Talk:Qusp/@comment-173.206.248.47-20150415195354/@comment-2107987-20150415225027

Hmm. Two things come to mind, though I don't know how useful you'll find them:

1) "like an ordinary computer would?" I don't think this is given. There's a small chance of a true bit error that you can't get rid of - you can reduce it with parities or other data integrity features, but it's never going to be a probability of exactly zero. So an ordinary computer would actually not necessarily proceed to make the same choice even for deterministic algorithms.

2) computation can intentionally put entropy sources (in the computational sense of the word) to use for random numbers. Cryptography comes to mind. That's not a closed system. Something much like that could conceivably be needed to simulate consciousness; not being in AI development, I don't know if that's true, mind you. Making something accept entropy sources as input and not split seems like it would be a difficult (if not unsolvable) problem (to me it immediately sounds like a contradiction, but it might not be).

(I'd have to read the end of Oracle again to see what you mean with the multiverse-suppression field, I have to admit, it's not ringing a bell. When in doubt, that's due to my inattentive reading/remembering, though!)

That being said, I'm not even convinced the ethical argument in favour of the Qusp is necessarily valid; from my understanding of the argument so far (i.e. having thought about it briefly, but not really dug into an attempted refutation or deep acceptance), it depends on the ethical model one pursues whether it's actually compelling. A deontologist, I imagine, would not be swayed.

To me the Qusp is mostly a quaint detail of the Singleton universe (ironically, given what I've named the universe) with interesting cultural and existential implications. I consider it a bit of a religion within said universe - after all, I imagine measuring that you really did not cause another multiverse where you made a different decision is difficult when the critical moment is intentionally isolated.