"Gaia lacked both the data and the capability necessary to model the entire universe, or even the entire Earth. Likewise did any other node, and the galactic brain. Powers of that order lay immensely far in the future, if they would ever be realized." (p. 145)
Might the entire universe be modelled in a far future? Might we be living in that model now? This is an empirical question. Either there is or there is not relevant evidence. We already know that reality and appearance differ so this could be another example of that.
But there is a more fundamental question. The omniscient narrator informs us that, to create an "emulation," Gaia represents each variable in a state of reality by a set of numbers and maps the state multi-dimensionally. Numbers and maps can represent but not duplicate the properties of reality and consciousness. Thus, it is not clear that emulations can be conscious.
(Having just returned from London, we, editorially speaking, will visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop tomorrow afternoon.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't believe any merely created AI, no matter how powerful, can model the entire universe, consisting as it does of billions, even trillions of galaxies. Only God can "see" the entire universe in the infinite "now" which is His mind.
Ad astra! Sean
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