From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jun 14 2003 - 15:12:57 MDT
The strongest argument that I have not yet heard here:
"Is this as good as it gets?"
WHY would anyone in their right mind, much less an SI,
waste clock cycles simulating our miserable state of
existence? Can't any one of you think of a zillion
different, more interesting universes to live in?
Would YOU choose to simulate a single-celled piece of
self-replicating proto-life, other than to answer some
scientific question? Is there some question that can
only be answered by an SI by simulating 21st Century
Earth, down to our miserable crawling state of
consciousness?
Or, for another take:
Let's say you are a master programmer, programming is
your life, it's all you want to do, and your basic
physical needs are taken care of for your expected
lifespan, so you can devote your entire life to
programming. But all you have is a Commodore 64. That
C64 could handle all kinds of trivial problems in an
eyeblink, but those aren't of interest. The
satisfaction of building a tic-tac-toe solver is
fleeting and afterwards you feel a letdown. What you
really want is a problem that will take all your
resources - time and processing power - and use them
in the most effective possible way, so that the last
instant of your existence will coincide with the final
output of the C64.
Now upgrade that to an SI who has the life cycle of
the universe to work in. Will the SI spend clock
cycles creating some protoplasmoid trivial simulation
of paradise with the 70 perpetual virgins? There are
natural limits to computational power - speed of
light, Heisenburg uncertainty, physical mass of the
universe, etc. Won't the SI look for the most
difficult problem and devote everything to it?
Isn't it kind of a stretch to imagine this SI taking
time out to simulate US?
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