Nope: there is sufficient evidence that the Earth is not flat, but there isn’t sufficient evidence that causality doesn’t exist. That is the difference. There are some counterintuitive theories, like QM or relativity or, maybe, round Earth, but all of them have been supported by a lot of evidence, there were actual experiments to prove them, etc. And these theories appeared, because old theories failed to explain existing evidence.
Can you name a single real-world example where causality doesn’t work?
And you’re not the first LessWronger to think that if your idea sounds clever enough, you don’t actually need any evidence to prove it.
Bad analogies don’t count as solid arguments, either. The difference between evolution/thermodynamics example and your case is that the relation between thermodynamics and evolution is complicated, and in fact there is no contradiction. While it’s evident that your idea works only if you can acausally influence something. That’s much closer to perpetual motion engine (direct contradiction), than to evolution (non-direct, questionable contradiction which turns out to be false).
Look, I explained the details in the OP. Create a lot of Earths and hope that yours turns out to be one of them. That already violates causality, according to your standards. I don’t see much of a way to make it clearer.
FWIW—I suspect it violates causality under nearly everyone’s standards.
You asked if your proposal was plausible. Unless you can postulate some means to handle that causality issue, I would have to say the answer is “no”.
So—you are suggesting that if the AI generates enough simulations of the “prime” reality with enough fidelity, then the chances that a given observer is in a sim approach 1, because of the sheer quantity of them. Correct?
If so—the flaw lies in orders of infinity. For every way you can simulate a world, you can incorrectly simulate it an infinite number of other ways. So—if you are in a sim, it is likely with a chance approaching unity that you are NOT in a simulation of the higher level reality simulating you. And if it’s not the same, you have no causality violation, because the first sim is not actually the same as reality; it just seems to be from the POV an an inhabitant.
The whole thing seems a bit silly anyway—not your argument, but the sim argument—from a physics POV. Unless we are actually in a SIM right now, and our understanding of physics is fundamentally broken, doing the suggested would take more time and energy than has ever or will ever exist, and is still mathematically impossible (another orders of infinity thing).
FWIW—I suspect it violates causality under nearly everyone’s standards.
Oh god damn it, Lesswrong is responsible for every single premise of my argument. I’m just the first to make it!
As for the rest of your post: I have to admit I did not consider this, but I still don’t see why they wouldn’t just create a less complex physical universe for the simulation.
Or maybe I’m misunderstanding you. My brain is feeling more than usually fried at the moment.
Nope: there is sufficient evidence that the Earth is not flat, but there isn’t sufficient evidence that causality doesn’t exist. That is the difference. There are some counterintuitive theories, like QM or relativity or, maybe, round Earth, but all of them have been supported by a lot of evidence, there were actual experiments to prove them, etc. And these theories appeared, because old theories failed to explain existing evidence.
Can you name a single real-world example where causality doesn’t work?
And you’re not the first LessWronger to think that if your idea sounds clever enough, you don’t actually need any evidence to prove it.
“Species can’t evolve, that violates thermodynamics! We have too much evidence for thermodynamics to just toss it out the window.”
Just realized how closely your argument mirrors this.
Er.. what? Evolution doesn’t violate thermodynamics.
Bad analogies don’t count as solid arguments, either. The difference between evolution/thermodynamics example and your case is that the relation between thermodynamics and evolution is complicated, and in fact there is no contradiction. While it’s evident that your idea works only if you can acausally influence something. That’s much closer to perpetual motion engine (direct contradiction), than to evolution (non-direct, questionable contradiction which turns out to be false).
Look, I explained the details in the OP. Create a lot of Earths and hope that yours turns out to be one of them. That already violates causality, according to your standards. I don’t see much of a way to make it clearer.
Ah—that’s much clearer than your OP.
FWIW—I suspect it violates causality under nearly everyone’s standards.
You asked if your proposal was plausible. Unless you can postulate some means to handle that causality issue, I would have to say the answer is “no”.
So—you are suggesting that if the AI generates enough simulations of the “prime” reality with enough fidelity, then the chances that a given observer is in a sim approach 1, because of the sheer quantity of them. Correct?
If so—the flaw lies in orders of infinity. For every way you can simulate a world, you can incorrectly simulate it an infinite number of other ways. So—if you are in a sim, it is likely with a chance approaching unity that you are NOT in a simulation of the higher level reality simulating you. And if it’s not the same, you have no causality violation, because the first sim is not actually the same as reality; it just seems to be from the POV an an inhabitant.
The whole thing seems a bit silly anyway—not your argument, but the sim argument—from a physics POV. Unless we are actually in a SIM right now, and our understanding of physics is fundamentally broken, doing the suggested would take more time and energy than has ever or will ever exist, and is still mathematically impossible (another orders of infinity thing).
Oh god damn it, Lesswrong is responsible for every single premise of my argument. I’m just the first to make it!
As for the rest of your post: I have to admit I did not consider this, but I still don’t see why they wouldn’t just create a less complex physical universe for the simulation.
Or maybe I’m misunderstanding you. My brain is feeling more than usually fried at the moment.