Just by chance, I happened to try to explain the dust theory to a completely uninterested subject today over lunch :) I tried to make it as brief as possible l

Just by chance, I happened to try to explain the dust theory to a completely uninterested subject today over lunch :) I tried to make it as brief as possible like this: some people believe mathematical truths are necessary and therefore that they exist independently of us discovering them. For example, the entire set of theorems that can be proven from a given set of axioms is already there in the axioms themselves- our calculations are a process of discovery, not of creation. Or to make another example, all the decimal digits of PI "exist", independently of us running the calculations that make them knowable to us. But suppose we had a function that produces the succession of discrete states of a self-conscious mind (for example, a detailed description of the state of each neuron at any given microsecond). How does the act of actually calculating the values of the function- discovering them- affect the self-perception of that mind? Does it really care if someone is running the calculation? There is a fun anecdote in Permutation City: the story of an old misanthrope who, nearing death, orders the creation of a digital copy of himself immersed in a simulated world; however, having no desire to communicate with the outside world, he asks for the simulation not to have any inputs or outputs. The algorithm is built, but once it's passed through an automated code optimizer, the optimizer spits out nothing: because a calculation that makes its results known to no-one is empty!