Are We Lving in the Matrix? [Oxford Prof Says There's 20% Chance We're All Living in a Computer]

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.'

I wish I could find it. Someone posted it here a while back.

Let me guess, the "formula" is
5x-1 = 0

That would explain the source of the 20% number

[But simulated humans are not humans.] If they're good enough simulations then they will be. They'll be self-aware and everything.

Uh, this begs a lot of questions :-)

[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.

Uh, we seem to have lost the original thread of what I was replying to. It was this: (Oxford guy sez there's 20% chance) "most humans today are really software created beings living in a virtual reality."

Granted, this can be read lots of ways, pending definition of "most", "humans", "really", "software", etc. I interpreted it in what I thought to be the most straightforward (and Matrix-consistent, since the article explicitly makes this connection) way, namely, by assuming that the preceding statement means or implies

-some beings are "humans" and some aren't and there is a way to tell the difference

-"most" of these humans are plugged into (Matrix-style) a software simulation living virtual lives

These statements aren't affected if I, as a human, fire up a game of Sims, no matter how realistic or large it is. Guy wasn't talking about realistic simulations of humans (like the Agents in the Matrix), he was talking about human humans, i.e. actual humans. If there's no difference between the two things then the guy's statement is meaningless anyway.

What's left unclear to me, then, is just how this "most" thing works. I guess there are a few options. First, either this world (the one you and I are corresponding in) is The Real World, or not. If it is, then we can't be simulations. So presumably the 20% refers to the probability that this world is a simulation. Oxford guy's now saying that, in the world which contains this simulation, there are humans, and "most" of them are living virtual lives. You and I may be such humans, or we may be "Agents". But it still makes me wonder, Where are the rest of the humans? What are they doing?

The Matrix of course does give one answer, namely that they're in "Zion" or flying in a hovercraft. I guess I was hoping for a more plausible answer. The problem is that most of my respondents are from people who misinterpreted what I was saying, what Oxford guy was saying, or perhaps just wanted to argue.

What's left unclear to me, then, is just how this "most" thing works.

I was wondering about that too.

Apparently (link to PDF file), the argument goes like this: If it is possible in principle to create simulated self-aware humans living a life that is indistinguishable from "normal reality" and if thirty billion people are experiencing the early 21st century, then your chance of being one of the six billion who are "real" is only one in 5, ergo 20%.

Of course, as you point out, this argument begs many questions, such as why 20% -- instead of 2% or 0.2%?

Also, you would have to grant the premise, namely that the creation of artificial realities populated by virtual self-aware humans is possible, for which I find not a shred of evidence.

Also, if we are computer-created virtual entities, why assume that there ever has been a "reality" resembling what we experience? The word "simulation" after all implies verisimilitude, i.e., the modeling/recreation of an original reality.

The "simulated reality" scenario makes for entertaining science fiction, but does not appear to present any testable propositions, even though many of its advocates are credentialed scientists.

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