Day 17 - fullstop.

Checking back, I posted 17 times in the first month I setup this thing, so that's pretty good.  There has only been one other month that I posted more... 2 years ago!  Jeez!  Can't even keep up with fashionable web trends anymore - I must really be showing my age.  This inane one-sided banter is helpful because it is writing.  I'm assuming that it's like publicity - any writing is good.  Er something.  More along the lines of what Malcom Gladwell describes in Outliers - that magic number of hours doing a task is what separates the average from the good from the great.  

Not that I think this will ever turn me into a great writer, but that this will make my writing better.  Haven't read that book yet, so I'm not sure if the argument is based solely on hours-on-task or if there is a combination of innate skills plus hours-on-task that leads to the heights of excellence.  I heard in an excerpt that top performers in given fields don't have the best IQs - there's no benefit after a score of about 120.  That suggests that intelligence (or the IQ measure of it) is not a key factor.  I believe that there is a balance between innate skills, intelligence and practise.  Someone that posses innate abilities but cannot be challenged at the right time will never explore the heights of their skills.  If an individual cannot remain engaged, they won't put in the time necessary.  This can be easily demonstrated with sports and the development of athletes - for example women's hockey.  Canada and the US have the two best teams and the two best programs.  The "program"is more than the identification and training of skilled athletes, it's the large number of teams for women to play in and the hierarchy of competitive tiers.  Countries without a wide infrastructure at the youngest ages don't cast the net very wide.  If there is lots of amateur play, but no tiers of increasing skill, the best players continue to play with the same set of teammates and opponents and are never challenged.    In Canada, women's hockey benefited from the existing hockey infrastructure - arenas, coaches, lots of people interested in the sport.  I believe (but do not know for sure) that in the US there are not as many amateur players, but good players are moved into more competitive leagues very effectively.  Other countries have excellent players, but their players may play at a skill level so far above their teammates that they aren't challenged during training.  That and other countries may not identify some of the truly skilled players because of this lack of infrastructure.

Long digression, but still see the balance between these items as being as important as any single factor.  Even the examples I've heard from Outliers (Bill Joy, Bill Gates, Wayne Gretzky) have that balance - all have innate skills, but access to certain resources (to allow the magic time to practise) and a place to apply the items were very fortuitous.  This is why we don't have people who simply spend thousands of hours making it.  If that were so, the pop charts would be clogged with the many skilled musicians that simply never made it "big" for whatever reason.  Looking at the issue from the other way - why did skilled, smart individuals not make it? - I guess that's why I'm arguing for the multiple factors.  Skill, focus and situational opportunity are the combo.  Skill is obvious - innate abilities sharpened through practise and refinement.  Situational opportunity are those things that can be called "right-place-right-time".  For Bill Gates, it was access to computer time when computers were rare and highly specialized.  For Bill Joy, it was arriving at Berkeley at the right time to be able to contribute to Unix and then found Sun.  Wayne Gretzky it was being part of the Canadian amateur hockey system that allowed him to compete against much older children so that he could challenge his own skills.

All this argument shows a bias forged in experience and undergraduate psychology courses - when there are several possible answers, the best (or right) answer is usually a combination of those possibilities.  When you are looking at phenomenon that is identified and studied in a scientific manner, the possible answers reflect the people creating hypotheses.  To explore a topic, an hypothesis is created and then tested.  Each individual may emphasize some items and overlook others so the initial hypothesis may not encompass the whole picture.  At around the same time, a different person explores the same phenomenon and starts with a different hypothesis.  Once research and testing show a hypothesis is valid, it is difficult to change people's minds about it, so sides develop that stick with one idea over the other.  Finally this is resolved when someone creates a hypothesis that incorporates both ideas and shows that it is true.  Similarly, experience shows conflicts are generally nuanced enough that it isn't as simple as one side over the other.  So that's my bias.

Simulation - not likely!

The stalwart Kimota94 posted this little gem about that philosophy paper making the rounds on the ole inter-weeb. You know - this one - that claims that this may all just be a simulation. Kimota94 does a good job refuting that idea with an excellent argument. He also asks "if this is a simulation, what would you do different?"

What would I do different? One argument would say "nothing - it's not possible to do things differently than the simulation would predict." Another would say "nothing - the simulation theory is nice but doesn't really impact me." A third would be "nothing - the amount of computing power necessary would require more operations per second than atoms in the universe so it would be unlikely to reach that level of computational power."

I'll start with the second one: it doesn't impact me. Even if I were to exist within a simulation, what I perceive as a "mind" is what I perceive. As a corollary to self-awareness, that would me the simulation created life (me) and I'm operating within it. Ipso-fatso, I am the simulation, but it is no different than what I was before.

The first answer justifies my view that "what would you do differently?" is the wrong question. I think I would rather ask "what would you simulate if you were in charge?" That would be interesting. The simulation described would have the power to simulate any possibility so changing your behaviour would be accommodated. Setting up different startup conditions or end conditions and running the simulation would be more interesting.

Another interesting aspect of the paper that I didn't see addressed was the time scale of the simulation. Would the simulation be in real-time or at some accelerated rate? I would hope that it would be accelerated as real-time would be a bit of a drag. I suppose if it is accelerated than we, as the simulacrums are thinking faster than the items being simulated. If indeed we are simulated, then is every single possible activity being simulated, or are short-cuts being taken? Computer modeling (as I know it) is discrete and therefore leaves out some information in the interest of producing a useful model. If the proposed machine is not modeling, then it really is new life in a novel media - AI if you will.

Finally I would say ('cause I really ought to be getting some sleep now) that I do not think such a model is possible. Let's take one of the better known systems used to model the world around us - mathematics. It has been demonstrated that any mathematical system is incomplete. As a corollary, the simulation system described would be incomplete, no matter its power. It would not be able to simulate life exactly, by the same argument. Therefore the simulation would be something different than the previous existence it is attempting to simulate, which implies that such a simulation would not be stable. It would crash soon after starting. Maybe it is a new religion - we are all just waiting the Great Blue Screen of Existence. The Reboot is Near - REPENT! Yes, sleep is needed. By me - maybe you, but definitely me.