In that respect I guess there’s plenty of ‘simulations’ going on. But, well… History will tell (maybe).
Attano wrote
Apathy and violence are a part of modern minds. Exhibit A: 
Yep, we got the app. for that and it was free! Exhibit B: 
Abstract projections of minds just having fun…and its provided free of charge.
Privacy? Safety? Kid’s toys. Play away.
Science is killing humanity in every sense of those words.
This is an intriguing assertion in its own right, and worthy of a lot more discussion. But here I think it is out of place: given that we are in a simulation, any limits we can detect may be limits of the simulation. Any limits to complexity that seem logically necessary may be due to manipulated logic and hence unreliable.
I think that is accurate with respect to Bostrom’s intent, but I still think my objection affects it. Let’s say we have good reason to belief that either A, B, or C is true, but also that if C is true we don’t have good reasons to believe anything. What are we to conclude from this? It seems like the mere inclusion of C destroys the possibility of concluding anything; in order to proceed, we have to take not-C as a given. That’s the same as my argument here: if we’re in a simulation, we have no good reasons to believe anything, so in order for the trilemma to be justified, we must also assume we are not in a simulation. That undermines the whole project: what looks like a trilemma actually can’t be, and must be of the form “(A or B) and not-C”.
I agree there are version of a simulation that would avoid my concern. A simulation that is truly rule-bound, that the Simulators aren’t interfering with, that is internally consistent, that models reality with high fidelity, etc., would be a simulation in which logical forms would be valid, and in which mathematical truths would still hold.
But why should we limit ourselves that way? The trilemma doesn’t seem to lead to that limited conclusion. In a world where ancestor simulations are cheap enough to be done on a massive scale, such that we’re likely to be one, we have every reason to believe that minds would be simulated for e.g. research purposes, such that variables are altered and manipulated and scenarios played out over and over in different permutations; or for entertainment, such that making minds believe things that are false is part of the fun. Once we open the door to the possibility that our thoughts and experiences are generated artificially, there’s no reason to assume that they are faithful representations of any reality.
My intent is to point out that once that door is open, logic itself is unreliable, because given that it is trivial for us to deceive a computer program. And that is a problem for the trilemma.
I recommend Steven Pinker’s Better Angel’s of Our Nature. It’s well-researched and well-argued, and presents a compelling case that not is the most peaceful time in human history, that modern minds are particularly violence-averse, and ancient minds were way, way more violence-prone.
Carleas, if our thoughts and minds can’t be " faithful representations of any reality" - then reality being the set of all that is real (Exists in context at a minimum) cannot be opposing / existant – meaning it cannot exist!! Realities represent themselves!!
Are you saying this reality doesn’t exist. ??
You said it’s trivial to deceive a program…
Unless the program is programmed with the concept of deception, you actually can’t deceive it, and in the case that it is, I consider it non trivial to deceive it
I don’t follow your logic here. I once used a very bad flight simulator, and Quake Arena has highly unrealistic physics. How does the existence of those faithless simulations prove that reality can’t exist?
By deceit, I only mean cause it to produce incorrect output without being able to detect the problem. The analogy would be to think of stored information that results from some operation as a program’s ‘belief’, and in that sense it is trivial to cause a computer to have a ‘false belief’, i.e. to ‘deceive’ it.
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I mean that logic is formal. Logical validity is not based on observation, it’s based on the proposition’s form, or however on formal rules that allow deriving a proposition from other valid ones. “If all X are Y and all Y are Z, then all X are Z” holds regardless the X, the Y and the Z. OK, at some point one needs perception to read symbols, but that does not enter into what makes the proposition a valid one.
As for the rest, I better forewarn that I am not going to pretend that I understood what in fact I did not. I am puzzled by almost every statement you wrote, to the point that I do not even understand if you are really objecting to the position that logic is not a matter of perception. I assume you do, though honestly that is not really clear to me.
So, sorry, my comments and questions could be horribly unsound.
I didn’t know about Anselm. I scrolled Wikipedia and Stanford Encyclopedia, maybe only superficially, but I could not find any reference. Can you be more specific about where Anselm developed this?
Then, I consider Occam’s razor a purely epistemological – not ontological – principle. I guess that aiming at the smallest set of assumptions in order to develop a theory is helpful. It helps – i. a. - both theorists and those checking on the theory. If that involves “the progressive separation of faith and science”, well… why not?
I do not understand the concept of “deductive methods of observation” (abstraction? - to me abstraction is no longer observation), and I don’t get how perception would or would not “begin with scientific observation to displace…” (sorry, I might have a problem of literal comprehension of the language here). Anyway I do not think that the goal is a ‘description’ of reality, I see it more as a model of it. The quality of the model is simply determined by the quality of inferences, of deductions, which is also to say, in your words, “verification and test”. If a theory appears – demonstrably(?) or not – paradoxical (which happens), that is not an objection to the validity of a theory.
I do not see the argument here, only the opposition between scientific theory and “prophetic early visions”. Then I tried to figure an instance of these visions and ended not having a clear idea of what they are. ‘Prophetic’ does not seem a constitutional character of myths, nor of metaphysics. Prophecies do have a part in Abrahamic religions, but I guess these lack of “anomouliously contained, non preferential, non temporally sequential concept”. More generally, it’s hard to picture a prophecy not relying on a “temporally sequential concept”, if that means that there is not going to be a future following a past (though it would be compatible with the idea of time made of cycles).
Finally I don’t even get why they have to be opposed… I mean, there may be very good reasons to pit the ones against the others, but I am unable to gather them from your sentence.
I doubt this is addressed to me. I can’t form a clear idea of what a “perceptual logic” is, but I doubt that may be ascribed to me after my statement that logic is not a matter of perception. I also fail to understand how a “perceptual process” requires ‘conscious’ acceptance of data. Then, if it relates to that, I agree that abstraction consist into shedding parts while maintaining others. I do not think there is any rigorous method for doing that and, probably unlike you, I guess that this discrimination may not be always conscious - yet I do not mean that it would be somehow ‘hardwired’ or structural in any form. Finally, I don’t see the opposition between Russel’s notion and the statement “logic is not a matter of perception”.
Logic and mathematics are both totally interconnected and as such nothing can be manipulated without it affecting everything else; “2+2=3 changes ALL mathematics, not merely that one equation”. As I said, if a person is not taught logic or math and/or hasn’t sufficient experience within the simulation, for whatever reason, only then can the person be manipulated into the deception. You are thinking in terms of small systems only.
“Logic” ONLY means consistency throughout the language or thoughts. Something is either consistent or it isn’t. There are no “forms”. Simulations and emulations are based on varied premises, not on disrupted logic “forms”. A mind can be blinded and thus make errors, but again, that is an issue of enough experience and education to be able to always track down the mistakes.
The USA Presidential election is the obvious present example of a simulation of a free election. If the voting doesn’t come out properly, something will be altered to satisfy the people into accepting the proper, intended result (much like the idea of stuffing ballots). A great, great deal of money and influence goes into that particular simulation. They very seriously want exactly what you suggest. But if they could actually do it to the degree you suggest, I wouldn’t be here telling you that it is a simulation, would I.
“…all of the people some of the time. Some of the people all of the time. But…”
Carleas said:
I don’t follow your logic here. I once used a very bad flight simulator, and Quake Arena has highly unrealistic physics. How does the existence of those faithless simulations prove that reality can’t exist?
Ecmandu replies:
Even a simulation is a real simulation!!
It was a technicality of your earlier phrasing…
You said they can’t be real.
Ecmandu said: You said it’s trivial to deceive a program…
Ecmandu said:
Unless the program is programmed with the concept of deception, you actually can’t deceive it, and in the case that it is, I consider it non trivial to deceive it
Carleas replied:
By deceit, I only mean cause it to produce incorrect output without being able to detect the problem. The analogy would be to think of stored information that results from some operation as a program’s ‘belief’, and in that sense it is trivial to cause a computer to have a ‘false belief’, i.e. to ‘deceive’ it.
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Ecmandu replies:
If it can’t detect the problem; that’s a universal…
Meaning that something cannot intercede to allow it to detect the problem, which means nobody can detect the problem…
Which means there is no problem!
It still seems as though you’re holding humans constant, and thinking of humans as we know them plugged into a simulation. That isn’t the world being hypothesized. Rather, both the world we see and our minds themselves are simulated. They operate only as they are allowed to operate by the simulators. As such, there’s nothing to stop the Simulators from changing, as necessary, “ALL mathematics” in order to make the deception work.
To speak metaphorically, the Simulators can edit a stored value between CPU cycles. Even if we some program would flip the state for the variable representing whether or not we’ve detected a flaw, the Simulators could go in and flip it back between the state being flipped and the flipped state having any consequences.
The minds are a part of the simulation, there is no level of learning that can remove them from it.
The problem is that, given that we are in a simulation, it follows that that sort of deception may be occurring without our detecting it. Though we can’t detect it, we can reason about what it implies for our experience. It’s clear that being in a simulation means that what we sense is not reliably ‘real’ (in the sense of ‘not simulated’), but I’m arguing that the same is true of our logic: given that we’re in a simulation, our logic is itself suspect, because it depends on storing information and performing operations on it, and the storage and operations could be altered ‘between CPU cycles’ by the Simulators, making our conclusions unreliable.
Carleas wrote
Violence prone out of necessity(then) versus violence prone out of unnecessary “frustration”(now)
I really don’t need to read that book to understand that it is not an accurate portrayal of modern human psychology and is only guesstimates of past eras of behaviors. This type of blindness resembles the political blindness regarding corruption and manipulation of modern USA mentalities by and large during this election cycle; it is written so it is so.
How do you simulate Consistency without being consistent?
That is your presumption. And I am trying to explain why you are wrong about that presumption. It has to do with the complexity issue that your simple minded examples do not address. They cannot simply change a mind about this or that issue and leave it.
JSS wrote
“Memory” modifications.
Attano: Sorry about my usage, I guess I will always be a hybrid product, of semantic duplicity, having not the good fortune of English being my mother tongue.
Neither have I , yet, the capacity to paraphrase. But will try to try again the basic argument against the proposition that perceptual logic is impossible. I was going to say something like contradiction in terms, but in fact it is not.
To admit to such, is to set up a linguistic priority.
To say : logical language is conceivably different then to say the language of logic, right?
Now immediately an objection can be raised as to what either of them mean, so as to establish for certain the resemblance or difference. That there are resemblances between them is apparently of no doubt, but are there identifiable elements depend more on a vastly deeper logical depth.
Why? Because identification comes between differentiation. This seems paradoxical, and if I propose a paradox in deciding this, it is, because of the examination’s own problem with this:
In the very beginning, identification involves the abstraction of basic characteristics, but is this process more of a logical methodology vis: of abstraction of common qualities between objects, literally , primarily looking at the different characteristics, rather then perceiving whole objects -consisting of lack of certain qualities. This makes a difference, because the latter (of becoming cogniscent of wholes, is different constructing the parts first.)
Is a construction of wholes pre requisite, in which case there would not appear to be any a-priori logical process going on, but merely a haphazard learning experience based on acceptance, or rejection of characteristics, which would over time fit, certain evolving modeling, as you seem to propose.
But maybe not, maybe there is some pre-existing formative capacity, in the acquisition of language themselves.
The languages need not be a literal language, it may be the route taken by pictorial representation, but even then, do the pictures constructed on basis of some meaning flow-trend?-related to such emotional events as danger=the animals represented as synmolic of danger.
Can these questions ever satisfactorily answered?
The implication of this is that it is impossible to decide between a logical language, or, a language of some kind of logic. Do the most disconnected images have a basic perhaps hidden underlying connection in the sequence of elements within it?
If so, Then it would not be possible to rule out a hidden logical connection, of the supposed conscious or unconscious elements.
In the basic choices which deal with survival in some aspect, such connections have been lost, rejected on some basis or another, and recapturing them would prove impossible apart from a connotative, rather then a denotative process. In other words, we have ceased to think in pictures. But that should not deny the possibility for that kind of thinking.
So a perceptual logic is similar to a logic of perception, and my point is, that such a difference at a certain stage creates an identity between them.
The Kantian ‘should’, is such an emotive element, begging the logical hiddenness of such an equality between them. From this point on,the rejection becomes preponderant, suggesting the overwhelming need for a verification of perceptual connections in terms of established logical linkages.
The later rejection of pre existing logical linkages produced what has come to be variant but compelling trends which modern philosophy has effected on logic.
Attano: Hoping this is an improvement on the preceding.
The “Simulation Hypothesis” is not provable and not disprovable. You can also believe what, for example, Plato already said (something like: You are living in the wrong world, the real world is the ideal world).
How do you demonstrate consistency without being consistent? The answer should be a paradoxical either/or, because, that is the implication. But this is incorrect, because the spectrum of totally inconsistent toward totally consistent do not sever at any point, and although one need not to read into it, the total difference in meaning, but it is also unnecessary to inquire as to it’s level, because that brings with it the differential/relative aspects of it’s argument. It minimizes or maximizes the purported argument it’s self.
JSS,
An individual memory can’t be altered and historical evidence too?
Arminius : It is a stage of identifiable certainty that the so called proof is searching for, for probable certainty, where the proof is secondary of finding differing simulations, for there never is only one.
Facets guys.
And …?