It's kind of interesting how people who would never consider a creationist explanation seem quite willing to embrace the idea that we're in a simulation.
Well, in my case, I don't believe our universe is a simulation, but I'm open to discussing the idea for fun and it does seem like a possibility. Whereas, most people that believe in creationism, believe it 100% to be the case and if you don't believe the same you are going to hell. I grew up in an evangelical Christian community and you can't really compare the two groups. Evangelicals are ready to die for this belief.
This is mostly the YECs (Young Earth Creationist - "the earth is 6000 years old" camp). There are other flavors like ID (Intelligent Design) that tend to hold things a good bit looser - and there are many different flavors of ID as well. But yeah, the YEC folks are completely "it's our way or the hellway!" and the Evangelicals have pretty much doubled down on YEC - that wasn't always the case, there used to be a lot of Evangelicals that were theistic evolutionists and had no problem with a 4.5B year old earth.
EDIT: maybe we need another word in this context besides 'creationist' since it has a lot of baggage in the culture at this point. What else to call someone who hypothesizes that there is some kind of intelligence behind the universe? The simulationists seem to fit into that category as do the various flavors of 'creationist', 'intelligent design', 'theistic evolutionist' and probably even Hindus, etc.
The term "deist" fits some of those items, although.
Interestingly, I think some of the distinction as to why this idea is more palatable is that it doesn't require "supernatural" or "magic" deities. The "creator" could be just like us. We already have evidence that creating virtual worlds is possible--we do it ourselves with games, so I think it takes a lot less faith, as we have a limited proof of principle already.
Also, most magical creationism is totally untestable. You can make some predictions about a simulation, though. If simulations are subject to constraints, which is likely, you should be able to ascertain, in the design of the universe, that items with the biggest O might be subject to performance optimizations. If you find lazy loading, caching, or other performance optimizations at the smallest scale (biggest O), which is what this might predict, you at least have some hints.
One is an assertion with no logic to justify it, the other is an assertion with a somewhat persuasive argument justifying it [1]. They are simply incomparable.
Of the 3 assertions in the abstract, the obviously false one is #2: "Any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history". When you realize that running a simulation of the universe requires more processing power than is available in the universe, this is very obviously false.
I respect people who believe in a bearded White omnipotent homophobic God who lives in a sky palace more than I respect people who believe in this insane drivel about the probability of living in a simulation. At least the former were indoctrinated as their brain was forming.
Isn't it possible that our universe is really just an approximation meant to look as detailed as possible? You don't need a universe of processing power to simulate a universe. You just need to make it look believable enough that it fools whoever is in your simulation.
I agree with you, and even if it's not an approximation, it doesn't matter; we can't make assumptions about the size of a parent reality (and its limits on processing power) relative to our own.
The simulation hypothesis seems as theistic as the creationist hypothesis. Maybe the main difference being that with the simulation there would likely have been many creators (programmers) whereas the creationists would say there is one (although there are polytheistic creation narratives, so maybe not so different). Other than that, they both seem to fall into the theistic category since a higher intelligence is posited who created (the simulation | the real world).
> Of the 3 assertions in the abstract, the obviously false one is #2: "Any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history". When you realize that running a simulation of the universe requires more processing power than is available in the universe, this is very obviously false.
I think you've expressed a number of confusions.
First, I think you contradicted yourself. The line you quote says that posthuman civilizations are unlikely to create simulations, but you say this is false because a universe simulation requires more power than available in the universe. So you're agreeing with the outcome while saying you're disagreeing.
Second, I suggest reading the the paper fully, because Bostrom explains that we don't need full universe simulations, we need only consciousness simulations (kind of like the Matrix). The very premise of a post-human civilization is that they have knowledge sufficiently advanced that they have algorithms to simulate human minds.
Much like how video games only render the part of the world that is visible to the players, so a consciousness simulation only needs to simulate minds and their perceptions of a macroscopic, classical world, they do not have to simulate a full quantum universe. Our brains are great at filling in information that we expect to be there, so even the parts that we directly perceivedon't need to be simulated with complete fidelity.
Frankly, I don't think you've given the argument sufficient thought, but by a happy accident you picked exactly the outcome that I think is most likely, and I elaborate on why here:
> Our brains are great at filling in information that we expect to be there, so even the parts that we directly perceive don't need to be simulated with complete fidelity.
Right, but the simulation is nonetheless bottlenecked by whichever system requires the greatest fidelity, and the more technology advances, the more of a problem that becomes. For instance, medieval times would likely be far easier to simulate than modern times, because the latter requires simulating our entire computer infrastructure.
And I think that infrastructure is harder to simulate than you'd think: I could use a solver on a big NP problem (we'll assume that P != NP), get a solution after an hour, and in theory, with some practice, I could probably check if the answer is correct in my head. So the simulator can't simply give me what I "expect". It has to actually compute the thing, and then it's clear that the faster our computers get, the slower the simulation has to run.
Alternatively, the simulation could mess with our minds so we never notice anything out of place, but at that point I'm not sure I understand the point of it. Might as well wonder if this is all a dream.
> For instance, medieval times would likely be far easier to simulate than modern times,
Agreed.
> because the latter requires simulating our entire computer infrastructure.
Maybe, that isn't clear. There are probably plenty of optimisations here too if given some thought.
> I could use a solver on a big NP problem (we'll assume that P != NP), get a solution after an hour, and in theory, with some practice, I could probably check if the answer is correct in my head.
Yes, but note that we very rarely solve NP or EXPTIME problems exactly due to the costs. We often solve them heuristically or approximately, which wouldn't pose a problem for a simulation either.
Then there's also the possibility that we are simply not free to choose the problem to solve. When running a solver for an NP problem, we just need to input any kind of NP problem, and a simulation could easily have large sets of precomputed solutions available.
> Alternatively, the simulation could mess with our minds so we never notice anything out of place, but at that point I'm not sure I understand the point of it
Depends on whether any such changes affects the point of the simulation. If the simulation is to test world-scale economic models, then isolated tribes wouldn't have much influence on those outcomes.
Then again, maybe the point is simply entertainment. Maybe we're just The Sims for post-humans, in which case there's no point anyway.
If the computer code running this simulation is that good to never have bugs, then the simulation is functionally identical to the meatspace real universe from our POV. So I don't know if there's any point thinking about it other than idle curiosity. But I do worry that for some simulation believers it could become an excuse to have less empathy towards fellow humans.
If "the simulation" and "reality" have the same properties, what would "being in the simulation" even mean? A thing/person/etc would "be" in both by definitions, be in neither by others, etc.
First, I think you contradicted yourself. The line you quote says that posthuman civilizations are unlikely to create simulations, but you say this is false because a universe simulation requires more power than available in the universe
No, they are saying the opposite. The argument that simulating the universe requires more atoms than the universe says that a later civilization would not simulate the entire universe. IE, #2 of the refutations really true.
When the simulator shows a previously unseen object, it must first simulate all its history accounting for all effects to ensure that the shown state is legit and doesn't expose the conspiracy. This state should also account for all future investigations. The easiest way to achieve this is to run a precise simulation, so it doesn't save any resources.
> When the simulator shows a previously unseen object, it must first simulate all its history accounting for all effects to ensure that the shown state is legit and doesn't expose the conspiracy
The simulation only needs to produce observations that are consistent with the knowledge of the first observer. Sometimes bit even that, as I describe in the blog post, because eyewitness testimony is known to be quite unreliable.
I'm not sure what sort of history you're thinking of specifically.
Existence of Neptune was conjectured before it was observed, the testimony came from instruments. If such consistency with contemporary observers was used, scientific revolutions wouldn't happen as observers would never observe what contradicts their knowledge.
I agree, there are necessarily some background facts that must be consistent with the environment. Science might eventually be able to trace the trajectory of the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, but that doesn't necessarily mean you would need to simulate every asteroid in the solar system since its initial formation.
The amount of information science could infer on many questions is strictly bounded and in those cases we could only reason stochastically. The data presented at time of first observation can then be generated randomly from the set of answers consistent with what's already known.
Maybe, but if you can segment out the unobserved items, and back-calculate it lazily, you could save a lot of processing and memory.
The place to implement an optimization like this would be at the items with the biggest O in your world, which is usually the smallest building block--what you'd have the "most" of, which would drive the largest memory and processing demands.
Fine, you got me: the assertion that is obviously true, but goes further in that it invalidates the need for any of this discussion. If your goal was to engage me in a thought-measuring contest, sure, you win: you've spent more time thinking about this utterly ridiculous nonsense than I have. Congrats?
Yeah, saying I think you're likely confused, as I did, is not remotely the same as calling subjects that interest some people "insane drivel", or "utterly ridiculous nonsense". You definitely need to recalibrate your scale IMO.
If you're not interested in philosophical discussions, then why engage at all, particularly only to denigrate people who like exploring thought experiments?
But how is the simulation hypothesis not positing a "god" of some sort (some kind of super-intelligence that they claim is behind it all)? It seems like the simulation hypothesis is a theistic hypothesis. Or do they assume the simulation just evolved?
Also, why the assumption that post-humans are running the simulations (as in the paper)? Couldn't it be any ultra-advanced civilization that's playing with an evolutionary simulation?
The simulation argument is exploring the likelihood that post-humans would simulate humans. Both post-humans and humans inhabit a universe with the same laws, so this isn't a fictitious universe created by a deity.
> Also, why the assumption that post-humans are running the simulations (as in the paper)? Couldn't it be any ultra-advanced civilization that's playing with an evolutionary simulation?
Sure, potentially. The paper makes no assumptions about the existence of other life forms, it instead extrapolates the likelihood of a simulation given the only intelligent life we know to exist: us.
Therefore you can see the simulation argument from that paper as a lower bound on the probability we live in a simulation. Positing the existence of other life forms that run random simulations can only increase the probability we're living in a simulation, assuming one of the other outcomes isn't more likely.
The problem with theistic hypotheses is that they start from the idea that a humanoid god is a simple explanation (since our brains devote a lot of effort to understanding humans, so humans seem misleadingly simple). The simulation hypothesis treats the idea of an intelligent entity running a simulation as a starting point, and the details of how such an entity would come to exist are taken as a serious point that needs to be explained, whereas with god hypotheses the matter of how that god exists in the first place is generally just waved away.
If a simulation exists, and there is evidence of it, then sure we could surmise that someone created the simulator - and would have some evidence of such?
I think the parent poster was noting that it is a pretty fundamentally different argument than say, positing the existence of a creator, because we exist at all - and that said creator has certain specific requirements of us regarding what we do on Sundays, for instance, or with whom and when we have kids.
> and that said creator has certain specific requirements
Is that a requirement of every flavor of creationism? Actually, maybe I shouldn't use 'creationism' in this context because that's a loaded term with a lot of baggage at this point. What else to call a hypothesis that asserts there's some kind of intelligence behind the universe that we see? Simulationists would seem to fall into that broader category as would old-school creationists.
Well, there are Simulationists which start going on wild flights of fancy about what said simulation creator intended/created it for, which yeah would start going into that territory pretty quickly.
Seems like first you'd need to have some kind of falsifiable evidence that we were in a simulation first before jumping there? Plenty of folks trying to do that though, without falling into the first case.
Personally it seems to have little to no real impact on anything I care about one way or another, so filed in the 'cute but who cares' bin.
It is. That's why the Big Bang is the scientific consensus.
Assuming any kind of simulation at all leads to more questions than answers - simply delegating the creation of the universe to the next turtle down. It's not a matter of how "persuasive" an argument is or isn't. It is the evidence the scientific method has produced from which we draw our conclusions.
I actually think the singularity is an interesting concept deserving of exploration. But "singularians" like Nick Bostrom (author of parent link) have some strange ideas.
A. The idea that intelligence beyond human beings would grant it's possessor power that are in ways absolute in very specific, rigid fashion. Human being can accomplish a lot of things. It's notable those things human beings do better than computers seem very tenuous. Humans seem to drive rather haphazardly yet humans drive much better than computers and driving overall seems a "bucket chemistry" sort of activity. Humans calculate much worse than computers and calculation is an exact, defined activity (arguable, the exact, defined activity). But for the singularians, transhuman devices will do the uncertain, tenuous activities that humans do but with "no mistakes". And for a lot human activities, "no mistakes" actually might not even mean anything. Despite humans driving better than computers, humans probably wouldn't even agree on what absolute good driving even means.
B. Simulation as exact map. Any human created simulation of some system is going to be an approximation of that system for the purpose of extracting particular phenomena. Some things are discarded, other focused on and simplified. A model of the solar has to consider conservation of energy or tiny deviations will produce instability over time since errors overall on unavoidable in current hardware. Even a simulation of a computer chip isn't useful unless one knows the chip's purpose is logical operations. But for Bostrom and partisans of
C. Incoherent ontology. If we could produce an exact model of a thing, which is the real subject and which is simulation? What if we could produce twenty "exact simulations", which is real? In a realm of unlimited hypotheticals and unlimited exact simulations, wouldn't a least a countable infinite simulations of "everything" exist. Which is real is quite a conundrum but this problem itself only exists in a world of multiplied objects which we actually have no reason to suppose exists.
Just realized you linked to an article by Nick Bostrom, apparently the same guy who posits the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant. Seems in general to hold opinions in contradiction with mine.
The simulation argument is definitely true, in the sense that one of the outcomes Bostrom describes must be true. I don't think he takes a position on which outcome is true, so I'm not sure what there is to disagree with there.
As for aging and life extension, I honestly don't understand how anyone could reasonably think we shouldn't stop or reverse aging.
Those are some bold claims that not even Bostrom makes. Irregardless, I would take one but for a fool for assertions without the backing of evidence: of which a hypothetical thought-experiment is not.
I can certainly comprehend why one would wish to become an immortal being incapable of death. But I just want to be human. Sure you can live forever, but at what cost? A fear for sunlight, garlic, and crosses? For me, "Death is very likely the single best invention of Life."
