What's it like to be an uploaded human with limited computing power?

In most science fiction where humans are simulated or uploaded onto computers, the humans are simulated with perfect fidelity. But this seems unlikely-- humans are very expensive to run. In Robin Hanson's Age of Em, humans that are too poor to run at full speed are just slowed down; probably the only reason that they aren't "lossily compressed" instead is that in that universe, we haven't made advances in neuroscience and must treat stored minds as black boxes.

In a world with the following:

• Abundant but finite computing power
• Trillions of simulated humans
• A value system that looks favorably on lossy compression of human thought, or the elimination of particularly expensive modules, to make room for more people
• The scientific understanding to do this

what mental faculties of the average person would actually be compressed/eliminated? Since computers are trillions of times more efficient than humans at arithmetic, imagine removing the ability for humans to do arithmetic, replacing that functionality with a software library. Or depowering parts of the brain related to social interaction when one is alone. There are surely better candidates. I'm especially interested in examples that result in interesting negative changes to subjective experience, that are plausible based on current scientific evidence.

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posted over 4 years ago

lirtosiast‭

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