Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8622384" data-attributes="member: 42582">As far as I understand these posts, they are saying that if a system is perfectly simulationist, then its probability distribution of the range of outcomes relative to inputs is the same as in the imagined world.The framing of that claim in terms of knowledge enjoyed by the inhabitants of the imagined world seems to add nothing to the claim. I don't think it adds any clarity, either, to refer to the rules of the RPG system: the claim is not about the rules, but about a probability distribution of outcomes relative to inputs.The claim it self seems to be intended to be a tautological unpacking of the concept perfect simulation.I'm not persuaded it's a tautology, because I'm not persuaded that the notion of causal process is fully analysable in terms of probability distributions: and simulationist mechanics, as I understand them, are primarily aimed at exhibiting the in-fiction causal process, so that what the players are working out at the table via their rules and procedures (roughly) correlates with things that are happening in the fiction. The aim of the mechanics is not to predict what would happen in the fiction (unlike, say, the simulation that an engineer sets up in a wind tunnel). For the same reason, I'm not persuaded of your standard of perfection.But accepting your account of perfect simulation, I can accept the tautology, but as I said don't see the benefit of rendering it in epistemic terms, or by reference to the rules of a RPG.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8622384, member: 42582"] As far as I understand these posts, they are saying that [i]if a system is perfectly simulationist[/i], then its probability distribution of the range of outcomes relative to inputs is the same as in the imagined world. The framing of that claim in terms of [i]knowledge[/i] enjoyed by the inhabitants of the imagined world seems to add nothing to the claim. I don't think it adds any clarity, either, to refer to the rules of the RPG system: the claim is not about the rules, but about a probability distribution of outcomes relative to inputs. The claim it self seems to be intended to be a tautological unpacking of the concept [i]perfect simulation[/i]. I'm not persuaded it's a tautology, because I'm not persuaded that the notion of [i]causal process[/i] is fully analysable in terms of probability distributions: and simulationist mechanics, as I understand them, are primarily aimed at exhibiting the in-fiction causal process, so that what the players are working out at the table via their rules and procedures (roughly) correlates with things that are happening in the fiction. The aim of the mechanics is not to [i]predict[/i] what would happen in the fiction (unlike, say, the simulation that an engineer sets up in a wind tunnel). For the same reason, I'm not persuaded of your standard of perfection. But accepting your account of perfect simulation, I can accept the tautology, but as I said don't see the benefit of rendering it in epistemic terms, or by reference to the rules of a RPG. [/QUOTE]

Verification