See “good regulator theorem,” and various LW discussion (esp. John Wentworth trying to fix it). For practical purposes, yes, you can predict things without simulating them. The more revealing of the subject your prediction has to get, though, the more of an isomorphism to a simulation you have to contain.
But when you say Simulator, with caps, people will generally take you to be talking about janus’ Simulators post, which is not about the AI predicting people by simulating them in detail, but is instead about the AI learning dynamics of text (analogous to how the laws of physics are dynamics of the state of the world), and predicting text by stepping forward these dynamics.
See “good regulator theorem,” and various LW discussion (esp. John Wentworth trying to fix it). For practical purposes, yes, you can predict things without simulating them. The more revealing of the subject your prediction has to get, though, the more of an isomorphism to a simulation you have to contain.
But when you say Simulator, with caps, people will generally take you to be talking about janus’ Simulators post, which is not about the AI predicting people by simulating them in detail, but is instead about the AI learning dynamics of text (analogous to how the laws of physics are dynamics of the state of the world), and predicting text by stepping forward these dynamics.