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Could we not be living in a more advanced version of this same project?

anonzzzies 3y ago
Aren't we?
PUSH_AX 3y ago
This just reminded me of Sam Harris’s arguments regarding free will not existing and certain thoughts that seemingly originate from nowhere. I guess an LLM is injecting them!
- pyinstallwoes 3y ago
  The Bible begins with a declaration of recursion stating it’s a LLM. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
  - all2 3y ago
    That's John 1:1 in the New Testament. The Bible begins in Genesis with a one week period of entropy reduction. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", a summary of the following three or four chapters.
    - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
      How many times in the Bible(s) is there a declaration of recursion/self-reference?
      - krapp 3y ago
        "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM" (Exodus 3:14) "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." (2 Peter 3)
        pyinstallwoes 3y ago
        Wow interesting. Thank you. Any other interesting ones ? How do you make sense of these?
icoder 3y ago
Haha yes the most commonly used argument is (afaik) that if we could create a 'complete' virtual world, we would, and projects like this and how enthusiastic we are about it suggest that that's indeed the case. (The argument then of course continues that if we would, our world's inhabitants would some day too, ad infinitum. Given such a stack, the chance that we're actually still in the top layer is very small.)
- tetris11 3y ago
  There is something nice in the sense that simulation appears to be completely unmonitored. If my Sims started producing scans that approximated the hardware of my Gaming PC, I would probably stop the sim... assuming I was closely monitoring.
  - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
    Why?
    - tetris11 3y ago
      Out of fear that they would come for me. I was not a kind God to these sims (under the impression they were toys), and their behaviours have shown me that though forgiveness is one of their capabilities, they do not wield it often.
      - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
        How do they show forgiveness and how were you not a kind God? And what makes you think they are not toys?
- lumenwrites 3y ago
  My counterargument to this is that people simulating our world would be simulating all the bad stuff in it, which would be cruel and unethical. I think if humans were simulating us, they'd simulate a more utopian world. And if curious-but-indifferent aliens/robots simulated us, they wouldn't be wasting compute on simulating all the boring and uninteresting things we have in our world. I just don't see why would an intelligent being (especially if they're a human descendant) choose to simulate our world the way it is right now.
empath-nirvana 3y ago
There's a fairly direct analogy to be made between this project and Averroes' idea of the universal intellect, which has roots in Aristotle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes%27s_theory_of_the_unity_of_the_intellect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes%27s_theory_of_the_uni... > Averroes argues, as put by the historian of philosophy Peter Adamson, that "there is only one, single human capacity for human knowledge".[3] He calls it—using contemporary terminology—the "material intellect", which is one and the same for all human beings.[4] The intellect is eternal and continuously thinking about all that can be thought.[5] It uses faculties (e.g. the brain) of individual humans as a basis for its thinking process.[5] The process that happens in the human brain is called fikr by Averroes (known as cogitatio in Latin, often translated to "cogitation" in English), a process which contains not universal knowledge but "active consideration of particular things" that the person has encountered.[5] This use of human faculty explains why thinking can be an individual experience: if at one point the universal intellect is using one's brain to think about an object of thought, then that person is also experiencing the thinking.[5] edit: I'm going to elaborate on this. In particular it's interesting to consider two kinds of knowledge -- the knowledge stored in ChatGPT's neural network, which is broad and "universal" and "timeless", and the knowledge of the individual agent's context, which is particular and local in both place and time. The "intellect" can't really do anything without being provided with a particular context in which to act.

Aren't we?

This just reminded me of Sam Harris’s arguments regarding free will not existing and certain thoughts that seemingly originate from nowhere. I guess an LLM is injecting them!

pyinstallwoes 3y ago
The Bible begins with a declaration of recursion stating it’s a LLM. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
- all2 3y ago
  That's John 1:1 in the New Testament. The Bible begins in Genesis with a one week period of entropy reduction. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", a summary of the following three or four chapters.
  - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
    How many times in the Bible(s) is there a declaration of recursion/self-reference?
    - krapp 3y ago
      "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM" (Exodus 3:14) "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." (2 Peter 3)
      - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
        Wow interesting. Thank you. Any other interesting ones ? How do you make sense of these?

icoder 3y ago

Haha yes the most commonly used argument is (afaik) that if we could create a 'complete' virtual world, we would, and projects like this and how enthusiastic we are about it suggest that that's indeed the case. (The argument then of course continues that if we would, our world's inhabitants would some day too, ad infinitum. Given such a stack, the chance that we're actually still in the top layer is very small.)

tetris11 3y ago
There is something nice in the sense that simulation appears to be completely unmonitored. If my Sims started producing scans that approximated the hardware of my Gaming PC, I would probably stop the sim... assuming I was closely monitoring.
- pyinstallwoes 3y ago
  Why?
  - tetris11 3y ago
    Out of fear that they would come for me. I was not a kind God to these sims (under the impression they were toys), and their behaviours have shown me that though forgiveness is one of their capabilities, they do not wield it often.
    - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
      How do they show forgiveness and how were you not a kind God? And what makes you think they are not toys?
lumenwrites 3y ago
My counterargument to this is that people simulating our world would be simulating all the bad stuff in it, which would be cruel and unethical. I think if humans were simulating us, they'd simulate a more utopian world. And if curious-but-indifferent aliens/robots simulated us, they wouldn't be wasting compute on simulating all the boring and uninteresting things we have in our world. I just don't see why would an intelligent being (especially if they're a human descendant) choose to simulate our world the way it is right now.

empath-nirvana 3y ago

There's a fairly direct analogy to be made between this project and Averroes' idea of the universal intellect, which has roots in Aristotle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes%27s_theory_of_the_unity_of_the_intellect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes%27s_theory_of_the_uni... > Averroes argues, as put by the historian of philosophy Peter Adamson, that "there is only one, single human capacity for human knowledge".[3] He calls it—using contemporary terminology—the "material intellect", which is one and the same for all human beings.[4] The intellect is eternal and continuously thinking about all that can be thought.[5] It uses faculties (e.g. the brain) of individual humans as a basis for its thinking process.[5] The process that happens in the human brain is called fikr by Averroes (known as cogitatio in Latin, often translated to "cogitation" in English), a process which contains not universal knowledge but "active consideration of particular things" that the person has encountered.[5] This use of human faculty explains why thinking can be an individual experience: if at one point the universal intellect is using one's brain to think about an object of thought, then that person is also experiencing the thinking.[5] edit: I'm going to elaborate on this. In particular it's interesting to consider two kinds of knowledge -- the knowledge stored in ChatGPT's neural network, which is broad and "universal" and "timeless", and the knowledge of the individual agent's context, which is particular and local in both place and time. The "intellect" can't really do anything without being provided with a particular context in which to act.