X-Message-Number: 9308
Date:  Tue, 17 Mar 98 17:45:54 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #9293 - #9301

Just a few comments on some of Bob Ettinger's remarks. Though I think 
an emulation of a person would be possible in various computational 
devices, even a simple Turing machine on a 1-dimensional tape, such 
strange emulation scenarios are mainly of value for thought 
experiments. I think an emulation could be 
accompanied by various "scratch space" calculations without affecting 
its validity. However, an emulation, especially in the more bizarre 
cases, must use many events to represent one event. On this 
ground, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I think it 
"likely" in some sense that we are not emulations but "the real 
thing," which should be the simplest, most straightforward process 
that could be "running" us. (I.e. we can apply occam's razor.) Similarly,
I would say a hydrogen atom is different from an emulation of a
hydrogen atom, i.e. it is most likely what it seems to be, not some emulation.

On the other hand, though, if we *were* emulations in some strange 
form we would, at least for the time being, have no way of knowing 
it. We have no way of knowing that we aren't such emulations right 
now, so I think this has to be accepted as at least a low-probability 
alternative to our straightforward impressions. In a sense, "we" 
extend over all our possible "instantiations," including even the 
bizarre, but probably very rare ones, that we can mostly discount.

Mike Perry

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