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You need to go deeper. What you are describing is not really what the BIV scenario is about. Modelling the BIV directly after the brains we know only serves as

You need to go deeper. What you are describing is not really what the BIV scenario is about. Modelling the BIV directly after the brains we know only serves as a justification in the thought-experiment that a BIV might reasonably exist. But actually the BIV does not need to be of similar character or composition than the simulated brains that a BIV can observe in its observable simulated world. Even if a simulated lobotomy would be performed under simulated general anesthesia, there is no reason to assume that the BIV itself would be completely inert during that time, the consciousness might well be a compartment of the BIV with other compartments tracking e.g. changes in the simulated body. This is not yet a full-simulation argument as the individuum itself is not yet part of the simulated universe, the simulation is still an external stimulus to the BIV system. The important takeaway here is that in a fully simulated universe, the concept of an objective "reality" is still intact, and generalized to nested realities. With a BIV, the perceived reality is always required to be entirely subjective. If the stimulus machine of a BIV is turned off, the individuum is still intact (and probably still wondering what the hell happened as it's suddenly floating in unperceivable nothingness), if a full-simulation is turned off, all observers (except those in the "higher" reality) cease to exist immediately.

benlivengood 4y ago
To be accurate a BIV would have to be able to reproduce any physical effect that could operate on the simulated brain. Regardless of what the BIV is implemented in (could be computronium or spiritual stuff) the QCD field theory still applies to effects the BIV would have to (for lack of a better word) simulate. We routinely use gamma knives and fMRI on brains as well as more traditional surgery tools, and astronauts "see" cosmic ray interactions. It matters where exactly those cosmic ray or gamma interactions happen with brain molecules, and so regardless of BIV substrate I'd argue strongly that the BIV must simulate a physical human brain to be accurate. Maybe I'm not supposed to take the premise that human brains can exist as QCD-physical objects? In that case it seems more like the dualistic belief that a spirit or supernatural entity puppets the physical body around and interprets its interactions with the physical world. (Which runs into the same problem of dramatic effects physical changes to brains have) So in the example of turning off the simulation and leaving the BIV running you either turn off the effects of receiving oxygen through the bloodstream in the same way choking or drowning produces, or you break the simulation of reality to artificially keep the BIV running despite conditions that would have stopped it if the simulated brain was removed from the simulated body accurately. How does disconnecting a BIV work, precisely, when e.g. homeostasis is enough to produce varying effects on conscious experience? Neurons get tired after firing and require nutrients to recharge. Those nutrients exist in the physical/simulated world and if they behaved even slightly differently the neural firing patterns would differ and the BIV and physical human brain would diverge. When the simulated nutrients go away does the BIV just pretend a baseline digestive, endocrine, cardiovascular, and lymphatic system still exist and fake everything? If so, then the BIV doesn't exist without regard to the turned-off simulation, it gets copy-pasted into a simplified simulation of whatever minimal physical apparatus would keep a physical human brain alive in a jar.
- mannykannot 4y ago
  > To be accurate a BIV would have to be... The thing is, though, there is no requirement for it to be accurate, it merely has to be fed simulated stimuli that are consistent enough that the mind of the BIV does not deduce the reality of its situation. For example, the simulation of banging one's head against a wall could be somewhat or even quite inaccurate without the BIV being able to tell that it is, even if it chooses to bang its simulated head against a simulated wall.
  - benlivengood 4y ago
    I suppose one problem is that we don't know precisely how conscious experience arises from neurons firing, which makes the question of simulation fidelity unanswerable at this point. If brains are simple enough that they model N discrete binary functions from simple stimuli domains to simple response ranges implemented in a manner that a physical interaction in a region of the brain is directly mapped to a single function and small subset of relations then perhaps a BIV wouldn't have to perform physics simulations to be accurate enough, but my guess is that an "accurate enough" BIV would be slightly more complex than a physical simulation of a brain; part to do the brain stuff and another part to interpret the necessary effects of physical changes on a brain in the same state as the BIV and map them to the appropriate stimuli for the BIV. In that case the BIV is extraneous, but would exist. As an aside, there's a related thought experiment about gradually replacing the neurons in a person's brain with artificial neurons that behave identically. The question is "at what threshold is the brain a different person" and my answer is never. If the artificial neurons behave identically then the person doesn't change, but their substrate does. That would be a method to construct a BIV, but the artificial neurons would need to respond to their local biochemical environment in the same way as original neurons. It would certainly be possible to make these artificial neurons immune to physical shock or cosmic rays but this would change the internal experience of the person; they would stop being vulnerable to some forms of physical trauma, some drugs, and some physiological states. The person would notice the change of becoming a BIV, because their experience would be changing at the extremes where it matters that they are physically embedded in a dangerous environment. If the BIV was constructed "outside the simulation" with an artificial biochemical environment they would notice an even bigger shift in perception, e.g. caffeine and other drugs no longer working as expected.

benlivengood 4y ago

To be accurate a BIV would have to be able to reproduce any physical effect that could operate on the simulated brain. Regardless of what the BIV is implemented in (could be computronium or spiritual stuff) the QCD field theory still applies to effects the BIV would have to (for lack of a better word) simulate. We routinely use gamma knives and fMRI on brains as well as more traditional surgery tools, and astronauts "see" cosmic ray interactions. It matters where exactly those cosmic ray or gamma interactions happen with brain molecules, and so regardless of BIV substrate I'd argue strongly that the BIV must simulate a physical human brain to be accurate. Maybe I'm not supposed to take the premise that human brains can exist as QCD-physical objects? In that case it seems more like the dualistic belief that a spirit or supernatural entity puppets the physical body around and interprets its interactions with the physical world. (Which runs into the same problem of dramatic effects physical changes to brains have) So in the example of turning off the simulation and leaving the BIV running you either turn off the effects of receiving oxygen through the bloodstream in the same way choking or drowning produces, or you break the simulation of reality to artificially keep the BIV running despite conditions that would have stopped it if the simulated brain was removed from the simulated body accurately. How does disconnecting a BIV work, precisely, when e.g. homeostasis is enough to produce varying effects on conscious experience? Neurons get tired after firing and require nutrients to recharge. Those nutrients exist in the physical/simulated world and if they behaved even slightly differently the neural firing patterns would differ and the BIV and physical human brain would diverge. When the simulated nutrients go away does the BIV just pretend a baseline digestive, endocrine, cardiovascular, and lymphatic system still exist and fake everything? If so, then the BIV doesn't exist without regard to the turned-off simulation, it gets copy-pasted into a simplified simulation of whatever minimal physical apparatus would keep a physical human brain alive in a jar.

mannykannot 4y ago
> To be accurate a BIV would have to be... The thing is, though, there is no requirement for it to be accurate, it merely has to be fed simulated stimuli that are consistent enough that the mind of the BIV does not deduce the reality of its situation. For example, the simulation of banging one's head against a wall could be somewhat or even quite inaccurate without the BIV being able to tell that it is, even if it chooses to bang its simulated head against a simulated wall.
- benlivengood 4y ago
  I suppose one problem is that we don't know precisely how conscious experience arises from neurons firing, which makes the question of simulation fidelity unanswerable at this point. If brains are simple enough that they model N discrete binary functions from simple stimuli domains to simple response ranges implemented in a manner that a physical interaction in a region of the brain is directly mapped to a single function and small subset of relations then perhaps a BIV wouldn't have to perform physics simulations to be accurate enough, but my guess is that an "accurate enough" BIV would be slightly more complex than a physical simulation of a brain; part to do the brain stuff and another part to interpret the necessary effects of physical changes on a brain in the same state as the BIV and map them to the appropriate stimuli for the BIV. In that case the BIV is extraneous, but would exist. As an aside, there's a related thought experiment about gradually replacing the neurons in a person's brain with artificial neurons that behave identically. The question is "at what threshold is the brain a different person" and my answer is never. If the artificial neurons behave identically then the person doesn't change, but their substrate does. That would be a method to construct a BIV, but the artificial neurons would need to respond to their local biochemical environment in the same way as original neurons. It would certainly be possible to make these artificial neurons immune to physical shock or cosmic rays but this would change the internal experience of the person; they would stop being vulnerable to some forms of physical trauma, some drugs, and some physiological states. The person would notice the change of becoming a BIV, because their experience would be changing at the extremes where it matters that they are physically embedded in a dangerous environment. If the BIV was constructed "outside the simulation" with an artificial biochemical environment they would notice an even bigger shift in perception, e.g. caffeine and other drugs no longer working as expected.