Daylen's Instinctual Dump

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daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Personality and Strategy

A personality space can be coupled to the super-strategy space like so:

Let personality be a probability distribution over the set of points in the super-strategy space which meet the following conditions:

1. A graph with zero nodes.
2. Has a neighborhood with transmissible single node graphs.

Now there are various different classifications for the set of points in this space which correspond to different types. Let there be an upper limit to the amount energy that can be expended to navigate the super-strategy space dependent on the lifetime of an agent. Personalities exist to the extent that agents and their paths though this space can be conditionalized on the probability of being initialized from birth at one of these starting locations in one of these classes.
Last edited by daylen on Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Social Mirrors

Social mirrors are like mirrors on the walls of bathrooms applied to social groups. Just as bathroom mirrors help you identify yourself, social mirrors help a group identify itself. All groups have some form of social mirror but not all social mirrors are associated with an ideology. The effects of a social mirror can be amplified by technologies such as social media, but a social mirror can be as simple as a label being echoed between its members (i.e. a group name).

This definition will be useful later.
Last edited by daylen on Fri Sep 04, 2020 5:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Dystopia Model

One possible future can become enabled by the following set of technologies likely in absence of AGI:

1. mass surveillance
2. automated killer drones or human kill/harm switches
3. anonymous mass virtual reality

So, this state of civilization would operate on the principle of maximal work/play separation. Work is heavily constrained by some set of segregating regulations and top-down organization constrained by some narrow set of goals. These regulations are enforced by 2. The only privacy is in the form of 3 where agents can develop a personal and group identity independent of their work identity. Distributed computer networks akin to Tor Browser allow for continuous generation of a common virtual reality world where real-world agents can aggregate together using pseudonyms which are unlikely to be linked to their real-world identities.

We may extend on this later. Primarily building up the pieces now before fitting them together.
Last edited by daylen on Fri Sep 04, 2020 4:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.

daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Simulation Stacks

Simulation stacks are simply simulations inside simulations inside simulations....which may or may not form a fractal-like structure constrained by the computational ability of "basement level" reality. Presuming that each level within this stack experiences a dimension akin to time (i.e. an apparently asymmetric dimension of reality defined by entropy). Otherwise the structure of reality could be such that there is no basement and it just loops on itself.

Simulations within a level of reality can be independent or partially dependent on each other. They can just simulate a single consciousness or a world of many consciousnesses (i.e. with or without an environment). All depends on how we want to delineate our ontological components from each other. All of what we experience as "time" may or may not be simulated in its entirety. The same flexibility is afforded with the more spacial-like dimensions of a reality.

Some interesting questions can then be asked such as why would a basement-level civilization run simulations? To even begin to answer this we must introduce what I will call the "Universal Mind Assumption" (UMA): An Agent's subjective model of their own mind can serve as a metaphor for what other minds are like objectively (i.e. a theory of mind can exist).
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daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Ancestor versus Generalized Simulations

Ancestor simulations attempt to replicate the reality in which they are hosted. Generalized simulations attempt to generate/derive the space of all possible realities given some set of constraints (e.g. contains life, contains intelligent life, allows planet formation, etc.).

Now, given the entropy/time constraint, a civilization cannot run an ancestor simulation in its entirety. A reality of equal or greater "complexity"(*) must be simulated partially or else at sub-real-time indefinitely (i.e. never halting).

(*) Roughly the total number of bits required to compute where every part is at any given time (dependent on what code is used).

Ancestor simulations may be run for nostalgic or studious reasons but cannot serve as a reliable predictor of the future asides from heavily constrained circumstances (i.e. physical experiments).... for complicated yet intuitive reasons... observed observers... blah blah.

Yet, an ancestor simulation could potentially be sampled in some manner. This leads to what I will call the "Dark Matter Sampling" hypothesis where dark matter is composed of particles which are used by our simulators to read our simulation via gravitational interaction. Presumably in concurrence with black holes which serve to track larger clusters of matter (e.g. galaxies and galaxy clusters).

In addition, I will also propose what I call the "Distributed Simulator" hypothesis which states that our universe is a simulation running on a distributed computer cluster in which there is a correspondence between sampling objects (black holes and dark matter) and server cores which generate our simulation within their localized region with a mass/volume in rough proportion to their own mass/volume. This may branch into slight variations depending on the density distribution of spacetime.

mooretrees
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by mooretrees »

daylen wrote:
Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:35 pm
Social Mirrors

Social mirrors are like mirrors on the walls of bathrooms applied to social groups. Just as bathroom mirrors help you identify yourself, social mirrors help a group identify itself. All groups have some form of social mirror but not all social mirrors are associated with an ideology. The effects of a social mirror can be amplified by technologies such as social media, but a social mirror can be as simple as a label being echoed between its members (i.e. a group name).

This definition will be useful later.
Is this a slightly different way to explain signalling?

daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

I think of signalling as a way to communicate status. Statuses are usually group descriptors which hold some form of social significance(*). Signals are coupled to a specific group the majority of the time but may also be a combination of group statuses corresponding to a unique personal identity. For instance, signaling "Physics PhD" + "personal finance guru" + "forum moderator" + "book author" could indicate a personal status without being attached to any particular social mirror.

In other words, an agent that accesses a unique combination of social mirrors could be said to have the capacity to signal a unique status.

(*) ..else may refer to specific individuals akin to a title on rare occasions (e.g. spiritual or political leaders, inventors, authors, etc.).

In addition, social mirrors can be associated to non-agent forms such as algorithms/technologies that dynamically track and record an aggregate of individual signals. This is partially the meaning I had in mind when writing that section but have not yet utilized.

mooretrees
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by mooretrees »

Okay, that's interesting, thanks for clarifying.

daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Axioms

Computation = Attention = Awareness = Consciousness = Observation = Subject = Existence:
Each may be used consistently in a certain context out of habit or prior reference yet all may be substituted for each other throughout a given context.

Substrate Independence:
What code is executed on/with does not change the computation associated with it.

Maximum Entropy:
Assign all possible outcomes an equal probability in absence of evidence.

Limiting Processes Must Terminate:
Models involving infinite computation do not represent reality. OR
Reality is Finite. OR
Mathematical analysis is an approximation tool.

Monism Over Many Worlds:
There is a single reality. OR
A multiverse model with independent parts does not represent reality.
Last edited by daylen on Mon Oct 12, 2020 7:15 pm, edited 14 times in total.

daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

A model which does not make assumptions cannot say anything of significance or even attempt to make predictions. Assumptions may be reduced/combined later if the conclusions they imply are invariant but this is not a priority I associate strongly with. Generally, I want to reach the strongest possible conclusions within the limits of my own attention.
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daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Agency is not equivalent to computation/attention/awareness/consciousness/observation/subject/existence. Agency will serve as one of the focal points for much of my analysis and will take on multiple forms depending on the context.
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daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Set theoretic systems which avoid Russell's Paradox and other such contradictions will be followed to the best of my ability. For instance, one rule is that objects/sets cannot contain themselves. Hence, simulations cannot contain full-versions of themselves. Another consequence is that agents cannot attend to their entire self (i.e. complete models of themselves).

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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Yet they must attend to partial models of themselves AND their environment.

daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

This leads to a thought experiment concerning complexity and existence. Imagine that you are being simulated with the bare minimum of processing power required for you to be born, live out your life, and then die someday(+). Under some conditions, certain details outside of your attention may as well not be rendered until they are drawn into your attention. When not in a room the simulator may just ignore it, yet presumably this would lead to a situation where you anticipate the state of the room to change without it actually doing so (e.g. dust accumulation). Therefore, the simulator may need to render the room anyway for a certain class of agents. Taken further, perhaps the simulator does not actually need to render the movement of electrons for a larger class of agents, because a smaller fraction of agents become experimental particle physicists than the fraction who dust a room.

Yet, a simulated agent attends to other agents in an environment which would appear to persist and evolve in absence of their attention. The apparent complexity of another agent in relation to your own mind would indicate that another computation is being executed in parallel of your own. So, we could say that even if our environment takes on an unrecognizable or distorted form in our simulator, it still does exist given attention=existence. In short, where there is complexity, there is something going on behind the scenes which may or may not undergo a transformation each time you observe it.

(+) ..to avoid the "my memories and me were created a second ago" possibility.
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daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Agency is a term which is generally associated with the ability to make decisions/choices/selections. When using this term I do not intend to imply that reality is non-deterministic. Rather, I think of the term as a way to talk about the in-determinism of open systems. Speaking more about this will surely just jumble us up but roughly our existence is characterized by two states: 1. Attention 2. attention to attention

It just feels as if we are at times certain about our integration with reality (i.e. system 1) or that we are puzzled by it (i.e. system 2). Existence either just is or it is one derivative removed from itself. Higher-order derivatives are not usually necessary but can occur. So, in a way it is as if we have agency that is either on or off (i.e. partial agency).
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

A Basement of Agents

Given the Universal Mind Assumption (UMA) and Simulation Hypothesis, basement level reality has one or more agents which are in-determinate about whether they are in a simulation. Perhaps this is what motivated them to build a simulation stack (or many). This leads to what I will call the "Simulation Sampling Experiment" (SSE) which may be assigned a more playful name someday by relating it to a metaphor. :)

Anyway, this experiment produces incomplete simulation stacks and samples them to determine their similarity to the reality where they are being produced. This allows for the agents doing the experiment to update their priors on how likely it is they are at basement-level reality by calculating the probability of their reality being stacked onto(*) various instances of some class of simulations characterized by a set of parameters. This class could be expanded to include more complex parameter combinations yet this would result(#) in less certainty that these incomplete simulation stacks actually match their associated parameter values.

(*) That is, being incompletely simulated in one of their simulations.

(#) All other things being equal.

This is one possible motivation. Another may be that the agents decided these simulations are an overall net positive ethically by producing more desired agency than they could otherwise achieve within their resource constraints. Let's call this the "Utilitarian Simulators" hypothesis.

daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Natural Dystopia

Nature has its own built-in kill switch: anxiety. Unfit specimens which deem themselves unworthy of equal share within a population based upon persistent failure(+) are subject to a negative feedback to their health. This process results in under-confidence (i.e. depression) further leading to under-performance. Depressed specimens may counteract this process with less ambitious dopamine trails. Long-term susceptibility to this negative decline may be measured as neuroticsim. In some cases, the overwhelming feelings of inadequacy may cause a specimen to take their own life or otherwise subject themselves to unnecessary risk.

When depressed specimens subject themselves to necessary risk the rewards are rarely bountiful but such a high-risk strategy is not a bug of evolution. Perhaps anxiety has deep roots in our evolutionary history and may even be associated with a speciation mechanism whereby depressed specimens are impressed by a pathogen resulting in horizontal gene transfer(*). Let's call this horizontal speciation.

(+) ..by their own standards and/or by their group.

(*) ..or though gene editing.. or through epigenetic change which somehow crosses back to germ-cells in the next generation.

The appearance of an alternate reality is another trick up the sleeve of natural dystopia. The desire for play at an early age combined with innate hallucinogenic ability allows some species to construct a parallel reality in which to express alternate personalities through dreams. This dual identity can persistent without detection from familiar specimens. Keeping social interaction somewhat orderly by limiting the threat of personal dispersion into a social mirror.

An ability to project limited agency onto a universal omnipotence results in God. Anthropomorphic constructions of God are usually thought to see everything that everyone does resulting in the imposition of an external morality on true believers. Such a moral system may or may not be fully embedded into the group with which a specimen identifies. Hence in the human version of natural dystopia, social rules are enforced through belief in something more powerful than any human. In the absence of this belief, God is dead and this dystopia looses power, leaving open the possibility of a technological dystopia.
Last edited by daylen on Tue Sep 22, 2020 10:19 pm, edited 3 times in total.

daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

Biological Clocks

Our genetic clocks tell cells when to stop replicating in order to avoid the build-up of cancerous mutations; epigenetic clocks based on DNA methylation are highly predictive of age. Epigenetic change across the lifespan alters the environment in which cells are told what to become and rearrange how DNA is accessed (i.e. silencing/expressing various genes). Given enough time either cells cease to communicate or falsely assume they are communicating where they should be. Cancerous mutations result in cells which ignore surrounding signals while continuing to replicate. I wonder what harm could result from stem cells believing they are in your leg when they are really in your brain.

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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by Alphaville »

daylen wrote:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 7:01 pm
I wonder what harm could result from stem cells believing they are in your leg when they are really in your brain.
foot-in-mouth disease? 😜

daylen
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Re: Daylen's Instinctual Dump

Post by daylen »

:lol:

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