Suppose that I am in a simulation, and the simulator drops in a hard disc containing a detailed description of the world outside the simulation. This description says how to reply. The simulator is clearly referencable. Gradually reduce the amount of evidence. You are looking at a pattern in coinflips, it might be a message from simulators, or maybe noise. You are looking at physical constants and wondering why the simulators chose α=1/137. There is no sharp line from referencable to unreferencable. Just a gradual increase in uncertainty.
When I say “there is a chair over there” I am not refer to a single hypothesis, a particular arrangement of atoms. Instead I am refering to an implicitly represented ensemble of hypothesis. This ensemble contains universes made of atoms, strings, platonic elements and much else besides. Within the set of atomic universes, the set contains all arrangements of atoms that contain a chair over there. So within this set is a universe of atoms, defined in terms of a long list of coordinates, in which [the moon is made of green cheese, and a solid diamond rocking chair is in the indicated direction ][Translated from a big list of numbers]. So “the simulator has green hair” is only a valid proposition over the subset of possible universes that contain exactly one simulator. The probability you assign to this subset can vary. When it is almost 1, “the simulator has green hair” feels either true or false. You feel like you can reference “the simulator”
“Suppose that I am in a simulation, and the simulator drops in a hard disc containing a detailed description of the world outside the simulation. This description says how to reply. The simulator is clearly referencable”—yeah, the situation can be dynamic. The simulator can be unreferencable at the start and then become referencable later like if a cat comes into my vision I can then say “that cat” when before I couldn’t have.
Suppose that I am in a simulation, and the simulator drops in a hard disc containing a detailed description of the world outside the simulation. This description says how to reply. The simulator is clearly referencable. Gradually reduce the amount of evidence. You are looking at a pattern in coinflips, it might be a message from simulators, or maybe noise. You are looking at physical constants and wondering why the simulators chose α=1/137. There is no sharp line from referencable to unreferencable. Just a gradual increase in uncertainty.
When I say “there is a chair over there” I am not refer to a single hypothesis, a particular arrangement of atoms. Instead I am refering to an implicitly represented ensemble of hypothesis. This ensemble contains universes made of atoms, strings, platonic elements and much else besides. Within the set of atomic universes, the set contains all arrangements of atoms that contain a chair over there. So within this set is a universe of atoms, defined in terms of a long list of coordinates, in which [the moon is made of green cheese, and a solid diamond rocking chair is in the indicated direction ][Translated from a big list of numbers]. So “the simulator has green hair” is only a valid proposition over the subset of possible universes that contain exactly one simulator. The probability you assign to this subset can vary. When it is almost 1, “the simulator has green hair” feels either true or false. You feel like you can reference “the simulator”
“Suppose that I am in a simulation, and the simulator drops in a hard disc containing a detailed description of the world outside the simulation. This description says how to reply. The simulator is clearly referencable”—yeah, the situation can be dynamic. The simulator can be unreferencable at the start and then become referencable later like if a cat comes into my vision I can then say “that cat” when before I couldn’t have.