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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8606954" data-attributes="member: 177">I mean, that depends on what you mean by &quot;about what is being simulated&quot;.A decent simulation gives you things that look like the thing that is being simulated, in some sense.&nbsp; That does not give you any information about the mechanisms that create the thing in the real world.For instance - In TV studios, they often use bright lights, sometimes tens of thousands of watts of light.&nbsp; They can be quite warm.&nbsp; Imagine filming a TV commercial, in which a character has an ice cream sundae.&nbsp; DO you think that sundae is holding up in the studio for hours?&nbsp; No.&nbsp; If the actor doesn't have to actually eat it, they can use a facimile, which is a visual simulation of an ice cream sundae.&nbsp; Similarly, the stuff they pour in slow-motion on cereal in cereal commercials often isn't actual milk.&nbsp; It is something that seems like milk on the screen.&nbsp; When I say the simulation doesn't tell us about how the world works, it is this:&nbsp; Neither the fake ice cream sundae, nor the fake milk, informs you about how cows are involved in the real thing.&nbsp; It just acts like we want these dairy products to act for the purposes we need.&nbsp; Knowing how the fake milk and fake ice cream are made does not necessarily tell you anything about the real milk in the fridge.Or, you can make a bot, a simulation of a person, who can hold up their end of a conversation in text.&nbsp; It can be done with clever context searches of large databases (or, the internet as a whole, even, iirc).&nbsp; That doesn't necessarily tell you how your human brain carries on conversation.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 8606954, member: 177"] I mean, that depends on what you mean by "about what is being simulated". A decent simulation gives you things that [I]look like[/I] the thing that is being simulated, in some sense. That does not give you any information about the mechanisms that create the thing in the real world. For instance - In TV studios, they often use bright lights, sometimes tens of thousands of watts of light. They can be quite warm. Imagine filming a TV commercial, in which a character has an ice cream sundae. DO you think that sundae is holding up in the studio for hours? No. If the actor doesn't have to actually eat it, they can use a [I]facimile[/I], which is a visual simulation of an ice cream sundae. Similarly, the stuff they pour in slow-motion on cereal in cereal commercials often isn't actual milk. It is something that seems like milk on the screen. When I say the simulation doesn't tell us about how the world works, it is this: Neither the fake ice cream sundae, nor the fake milk, informs you about how cows are involved in the real thing. It just acts like we want these dairy products to act for the purposes we need. Knowing how the fake milk and fake ice cream are made does not necessarily tell you anything about the real milk in the fridge. Or, you can make a bot, a simulation of a person, who can hold up their end of a conversation in text. It can be done with clever context searches of large databases (or, the internet as a whole, even, iirc). That doesn't necessarily tell you how your human brain carries on conversation. [/QUOTE]

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