I was talking with Rupert McCallum about the simulation hypothesis yesterday. Rupert suggested that this argument is self-defeating; that is it pulls the rug from under its own feet. It assumes the universe has particular properties, then it tries to estimate the probability of being in a simulation from these properties and if the probability is sufficiently high, then we conclude that we are in a simulation. But if we are likely to be in a simulation, then our initial assumptions about the universe are likely to be false, so we’ve disproved the assumptions we relied on to obtain these probabilities.
This all seems correct to me, although I don’t see this as a fatal argument. Let’s suppose we start by assuming that the universe has particular properties AND that we are not a simulation. We can then estimate the odds of someone with your kind of experiences being in a simulation within these assumptions. If the probability is low, then our assumption will be self-consistent, but the if probability is sufficiently high, then it become probabilistically self-defeating. We would have to adopt different assumptions. And maybe the most sensible update would be to believe that we are in a simulation, but maybe it’d be more sensible to assume we were wrong about the properties of the universe. And maybe there’s still scope to argue that we should do the former.
This counterargument was suggested before by Danila Medvedev and it doesn’t’ work. The reasons are following: if we are in a simulation, we can’t say anything about the outside world—but we are still in simulation and this is what was needed to be proved.
“This is what was needed to be proved”—yeah, but we’ve undermined the proof. That’s why I backed up and reformulated the argument in the second paragraph.
One more way to prove simulation argument is a general observation that explanations which have lower computational cost are dominating my experience (that is, a variant of Occam Razor). If I see a nuclear explosion, it is more likely to be a dream, a movie or a photo. Thus cheap simulations should be more numerous than real worlds and we are likely to be in it.
It’s been a while since I read the paper, but wasn’t the whole argument around people wanting to simulate different versions of their world and population? There’s a baked in assumption that worlds similar to ones own are therefore more likely to be simulated.
I was talking with Rupert McCallum about the simulation hypothesis yesterday. Rupert suggested that this argument is self-defeating; that is it pulls the rug from under its own feet. It assumes the universe has particular properties, then it tries to estimate the probability of being in a simulation from these properties and if the probability is sufficiently high, then we conclude that we are in a simulation. But if we are likely to be in a simulation, then our initial assumptions about the universe are likely to be false, so we’ve disproved the assumptions we relied on to obtain these probabilities.
This all seems correct to me, although I don’t see this as a fatal argument. Let’s suppose we start by assuming that the universe has particular properties AND that we are not a simulation. We can then estimate the odds of someone with your kind of experiences being in a simulation within these assumptions. If the probability is low, then our assumption will be self-consistent, but the if probability is sufficiently high, then it become probabilistically self-defeating. We would have to adopt different assumptions. And maybe the most sensible update would be to believe that we are in a simulation, but maybe it’d be more sensible to assume we were wrong about the properties of the universe. And maybe there’s still scope to argue that we should do the former.
This counterargument was suggested before by Danila Medvedev and it doesn’t’ work. The reasons are following: if we are in a simulation, we can’t say anything about the outside world—but we are still in simulation and this is what was needed to be proved.
“This is what was needed to be proved”—yeah, but we’ve undermined the proof. That’s why I backed up and reformulated the argument in the second paragraph.
One more way to prove simulation argument is a general observation that explanations which have lower computational cost are dominating my experience (that is, a variant of Occam Razor). If I see a nuclear explosion, it is more likely to be a dream, a movie or a photo. Thus cheap simulations should be more numerous than real worlds and we are likely to be in it.
It’s been a while since I read the paper, but wasn’t the whole argument around people wanting to simulate different versions of their world and population? There’s a baked in assumption that worlds similar to ones own are therefore more likely to be simulated.
Yeah, that’s possible. Good point!