<div dir="auto">From the latest Future Crunch newsletter:<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color:rgb(21,33,42);font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:16px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">In this week's </span><em style="color:rgb(21,33,42);font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:16px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">we're living in a simulation</em><span style="color:rgb(21,33,42);font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:16px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> news, two defendants are going to traffic court somewhere in the US, where they will be defended be artificial intelligence. Proceedings will be recorded via glasses, while a chatbot built on GPT-3 will offer legal arguments in real-time, which the defendants have pledged to repeat. </span><a href="https://futurecrunch.com/r/cd4b5ad7?m=66279235-e802-4d62-a851-0e3664455e42" style="color:rgb(255,0,137);font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:16px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Daily Beast</a><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"> Curt</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:14 PM Steve Smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Glen -<br>
> That's why I mentioned it, and focused on the word "simulation". To <br>
> me, the parallel worlds conceptions are *covered* by David Lewis' <br>
> possible worlds. <br>
More homework... thanks!<br>
> When I said that in the pub the other night, some rando objected and <br>
> claimed his PhD thesis (at St. Martin's) was on Lewisian possible <br>
> worlds and modal logic. He was insistent that the many worlds stuff we <br>
> get from QT was fundamentally different. Pffft. I shouldn't have (but <br>
> did) taken his word for it there at the pub. I'm glad he stopped short <br>
> of mansplaining the two, though. Nothing's more annoying than rando <br>
> PhD candidates mansplaining their theses when you're just trying to <br>
> quaff a pint or two. Now that I've had time to think about it, I think <br>
> he was just posturing.<br>
It is all posturing in some sense, no? nevertheless I haven't had that <br>
kind of pub conversation in a long time (we don't really have proper <br>
"pubs" here) but that is on me for not frequenting them much and when I <br>
do not engaging with randos (besides the ones inside my head). Your <br>
description makes me think of the "Good Will Hunting" Cambridge Bar <br>
scene that ended in "how do you like THEM apples"?<br>
><br>
> The important point is that simulation is not *really* about analogous <br>
> reasoning. Sure that's a convenient lesson you might teach a budding <br>
> simulationist in the early days. But it's really about, as Marcus put <br>
> it, realizability ... or, maybe some might like "effective procedures" <br>
> better. I prefer "numerical solution" or "equation-free model". To <br>
> each her own. But in that sense, reality seems to me to *be* brute <br>
> force solutions, space/niche-filling Twitch. Everyone runs around <br>
> talking about beauty, efficiency, blahblah. <br>
<br>
On one hand, I have a lot more unpacking (unraveling) to do on this <br>
paragraph before I can pretend to grok it... I'm not asking <br>
specifically for you to do that for me ( won't complain if you do), but <br>
acknowledging that I am still a few universes over from yours when you <br>
do "simulationist" talk... I've built, run, and specified simulations <br>
for many years and think I appreciate your general use of the term, but <br>
there is a fine structure to your lexicon that is well beyond mine in <br>
this domain. Maybe nothing to be done besides continue the bramble <br>
here... though listening in at your pub with a pint or two (do they have <br>
a good not-sweet Gose?) in me might help.<br>
<br>
On the other hand, my spirit IS aligned with your dismissal of "beauty", <br>
"efficiency", "parsimony", whatever... for perhaps similar reasons.<br>
<br>
> But what I see are brute force solutions, trial and error ... <br>
> computational indulgence. And that maps well enough to many worlds.<br>
As I moved more and more into ensemble-steering and exploration I would <br>
say I developed a more useful metaphorical target for this kind of <br>
thinking. I like "computational indulgence" but also offer perhaps <br>
"computational fecundity" as well? I'm not sure about the implications <br>
of the passive vs active voice in those choices...<br>
><br>
> And to go back to Pieter's techno-optimism, Utopias obtain. And <br>
> dystopias obtain. But the distributions are biased toward the latter. <br>
> You can only hope that you're participating in those on the rarer side <br>
> ... in the thin tail, I guess.<br>
<br>
I think Utopia/Dystopia is in the "eyes of the beholder" or more to the <br>
simulationists vernacular "fitness function". Depending on one's <br>
heuristics for pruning the infinitude of possiblities (the "stuff of the <br>
simulation itself?) it seems that the bias can be moved (at the risk of <br>
missing "interesting" things by risk-aversion in one's cut-and-try <br>
techniques)? I also sometimes suspect that there is some kind of <br>
"conservation of topias" that requires them to be balanced in some way <br>
(one gender-ambiguous-person's utopia is another's dystopia)?<br>
<br>
Bramble,<br>
<br>
- Steve<br>
<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div>