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Showing posts with the label Human

On "morality derived from space colonization"

" Morality derived from space colonization " defines as the highest "Good" the survival of humans in case of an eventual global Earth cataclysm. I believe that such goal (humanity preservation) is likely to be acceptable for many people, but why only by space colonization? There are arguments that an event that could destroy human life on Earth is likely to happen. We don't need to go until Sun depletion, it is more likely that a big enough asteroid will fall in the next thousands of years. Even without this, life of Earth might be threatened by local events like nuclear accidents, major climate change (it happened before). Even destructive diseases might not be contained in a certain Earth region. If not this, we might also face resource depletion if the population continues to grow. It seems reasonable that saving humanity from a global Earth cataclysm depends on... finding another planet capable to sustain human life. It is like in the saying "don...

Can a computer (or human) simulate itself?

A virtual machine is a common example of simulation. It can take the description of a (virtual) "computer" state and continue the execution from that point on. You can simulate a huge computer given a computer with more memory than the virtual machine, although it might be way slower. However, such virtual machine does not answer the problem because it normally simulates a computer with less memory. The question is, can a computer to simulate a virtual computer that has the same capabilities as itself? Before answering this, let's exclude some trivial (forbidden) cases of "simulations": A calculator will always do exactly what it does, it will be identical with itself, we will not call this a simulation of itself. Copying the exact state of another identical computer in a "twin brother" will not be considered simulation. Starting 2 identical computers with the same input will not be considered like one is simulating the other.

We believe in a compressible Universe

"Believe" is often associated with religion. However, even for using the " scientific method ", we are forced to assume certain qualities of the Universe that we cannot prove nor fully verify. The most basic assumption is that there are common laws that are universal and they function the same across the whole Universe. This is a leap of faith that we have to take if we believe that the Universe can be understood at all by humans.