I disagree with you that:
>and can impinge upon the simulations at any time
A simulation could just be some states. Consider the rule, double and subtract one to get to the next world-state, over the integers, and start the world with the state 1. So the next state is 1. The one after is also 1. The one after is also 1. The universe is stuck in a static state.
As I, you, or a Python script is modeling this universe, where does the outside universe "impinge" on it?
Then let's do a different universe, starting at 2. Then the next state is 3, the state afrer is 5, the state after is 9, and so forth.
As you do this universe in your head, where does the outside universe "impinge" on it?
There is a problem, however. All future states are well-defined in the universe I've given even if nobody in our universe or any other is calculating them.
It is trivially obvious that the human mind is an emergent property of its neural firings (of the brain), and that replacing some part of it with a black box that interacted with the rest would leave it with the same emergent properties, even if this black box were modeling in a different medium.
The question is, if you can model the whole thing over a well-defined program that did not require non pseudorandom entropy, then it would be similar (just start with more complex data than 1 or 2, and more complicated rules than double and subtract one) - so in order for these states to exist, would anyone have to actually calculate it, or is it enough for these states to be mathematically defined?
What I am saying is that it is a statistical certainty that within a thousand years we can create a deterministic model of a brain in a VR, where the brain reports consciousness. (this is 100.000% absolutely necessarily true and not open to debate. The brain is a couple of pounds of stufd, with just a few hundred billion neurons or fewer - I bet we could practically have the hardware to model one today.)
Does this mean that that model already exists? (before anyone chose to calculate it)?
This is similar to asking whether the quintillionth prime exists. Yes, of course it exists.
Really? Even if nobody calculates it? Then what is to say that we might not exist without anyone calculating us?
Perhaps the states of the universe, like the quintillionth prime, exist without anyone calculating it. Perhaps there is no underlying reality at all, just as there is not an underlying reality in which the quintillionth prime is embedded.
>and can impinge upon the simulations at any time
A simulation could just be some states. Consider the rule, double and subtract one to get to the next world-state, over the integers, and start the world with the state 1. So the next state is 1. The one after is also 1. The one after is also 1. The universe is stuck in a static state.
As I, you, or a Python script is modeling this universe, where does the outside universe "impinge" on it?
Then let's do a different universe, starting at 2. Then the next state is 3, the state afrer is 5, the state after is 9, and so forth.
As you do this universe in your head, where does the outside universe "impinge" on it?
There is a problem, however. All future states are well-defined in the universe I've given even if nobody in our universe or any other is calculating them.
It is trivially obvious that the human mind is an emergent property of its neural firings (of the brain), and that replacing some part of it with a black box that interacted with the rest would leave it with the same emergent properties, even if this black box were modeling in a different medium.
The question is, if you can model the whole thing over a well-defined program that did not require non pseudorandom entropy, then it would be similar (just start with more complex data than 1 or 2, and more complicated rules than double and subtract one) - so in order for these states to exist, would anyone have to actually calculate it, or is it enough for these states to be mathematically defined?
What I am saying is that it is a statistical certainty that within a thousand years we can create a deterministic model of a brain in a VR, where the brain reports consciousness. (this is 100.000% absolutely necessarily true and not open to debate. The brain is a couple of pounds of stufd, with just a few hundred billion neurons or fewer - I bet we could practically have the hardware to model one today.)
Does this mean that that model already exists? (before anyone chose to calculate it)?
This is similar to asking whether the quintillionth prime exists. Yes, of course it exists.
Really? Even if nobody calculates it? Then what is to say that we might not exist without anyone calculating us?
Perhaps the states of the universe, like the quintillionth prime, exist without anyone calculating it. Perhaps there is no underlying reality at all, just as there is not an underlying reality in which the quintillionth prime is embedded.