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How to Build a Computer Model of God
- soci_rich 15y agoambitious model
- noonespecial 15y agoThat's called "Simulationism". I happen to quite like it. http://www.simulation-argument.com/ http://www.simulation-argument.com/
- danteembermage 15y agoIt's really interesting to think about the theological implications of simulationism. If the world were really structured as described in the article (which is not the point he was making, I'm just having fun), then one has to wonder what the purpose of having simulated, self-contained intelligences would be. I like to think about the implications of a specific purpose and I have a favorite. Suppose one was trying to train up a batch of true AIs that were generous, moral, loving, responsible, principled, etc. (think Santa, Jesus, or Fred Rogers). I would submit that the task would be much better suited to some combination of genetic programming and machine learning i.e. generate a bunch of AIs with varying characteristics and let them learn for a while and see how they do at the stated task. I think it would make a lot of sense for a simulation scientist to want to have a bunch of these around, they could do some really cool stuff for you and you wouldn't have to worry too much about IRB approval since they would be certified moral by the previous test. What kind of test would make sense? It would have to be one with difficult moral choices, one with an opportunity for failure. One without unnecessary pain and stress, but one that allows the AIs to make moral mistakes and be held responsible for them. If the true AIs are interacting, and it makes sense that they probably would have to, then naturally the duds could make life a little miserable for the good ones, you'd want to minimize that as much as you could without restricting the ability of all AIs to choose freely among available opportunities given to them. On top of that you might put them in a hostile environment that requires work and effort for survival to see if they have what it takes to get stuff done. Now if that doesn't sound like life I don't know what does. I that context hell doesn't really make a lot of sense (would you really punish bad AIs forever or just put them in charge of non-morally challenging and easy jobs? (my first thought was the coffee pot, but maybe putting a misbehaving AI in charge of that is not such a good idea) and "heaven" becomes more of a "gets to do cool, interesting stuff" than "chill out playing harp". From my experience many religious people tend to punt on what actually an afterlife would be for, other than it would be nice to reward us for being good. The answer to "Why can't the simulation master give the nice heaven to everybody?" is pretty clear in this context. She can't because that would be really bad for whatever task she needed moral AI for, which, if it affected a bunch of other true AIs has huge moral implications. So sorry, no offence, but based on your test results you don't get to do the cool stuff.
- icebraining 15y agoThen in that view, "God" doesn't really care about each of us more than a programmer cares about the thousands of solutions that are created and destroyed while the program is running to reach a single best. Somehow, I don't think most religious people (with exceptions like Deists) will feel comfortable with that possibility ;)
- danteembermage 15y agoI think true AIs would be no more or less deserving of the love of their creator than the real people. Now maybe the programmer running the genetic training algorithm has no love for the AIs and then you're right, it wouldn't really fit. But what if the programmer did love then? What if, in fact, the programmer was a true AI herself, having gone through a similar experience and was proven moral, loving, and capable enough to do this job. How hard would it be for her to love them? Yes, turtles all the way down and all that but what about turtles most of the way down? Seems like a reasonable way to train more AIs.
- Radim 15y agoA different take on the same topic: Greg Egan, Crystal Nights: http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/ http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/
- danteembermage 15y agoThank you, that was a fascinating read
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- padobson 15y agoWhat I admire most about the author is the honest search for Truth. It is a rare individual that can approach this problem while relinquishing their biases. I can't count myself among their ranks. It seems the majority of people, believers and non-believers alike, tend to come to a decision about God after about an afternoon of thinking about it, at most. And really, what philosophical question posed to us could be more important than the question of God? It seems that every human should spend some significant amount of time deciding where they fall on this problem before they do...well...anything else.
- kristaps 15y agoWhat does it matter if the answer cannot be known? If the question cannot be answered than "spending a significant amount of time deciding" is just waste.
- DougN7 15y agoWhat if the answer can be known? Several people in the world and throughout history claim to _know_ the answer through physical experiences. They are easy to dismiss as crazy, but what IF they've discovered HOW to search? Some things just can't be measured by physical apparatus (like love for example).
- icebraining 15y agohttps://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Biological_basis_of_love https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Biological_ba...
- DougN7 15y agoLots of "migth be" and "seems to be" in that article. I don't think we understand it or can replicate it in the laboratory.
- icebraining 15y ago
- TheRevoltingX 15y agoKinda interesting, sorta reminds me of Knuth's book on bible verses.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jgrahamc 15y ago"Like most people, questions about the existence of God and all things spiritual plague me frequently. I want to believe in such things, especially when it comes to continuity of my consciousness. I don’t like the idea of disappearing when I die." One way to address this is to deal with these thoughts rather than entering a philosophical rat hole of trying to simulate our existence and find an analogy to the computer. Once you accept that an outside meta-influence is possible then you don't have to worry about all this "is there a God or not?" If God exists then God has powers that make Him imperceptible; if God doesn't exist then He's imperceptible. You can't tell the difference. Oh well. Better to live a life of good deeds and actions then worry about what's next.
- euroclydon 15y agoGreat point up to the last sentance which, whether you intended to or not, draws a line between the worlds major religions and quasi-endorses those on one side.
- eggnet 15y agoWhat major religion doesn't endorse good deeds?
- euroclydon 15y agoSend me an email and I'll explain.
- acuozzo 15y ago> If God exists then God has powers that make Him imperceptible; if God doesn't exist then He's imperceptible. You can't tell the difference. This is the omnipotence paradox[1]. I often help friends and relatives understand why my religion (or lack thereof, actually) is `Tooth Fairy Agnosticism' by asking them whether or not God can create a stone that He can't lift. > Better to live a life of good deeds and actions then worry about what's next. I agree. This is how I try to live my life, but it's hard to stop worrying when you have severe thanatophobia[2] like I do. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanatophobia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanatophobia
- _THE_PLAGUE 15y agoSay I live in a set, set_1, that has some property p_1. I can think about other sets, like my own, say, set_n, with similar properties for those, say, p_n. I am confined to set_1 so I can only speculate about what goes on in the other sets, if, indeed, there be any other sets. I speculate that all these sets, s, reside in some big super-set, S, with it's own p-like property, P. But this does not have to follow. I could have an infinite series of sets s, with their own unique p properties, but a super-set to which they belong does not itself have to have its own super-p property. It might, but it might not. This is my problem with "Simulationism". It assumes such a "super P" property for the "super-set containing all universes". This property of course is time. The entire universe could be describable by a bit-string (Tegmark, et al) but that does not mean it has to "run" on anything, any more than a super-set S of s worlds each with property p has to have its own "super-property" P. I think it is a common misconception but not easy to clear up for people who don't have a technical background.
- hasenj 15y ago> Despite my desire to accept religious teachings, I am constantly prevented by a simple fact: no one has found any physical evidence of something like a soul, or any mechanism which might enable a persistent consciousness beyond our current brain. For a minute, forget about "persisting beyond death". Consider consciousness, is there any conceptual model at all of how it arises purely out of the known physical laws? I can imagine building a computer with strong-AI and I see no reason - what so ever - to assume that it may possess any form of consciousness. Given all that we know about how the physical world works, and how computers work, there's no reason to assume that some particular software configuration will give rise to subjective consciousness within a computer.
- icebraining 15y agoDefine consciousness.
- hasenj 15y agoThat's part of the problem :)
- icebraining 15y agoThen the question of whether software can have consciousness is meaningless. As Dijkstra said, "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
- hasenj 15y agoI think you misunderstood what I meant. The closest thing to a definition would be something that experiences Qualia, but then you'd ask me to define Qualia, and at this point I can't give an objective non-circular definition. David Chalmers does a good job of explaining it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Yo6VbRoo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Yo6VbRoo
- ryusage 15y ago
- wbhart 15y agoI don't understand how your model hopes to capture any of the essential features of God as known to academic philosophers. You mention Godel incompleteness, but this only applies to sets of axioms which can be generated algorithmically. Furthermore, pure logic reveals that a transcendental first cause must be eternal, changeless (without the universe), non-physical, most likely having a mind with free will, etc. Your model fails to capture any of these essential features. In fact, I agree with the poster who says that you should reason about God, rather than try to model Him. Naturally my reason leads me to different inescapable conclusions than his.
- icebraining 15y agomost likely having a mind with free will What does that even mean outside of the physical universe?
- wbhart 15y agoNothing, if you are not a philosophical dualist.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- demallien 15y ago* Naturally my reason leads me to different inescapable conclusions than his.* Which should be a big honking, flashing neon sign that you're both arguing without any facts to back you up, ie you're both just making stuff up. You might as well argue about whether Santa has white or black fur as the trim on his coat, for all of the utility that you will get out of such arguments.
- gnaritas 15y agoPure logic reveals no such thing.
- vannevar 15y agoThe author is missing a key element in his model of life, one which significantly affects the outcome of the thought experiment: his simple loops are independent, they have no shared state. Real existence is not so clean---living beings are constantly being altered by their environment, and conversely altering it. It would be impossible to simply 'save the state' of a living being without saving the state of the entire universe in which it resides (the virtual machine). This makes reincarnation (or at least the very simple model presented in the article) impossible.
- icebraining 15y agoOne can claim that humans are more like shared-nothing message passing processes, which can alter and be altered by their "surroundings" without sharing state per-se. Shared state/memory seems more like a representation of the Borg ;)
- vannevar 15y agoHowever you choose to model it, the fact remains that there is no clear boundary between the state of a living thing and its surroundings.