EP251: Unexpected Outcomes

[Unblinking]

Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will?

The same way you prove it in our world:
I think, therefore I am. 

[Ocicat]

Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will?

The same way you prove it in our world:
I think, therefore I am. 

...that proves it to no one but yourself.  You need to work harder to pass the Turing Test, much less prove sentience to an outside observer.

[Scattercat]

Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will?

The same way you prove it in our world:
I think, therefore I am. 

...that proves it to no one but yourself.  You need to work harder to pass the Turing Test, much less prove sentience to an outside observer.

Plus, you can trick yourself (or be tricked) into believing that you think when you really don't.  If I'm programmed to believe that I think and make choices, even when I'm not, well, I'll still think that I think. 

[Unblinking]

Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will?

The same way you prove it in our world:
I think, therefore I am. 

...that proves it to no one but yourself.  You need to work harder to pass the Turing Test, much less prove sentience to an outside observer.

But if I am, then there's no reason to think that other people I meet aren't, unless I am somehow mentally unique.  If I am the same as everyone else in every observable way, then it makes more sense to assume that others are like me in that aspect.  I could assume that I am the only sentient being in the history of the universe, but I'd call that a God Complex.

Except for people on the internet--everyone knows that everyone on the internet is artificial.

And don't get me started on the Turing Test as a measure of intelligence--it's highly flawed.  It only measures the "human-ness" of a subject, not the intelligence.  If you had a true artificial intelligence, to pass the Turing Test it would have to hamstring its reactions to simulate forgetfulness, slowness of thought, and irrational emotion.  That's not a test of intelligence, it's a test of human mimicry, which are not the same thing.

[Unblinking]

Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will?

The same way you prove it in our world:
I think, therefore I am. 

...that proves it to no one but yourself.  You need to work harder to pass the Turing Test, much less prove sentience to an outside observer.

Plus, you can trick yourself (or be tricked) into believing that you think when you really don't.  If I'm programmed to believe that I think and make choices, even when I'm not, well, I'll still think that I think. 

If your mind is hardcoded with false beliefs, then is it better to come to the conclusion that no conclusion can be reached?  Your senses are your window to the world, and your mind is the machine that processes your senses.  If one or the other does not exist, then no conclusion you ever reach will be correct--including the statement that you can be tricked into thinking you think. 

To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else. 
1.  I think, therefore I am. 
2.  My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.

If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.

[yicheng]

....

To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else. 
1.  I think, therefore I am. 
2.  My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.

If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.

Sounds like faith to me.  :-)

[Wilson Fowlie]

"I think, therefore I am."

Also, therefore rice pudding and income tax. 

[Scattercat]

To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else. 
1.  I think, therefore I am. 
2.  My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.

If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.

I'm not saying it's not useful to make those assumptions.  I'm just pointing out that they ARE assumptions and therefore "cogito ergo sum" doesn't (and can't) actually prove anything.

[Unblinking]

To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else. 
1.  I think, therefore I am. 
2.  My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.

If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.

I'm not saying it's not useful to make those assumptions.  I'm just pointing out that they ARE assumptions and therefore "cogito ergo sum" doesn't (and can't) actually prove anything.

And I'm not disagreeing with that either.  But if I decide that I don't exist, then nothing else I do or experience matters in the slightest, even to me.  And, well, that just sounds boring. 

[Unblinking]

....

To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else. 
1.  I think, therefore I am. 
2.  My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.

If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.

Sounds like faith to me.  :-)

The faith upon which all science is based--believing in evidence that you observe.  If you don't believe you can observe, than all science is nonsense! 

[Wilson Fowlie]

There's a difference between faith and trust.

If I'm going to believe in (say) leprechauns, I have to have faith in order to do so, because I have not observed any evidence to support their existence.  I have heard stories and claims and the like, but I haven't directly observed any evidence, however weak.

In the case of science, I may have to start out with faith that what I am sensing is what's actually there, but the longer I do that, the more predictions I can make about the world around me. E.g. that if I reach out what I believe to be my 'fingers', in what seems, to my limited senses, to be a sufficient 'distance', in what I perceive to be that what-I-shall-call 'direction', I will experience something that I name a 'feeling' of the wall I encounter.

And when I do encounter the wall, my prediction has been provisionally verified (pending further testing).  Every time I test my senses and my predictions (at least seem to) come true, then I go further down the road from 'faith' to 'trust' in my perception of the world around me, to the degree that I act as though what I believe - i.e. that what I see around me is 'real' - is true.

Faith is belief in something despite a lack of evidence, or worse, in the face of evidence to the contrary.  Trust occurs when you believe in things (or people) that either you have tested to your satisfaction or that someone you trust in turn has done so (and that chain of trust can be arbitrarily long).  Trust is harder to gain and easier to lose, but ultimately, I think, more valuable and useful.

[Unblinking]

But how do you know that the world isn't meeting your expectations because it is imaginary and your mind is forcing restrictions upon it? 

I do see your point, though.  But just because the world appears to be very consistent in some respects doesn't prove that it's not just a very consistent illusion.  Which I don't think it is, but my point is that if one doesn't believe in one's own existence and doesn't believe one's senses, then every other "fact" is debatable.

[Scattercat]

Yup.  It's generally useless on a pragmatic level to discard the "I am real and so is the stuff around me" assumption.  Still, "I think therefore I am" doesn't actually prove anything; the reason we can safely assume that we are sentient and that other people around us are sentient is because experiential information is mostly concordant with that situation.  Everyone reacts as though they are separate and sentient, and until we find the red pill and the blue pill, we don't really have any way to test or prove that we aren't all living in our own personal Matrix, so we might as well assume that reality is real and get on with it.

[neltek]

 

  Also, am I the only person who flashed on Doctor Who when Tim referred to the lab tech as "The Doctor" at the beginning?

yes I did 

Good but felt to be missing lots and ended a bit fast

[deflective]

[yicheng]

....

To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else. 
1.  I think, therefore I am. 
2.  My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.

If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.

Sounds like faith to me.  :-)

The faith upon which all science is based--believing in evidence that you observe.  If you don't believe you can observe, than all science is nonsense! 

I disagree.  There are plenty of metaphysical conclusions and structures that can be based such a conclusion.  Buddhism, for example, is entirely based on the assumption that the self actually doesn't exist, and that all of physical things we perceive around us are just illusory and self-created, and that what is actually "real" (in the metaphysical sense) can not be directly perceived.

It is entirely possible to have a scientific and rationally-built paradigm built around such assumptions, as long as you keep in mind that it's at best only a model of reality:  a model that might be very accurate and very useful, but still only a model.

[Max e^{i pi}]

I think that we have a classic case of life imitating art on our hands.
Story from Slashdot.

[Umbrageofsnow]

I love all the metafiction. I've seen some whining about writers having main characters be writers, but the metafictional, autobiographical aspect of this story adds a lot of emotional power, and makes me think about what the me in this other world would be doing. Maybe I'd become friends with Tim Pratt.

Seriously, the author as a main character absolutely makes this story. In some stories it can seem a bit wankish, but it can also be a useful device, as Pratt shows us here.  Somebody above said it was "Chicken Soup for the Post-Apocalyptic Soul", but it is darker and more combative than that would imply. Tim Pratt is not endorsing passive resignation to our fate, even if we are all simulations.

The best part of the story is both Pratt's anger toward the end, and the reader's ability to capture it.

This is one of my favorites of the year.