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Article 6000 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu (Stephen P Spackman)
Subject: Re: Hypothesis: I am a [sensory] Transducer
In-Reply-To: forbis@carson.u.washington.edu's message of 1 Jun 92 03:58:18 GMT
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References: <1992May31.145204.16357@Princeton.EDU> <1992Jun1.012608.3756@mp.cs.niu.edu>
	<1992Jun1.023730.20079@Princeton.EDU>
	<1992Jun1.035818.6822@u.washington.edu>
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1992 05:43:08 GMT

It should be fairly clear that the reality of "reality" and the
"reality" of the self are co-determined. That is, just as the thing
that distinguishes the actual world from other possibilia is that it
is the one in which *you* are embedded (for all values of "you"!), so
the thing that makes you *real* and not a simulation is that you are
embedded in the in "the" *real* world.

[Actually it's a little trickier because there are multiple
information channels linking two people, even - especially - when the
two people are identical. There are some amusing pathologies that can
be constructed; a neat one person case is the upside-down glasses
experiment; for the two-person case - have you ever had the experience
of body-map crossover with (say) a lover, when you can't figure out
who some piece of anatomy belongs to?]

So a simulated person in a simulated world stands (and
indistinguishably so) in the same relation to hir environment that a
real person in a real world does - and a different one that a
simulated person in a real world or a real person in a simulated world
does, since in each of the latter cases there is an essentially
arbitrary interface layer involved.

That's what Gibson's (rather unconvincing) cyberspace is about - why
it has psychological power. Trite Godel reference goes here.  More
important in practise, it explains why in "hard" CS virtual machines
are such a big issue: it is (syntacto-) semantically essential that
the actuality of reality be undecidable on the basis of internal
evidence.

[It's also one of the things that distinguishes (well-) engineered
systems from evolved ones: nature exhibits her own interpreters, but
she delights in gross hacks with global variables, which actually
provide resiliance in the face of reality-failure. It's really
fascinating to contemplate how DNA compares to Unix source, in
particular, in regard to the parts that seem "clever".]
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stephen p spackman         Center for Information and Language Studies
stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu                    University of Chicago
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       Believe in Strong AI? I don't even believe in Strong I!


