Q&A: Simulation B
Simulation B
Question
With God’s help
I saw here not long ago a question that got bumped up about living in a simulation, and I saw that this is a discussion imported from America. Some define it as the best and newest skeptical question.
I wanted to ask whether, in your opinion, for someone who advocates materialism and holds that consciousness can exist either in an organic brain or a digital one, this really is an excellent doubt for him.
That is, if you think it is possible (given Moore’s law) to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, and that one can think we may reach a level where it will be possible to imitate the world (by extrapolation), then it is presumably likely that we ourselves are living in a simulation. Because there would be more simulated worlds than ordinary ones.
Because it really seems to me that someone who advocates materialism needs to try to solve this claim. But it sounds really strange.
B.
Using the term simulation portrays God as an intelligent entity that coordinates between the different parts of reality. So I think many of the proofs for God would remain valid here as well.
But I wanted to ask whether, in your opinion, the proof from epistemology—that infers from our understanding an entity that fitted it—also applies to this understanding. Because it makes a practical difference how you understand the proof: whether it merely “infers” (and then it applies to this too), or whether it is valid only if you are acquainted with what the theological proof is trying to identify, in which case only God (following the religious feeling) explains our knowledge in the best way, (because a person does not say that he is acquainted with the simulation) whereas with respect to God this is fairly accepted.
Answer
A very strange argument.
First, I do not think consciousness is possible for a digital system, so there is no point answering hypothetical questions.
Second, how do you know there could be more simulated systems than regular ones? Anything you imagine could also exist in some world.
Third, if I conduct a lottery, then I choose what has the higher probability. But I am not conducting lotteries. I trust my perceptions.
I do not understand the connection to materialism, nor the connection to the proof from epistemology.
Discussion on Answer
When I speak about consciousness, I mean the mental in general, including choice and free will of course, but also consciousness. But even regarding consciousness in itself, the claim that it is created from the organic whole (emergence) is itself very strange and implausible. Assuming that this does happen, you are right that one cannot rule out the possibility that it could also emerge from a mechanical structure. That only strengthens even more the strangeness of this claim. It is worth looking at column 35 (and also 175) about judgment.
The fact that futurists talk about something is no proof of anything. They say so much nonsense that, in my view, the presumption goes the other way. Not necessarily that they are wrong, but unless proven otherwise they are probably wrong.
I did not understand your explanation of the question at the end.
I will perhaps ask it as two separate questions:
Assuming*according to the view* that consciousness really can develop from organic complexity, it is plausible that it could also develop from a mechanical/digital assembly.
If so, if computer simulations can create consciousness, as was recently published about the scientist from Google,
then we have a positive doubt as to whether we are inside a simulation. Right?
That is, materialism undercuts the simple understanding that the world outside exists.
“The scientist from Google” is nonsense, as usual. This whole discussion too is bizarre, pardon me.
Computer simulations do not create consciousness according to any view in the world. At most, computers create consciousness. A simulation is software, not an object. I can understand (even if I do not agree) the claim that a non-organic object could have consciousness. But I do not understand what it means to say that a simulation could have consciousness.
Fine, so let us now assume for the sake of discussion a baseless assumption that according to materialism a computer too can have consciousness. You also need to assume in addition that this consciousness does not know where it came from, and that the body (and the whole world) that it notices is its illusion. Now the conclusion is at most that we are computer consciousnesses. Why does that mean there is no outside world? Of course there is. Except that perhaps it is a mechanical world and not an organic one.
These are the kinds of amusements of confused people, usually artificial intelligence people and futurists (in the style of Ray Kurzweil), who dabble in philosophy without minimal skill.
If this is what you want to use to defeat materialism, you will not get far.
Of course, what is meant by the term simulation is that there exists an object that contains it (processor and memory).
Only if the processor is large enough, one can speak about a simulation within a simulation, something like VirtualBox.
As you just said, the conclusion is at most that we are computer consciousnesses whose source is mechanical.
You just ignored the probabilistic considerations. That is, would this conclusion too—that is how to interpret reality—also be more plausible than the assumption of an organic source?
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By the way, the scientist from Google is not nonsense, but a not-so-rare view about the future of humanity.
For example, although he was removed from Google, in my opinion he only voiced conclusions that many of them have subconsciously. There are quite a few claims that most people in that industry think it is possible that we will reach a state in which AI will have consciousness. (And Google’s own vice president, in relation to the case, supported the hypothesis that LaMDA will soon have awareness.)
A pretty strange claim—why would someone who is a materialist allow consciousness only in an organic brain?
After all, many futurists talk about the transfer of consciousness into the digital space, etc.
Because we have more information about the plausibility of simulation than about unfamiliar systems.
In any case, every simulation that runs on a computer creates new products.
I didn’t understand—here the lottery explains reality. That is no different from an interpretation of God, say, for the proof from complexity.
That a person infers, because he thinks he is coordinated with something, the existence of a coordinator. (The simulation.)
Though he is not acquainted with it, whereas the classical argument for God speaks about the “religious feeling / religious experience.”
And that is why I asked whether you think this is valid, because it provides justification but without the ability to claim that a person can arrive at it directly.