Are intelligent entities modeled as objects? In other words, are they instantiated and managed as distinct tracked pieces in the simulation? Or is the universe just modeled as huge numbers of subatomic particles and energy?
We have no reason to believe that intelligent entities behave in a way that contradicts reductionism. This is a fact mostly independent of whether we’re being simulated. So, intelligent beings may be tracked by the simulation, but they behave like collections of particles, so it seems simpler to suppose they are simulated the same way everything else is.
If intelligences aren’t modeled as objects are they at least tracked or studied by whoever is running the sim? Or is the evolution of intelligence in the sim just seen as an uninteresting side effect and irrelevant to the sim’s purposes?
Assuming we are simulated, we still know nothing about the simulators other than that they exist. To discuss the probability of propositions about them (are they studying us?), we have to make some limiting assumptions, and I know of no good prior for choosing these.
For instance, if there are infinitely many universes which may simulate each other, there are different ways of assigning probability mass to each of them: does a universe gain probability mass through being simulated multiple times, or in multiple other universes? Does this mass depend on the simulator’s own mass? Can a universe have a nonzero probability mass at all if it’s never simulated (that is, can there be an Unsimulated Simulator universe)? Does the whole concept even make sense when dealing with infinitely many “existing” universes?
Under some assumptions, every possible universe (every point in universe-history phase space) may have at least one other universe simulating it, or perhaps infinitely many. If you allow universes that have more physical computing power than our own appears to have (i.e. more than a Turing machine), then a single such universe may simulate all possible universes in finite time, and maybe for beings living in it that’s an obvious first step before they start searching among the simulated universes for the one they want to study. And so on.
We have no reason to believe that intelligent entities behave in a way that contradicts reductionism. This is a fact mostly independent of whether we’re being simulated. So, intelligent beings may be tracked by the simulation, but they behave like collections of particles, so it seems simpler to suppose they are simulated the same way everything else is.
Assuming we are simulated, we still know nothing about the simulators other than that they exist. To discuss the probability of propositions about them (are they studying us?), we have to make some limiting assumptions, and I know of no good prior for choosing these.
For instance, if there are infinitely many universes which may simulate each other, there are different ways of assigning probability mass to each of them: does a universe gain probability mass through being simulated multiple times, or in multiple other universes? Does this mass depend on the simulator’s own mass? Can a universe have a nonzero probability mass at all if it’s never simulated (that is, can there be an Unsimulated Simulator universe)? Does the whole concept even make sense when dealing with infinitely many “existing” universes?
Under some assumptions, every possible universe (every point in universe-history phase space) may have at least one other universe simulating it, or perhaps infinitely many. If you allow universes that have more physical computing power than our own appears to have (i.e. more than a Turing machine), then a single such universe may simulate all possible universes in finite time, and maybe for beings living in it that’s an obvious first step before they start searching among the simulated universes for the one they want to study. And so on.