ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html ^ | NICK BOSTROM (Yale)

[LiteKeeper]

This person has entirely too much time on his hands. He needs to get a real job.

[dark_lord]

The assumptions are lame.
The conclusions don't follow from the assumptions.
The writing is weak.
The "math" looks to be thrown in just to make it look impressive.
Look's like it was hacked together by a freshman. A smart freshman at Yale, but a freshman.
I give it a C-.

[Cultural Jihad]

This person has entirely too much time on his hands. He needs to get a real job.

A social parasite, eh? Seriously, I don't see any value having this ivory tower drivel posted here, either.

[Jeff Chandler]

"How do I know the world around me isn't the creation of a malicious demon,"

Like the malicious Daemon in my e-mail server?

[Mr. Mojo]

I find this paper to be incomprehensible. Perhaps because it is written by a philosophy major?

No perhapses about it.

[john in missouri]

Well, I haven't yet tried to completely digest the article, but unlike some who've posted here, I'd say the whole basic thrust and pretty much what I've read of it makes sense to me, and I'm glad to see it posted here.

Of course, if you haven't previously run across at least a couple of the names in the acknowledgments (I've read past stuff by at least Robin Hanson & John Leslie), then ymmv. A lot.

On the surface of Earth, macroscopic objects in inhabited areas may need to be continuously simulated, but microscopic phenomena could likely be filled in ad hoc.

Thus potentially answering the immortal question, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make any noise?"

The answer, of course, being: Perhaps the tree never falls.

[Jeff Chandler]

"If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make any noise?"

The primary definition of noise is a loud sound. The secondary is a sound of any kind. The primary definition of sound is a transmitted vibration in the range capable of being heard by humans. The secondary definition is a transmitted vibration of any frequency.

The answer would be "yes".

[Jeff Chandler]

Or perhaps there is no tree to begin with. Or no forest.

[john in missouri]

Or perhaps there is no tree to begin with. Or no forest.

Yup! You got it.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

The assumptions are lame.

The conclusions don't follow from the assumptions.

The writing is weak.

The "math" looks to be thrown in just to make it look impressive.

Look's like it was hacked together by a freshman. A smart freshman at Yale, but a freshman.

I give it a C-.

I generally agree and expand as follows:

1. I could not agree with any of his assumptions, nor with the "substrate independence" assumption--i.e., the human mind can be ported any where.
2. He does not define consciousness, a rather glaring hole in his reasoning. In his defense, few others have defined it either. In any case, no one agrees upon the definition. See comp.ai.philosophy for endless debate. I check in about three or four times a year. The arguments never change.
3. I'd give him a C- as well, if he were a freshman. If he were an upperclassman or a graduate student, he'd flunk.

[Momaw Nadon]

ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

Well, if I am living in a computer simulation, the programmer sure does seem to be sadistic.

[PGalt]

A = A...fiction = fiction...junk philosophy=junk philosophy.

[A. Pole]

A modern version of Plato's cave. Matrix is another one.

[bimbo]

ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

Other people might be, but I am not ... I trust that if my future progeny were simulating me, they'd have simulated a much more economically favorable condition for their simulated ancestor.

[freebilly]

Wow! This is great news for Creationists! Evolution really is just a theory.... ;o)

[monkey]

I cannot read all the words. But it seems:

1) No one wants to live in an ancestor simulation of Homo Erectus. We could approximate it now by living in the wild, but it's not a popular choice.

2) If you had a holodeck available, would you choose to live like your great-grandpappy? What about a simulation that is apart from (day-to-day) life?

Why isn't our simulated world perfect (or is he arguing that it is)?

I think he is using the logic of: if people move to ancestor simulations, then there will be a huge number of times (or a long time) during the simulation period that people wonder if it is a simulation. There will only be one time (period) when people wonder if it's a simulation, and it is not. Therefore, the probability is nearly one that we are in a simulation.

This is a very weak argument, based on extremely restrictive assumptions. Hasn't he noticed how much people are changing, even during his lifetime? What would primitive humans think of our symbolic lifestyle, punching keys at a terminal, pressing a gas peddle to move, and (most of us) caring not a whit about animals, signs on the walls of caves, or Venus figures?

Does he address the matter of whether we could tell, from the simulation, whether it's a simulation? He mentions the possible recursive quality to his argument, but what would the result of that be? He's not trying very hard with this essay, but that's modern academia.

[A.J.Armitage]

Kind of reminds me of Grand Theft Auto, which could be taken as a primitive version of what he's talking about. But Grand Theft Auto is interesting. My life isn't, at least not to anyone but me. As a life it's interesting enough, but I wouldn't want to play me as a game. Maybe you'd want to play someone like Osama bin Laden as a game. So where does that take us? Osama's a transhuman goofing off over the transhuman weekend, the other important people of the world are either other transhumans or computer-simulated conciences, and everyone else is a zombie.

But I'm not a zombie, and I don't matter. If I will matter, it makes more sense for me to be a zombie now and become a concious entity that thinks it's always been one later. But I'm not a zombie now.

Therefore it isn't all just a game, but real.

[tortoise]

Does he address the matter of whether we could tell, from the simulation, whether it's a simulation? He mentions the possible recursive quality to his argument, but what would the result of that be? He's not trying very hard with this essay, but that's modern academia.

The problem is that the paper was written within a certain context that has very obviously been lost on the audience here, or is at least lacking in the audience. By some odd coincidence, I know Nick Bostrom and remember discussing this very topic when the paper was actually being written. I may point him to this thread as feedback.

While I don't always agree with Mr. Bostrom, I will say in his defense that he is an extremely bright fellow. It is apparent that most of the people reading the paper here either lack the basic grounding entirely or are missing some critical points entirely. This partially an indictment of Nick's paper (it doesn't convey the concepts as clearly as it could -- something I agree with) and a partial indictment of the audience (it was written with certain assumptions about the audience that most people here are apparently failing to live up to).

So my only comments at this time (my lady will be annoyed if I spend much time on the computer tonight) are that it seems that most of you are misjudging the paper. Dr. Bostrom is a very smart guy, and the ideas he put forth in this paper are pretty sound; it was critically reviewed by others before publication and most of the possible weaknesses were thoroughly explored at that time.

And beside, Dr. Bostrom is actually a pretty conservative guy in a Constitutionalist sense despite coming from Scandinavia. He would have little difficulty fitting into the usual continuum of characters that we have on FreeRepublic. He is definitely not some left-wing hippy from academia without a clue.

[Billy_bob_bob]

What a waste of intellectual effort. Of course we are not living in a computer simulation. I've worked in the computer industry since 8-bit computers were considered "cutting edge". I cut my teeth on a PDP-11/04 running 3-D CAD. There is NO WAY we could simulate "reality" with our current technology, let alone twenty years ago, or thirty years ago. Before that, we didn't have the electrical grid in place to do such a thing, let alone the communications grid. Remember, Tesla invented the A/C electrical grid only a little over a hundred years ago.

This article reminds me of an old joke techies used to tell each other: "Go outside, the graphics are intense!" The bottom line is that the technologies needed to do such a thing are decades away, and without the technologies you don't get the result.

I guess I didn't go to school long enough to learn how to sling this many words to such little effect. Oh well.

[Centurion2000]

Interesting ..... outlandish but interesting.