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Article 6022 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: santas@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Hypothesis: I am a [sensory] Transducer
Message-ID: <1992Jun1.214536.2308@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>
Date: 1 Jun 92 21:45:36 GMT
References: <1992Jun1.023730.20079@Princeton.EDU> <1992Jun1.035818.6822@u.washington.edu> <STEPHEN.92Jun1004316@estragon.uchicago.edu>
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In article <STEPHEN.92Jun1004316@estragon.uchicago.edu> stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu (Stephen P Spackman) writes:
>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.

I would say that the absence of an object defines a real world too.
Think of the world before your birth. You were not there,
even if we assume that the evolutionary path was leading to your creation.
This world was very much real. 

On the other hand you can have _identical_ impressions of your environment
while living in different realities, simply because you cannot process
or grasp the whole reality. Newtonian theory can be sufficient for two worlds
which obey or not obey to the principles of relativity (in the one case it is 
the limit humans can understand, in the other it is the general rule)

>[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?]

But after enough practising you can distinguish your parts from the others.
This is what I mean by inability to check all the data from the very beginning
(in this case the two previous worlds ca be separated within the human reality).

>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.

Not if one discovers more facts about the reality.
Then there is a transit period, untill one comes to the equilibrium
about the actual reality, and its internal represenation.

>[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".]

One can construct such mappings in almost every case.
Think of the very much discussed issue: a rock implements every FSA...

>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>stephen p spackman         Center for Information and Language Studies
>stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu                    University of Chicago
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>       Believe in Strong AI? I don't even believe in Strong I!


Philip Santas

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email: santas@inf.ethz.ch				 Philip Santas
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