Posted on 05/14/2003 4:13:00 PM PDT by ewing
A Philosophy Professor who teaches at Oxford says there is roughly a 20 percent chance that most humans today are really software created beings living in a virtual reality.
Dr. Nick Bostrum says there is a good chance technology can mature to the point where life like simulation programs are regularly run.
If that is the case there is no way of knowing whether right now youre currently living in real history or a simulation of the year 2003.
However, he says it is equally likely that humans will become extinct before then can develop such advanced computer simulations or lose their interest in simulations entirely.
Bostrom's arguement appears in his new book 'Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in the Matrix.'
(Excerpt) Read more at ncbuy.com ...
(This is getting pretty silly :-), but..) that's not how I read it. He's suggesting that "most people" (=real people, actual humans) are living in a Matrix-like situation.
This is exactly the same (not reversed from) what is portrayed in the Matrix. "Most people" are plugged into the Matrix, and experience a fake reality. There's a few of 'em living in "Zion" or flying around in a ship.
But I'm talking about "most people" as measured from *the real world*, not measured from *within the Matrix* (as you seem to be). If you were in the Matrix and didn't know there was a "real world" outside it, but you knew that there were "Agents", you'd say that most people are real, the Agents are fake.
But the Agents aren't human to begin with, and the author was not saying that "most people" are Agents. He was saying that "most people" are batteries, just like the movie says. (Agents, not being people, don't count in that discussion.)
Okay, enough nerdiness ;-)
If this is the argument I'm familiar with then there's actually a mathmatical formula that this is derived from.
-I understand the basic Matrix hypothesis but not how he can believe that it could apply to "most humans today". How in the world could only "most" humans be "really software beings living in a virtual reality"? What about the rest of the humans, where are they? (Is he one of them?)
If you ran a bunch of simulated humans on your computer there'd be you, the people on your computer, and everybody else. If there were enough of these simulations then the simulated humans would outnumber the real ones.
main()
{
while(1){
q2=fork();
}
}
Now I'm really worried.
From your link:
In the 1920s, researchers found that electrons, traditionally regarded as particles, could behave as waves in experiments where an electron beam is diffracted from a crystal lattice -- indeed, in one of the nicest examples of wave- particle duality, the physicist J. J. Thomson {ED: NB always "J J", never referred to by name} received a Nobel Prize for discovering that the electron is a particle, while his son George received a Nobel Prize for proving that the electron is a wave.
What formula would that be. Got a link for me to read? ;-)
[How in the world could only "most" humans be "really software beings living in a virtual reality"?] If you ran a bunch of simulated humans on your computer there'd be you, the people on your computer, and everybody else. If there were enough of these simulations then the simulated humans would outnumber the real ones.
But simulated humans are not humans. Author guy was talking about the nature of the existence of "most humans". Simulated humans don't count. If I play a game of The Sims and get 10 billion simulated-human-lives going, the fact that this world contains my 10 billion Sims and 6 billion humans doesn't mean that "most humans (10 out of 16 billion) are virtual". The Sims aren't humans!
Further, if I'm one of the Sims, looking at the world from within the world of the Sims, and I look around at all the other Sims, I might be able to speculate that either we're all real, or we're all virtual. But not merely "most" of us (as in: most of the Sims are virtual, some are "real" humans). A human who creates Sims on his computer doesn't actually live in that computer with them.
Maybe I'm really misinterpreting what the guy's position is, or at least, the newspaper writer's portrayal of the guy's position.
I wish I could find it. Someone posted it here a while back.
But simulated humans are not humans.
If they're good enough simulations then they will be. They'll be self-aware and everything.
A human who creates Sims on his computer doesn't actually live in that computer with them.
But they all exist, even if they don't all directly observe each other.
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