rolling rock (a genuine one, not a simple approximation of one) is physics.

So we each have an opinion, and nobody has a proof. I hope we can agree on that.

Yea, but my opinion doesn't count, except that my opinion rejects Bostrom's probability argued to the first two options.

You have gone a long way towards agreeing with me. If a rock rolling downhill might not be computational, then surely consciousness might not be either.

And my point is that like the rolling rock, it being noncomputational doesn't prevent it from being simulated to enough precision that it works. There's no evidence that consciousness is dependent on non-computability. If it was, then indeed, it could not be simulated at all. The lack of evidence of this dependency means that the SH isn't falsified by this [lack of] evidence. Falsification requires evidence.

You seem to be making a distinction between "computaional" and "functioning in a computational way." I do not understand that distinction. Unless by "functioning in a computational way" you mean something that can be approximated or simulated by an abstract model. But that is not functioning that way -- it's only being approximated that way.

Yes, you got it. Functioning in a computational way means being approximated to sufficient precision. I can approximate a car crash to sufficient detail that when I finally make a genuine car, I will know how safe it is, how it handles specific collision scenarios.

Note that I am using here and earlier the word 'genuine' as defined by Ludwig at the top of this post, since his definition of 'real' would not be fitting.

I agreed with you right up till you said, "any property I want." Clearly we can't do that, because we haven't got a theory of quantum gravity, meaning that we have not yet got a complete theory of gravity.

OK, I grant that. I just want to know if the rock will bust in two when it hits that other rock, or if it will essentially bounce off with only small fragments ejecting. I don't expect the simulation to predict exactly which atoms within it will decay during the time simulated. No amount of precision will predict that.

So there are SOME properties, tiny little wobbles, that we can NOT simulate or approximate, because we haven't got enough physics.

Those we can predict with enough precision, with enough detail of initial state. Those are classical properties. They do have simulations of dark matter, and they explain the unusual rotation curves of some galaxies. The simulations show how those galaxies seem to have little dark matter in them compared to most. The simulations don't get the predictions correct partly due to the inability to guess correctly at initial conditions. Bostrom doesn't seem to address this problem in his paper. It is apparently 'hand waved' away. How does one set up initial conditions of this 'ancestor simulation'? Apparently an exercise for the people of the future to solve,

He explicitly assumes that the "simulation" implements consciousness.

Yes, he does. This point obviously grates against your opinion enough to prevent further reading.

So he is (in my reading) NOT talking about simulation as approximation; or simulation as a perfect implementation of an abstract model that captures most but not all of a system's behaviors. He is talking about my consciousness, this noisy voice in my head and the feeling of the keys under my fingertips, the pleasant sensation of the soft breeze coming in the open window, being literally implemented, instantiated, created by the "simulation."

Yes, that's what he's talking about. I thought that was clear, even from the abstract.

I find that most unlikely, for the simple reason that I don't think computer programs have inner lives.

He does not suggest that we're computer programs. Being a program is very different than being simulated by one. You don't buy the hypothesis because it conflicts with your beliefs. Nothing wrong with that.

So he is using the word simulation to mean instantiation or creation; and NOT approximation or execution of an abstract model.

I hate to say it, but how does instantiation differ from execution of a model? I thought I had got it right, but now you're treating these terms as distinct.

Remember: Simulations of gravity do not attract nearby bowling balls. I hope you will consider this.

No, but simulated bowling balls are attracted to each other (not much). Either that or the gravity simulation isn't as accurate to sufficient precision. Most gravity simulations don't go to that precision.

But there is a conceptual link between danger and fear that makes it hard to understand what recognizing a danger could be if one didn't fear it. — Ludwig V

Not sure what you're saying here. If you don't fear something, then it seems you don't recognize it as a danger. I suppose one could employ wordplay to come up with a scenario illustrating one but not the other, but it seem that the fear reflex is triggered exactly by recognition of something that can be characterized by danger.

I hope I'm free to disagree with you?

As do most people. If determinism is true, then you still disagree, but the disagreement isn't free. I also want to point out that my personal opinion isn't one that supports determinism, but that doesn't mean the view is 'hand waving' or that it's wrong.
"I believe X, therefore any other view is wrong" is essentially closed mindedness, an encouraged attitude for religion, but a terrible one for pursuit of truth. And no, I most certainly don't claim my view to be truth.

And that adds up to genuine emotion?

If Bostrom's hypothesis is true, and your definition of 'genuine' doesn't include simulated cognition influenced by simulated chemistry, then your emotion is indeed not genuine. That's the best I can answer without a clear definition of 'genuine' in this context.

Searle is making an entirely naturalist premise. He denied dualism. — fishfry

I really need a quote on that for context. He asserts that mind works differently than everything else physical. Sounds like dualism to me. If it can be show that it really works that way, then physics needs to be rewritten to include this magic as part of naturalism.

He says consciousness is physical, just not computational.

And how has this been demonstrated? He has no more evidence of that than the science community has that it IS computational, but even a rock rolling down a hill hasn't been shown to be computational.
Point is, it's no big claim to say something isn't computational. The big claim is one that says that the effect in question cannot function in a computational way.
I can computationally simulate an approximation of the rock rolling down the hill, a simulation that will yield almost any property I want of a rolling rock.

Bostrom's hypothesis suffers from this. A simulation seems necessarily classical, and yet science has demonstrated (Bell's theorem for starters) that our physics isn't classical. So Bostrom has to modify his hypothesis to change physics when attention is paid to it, to make it appear non-classical when in fact it actually is. That make the job of the simulation so very much more difficult.

it's my point. Consciousness is physical, but not computational.

Again, how do you know this? Fervent belief, or something with actual evidence? Are you asserting (without evidence) that something computational cannot be conscious? Or is it the weaker claim that consciousness simply exists in a classical environment that emerges from non-classical underlying physics? I would fully agree with the latter statement, but I know of zero evidence for the former.

Wiki says:

Penrose argues that human consciousness is non-algorithmic
...
Penrose hypothesizes that quantum mechanics plays an essential role in the understanding of human consciousness. The collapse of the quantum wavefunction is seen as playing an important role in brain function.

The same could be said of a transistor in a computer, the operation of which is utterly dependent on quantum effects. It doesn't mean that one cannot create a classical simulation of a transistor, something that is done all the time.

Penrose may hypothesize these things, but hypothesizing and demonstrating are two different things. In particular, he suggests that consciousness is dependent on wave function collapse, but wave function collapse has never been demonstrated. If it had, then all the interpretations that deny wave function collapse (about half of the ones listed on Wiki) would have been falsified.

He's expressing opinion, as are you. I try to keep my opinions out of the discussion, and try very hard not to escalate them to assertions.

Code which is influenced by chemistry. — Ludwig V

No. Simulated cognition influenced by simulated chemistry. The code is not simulated, unless of course you're multiple layers deep.

That's just a version of Laplace's demon. Hand-waving.

Another word for determinism, and determinism is not hand waving. It's simply a valid philosophical view.

That's just a lot of hand-waving.

Yes, that part is hand waving. It assumes that the hard problem isn't hard, or rather, that there isn't a hard problem. The hard problem, as stated, is also hand waving, and will by definition never be solved, regardless of the progress of science and the success of a simulation such as Bostrom describes. The runners of the simulation have zero evidence that the simulated people are conscious as defined by the dualists, as opposed to p-zombies.

What makes free will possible? — Patterner

That depends heavily on how one defines free will. The way it is being used in this topic, free will is agency of a physical entity (something in the simulation) from a will that isn't part of the physics of the universe (the simulation). So in a VR, Lara Croft has free will since her will comes from outside the physics of the tomb. The NPCs she shoots do not have free will since their agency does come from said physics.

That's what I'm asking.

I don't see a fundamental difference, so 'other people' must answer your question since you say that "It is only when talking about what humans (some people include other animals) do that anyone calls the outcome choice", which implies that only living things have choice. But 'living' is just a language tag. There's no physical difference between a thing designated as living and one that isn't. They're both (per the naturalism view) just material doing what material does.

I suspect the reason believers who don't engage in empirical research don't engage in empirical research is their minds aren't strong in that area. "God did it" and "How does it work" are not incompatible thoughts. Francis Collins is such a strong believer that, when he finished mapping the human genome, he called it the Language of God. Also Mendel, Carver, Maxwell, Cantor, Kelvin, Heisenberg, and many others.

DNA doesn't explain how supernatural will has the agency to move one's arm. Searle apparently did a talk on how one can willfully move one's arm, but I don't know how he claims to have solved the problem. I'm pretty confident that there's a step in there that require hand-waving or begging or some such, but I've not seem a link to what he says.

- - - -

On the subject of computability: Where does randomness come into play? I've posted above that classical physics is computational, but there are valid classical situations where effects occur uncaused, such as described by Norton: "acausality in classical physics".
The cleanest example was a particle on a cone that can at any random time slide off it, or remain at the top indefinitely. Computable physics is supposedly deterministic, but here's a case where the simulator is forced to pick a random value.

The question is How much more? — Ludwig V

Well, all of it, but I see the question being, at what point can we back off on the level of detail simulated? Simulation is necessarily an approximation, and the further away you get (say the wall to your left), the more you can approximate the physics of it, if the intent is mostly to make the simulation undetectable to the humans. The bugs on the wall will notice, but the sim is not giving them buggy experience. The bugs are but phenomena to the humans, not things that have phenomenal experience themselves. All the above is per Bostrom, describing how the simulation could be optimized. But if the simulation does this (inconsistent physics between say the wall and one's gut biome), then it opens the door for empirical ways to detect this, but it gets hard because the sim is an AI that gleans intent, and it would change the physics of the bug if one focuses sufficient interest in one.

Emotions (as opposed to moods) have a cognitive content, and that wouldn't be a problem. But they also involve desire and value.

I find all of that list to be part of cognitive content, but with chemical influences as well. Fear is a very chemical emotion, but fear is necessarily initiated as a cognitive function: One must conclude a danger of some sort first before the chemicals come into play.

That is extremely problematic. It seems to me that software commands can simulate emotion, but having an emotion (desire, value) is a very different kettle of fish.

Software is not driving any emotions in the sim described. It is just simulating molecular interactions or some such, essentially an uncomplicated task. It is the molecules that are arranged into a person who has real emotions that emerge from the molecular activity, never simulated emotions.
Fundamentally, the software could be a trivial program that does only that. Give it particles and forces and such, and off you go. It would need an insane amount of power and memory, but a relatively trivial code base.
But Bostrom adds a lot more to the software requirement because it needs to know which molecules comprise a set of particles that is designated as a human, and it needs to glean intent from that human so that it can change the physics of some systems when necessary. Now the software is a million times more complicated, but the extra code is worth it for the optimization it buys.

You grabbed a statement I made to Ludwig V about Searle, interpolated Bostrom — fishfry

Ah, Searle said that, which makes sense. Of course Searle isn't going to accept a naturalist premise, but his unwillingness to set aside his opinion about it prevents his rendering any proper critique.

People keep using the word naturalism and I'm trying to understand what it means. Is it the same or different than physicalism? — fishfry

For purposes of this discussion, I've been using the two terms interchangeably.

The causes of the hormones in the brain and the effects of the hormones in the body, together with their psychological counterparts are all part of the package. — Ludwig V

If this world is part of a simulation, it is definitely going to have to simulate chemical/hormonal influences on our experience. Far more than that even.

Much of my skepticism of SH is that he proposes that the physics of a system changes depending on how much attention is being paid to it.

But our will is the result of physical interactions. Regardless of their complexity, physical interactional are physical interactions.
-Physical interactions determine the final arrangement of the pool balls after the break.
-Physical interactions determine whether a bunch of particles will gather into a planet orbiting a star; become a loose gathering, such as the asteroid belt; or scatter to the various directions of space.
-Physical interactions determine if and when solid H2O will become liquid, and vice versa.
-Physical interactions cause the globe's weather patterns.
-Physical interactions determine what a person has for dinner, or how a person deals with a cheating spouse. — Patterner

I notice you seem to use the verbs 'cause' and 'determine' somewhat interchangeably there. I agree with all, but I want to highlight some distinctions, the main one being, 'under physical monism' (not dualism), all the above is true, since some (not just the last one) is not true under dualism.
All of them are examples of 'physical interactions cause this and that'. The word 'determines' implies determinism, that not only does state X cause state Y, but state X can only cause Y and not any different outcome Z. There are valid deterministic interpretations of physics and valid nondeterministic ones, so we don't know if physics is deterministic or not.
The second important point is: the lack of determinism does not imply free will, it only implies randomness, and randomness is not what makes free will possible. It isn't information (enaction of choice) from outside physical interactions of matter. Randomness conveys no information, hence cannot enact the external choice necessary for free will.

Hence yes, determinism or no, under physicalism, an external entity cannot hold a physical entity responsible for how the physics works in this universe. Internal entities can, so justice is served if I go to jail for setting my cat on fire, but not if I go to hell for it, as if it is even meaningful to put a physically meaningful arrangement of matter into a non-physically meaningful state.

How is this relevant to the simulation hypothesis? Well, the runners of the simulation have no meaningful way to exert their ideas of a moral standard on the states of matter in their simulation. OK, the simulators could sprinkle a bunch of 'divine scripture' copies here and there as part of the initial state of the simulation, but the runners really have no way of doing anything about it if someone in the sim doesn't follow the rules spelled out in the scripture. Lightning strikes from above would render it into an interactive VR for the simulators, and no longer a pure sim. It would reduce the occupants of our world to NPCs, zombies in a world with only one or a few actual free willed VR players (the ones aiming the lightning strikes, or whatever method they choose to implement their interference).

It is only when talking about what humans (some people include other animals) do that anyone calls the outcome choice.

Speak for yourself. I picked the cars as an example since I consider it to be making choices, even if I don't think it is a very good example of AI. They're complicated, but still very much automatons, but they do make choices about which route, which lane to use, and so on. If that's not choice, then fundamentally, as a physicalist, what am I doing that is different?

The planet's weather is the result of more particles than are in our brains

My decision to not burn the cat is also the result of more particles than is in my brain. In fact, that choice is a function of pretty much everything else you listed. It is not a function of matter 50 billion light years away. That's how far I need to go.

Yet, even there, we do not speak of choice or will. Why do we only when the physical activity within a human brain is involved?

Because that's how language is used, and language usage, more than anything else, sets one's biases.

The pool balls can come to rest in a huge number of arrangements after being struck by the cue ball at the break. But I wouldn't say any arrangement is ever a choice. — Patterner

Pool balls don't seem to be an example of something enacting will, of something making choices.

A self-driving car makes choices, unless you're the type to forbid such language being applicable to something other than a human doing it. Yet most would agree it has no free will. Again, I see no benefit of free will (an action whose causal chain isn't rooted in physical state somewhere) to be preferable to actions whose causal chain is rooted in physical state. Crossing the street is my typical example of this.

in what way are our choices different if we don't have free will?

I suspect that they're better choices if they're not free. Being 'free' seems to imply being controlled by an external entity, which I consider equivalent to being possessed. One never knows if what possesses you has your best interests in mind, especially if its survival isn't dependent on the survival of that which it possesses.

Does naturalism state that we currently know of all things natural?

Quite the opposite. It implies that it is far better to say "We don't know how X works yet" than to say "X? Oh, that's done by Gods, magic, woo, whatever. The latter attitude discourages research. The former methodology encourages it.
Hence the dark ages when methodological supernaturalism was prevalent, and the explosion of knowledge when methodological naturalism took over some 7 centuries ago give or take.

If your question is about a new kind of physics that implements mind, well, if it can be shown that such is how it really works, then it falls under naturalism, yes. But nobody is treating it as something that can be investigated. The whole point of woo is that it be based on faith in lieu of lack of evidence. So empirical research into any of it is discouraged.

If there is a causal connection between my decision to point a gun and Lara Croft raising her arm, there are two things that interact. That's what causality means. — Ludwig V

Quite right, and there very much is such a connection in that example.

Whether you are dualist, monist, physicalist, idealist, epiphenomenonalist or panpsychist.

There's a difference. With physicalism, there's a wire connecting the physical system where the will is implemented, to the system where the motor control (and eventually the arm) is implemented. Under dualism, that causal chain is seemingly broken/unknown, and it's a problem that needs to be solved, something that isn't a problem for the monist.
I don't know how Searle claims a solution to this problem, but I will lay odds it involves persuasion rather than empirical investigation.

Do we have any inkling of how brains are conscious? — RogueAI

You're asking somebody who claims brains are not. Heck, even I am one of them since I wouldn't consider a brain on its own to be conscious. it is beings/complete systems, not just brains, that are conscious or not, per a physicalist view.
No answer to this question will ever satisfy a dualist. Any progress towards such knowledge is waved off as correlation, not actual consciousness. I mean they have machines that know the choice you will make before you do yourself. "Oh, that's just correlation".
Anyway, the existence of such a device does not mean that we know how biological beings are conscious.

If entities create a simulation that includes other entities that do not have free will, the creators would be ... what's there right word ... idiots if they held the creations responsible for their choices. — Patterner

Quite right, but they still can be held responsible for their choices in the simulation itself. If you make a bad choice (cross street without looking), it's your fault if you get hurt/killed. No point in having a better brain if it isn't useful to make good choices. Not having free will does not mean you have no choice.

I'm not sure it would be worse to hold characters in a story you write responsible for their choices.

Characters in a story have no will at all. Their will is at best that of the author, and perhaps the author is responsible for their actions.

Naturalism is computationalism? I genuinely doubt that, but I'm no expert. — fishfry

Naturalism is not-dualism. No secret sauce.
Physics is not computational, but an approximation of it is, sufficient to simulate consciousness.

The economy is the deterministic output of a computer program?

Strawman. I never said that.

Meaning that I'm not a simulation, I'm an instantiation.

The way you seem to define instantiation, you are one whether or not Bostrom's hypothesis is true.

Since we have made zero progress on instantiation (there's that word again) consciousness

Your assertion. I disagree. I do agree that video games are not where this progress is being made since no video game to date has need of it.

So the simulator implements my consciousness.

Thee simulator implements physics. Physics implements your consciousness, regardless of whether the physics is simulated or not. Under supernaturalism, this isn't true.

And exactly what is it that makes a program conscious?

The program has no need of being conscious, just like atoms are not conscious. You are conscious, not the program, not the physics that underpins how your consciousness works.
Technically, a simulation of some system is far simpler than say microsoft code, but it is also much larger since it needs far more data than the capacity of say some desktop.

I would still be the one having the experience. The "I" having the experience.

That's right, which is why a video game is not a model of the simulation argument. Sim is not VR. Video games are VR. VR is dualism. Sim is physicalism.

If Bostrom thinks a computer can instantiate consciousness, the burden is on him to say how, since nobody has the slightest idea how.

It's not on him to say how. It's on those GS guys 10 centuries from now. Part of being 'posthuman' is apparently that they've figured it all out, at least far enough to glean focus and intent from watching raw physics happen, because the algorithm he suggests depends on these things.

Where is your evidence that computer programs are conscious?

Strawman. I never said they were. If this world is a sim, it isn't any program that is conscious, it is just us. I don't think this world is a sim.

So in the future there will be a breakthrough.

A lot of them, yes. Far more than I can accept.

But my simulator made me do it, honest. I had no choice.

Patterner above makes a good reply to this. Determinism made me do it. I'm not responsible. Doesn't work that way.

Do I have choice, by the way? Does Bostrom deny free will?

Nicely illustrating the mistake of equivocating choice and free will. Don't need the latter to have the former, as evidenced by our having evolved expensive brains to make better choices. Free will does not add any survival benefit.

Programs don't have free will by virtue of getting external inputs.

Unless the external input IS the will, as it is in any VR.

You contradicted yourself at least three times getting from the beginning to the end of that para. No free will but there might be if there's randomness, but it might only be pseudo-randomness, in which case it's not random after all.

You've identified no contradictions. Randomness is not free will. I did not mention free will in the paragraph quoted. There is no free will in Bostrom's proposal.

You asked what Bostrom's sim is a simulation of. I answered that.

According to science?

Per the methodological naturalism under which science operates. If one presumes otherwise, it isn't science.

Yet you think I'm an approximate computation?

I never said any such thing. You do like putting crazy words in my mouth.

I urge you to think about what you are saying.

I urge you to read what I'm saying.

So brain in vat IS is like simulation after all?

I urge you to read what I'm saying.

The sim theorists say God did it and God is a Turing machine.

I urge you to read what sim theorists are saying, because it certainly isn't that, and it isn't anything I've said.

Why do you think his conclusion doesn't follow from his premises? That might be interesting.

First option: We never get 'posthuman'. His description of the requirement for this posthuman state is so high that the probability of option 1 being the case is 1 to an awful lot of digits. His argument requires that probability to be close to zero. I could go on, but that's enough.

Really. You're not here at all?

I am quite here, no problem. But I'm not a realist, and 'instantiation' seems to be synonymous with 'to be made real in some way', or more exactly, to set the property of being real to true. I define being real as a relation, not a property like realism does, so an instantiator ceases to be a necessity.
You asked. I don't expect you to accept it, and you'll no doubt bend it to something I didn't say.

That you don't exist? That takes skepticism a bit too far.

No, I just have a different definition of 'to exist', a relation, not a property. And yes, this very much solves a problem that plagued me for years, one that comes up in this forum frequently since the typical answers don't work.

And if the simulators are a future civilization, who created them? In the end it's either "God did it," or "We don't know."

And you said that my (minority) view didn't solve any problems, yet here is one that isn't solved by the more mainstream stances.

How could the mind-body problem not be relevant if people are positing that sims might be people (and sometimes asserting that at least some people are sims?) — Ludwig V

Mind-body problem is only relevant to dualism, and sim theory isn't dualism, so the there's no problem. I think the term is 'interactionism', how the dual aspects interact with each other.
It's very relevant to a VR. How does my decision to point a gun at the baddie cause Lara Croft to raise her arm? There has to be a causal connection between my decision and her arm, and there is. But under sim theory, there isn't two separate things that need to interact, so the problem doesn't arise. If Bostrom is wrong about his philosophy of mind, then his hypothesis falls flat.

I believe in that same lecture (or perhaps a different one) he [Bostrom?] did NOT advocate dualism. ... That is, consciousness is physical, but not computational. — fishfry

Wait, Bostrom said that mind is not computational, and yet pushes a view that our consciousness is the result of a computation? That seems to be a direct denial of his own paper. Got a link to where this is said?

I can't see reading further. Bostrom assumes that consciousness can be implemented on a computer. — fishfry

It's really hard to critique the paper if you cannot set your personal beliefs aside for a moment and take a non-dualist perspecitve for a moment. The inability to do so renders yours objections invalid, as evidenced by all the strawman statements you make above.
Nobody is asking you to accept his conclusion or believe his premises.

Oh, and instead of justifying and supporting his computational consciousness claim, he blithely says it's "widely accepted." By whom?

The science of neural biology for one. There's possibly an exception to that, but I've never seen it: Somebody presuming your stance and implementing the scientific method to actually investigate it. Amazing that nobody tries such an obvious empirical thing.

My reply was edited since I think I finally grasped what you mean by 'instantiation', as being distinct from 'simulation'.

My point is that Bostrom and others are equivocating simulation in this manner, — fishfry

No they're not. They are using the word in a single consistent manner at all times. You admit that it is you that is finding two different meanings and trying to use two different words to distinguish them. Under naturalism, there is a physical system that is simulated using a model of physical laws. It's completely computational in all cases.

I am allowed to have an opinion, right?

I acknowledged your opinion. It isn't wrong, merely inconsistent with Bostrom's naturalism opinion.

My opinion is that the economy isn't an example of something noncomputational.

I deny that physics is computational, or rather I'm pretty sure it's not.

With that I completely agree, which is why any computation of our physics is necessarily an approximation.

Whereas (this is my thesis and maybe not Bostrom's) simulation theory says that our very existence, as it really is, is a program in the big computer in the sky. An entirely different thing than simulation.

I'm unclear of the distinction between that and simulation. Bostrom says that it is humans (or 'post-humans') running the big computer. Simulation theory in general doesn't require that detail.

Oh my, are we disagreeing on propositional logic?

Not at all. I am balking at your equating a premise that science in general would find false (2+2=5) with one that science in general accepts as true (naturalism).

So I'll call PacMan early VR, I have no problem with that.

Good. Best they could do at the time. Even today, few non-headset games even have a first person perspective. Minecraft and Portal come to mind. I'm sure there are others, but still a small percentage. Earliest one I can think of is Battlezone. Remember that one? It pre-dates pacman I think. Ground breaking stuff it was.

I assume computer scientists must have a technical term for that, when execution speed makes a difference in the output of a computation

Yes. "Real time". But technically, all computation has this requirement, which is one reason nobody makes real Turing machines. Imagine if you had a 4-banger calculator that took 40 years to add 2+2. Would you use it? Does that make adding 2+2 something more than computational?

I have opinions, I have beliefs, I don't deny them.

A good stance, and I worded it as 'belief' instead of 'opinion', which may have been too hash. The simulation hypothesis can only be considered under the naturalism it presumes, whether or not naturalism is part of one's opinion.

We have some extra secret sauce, I don't know what it is.

Your opinion then is that we have the secret sauce, and that whatever it is, it isn't computational, although I don't know how you can infer it being noncomputational if you don't have any idea what it is. So probably also another opinion.

But then was is my Cartesian "I", the thing that doubts, the thing that is deceived?

There isn't a separate Cartesan "I" thing under naturalism.

But you'll defend it to the death against the likes of me, who hasn't even read the paper?

Explaining it and defending it are two different things. The abstract is accurate, meaning I find it reasonably valid and sound, although it seems that it has been updated since wiki lists 5 options now instead of the original 3, but the new ones seem to overlap with the old ones.

That's because even though I haven't read Bostrom, I've read a bit of simulation criticism and support.

Much (the majority?) of criticism and support seem to be from people without a reasonable understanding of what it says. You can include me on that list. Don't trust what I say, but I have read the actual paper at least, and I know the difference between it, other sim proposals, and with a VR proposal. Many of the articles discussing it seem not to know the differences.

Is my consciousness part of the simulation?

So says Bostrom, yes. Naturalism says it is if the simulation is run at a sufficiently detailed level, which is still classical, not necessarily down to the quantum level.

Is that the distinction between VR and Sim?

A VR does not produce a second consciousness for the avatar. A sufficiently detailed VR might for an NPC, but nothing like that exists in any current VR system. The current VR immersion (with the 3D headset and all) is barely better than the one for Pacman. With a good one, there'd be no controller in your hand. You would not have access to say your real body being touched.

So maybe or maybe not?

Very likely not.

Full knowledge of how memory and consciousness works.

No, that isn't needed, but it is needed if the sim is gleaning intent from the physics it is simulating, and Bostrom very much does propose that it is interpreting human intent. Also, that understanding is needed for any human that is not born, but is part of the initial state. So bottom line, yea, it is needed.
A pure simulation of a human from the human's initial state has no need for knowledge of how memory and consciousness works, for the exact same reason that physics doesn't need to know the details of the workings of the things that result from the physics.

So Bostrom is assuming this problem has been solved?

Centuries hence, it seems so. Without it, there can be no plausible initial state, unless you go back 3 billion years where the initial states were less complicated

But that goes against the claim that "the video games are so much better now," an argument often given in support of the simulation hypothesis.

No video game claims any understanding of what is referred to as the hard problem. If somebody references a game as an illustration of Bostrom's hypothesis, then they don't understand the difference between a sim and a VR. But they're probably just using games as one way to demonstrate Moore's law, which Bostrom presumes to continue for centuries.

So I'm not real, according to the theory.

If all this is a simulation, I am still very much real according to my stated definition of 'real' and you've not given yours. SH is very different than BiV and Boltzmann brains.

Even if they did, they would not know what each person is going to do next. Unless you also reject free will.

I don't think there is the sort of free will you're thinking if our world is a simulation. A simulation like that doesn't have causality from outside the system. If it did, it would probably be a VR. I say this, but I've done chip simulations that get driven from external state. The signals fed to the chip are artificial, not from other simulated circuits since it's only the one chip being tested. Such a chip simulation is hard to classify as a VR.

If I'm a simulation, what am I a simulation of?

You are part of the physical evolution of the chosen initial state. That answer pretty much applies to any simulation, including all the ones I've seen done. You want to call it an instantiation and I think I see how you're using that word. A simulation is the execution (instantiation) of a mathematical model, that model itself being an approximation of some hypothetical corresponding reality. Since it is the execution of a model, it is presumably exact, except the model might include randomness, in which case the exactness is wrong since multiple instantiations of the same model will evolve differently. Bostrom does propose some randomness in his model, so not sure how 'exact' it would be. Said randomness need only be apparent, so it can be driven by a pseudo-random mechanism, which restores the deterministic nature of the simulation.

You can't go from "people aren't special in the universe," to "therefore people are computational."

I don't think any physical thing (people or otherwise) is computational. But an approximation can be, and people are no exception to that according to science.

You are strenuously trying to explain to me that Bostrom's idea is nonsense; but not liking my own argument as to why it's nonsense. Why are we doing this?

You're not taking down Bostrom's argument. You presume his premisies to be false. I presume them to be true, and I think his conclusion doesn't follow from them.

SH is not brain in vat?I thought VR was like a video game, and SH is where my mind is being instantiated too.

That's right. BiV is like the video game: an artificial (virtual) experience stream to the real (not simulated) experiencer, effectively a video game for the B in the Vat, whatever its nature.

So now I'm a simulation of a dead person.

Very unlikely for the reason's I've stated. Only if you're part of the initial state, and then only if that initial state had some kind of access to the molecular state of everybody on Earth many centuries prior, which they don't because there's no tech today that can do that.

There cannot be instantiation? What do you think the universe is?

Under Bostrom's view, the universe is a simulation, or at least something that can be seen from the simulation since most of it is just phenomenal.

Yes, our universe is what it is, and that's an intantiation in your wording. But the wording give no clue as to the nature of how it comes to be, since any story fits. Bostrom gives one possible way that it is instantiated. A deity is another. Both fail to solve the problem of 'why there's something and not nothing', but Bostrom isn't positing a solution to that problem. The deity answer often is such an attempt, and a failed one since it explains a complicated thing by positing an even more complicated thing.

We've all been instantiated somehow. We are here. We have been instantiated. That's the point.

I think I understand your usage of that word, and I don't in any way presume that I am instantiated. But that's me, being far more skeptical than most. Being instantiated doesn't solve any problems. I personally suspect that the sum of 2 and 2 is 4 even in the absence of anything actually performing that calculation (absence of it being instantiated). Apparently I am in the minority in this opinion.

if you simply want to make the point that I have an opinion and that I'm wrong. I agree.

I never said your opinion is wrong. It's just a different one than somebody else's. Different premises.

I have my opinion and I may be wrong, but the more we talk about it, the more these concepts are clear in my mind, and I think I'm right.

I think I'm in the minority of being somebody who has opinions X and Y and such, and I also think I'm mostly wrong about them. Some are probably right, but I realize that the odds of me getting most of them right is stupidly low.

God instantiated the universe. You say God is a digital computer.

I say that?

I say that's one extra assumption and by Occam, we should just stick with God. That's what I get from Bostrom.

'God' sound like the extra assumption in that statement. Occam says it's better to ditch both the deity and the simulation layers

But if we have free will, then we aren't simulations. — Patterner

Totally agree. Some take that as evidence against the argument, but only because 'free will sounds like a good thing, therefore I must have it". To me it sounds like a bad thing, but I don't hold a presumption that the entities in the simulation will be held responsible for their choices, by entities not in the simulation.

.

what the "GS"? — Ludwig V

It means 'Great Simulator', which is the base reality running the base simulation. So if we're 3 levels down, the GS is the first level, the only level that isn't itself a simulation.

The term was coined by fishfry in this topic many posts back, and it's easy to type.

But computers as we understand them now don't qualify for simulation of biological phenomenon. — SpaceDweller

I beg to differ. Computers as we understand them now are quite capable of the task, but at this time, perhaps 40 orders of magnitude speed and memory capacity short of the scale of simulation described by Bostrom. This presumes naturalism of course, and many here (fishfry, possibly Ludwig, possibly yourself) do not so presume.

No, there are only simulated storms and rain in the simulated world. — Ludwig V

Nobody calls them simulated storms. I was in one last night, and we all call it a storm.
Sure, they are simulated storms in the GS (fishfry's term, which I find very useful) world since that's the world in which the simulation is running, but in our world, they are storms. In the case of a weather simulation, in the simulated world, they are storms, but in that case, the GS world is ours, so they are simulated storms relative to us. There are no people in our weather simulations to call them storms, but the point stands: What they're called depends on the point of view.

I can believe that it is not compatible with Bostrom's view. The question is whether Bostrom's view is coherent.

Bostrom proposal is consistent with the methodological naturalism under which all of modern science is based. That means that human beings are treated as just collections of matter doing what the laws of physics says that matter does. I say consistent, but then Bostrom changes the laws of physics from here to there, as does any simulation. A simulation has boundaries, and so a distant star is probably modeled (most of the time) as a simple point source of light. The people in the sim would probably notice if there were no stars in the sky but the simulation hardware is not capable of simulating stellar combustion at the molecular level for the entire visible universe.

So Bostrom does suggest that the simulations of people "inside" the (non-conscious) computer are conscious.

He proposes that we are likely in such a simulation. If you consider yourself to be conscious, then yes, the hypothesis says that you (a simulated thing) is conscious. That's different than saying that the simulation itself is conscious. The simulation and you are different things. The former is a process running in some GS world, and the latter is you, an simulated dynamic arrangement of matter in the simulated world.
His argument proceeds along probability lines, not along empirical evidence lines. This is very similar to the sort of probabilistic reasoning behind the dangers of Boltzmann Brains. No argument for or against Boltzmann Brains can proceed along empirical lines so one is left with probability.

if the "me" in here is having subjective experience, then I must be able to interact with the presented illusory environment,

Of course you interact with your environment. what kind of simulation would it be if you couldn't? Even a statue of Ludwig interacts with its environment, if only to get wet, change temperature, and exert force on the ground. Having subjective experience or not doesn't change that, but you'd probably die pretty quickly if you didn't have that subjective experience.

But that would make me a real person, not a simulation (though I might be a clone.)

You are a real person in this world, but a simulated person relative to the GS world (according to Bostrom). I am perhaps using a different definition of 'real' than you are, and this likely needs to be clarified. I consider what we can see, reach out and touch, to be real to us. You seem to be using a different definition, such as perhaps "is part of the GS", the base world. which presumes no infinite regress.

There's an ambiguity here. There could be simulations of people that are like fictional people. Their originals would be people in general, not people in particular (though an ancestral simulation suggests that they would need to be people in particular - if they aren't, then what makes it an "ancestral" simulation.)

Totally agree. There would be no particular correspondence between people or events in the sim, to people and events in (the past history of) the GS. A war in this world, or a cup being dropped and breaking, would have no particular corresponding event in the GS world. And you're exactly correct: Without this correspondence, how is it being described as an ancestral simulation justified in any way?

But problem is that in real world there is biology and biological things happening such as us, plants and animals, this is something which "computers" (electronic devices) don't do — SpaceDweller

Bostrom's hypothesis is consistent with the methodological naturalism under which all of science operates. That means that plants/animals are very much something that computers can 'do'.

, if I am a simulation that is not aware of the fact, I must be able to act and react in my world. In that case, I am not a simulation of anything. — Ludwig V

We seem to be unable to communicate. A simulated thing that was causally disconnected from its environment would be an inaccurate simulation, unless perhaps it was a simulation of dark matter, which really is unable to 'act and react' in its world in any way beyond contributing to the curvature of spacetime.

I can think of models of the weather system that are used to predict the weather. They can be called simulations. They remain quite distinct from the actual weather. There are neither storms, nor rain, nor sunshine inside the computer.

But there very much is storms and rain in the world simulated. It wouldn't be a weather simulation without such things.
Similarly, a simulation of a conscious being would not make a computer conscious, but that doesn't mean that simulated person is not conscious. Bostrom suggests that is exactly what's going on.

Yet the point of the exercise is that it remain as close as possible to what actually happens/-ed. (I can't imagine what the point of ancestral simulations would be, if not that.)

I suppose that's the point, but Bostrom has zero awareness of chaos theory if he thinks that will happen. And he doesn't suggest it. He makes no suggestion that us (the simulation) is evolving in any way the same history as in the simulating world. But yes, what's the point of running such a simulation? Not for prediction purposes, and that's almost always the motivation behind running any simulation.

Once you suppose that the simulations are conscious

I don't think anybody is supposing that. See the above. Yes, a simulated person would behave differently than 'their originals', which I put in quotes because there are no originals in the scenario in question, except as a wild guess at an initial state, giving some characters the same names and roles as historic figures.

The point of the simulations would be lost if real people capable in their own right of acting and reacting in their world.

That sentence lacks a verb, and you lost me. Real people are the ones supposedly running the simulation. The 'point of the simulation' is meaningful to those that are running it. The simulated people have no access to those running the sim, and if they detect or just suspect that they are a sim, they can only guess at the motivations behind the running of it.
Your wording in the verb-less sentence suggests that simulated people would perhaps need to exert some sort of free will over the physics of the simulation. That model isn't compatible with Bostrom's view.

It's me trying to EXPLAIN that OTHER people are using the same word for two very different things. — fishfry

Or its the other people always meaning the same thing, and thus needing only one word for it.
You seem to be the one finding two different meanings, one which sounds like how others use 'simulation', and then this other thing which for reasons not spelled out, require exactness, and is perhaps not computational. I have no idea how to simulate something non-computational, let alone doing it exactly. I don't think anybody else is suggesting any such thing.

But I also maintain that the hypothesis is false. So there's no contradiction.

Well yea, you deny the premise that physics is computational at the necessary levels of precision needed.

So I am not in a position to dictated whether or not 2 + 2 = 5 because I hold that the proposition is false?

No, you're not in the position to say what other people think follows from accepting that 2+2=5.

Pacman ONLY involves computation.

You said "Then whatever [VR] is doing is not computational.", and now you say it is nothing but.
Perhaps you don't consider pacman to be an example of VR. It's admittedly crude and not deeply emersive, but most action video games are nevertheless a form of VR.

The point seems moot. The subject of the topic is simulation theory, not VR theory. VR examples have little to no bearing on simulation hypothesis, a hypothesis you just plain deny due to your lack of belief that a human is computational.

The points you're making in this post are trivial and wrong, not up to your usual standards.
— noAxioms

I don't think I ever said that. This quote is mistakenly attributed to me. Maybe I'm wrong about that. It's a long thread.

I take your point about real time computing, but that does not change the definition of computability.

You seem to go on endlessly about me somehow disagreeing with the definition of computability. I'm not. Real-time issues don't exist in simulation hypothesis, so those are moot until one starts talking about something other than SH.

So who is the me that's being simulated?

Under the simulation hypothesis, you are yourself, which is tautologically true, SH or not. There is not a different 'more real' or 'less real' fishfry somewhere else. It is an ancestor simulation, not a simulation of a fishfry model. Your maker is still your mother, also part of the simulation.

You (or you quoting Bostrom) say that I'm a simulation

You are part of one large simulation, and yes, me quoting Bostrom. I don't buy the hypothesis for a moment.

I'm asking what I'm an approximation of.

You are not an approximation of anything. The simulation is an approximation of the physics of a system (a planet perhaps). You are part of the state of that simulation.

So do I correspond to an actual person or not?

Probably not, unless the simulation's initial state was very recent (our time) and that initial state included a real person who happened to identify as fishfry. I seriously doubt the GS people centuries in the future would know almost anything about you except your parental lineage, all of which is only relevant if the initial state was set since your birth. It has to start somewhere, and that means that the people of that time are created in thin air, with memories totally consistent with their nonexistent past. Doing that requires a full knowledge of how memory and consciousness works, not just a model of how physics works. The initial state requires far more work than does the simulation itself, which is fairly trivial if you get the state right.
Such things are easy with weather and car crashes, but a nightmare for something complex.

As I go through my daily life and encounter other humanoid-appearing creatures, is there a way for me to determine which correspond to actual people and which don't?

Probably none of them, unless they are older than the date of the initial state. Anybody conceived after simulation start has zero probability of having a corresponding real person.

Are the non-corresponding creatures like NPCs in video games?

No. They're no different, except they have real memories, not fake ones put there by the initial state. Maybe the sim only last 10 minutes and everybody is 'corresponding'. This is presuming that the people of the future know exactly who and where everybody is at some random time centuries prior. They don't.
Why do you harp on this? Of what possible importance would it be to anybody in a sim to have a corresponding person (long dead) in the GS? I do realize that I am asking this question of a person who thinks people are special in the universe can cannot be computational like everything else.

You know you are really out on a limb here

Bostrom is maybe. You forget who's pushing the hypothesis. It isn't me, but I'm a computer person and at least I understand it enough to see it for the nonsense it is.

but only because my vat programmers have erased my memory.

SH is not a BiV scenario. VR is, but Bostrom is not talking VR.

So we're all non-corresponding players now? Not just some of us?

An corresponding people from the initial state of the sim would correspond to people centuries dead in the GS world, so nobody can correspond to any living 'real' person.

Simulation as approximation. As opposed to simulation as instantiation.

Sorry, but despite your repeated use of that word, I don't know what you mean by it. You've mentioned that it needs to be 'exact', and the exact physics of even a small trivial real system cannot be exactly simulated, so there cannot be what you call an instantiation. So we're back only to simulations of the approximate physics of some chosen system.

This ignores the possibility that there may not be "lots of civilizations". — Janus

Bostrom addresses that point in his first of three possibilities listed in his abstract.

I didn't get a notification of this. Glitch the matrix? — Patterner

I occasionally get a reply that doesn't make it to the 'mentions' list. Maybe a glitch. I suspect it perhaps might be a post that was already posted, and then later gets edited to mention you, but the one in question here is short and a reply only to you, so that's a significant data point against my theory.

My problem is that I don't understand what metaphysics is, — Ludwig V

I can answer this. Metaphysics is about what physically is, and physics is about what physically is measured. That's a crude definition, but what it comes down to is that the phrases 'physically possible' and 'metaphysically possible' mean the same thing. You can't have one without the other. Metaphysically possible means that there exists a metaphysical interpretation where the thing in question is physically possible.
So for instance, physical determinism is a metaphysical issue. There are some valid interpretations that are deterministic, and some valid interpretations that are not. Therefore determinism is metaphysically possible, and therefore determinism is physically possible.

Everybody posting seems to treat 'metaphysically possible' as some weird sort of realm between physically and logically possible, resulting in confusion when nobody can come up with an example of something distinct.
So any argument against the lamp, or recitation of numbers, becomes a logical argument because these arguments have no application to physics. They are all metaphysically impossible for the very reason that they are physically impossible.

Supertasks play on the difference between the physically possible and the logically possible to create an illusion.

This seems to say it. It is a logical issue, but with applications to the physical when the scenario in question doesn't involve physical impossibilities.

After completing the supertask the lamp must be either on or off — Michael

I am willing to accept this statement, but you are not willing to engage with any of the faults identified with your logic. Hence I can only presume you have no counters to them, resorting only to changing the subject every time a fallacy is pointed out. I for the most part have dropped out due to this lack of engagement.

It is impossible to complete any action an infinite number of times. — Ludwig V

This is Zeno's strategy. Just beg your conclusion.

The notation does not define an end, — Ludwig V

There it is. Not possible due to the asserted necessity of a bound of something which by definition has no bound. All the arguments against seem to take this form. Even Zeno avoided this fallacy, and his argument was made before the mathematics of infinite sets was formalized.

Your post seems to add nothing new, and does not appear to engage with any of the points I've made. I have nothing to add till I see a need to write something I haven't already said. — fishfry

Myself as well. I have dropped out some time ago, and not surprisingly, nothing new has been posted. But I did chime in to define 'metaphysically possible' since the term seemed to be used in a way in which it was somehow meaning something different than physically possible, which it cannot be.

But that would mean that the simulation is a reality of its own, independently of the "real" reality. — Ludwig V

I want to agree and disagree with this. By most definitions of 'reality', yes, a simulated world would be a reality of its own, but it being called a simulation is an explicit admission of it being dependent on the deeper reality running the simulation, just like saying 'God created the universe' makes the explicit relation of the universe being dependent on the god. Neither case is that of a 'universe on its own'.

Well yes, by my definitions "couldn't simulate exactly" is synonymous with couldn't simulate.

Again, we have this ongoing equivocation of the word simulation. I agree with you that when I program my computer to simulate gravity or the weather, the simulation is not exact. It's an approximation. — fishfry

The above two comments seem to contradict each other. By your definition, a simulation isn't one unless it is exact, and then you give examples of simulations that are not exact.

But when the GS simulates my consciousness and the experience of my senses, that is exact.

You also said that consciousness is not computational, and therefore the GS cannot simulate via computation, a conscious thing. That puts you into a position to not dictate whether or not those holding a different opinion would say that exactness is required or not.

Then whatever [VR] is doing is not computational.
...
If that is true, then VR is not computational.

So pacman does not involve computation. Hmm....

If you execute Euclid's algorithm faster, it is still Euclid's algorithm and has no capabilities (other than working faster) than it did before. It does not acquire more side effects or epiphenomena or "emergences" like consciousness or realism.

Agree, but I was talking about VR when I said that the rate of computation is essential. None of your examples above are VR examples.

Other examples is any other kind of real-time programming such as a self driving car. A car cannot function if its processing uses paper and pencil. A certain minimal rate of computation is required, or the task cannot be done. Computing slowly isn't enough if you take 3 months to see the stop sign. You seem to assert that what a self-driving car does therefore cannot be computation, but it very much is.

What does running an algorithm fast do that running the same algorithm slowly doesn't?

I already told you: It gets it done before the computer ceases computing. A human with a pencil lives maybe 50 years (with the pencil) and accomplishes what a computer can do in under a second, and computers tend to last longer than a second before they fail. A computer can come up with an answer while the answer is still needed. In a simulation, there are no deadlines to meet (except getting something done before the computer fails), but in any kind of real-time programming, it must be completed before the output is needed by the consumer of that output.

Even if I agree 100%, the definition of computability specifically ignores matters of time, space, energy, and resources

Ok you agree. That's good. So if I write some code, and when I run it slowly it computes Euclid's algorithm; and when I run it fast, it computes Euclid's algorithm and whistles Dixie; then by the definition of computability, which you have now agreed to, whistling Dixie is not a computable function. It it were, the slow algorithm would get the same output as the fast one.

If it whistles Dixie, it is computing something different. Both should have identical output. Euclid's algorithm isn't a real-time task.

That's the only point I'm making. But it's important, because you claim that running the algorithm fast makes a qualitative difference.

Only to a real-time task, and none of your examples are one.
.

Wait. There's an abstract mathematical model of a human and any particular sim is only an approximate instance?

There's a model of physics, and any sim is only a computable approximation of that. Bostrom says that a human is a product of physics, and thus can be functionally simulated given a sufficient level of detail, which is still classical.

That's more like Tegmark, that we're all mathematical structures.

Same model, different supervenience, if I get my terminology straight.

So there's a simulation of a person AND there's a real person being simulated?

I don't know what you think it means for a real person to be simulated. Bostrom suggests a sim of ancestral history, which means that random new people get born, and these people do not in any way correspond to actual people that might have existed in the history of the GS. Much depends on what period of history they choose for their initial state.

Now you have TWO mysteries instead of one. I'm a simulation and there's a real me above that? I don't believe that.

That would be something other than 'ancestral history'. You say take a molecular scan of a real person, create a sim model of that exact arrangement of matter, put it in a small environment, and see what it does. That's far more likely than this 'ancestral' thing, but it also would be trivial for the simulated person to realize he's not the original since he's been put in this tiny bounded space, a sort of jail, when he remembers getting into the scanning machine.

Now according to your stated beliefs, that simulation wouldn't work. It is computational and you say a person isn't, so the simulated thing would not be functional at any level of detail.

Then you tell me that I'm only an approximation of a real person.

No, I did not suggest there needs to be a 2nd fishfry that is 'real'. Ancestral history simulations certainly don't produce simulated people that correspond to people in the GS world.

I no longer accept the coherence of the thesis being proposed. I'm a sim fishfry and there's a "real" entity fishfry who's being simulated, but who isn't reall there.

No, not two of you. Bostrom's sim hypothesis would have all of us being in one large simulation, and no real fishfry in the GS world. I apologize if something I posted led you to conclude that I was suggesting otherwise.
What is approximated is the physics. I can simulate planetary motion by modeling Earth as a point mass. That's a super-trivial approximation of Earth that works for seeing where it is 100 years from now, but it needs more detail if you say want to see which way the planet is facing in 100 years.

What we do is invent video games that use different physics and are nothing like us at all.

Yes, but over time, many video games keep getting closer and closer to the sort of reality we'
re used to. Not all of them. Some are still total fiction with deliberate fiction physics, if they have physics at all. They're also video games, which makes them VR, not simulations.

I've seen videos where someone debunks every other relativity video on the Internet

It's low hanging fruit to debunk various videos. There is indeed whole sites dedicated to debunking relativity in all possible ways, and it is a interesting exercise to find the fallacious reasoning in every one of the arguments. And I do know enough physics to do it to almost all of them.
The delayed choice quantum eraser isn't really an experiment having anything to do with relativity theory.

That's the astonishing thing. It plays pretty well even then, in games whose length exceeds the length of any of its training data..

News to me as well. It seems to require at least some level of what would qualify as 'understanding'.