(December 6, 2014 at 6:53 am)Rhythm Wrote: There's no inside perspective for a program because there's no "inside". Could just as easily be true for human "minds" (perspective is much easier to accomplish mechanically than "inside" is, or, if you prefer - it's easier to create a frame of reference or rule than it is to create space...perspective is an elusive word, but whatever idea we come up with for perspective it's likely to have an analog in a variety of systems) - but this says much more about us and little about whatever world is external to us, simulation or not. Perspective may -be- the simulation, rather than the world being a simulation. Then those observations you might make about our universe and it's similarities to a simulation (if you aren't satisfied with having designed simulations specifically to mimic our universe as an explanation for those observations) start to come into focus as a "biological simulation", and we see the next hurdle we have to jump before we can propose the -universe itself- as simulation with any profundity.
That's why the whole thing flirts with a comp. We're starting at the bottom, the effects, and trying to draw the line up. The effect managed by a part could cease to be present at any point along the way to the whole. I shout at inanimate objects - does that mean that the universe shouts at inanimate objects? My perceptions are similar to a simulation - does that mean that the universe is similar to a simulation?
You claim there is no inside perspective. But I recall you also admitted that it was at least a possibility that you are a simulant existing in a computer. I see this as being a contradictory position. If you are simulant, you and your reality exist only in a computer somewhere. You obviously have perspective so if you are a simulant, your perspective must also exist inside a computer. If your perspective exists inside a computer then it must be that there can be inside perspectives.
