Is Bostrom’s original Simulation Hypothesis, the version involving ancestor-simulations, unconvincing to you? If you have decided to implement an epistemic exclusion in yourself with respect to the question of whether we are in a simulation, it is not my business to interfere with that. But we do, for predictive purposes, have to think about the fact that Bostrom’s
Simulation Hypothesis and other arguments in that vein will probably not be entirely unconvincing [by default] to any ASIs we build, given that they are not entirely unconvincing to the majority of the intelligent human population.
I am not in any way excluding the possibility of being in a simulation. I am only saying that one particular scenario that involves simulation does not make sense to me. I am asking for some way in which “acausal blackmail by a distant superintelligence” can make sense—can be rational as a belief or an action.
As I see it, by definition of the scenario, the “blackmailer” cannot communicate with the simulated entity. But then the simulated entity—to say nothing of the original, who is supposed to be the ultimate target of the blackmail—has no way of knowing what the blackmailer wants.
Is Bostrom’s original Simulation Hypothesis, the version involving ancestor-simulations, unconvincing to you? If you have decided to implement an epistemic exclusion in yourself with respect to the question of whether we are in a simulation, it is not my business to interfere with that. But we do, for predictive purposes, have to think about the fact that Bostrom’s Simulation Hypothesis and other arguments in that vein will probably not be entirely unconvincing [by default] to any ASIs we build, given that they are not entirely unconvincing to the majority of the intelligent human population.
I am not in any way excluding the possibility of being in a simulation. I am only saying that one particular scenario that involves simulation does not make sense to me. I am asking for some way in which “acausal blackmail by a distant superintelligence” can make sense—can be rational as a belief or an action.
As I see it, by definition of the scenario, the “blackmailer” cannot communicate with the simulated entity. But then the simulated entity—to say nothing of the original, who is supposed to be the ultimate target of the blackmail—has no way of knowing what the blackmailer wants.