One thing that confuses me about these discussions, and I’m very willing to be shown where my reasoning is wrong, is that there seems to be an implicit assumption that the simulators must follow any of the rules they’ve imposed upon us. If I simulate a universe powered by the energy generated by avacados, would the avacado beings try to spot an avacado limit, or an order to the avacados?
A simulator could have a completely different understanding as to how the universe works.
I would guess the argument against this is that why else would we be simulated if not to be a reflection of the universe above? I’m not sure I buy this, or necessarily assign a high probability to it.
I tried to avoid assuming this in the above discussion. You are correct that I do assume that the physics of the simulating world has two properties.
1) Effective physical computation (for the purposes of simulation) is the result of repeated essentially finite decisions. In other words the simulating world does not have access to a oracle that vastly aids in the computation of the simulated world. In other words they aren’t simulating us by merely measuring when atoms decay in their world and that just happens to tell them data about a coherent lawlike physical reality.
I don’t think this is so much an assumption as a definition of what it means to be simulated. If the description of our universe is embedded in the natural laws of the simulating universe we aren’t so much a simulation as just a tiny part of the simulating universe.
2) I do assume that serial computation is more difficult to perform than serial computation, i.e., information can’t be effectively transmitted infinitely fast in the simulating universe. Effectively is an important caveat there since even a world with an infinite speed of light would ultimately have to rely signals from sufficiently far off to avoid detection problems.
This is something that surely is plausible to be true. Maybe it isn’t. THAT IS WHY I DON’T CLAIM THESE CONSIDERATIONS CAN EVER GIVE US A STRONG REASON TO BELIEVE WE AREN’T A SIMULATION. I do think they could give us strong reasons to believe we are.
One thing that confuses me about these discussions, and I’m very willing to be shown where my reasoning is wrong, is that there seems to be an implicit assumption that the simulators must follow any of the rules they’ve imposed upon us. If I simulate a universe powered by the energy generated by avacados, would the avacado beings try to spot an avacado limit, or an order to the avacados?
A simulator could have a completely different understanding as to how the universe works.
I would guess the argument against this is that why else would we be simulated if not to be a reflection of the universe above? I’m not sure I buy this, or necessarily assign a high probability to it.
I tried to avoid assuming this in the above discussion. You are correct that I do assume that the physics of the simulating world has two properties.
1) Effective physical computation (for the purposes of simulation) is the result of repeated essentially finite decisions. In other words the simulating world does not have access to a oracle that vastly aids in the computation of the simulated world. In other words they aren’t simulating us by merely measuring when atoms decay in their world and that just happens to tell them data about a coherent lawlike physical reality.
I don’t think this is so much an assumption as a definition of what it means to be simulated. If the description of our universe is embedded in the natural laws of the simulating universe we aren’t so much a simulation as just a tiny part of the simulating universe.
2) I do assume that serial computation is more difficult to perform than serial computation, i.e., information can’t be effectively transmitted infinitely fast in the simulating universe. Effectively is an important caveat there since even a world with an infinite speed of light would ultimately have to rely signals from sufficiently far off to avoid detection problems.
This is something that surely is plausible to be true. Maybe it isn’t. THAT IS WHY I DON’T CLAIM THESE CONSIDERATIONS CAN EVER GIVE US A STRONG REASON TO BELIEVE WE AREN’T A SIMULATION. I do think they could give us strong reasons to believe we are.