Just because you panic about the unknown does not mean the unknown will actually be a large factor in your reality.
I do understand the point you are trying to make, but a large part of speculation around AI on this forum, especially around acausal trade, the simulation hypothesis etc. basically lives outside of the bounds of the two axioms you have set up. Especially if you start talking about whole brain emulation and the possibility of living in a simulation, you are no longer making educated inferences based on logic and sense data: Once you posit that all the sense data you have received in your life can be fabricated, you open yourself up to an endless pit of new and unfalsifiable arguments about what exactly is “out there”.
In fact, a lot of simulation hypothesis related arguments have to smuggle assumptions about how the universe works out of the matrix, assuming that any base universe simulating us must have similar laws around thermodynamics, matter, physics etc., which is of course not a given at all. We could be simulations running in a Conway’s Game of Life universe, after all.
And you can say, “well we must believe in this because the alternative is of no use to us and would be completely unworkable by the lights of my worldview”, in which case you have just made a statement of faith sans evidence either for or against. You choose to believe in a universe where your systems of thinking have purpose and utility, which is basically the point I’m trying to make.
I do understand the point you are trying to make, but a large part of speculation around AI on this forum, especially around acausal trade, the simulation hypothesis etc. basically lives outside of the bounds of the two axioms you have set up. Especially if you start talking about whole brain emulation and the possibility of living in a simulation, you are no longer making educated inferences based on logic and sense data: Once you posit that all the sense data you have received in your life can be fabricated, you open yourself up to an endless pit of new and unfalsifiable arguments about what exactly is “out there”.
In fact, a lot of simulation hypothesis related arguments have to smuggle assumptions about how the universe works out of the matrix, assuming that any base universe simulating us must have similar laws around thermodynamics, matter, physics etc., which is of course not a given at all. We could be simulations running in a Conway’s Game of Life universe, after all.
And you can say, “well we must believe in this because the alternative is of no use to us and would be completely unworkable by the lights of my worldview”, in which case you have just made a statement of faith sans evidence either for or against. You choose to believe in a universe where your systems of thinking have purpose and utility, which is basically the point I’m trying to make.
I would say that I focus my thinking on the universes I can get sensory input showing the thinking is useful.
Re: this thread