"Earth as a Simulation Series 2: Are we simulated copies of people? How, slowing down technological development in your simulation will get around the potential recursive building sims in a sim glitch problems. However, an accurately simulated population will STILL present specific experiences, despite that the technologies these experiences depend on DON'T YET exist (immersive VR experiences for example). This series presents evidence of anomalous 'missing technology' experiences & evidence of obscuration of these & evidence that the simulation we are in was built in the last few decades."
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How can you retain ‘accuracy’ while ‘apparently’ magically disappearing the ‘earth as a simulation’ project even though all design ‘elements’ of the simulation would still have to be happening in plain sight to retain accuracy with respect to your simulated people?
Well what I’d personally do if I was designing this simulation is that I’d speed up the final ‘advanced’ phase of the simulation say 10 fold AND I’d simultaneously slow down technological developments and advances (both are easily done in an entirely software defined reality).
Doing this would retain accuracy enough to satisfy people’s scripted expectations because by slowing everything down you will continue to have all your simulated people engaged with what they were each individually doing for the original simulation project they’d all just be working with less advanced versions of what they had originally.
Did you know that ‘some’ academics have actually noticed that we seem to have a repeating a historical phase every 700 to 800 years with each phase stepping up in terms of advances AND they’ve even noticed that bizarrely the ‘current’ phase seems to be happening in 70/80 years rather than 800 (this is described on various pages within this web site here).
How Would you HIDE all of the Research of EVERYTHING from your simulated Population?
What I would personally do if I was designing this simulation would be to split up all the different aspects of the ‘earth simulation project’ into as many different factions as possible and I’d keep them completely separate and compartmentalized too so that everyone is doing what the person they are simulating originally did BUT in isolation from as many others that were working on it as possible.
For example, did you know that we do have a ‘simulation’ project here focused on trying to understand ‘earth’ peoples behaviours and problems which is described on this page here (the project is called the ‘Living Earth Simulator’).
This projects aim is to advance the scientific understanding of what is taking place on our planet. Dr Helberg states:
“Many problems we have today – including social and economic instabilities, wars, disease spreading – are related to human behaviour, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding regarding how society and the economy work,” and that “Thanks to projects such as the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator built by Cern, scientists know more about the early universe than they do about our own planet.”
Coincidentally as an earth simulation designer I’d also apply this isolation and compartmentalizing strategy to my simulations academics and scientists at least during the latter phase of the simulation. I’d do this because I’d not want any ‘expert’ being an expert of anything other than a teensy weensy faction of an isolated sub part of a tiny bit of ‘something’ because then they’d not have a hope in hell’s chance of ever putting together larger even slightly more ‘integrated’ understandings spanning many disciplines.
Has anyone else noticed that academics and scientists are all individually stuck in an isolated cubby hole with absolutely no larger or integrated structure above this?
For a set of people with a fetish for OBSERVATION they don’t seem to be very good at observing themselves such that they appear to have not even noticed the insanity of their balmy ‘one dimensional research structure model’.
Where is all the Research of EVERYTHING that would be Required for a Full WORLD Simulation of self aware People?
Coincidentally, this is EXACTLY the research model that will prevent researchers from becoming aware of the sheer scale of serious ‘oddities’ presented EVERYWHERE here never mind that how they are organized means that not one of them is qualified to join any even slightly larger dots AT ALL.
Coincidentally, if I was a simulation designer then personally this is exactly the research structure I’d sell my granny to have my population’s simulated researchers adopting.
‘IF’ you reading this ARE an academic and or scientist then ‘IF’ you were our hypothetical simulations designer then how would you MANAGE YOURSELF as you read these pages? As a simulation designer what awareness and cognitive management strategies would you implement to make sure you yourself would dismiss what are my very rational and very reasoned and logical presentations here? What individual management strategies would you use to make sure that an academic or scientist reading this wouldn’t be able to think well enough to objectively and or IMPARTIALLY evaluate these pages?
For example, perhaps your managing software would have what is written on the page EDITED & CHANGED before it even ends up in your head such that what ends up in your head ISN’T WHAT I ACTUALLY WRITE?
After you’ve figured out what strategies you would use then you can start figuring out how to EVALUATE under research conditions THE STRATEGIES BEING APPLIED TO YOURSELF NOW? I should perhaps point out that I’ve already done this and that I already have pages of material cataloguing the diverse set of integrated strategies our hypothetical simulation software uses particularly for information you can easily deduce it won’t like.
‘IF’ you reading this ARE an academic then what other STUPIDLY obvious visible clue that we are being simulated though the phase the simulation was designed and built would you check for?
Here is a clue . . .
Does Science ‘REALLY’ Almost Understand Everything?
I’ve been a bit taken back in the last few years when I’ve come across the occasional science orientated web site presenting a page that is obviously serious when they state something like . . .
“Science at this point NOW almost understands EVERYTHING, there are just a few minor ‘odds and ends’ to tie up . . . “
Coincidentally, the above statement would be exactly what you’d expect ‘IF’ we are simulating the population that put this simulation together AND they’d almost finished ALL OF THE RESEARCH OF EVERYTHING which they’d obviously need to do to put together a simulation of a fully functional entire world with a cosmic backdrop.
Don’t tell me that you didn’t figure out that ‘IF’ we are in a simulation then those that built it would literally have to research absolutely EVERYTHING to put a simulation of this detail together. In them having to research EVERYTHING then this is what we’d do here (albeit in a very managed, compartmentalized, disguised fashion).
‘IF’ we are NOT simulating a population researching EVERYTHING then perhaps this could explain why despite ourselves having MANY obvious and severe global problems with respect to like climate extremes, pollution, oceans dying, rapidly rising health problems, disturbing and increasing species extinction, dwindling energy and many other resources crises that we are not doing the obvious RATIONAL thing of specifically PRIORITIZING research in the short term to ‘rationally’ focus our efforts on solutions for at least ‘some’ of the large number of the seriously pressing problems?
How come we are NOT significantly prioritizing the research and how come we are CONTINUING to research EVERYTHING even when we are also effectively BANKRUPT?
The statement . . .
“Science at this point NOW almost understands EVERYTHING, there are just a few minor ‘odds and ends’ to tie up . . . “
Is also balmy because it is obviously NOT TRUE AT THE PRESENT TIME, we are observably NOT close to understanding everything.
However, if we are in a simulation and we are being simulated through the phase our hypothetical simulation was designed and built AND everything was slowed down as I have suggested then everyone’s perspectives and expectations of the research in the resulting accurately simulated population would be out of synch with the REALITY OF RESEARCH PROGRESS HERE.
‘IF’ we are in a simulation and advances i.e. research is slowed down then our research would be say 50 years behind the expectations and perspectives of those doing the research and of those following and writing about the ‘researching EVERYTHING’ goal.
If as a simulation designer you did slow down technological advances then can you THINK of the implications of slowing the development of advanced virtual reality technologies down AND then ‘IF’ you did do this what experiences here would pass for evidence that this strategy is OPERATIONAL?
Click the right >> link below for the next page in this series . .
January 13, 2015 @ 3:38 pm
Here is an excerpt from the science fiction novel Permutation City which sketches out the possible trajectory/ timeline for mapping the human brain, which is currently now in the early phases in our simulation. This is a possible example of the reasoning behind slowing down our technological advances in the simulation, and also of the project to map the human brain as ‘evidence that we’re in the simulated we designed and built’.
It also has a bit about ‘ethical considerations’ and treatment of simulated people as copies which is mentioned elsewhere in this series.
—
Permutation City by Greg Egan
p. 38 – 41
3. (Rip, tie, cut toy man)
June 2045
Paul — or the flesh-and-blood man whose memories he’d inherited — had traced the history of Copies back to the turn of the century, when researchers had begun to fine-tune the generic computer models used for surgical training and pharmacology, transforming them into customized versions able to predict the needs of individual patients. Drug therapies were tried out in advance on models which incorporated specific genetic and biochemical traits, allowing doses to be optimized and any idiosyncratic side-effects anticipated and avoided. Elaborate operations were rehearsed and perfected in a Virtual Reality, on software bodies with anatomical details — down to the finest capillaries — based on the flesh-and-blood patient’s tomographic scans.
These early models included a crude approximation of the brain, perfectly adequate for heart surgery or immunotherapy — and even useful to a degree when dealing with gross cerebral injuries and tumours — but worthless for exploring more subtle neurological problems.
Imaging technology steadily approved, though — and by 2020, it had reached the point where individual neurons could be mapped, and the properties of individual synapses measured, non-invasively. With a combination of scanners, every psychologically relevant detail of the brain could be read from the living organ — and duplicated on a sufficiently powerful computer.
At first, only isolated neural pathways were modelled: portions of the visual cortex of interest to designers of machine vision, or sections of the limbic system whose role had been in dispute. These fragmentary neural models yielded valuable results, but a functionally complete representation of the whole organ — embedded in a whole body — would have allowed the most delicate feats of neurosurgery and psychopharmacology to be tested in advance. For several years, though, no such model was built — in part, because of a scarcely articulated unease at the prospect of what it would mean. There were no formal barriers standing in the way — government regulatory bodies and institutional ethics committees were concerned only with human and animal welfare, and no laboratory had yet been fire-bombed by activists for its human treatment of physiological software — but still, someone had to be the first to break all the unspoken taboos.
Someone had to make a high-resolution, whole-brain Copy — and let it wake, and talk.
In 2024, John Vines, a Boston neurosurgeon, ran a fully conscious Copy of himself in a crude Virtual Reality. Taking slightly less than three hours of real time (pulse racing, hyperventilating, stress hormones elevated), the Copy’s first words were: ‘This is like being buried alive. I’ve changed my mind. Get me out of here.’
His original obligingly shut him down — but then later repeated the demonstration several times, without variation, reasoning that it was impossible to cause additional distress by running exactly the same simulation more than once.
When Vines went public, the prospects for advancing neurological research didn’t rate a mention; within twenty-four hours — despite the Copy’s discouraging testimony — the headlines were all immortality, mass migration into Virtual Reality, and the imminent desertion of the physical world.
Paul was twenty-four years old at the time, with no idea what to make of his life. His father had died the year before — leaving him a modest business empire, centered on a thriving retail chain, which he had no interest in managing. He’d spent seven years travelling and studying — science, history and philosophy — doing well enough at everything he tried, but unable to discover anything that kindled an intellectual passion. With no struggle for financial security ahead, he’d been sinking quietly into a state of bemused complacency.
The news of John Vines’ Copy blasted away his indifference. It was as if every dubious promise technology had ever made to transform human life was about to be fulfilled, with a vengeance. Longevity would only be the start of it; Copies would evolve in ways almost impossible for organic beings: modifying their minds, redefining their goals, endless transmuting themselves. The possibilities were intoxicating — even as the costs and drawbacks of the earliest versions sank in, even as the inevitable backlash began. Paul was a child of the millenium; he was ready to embrace it all.
But the more time he spent contemplating what Vines had done, the more bizarre the implications seemed to be.
The public debate the experiment had triggered was heated, but depressingly superficial. Decades-old arguments raged again over just how much computer programs could ever have in common with human beings (psychologically, morally, metaphysically, information-theoretically. . .) and even whether or not Copies could be ‘truly’ intelligent, ‘truly’ conscious. As more workers repeated Vines’ result, their Copies soon passed the Turing test: no panel of experts quizzing a group of Copies and humans — by delayed video, to mask the time-rate difference — could tell which were which. But some philosophers and psychologists continued to insist that this demonstrated nothing more than ‘simulated consciousness’, and that Copies were merely programs capable of faking a detailed inner life which didn’t actually exist at all.
Supporters of the Strong AI Hypothesis insisted that consciousness was a property of certain algorithms — a result of information being processed in certain ways, regardless of what machine, or organ, was used to perform the task. A computer model which manipulated data about itself and its ‘surroundings’ in essentially the same way as an organic brain would have to possess essentially the same mental states. ‘Simulated consciousness’ was as oxymoron as ‘simulated addition’.
Opponents replied that when you modelled a hurricane, nobody got wet. When you modelled a fusion power plant, no energy was produced. When you modelled digestion and metabolism, no nutrients were consumed — no real digestion took place. So, when you modelled the human brain, why should you expect real thought to occur? A computer running a Copy might be able to generate plausible descriptions of human behaviour in hypothetical scenarios — and even to appear to carry on a conversation, by correctly predicting what a human would have done in the same situation — but that hardly made the machine itself conscious. Paul had rapidly decided that this whole debate was a distraction. For any human, absolute proof of a Copy’s sentience was impossible. For any Copy, the truth was self-evident: cogito ergo sum. End of discussion.
But for any human willing to grant Copies the same reasonable presumption of consciousness they granted their fellow humans — and any Copy willing to reciprocate — the real point was this:
There were questions about the nature of this shared condition which the existence of Copies illuminated more starkly than anything which had come before them. Questions which needed to be explored, before the human race could confidently begin to bequeath its culture, its memories, its purpose and identity, to its successors.
Questions which only a Copy could answer.
January 16, 2015 @ 10:40 pm
I’ve been around LOTS of researchers and academic types in my life, and their starting point for research is a literature review. Basically it’s looking at what other academics have already said about a topic.
Then after the research is done, the paper to present the results is “anonymously” reviewed by the very same people, who then determine whether it’s published and enters the body of accepted research and is thus available for others to base their research on, and the cycle starts again. It’s a closed system.
The truly, truly open mind is missing here, which is why it’s so hard for any academic to have a clue. They all keep looking at past academic research and each other for the answers, too blocked into a rigid closed system to actually THINK. And attempts to craft interdisciplinary research projects are repeatedly blocked and sabotaged (likely by the sim?).
It’s those sabotages that intrigue me the most–how life paths and outcomes can be so easily managed by small adjustments to a chain of events – a delay, a lost item, an illness .. And everyone shrugs their collective shoulders and blames “bad luck” or “that’s life” or “well it wasn’t meant to be.”
These sabotages happen to everyone, and we all turn a blind eye. Why don’t we ever ask why?