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Maybe this definition accommodates both the multiversal and atemporal aspects of reality: a program's reach is the set of its outputs that solve problems in any universe (past, present or adjacent).

I don't think so; just having a Wall of posts on my profile is fine, no funny business. Here I was only hoping to delete an accidental mis-post. Maybe allowing deletion of exact duplicates with no parents is reasonable? But this is just a cleanliness/organizational thing, and kind of a fluke, probably not an issue worth spending much time on. (But I stand by #5143, and regardless of the size of the revision. Seems cleaner to me to only show the latest version, no diff.)

But sometimes revisions can be substantive, and OP could defend against one version, and in that case it should count to the battle-tested badge!

I question whether previous versions of a criticism should contribute to the battle-tested count, as they do currently. Someone can make a spelling correction to the criticism, which creates the "supersedes" criticism of that previous version of the criticism, and that then contributes to the battle-tested count. This seems wrong, since that counter-criticism is not substantive, and even if it were, OP only generally responds to the latest version of a criticism (may not even have known about previous versions; all of this happened in: https://veritula.com/ideas/5089-knowledge-growth-such-as-in-genes-in-the-biospher).

Okay to allow for posts that have no comments or criticisms? Or only for posts on one's profile (perhaps also meeting that criterion)?

No way to delete posts. Posted same thing twice by mistake (unexpected Chrome behavior). Choices are to leave the duplicate, which seems inelegant, or to revise it into another whole post, which I did, but that contributed to the issue in #5143 (creates an unclear green and red update post).

Wouldn't it have to be instantiated in the overall system itself, which contains the replicators (among other things?)? Otherwise, how could that variable be a form of criticism by the system?

How is the quantity of a replicator not based in the same medium as the replicator?

Non-specific criticisms, those not taking into account the content of their target, are always "analogue" (or quantitative as opposed to qualitative) in the sense of being based on a variable whose quantity changes in a medium distinct from that hosting the knowledge it is serving as criticism for. (E.g. capital allocation in an economy; number of instances of a replicator.)

Specific criticisms, those taking into account the content of their target, are always discrete and absolute because they identify a contradiction. (E.g. criticisms of a scientific theory.)

Maybe natural selection logically does not require death, but when we introduce a scarcity of resources, isn't death an inevitable byproduct? Eventually, the best replicating will be those which take the resources from others? If no death, then number of entities increases without bound. So any real system will have it, or will stop functioning when the limit is reached.

It's sort of like: the "this is replicating less" criticism has no actual weight to it unless there is a point beneath which any less fecundity = bye-bye.
**If things with arbitrarily low fecundity are left intact forever, how is differential replication a criticism?**

I wonder if there is any significance to the "distance" the laws of physics are from us, in the sense of emergence. Each quantum application of the laws of physics (conceived as discrete steps) is so far down, but maybe it need not be so. Maybe there are people in other laws of physics, where the laws are much closer at hand. Do the laws need to have a certain minimum range of emergence for personhood to be possible..? Couldn't people like us exist in a universe where fundamental physics is no more complex than the operation of our minds, or is the "breathing room" we have here necessary?

If changes are not blind, the changer is changing based on the content of the knowledge in the target, in which case the two have a joint implication space: their possible states are all implicit in the system, and there are no states that are novel with respect to either of them; creativity is not possible. It’s like two differently charged conductors coming into contact and neutralizing the electric field between them.

The externally-derived sources of variation/novelty in the case of DNA (cosmic rays and failures in copying due to chemistry) are blind: they do not interact (epistemically) with the knowledge of the system.

Knowledge growth (such as in genes in the biosphere, or in a person) can only proceed by conjecture and criticism -- variation and selection. In a system which can create knowledge, but has not yet, there are no modes of substantive criticism available, since that would itself require knowledge. So how can the system create knowledge at all? Because although substantive criticism is not yet possible, the crudest form of full-on refutation is: the destruction of the information medium on which a conjecture is based, i.e., death. Death is the only "undesigned" refutation. So any initial knowledge created in an otherwise empty knowledge-creating system can only be that relating to how to avoid death in the local environment. This is the knowledge which defines replicators.

Any physical process can be simulated to arbitrary precision. A simulation is a program, and nothing is stopping any given program from being rerun.

But the mind has finite memory as well, and doesn't stop showing novelty. I was going to say it doesn't plateau in complexity, but actually I guess there is a ceiling... It's just that new and better ideas make better use of the finite resources; they aren't just more complex.

Not sure what you mean by the soup being more open to the world, or allowing for "more" open-ended evolution. Unless you mean the quantity. I think evolution is either open- or closed-ended, as a binary. And again, not convinced any external world or feedback is required for open-endedness (per Deutsch). It might merely be very helpful.

Could you say more about those regions?

I wish! I'll try.

creativity still could occur in total isolation, but I don't think they would generate much knowledge due to the lack of external feedback.

Maybe less overall, maybe just less by our standards. Maybe still a lot of knowledge can be made in isolation, just of a schizophrenic kind, more unstable without the regularities of external reality. But I'm wondering if isolated regions of the mind can provide "external" variation to each other in that one can make changes to the other, but not vice versa (like how the world makes blind changes to DNA but not vice versa). Maybe this is how evolution happens more quickly in the mind than by random copying error and mutations alone, because there are many more sources of blind variation...

Even in isolation, the real world applies [hardware constraints]

Agreed. So by isolation from reality we shouldn't mean isolation from physics. Just that the evolution taking place in the mind has no specific causal dependence on the external reality, I think. If it's "isolated" in this sense, nothing outside the mind, if changed, would impact the mind's evolution, its content. Even though mind and world are both determined by the same physics. Reality is not necessary, in this sense, so marking this as a criticism.

I also picture a primordial soup often. Maybe including these autonomous regions or layers I'm grasping at. Soups and "Turing gases" have been programmed and so far always plateau in complexity, even with no predefined criterion, so there's something else going on.

One neat paper, for example: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.19108
It sounded unbounded at first, but Claude explains that in a recent followup interview, plateauing has been confirmed: https://poggio-lab.mit.edu/blogsupdates/interview-blaise-aguera-y-arcas

Unless I'm mistaken, Deutsch has argued that a person in total isolation from reality would still be capable of creativity. Reality is a good source of problems/niches for us, but is not necessary. It seems to me we must have sources of selection in the mind. I picture autonomous regions, or layers, each of which is like an external reality from the perspective of the others, so they all scratch each other's backs.

If qualia are only present when new knowledge is being made, then for a quale to be replayed it could be that there must be a reset each time: the knowledge produced from the previous run is erased. So w.r.t. the AGI system alone, new knowledge is being created each time (it doesn't matter if the knowledge is copied from a previous run and stored elsewhere, in which case it is not new w.r.t. that combined system).

Actually maybe this isn't so obvious. A person need not create new knowledge for the personhood property to be present, since it is a counterfactual property: a person can create new knowledge (new and non-inferable, I argue).

A quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times. That looping program is not a person (no knowledge is created, however many times it loops, for instance), but it still constitutes experience.
So people are not the only programs that can be qualia.

Are pacifism, socialism and compromise all short-termist?

Pacifism reduces casualties --- in the short term.

Socialism reduces poverty --- in the short term.

Compromise reduces disappointment --- in the short term.

The above idea (#4751) is the only solution to the "PROBLEM" raised in #4752.
(Criticize this with alternative solutions).

The above idea (#4751) is the only solution to the "apple problem" raised in #4752.
(Criticize this with alternative solutions).