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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9308