I’ll have to review your arguments to provide a really well informed response. Please allow me roughly 24 hours. But in the meantime, I know I have seen arguments invoking Occam’s razor and “locating the hypothesis” here. I was under the impression that some of those were yours. As I understand those arguments, they apply equally well to theism and simulationism. That is, they don’t completely rule out those hypotheses, but they do suggest that they deserve vanishingly low priors.
Occam’s razor weighs heavily against theism and simulism—for very similar reasons.
Probably a bit more heavily against theism, though. That has a bunch of additional razor-violating nonsense associated with it. It does not seem too unreasonable to claim that the razor weighs more heavily against theism.
arguments invoking Occam’s razor [...] don’t completely rule out those hypotheses, but they do suggest that they deserve vanishingly low priors
“Decoherence is Simple” seems relevant here. It’s about the many-worlds interpretation, but the application to simulation arguments should be fairly straightforward.
I’m afraid I don’t see the application to simulation arguments. You will have to spell it out.
I fully agree with EY that Occam is not a valid argument against MWI. For that matter, I don’t even see it as a valid argument against the Tegmark Ultimate Ensemble. But I do see it as a valid argument against either a Creator (unneeded entity) or a Simulator (also an unneeded entity). The argument against our being part of a simulation is weakened only if we already know that simulations of universes as rich as ours are actually taking place. But we don’t know that. We don’t even know that it is physically and logically possible.
Nevertheless, your mention of MWI and simulation in the same posting brings to mind a question that has always bugged me. Are simulations understood to cover all Everett branches of the simulated world? And if they are understood to cover all branches, is that broad coverage achieved within a single (narrow) Everett branch of the universe doing the simulating?
I’m afraid I don’t see the application to simulation arguments. You will have to spell it out.
My thought was that the post linked in the grandparent argues that we should prefer logically simpler theories but not penalize theories just because they posit unobservable entities, and that some simple theories predict the existence of a simulator.
We don’t even know that [simulations rich enough to explain our experiences are] physically and logically possible.
Yes, the possibility of simulations is taken as a premise of the simulation argument; if you doubt it, then it makes sense to doubt the simulation argument as well.
some simple theories predict the existence of a simulator.
Perhaps we are using the word “simple” in different ways. Bostrom’s assumption is the existence of an entity who wishes to simulate human minds in a way that convinces them that they exist in a giant expanding universe rather than a simulation. How is that “simple”? And, more to the point raised by the OP, how is it simpler than the notion of a Creator who created the universe so as to have some company “in His image and likeness”.
Bostrom is saying that if advanced civilizations have access to enormous amounts of computing power and for some reason want to simulate less-advanced civilizations, then we should expect that we’re in one of the simulations rather than basement-level reality, because the simulations are more numerous. The simulator isn’t an arbitrarily tacked-on detail; rather, it follows from other assumptions about future technologies and anthropic reasoning. These other assumptions might be denied: perhaps simulations are impossible, or maybe anthropic reasoning doesn’t work that way—but they seem more plausible and less gerrymandered than traditional theism.
I’m not convinced of it for a few reasons, but I’d consider it located at least.
I would express my opinion of that argument using less litotes. But as to locating the hypotheses, I suppose I agree.
Which leads me to ask, have you read the catechism? Like most Catholic schoolchildren, I was encouraged to memorize much of it in elementary school, though I have since forgotten almost all of it. It also locates one hypothesis, a hypothesis considerably more popular than Bostrom’s.
I’ll have to review your arguments to provide a really well informed response. Please allow me roughly 24 hours. But in the meantime, I know I have seen arguments invoking Occam’s razor and “locating the hypothesis” here. I was under the impression that some of those were yours. As I understand those arguments, they apply equally well to theism and simulationism. That is, they don’t completely rule out those hypotheses, but they do suggest that they deserve vanishingly low priors.
Occam’s razor weighs heavily against theism and simulism—for very similar reasons.
Probably a bit more heavily against theism, though. That has a bunch of additional razor-violating nonsense associated with it. It does not seem too unreasonable to claim that the razor weighs more heavily against theism.
“Decoherence is Simple” seems relevant here. It’s about the many-worlds interpretation, but the application to simulation arguments should be fairly straightforward.
I’m afraid I don’t see the application to simulation arguments. You will have to spell it out.
I fully agree with EY that Occam is not a valid argument against MWI. For that matter, I don’t even see it as a valid argument against the Tegmark Ultimate Ensemble. But I do see it as a valid argument against either a Creator (unneeded entity) or a Simulator (also an unneeded entity). The argument against our being part of a simulation is weakened only if we already know that simulations of universes as rich as ours are actually taking place. But we don’t know that. We don’t even know that it is physically and logically possible.
Nevertheless, your mention of MWI and simulation in the same posting brings to mind a question that has always bugged me. Are simulations understood to cover all Everett branches of the simulated world? And if they are understood to cover all branches, is that broad coverage achieved within a single (narrow) Everett branch of the universe doing the simulating?
My thought was that the post linked in the grandparent argues that we should prefer logically simpler theories but not penalize theories just because they posit unobservable entities, and that some simple theories predict the existence of a simulator.
Yes, the possibility of simulations is taken as a premise of the simulation argument; if you doubt it, then it makes sense to doubt the simulation argument as well.
Perhaps we are using the word “simple” in different ways. Bostrom’s assumption is the existence of an entity who wishes to simulate human minds in a way that convinces them that they exist in a giant expanding universe rather than a simulation. How is that “simple”? And, more to the point raised by the OP, how is it simpler than the notion of a Creator who created the universe so as to have some company “in His image and likeness”.
Bostrom is saying that if advanced civilizations have access to enormous amounts of computing power and for some reason want to simulate less-advanced civilizations, then we should expect that we’re in one of the simulations rather than basement-level reality, because the simulations are more numerous. The simulator isn’t an arbitrarily tacked-on detail; rather, it follows from other assumptions about future technologies and anthropic reasoning. These other assumptions might be denied: perhaps simulations are impossible, or maybe anthropic reasoning doesn’t work that way—but they seem more plausible and less gerrymandered than traditional theism.
Have you read the paper? I’m not convinced of it for a few reasons, but I’d consider it located at least.
Yes, I had read Bostrom’s paper.
I would express my opinion of that argument using less litotes. But as to locating the hypotheses, I suppose I agree.
Which leads me to ask, have you read the catechism? Like most Catholic schoolchildren, I was encouraged to memorize much of it in elementary school, though I have since forgotten almost all of it. It also locates one hypothesis, a hypothesis considerably more popular than Bostrom’s.
My new word of the day. It’s not a bad one!