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.
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.