What evidence is there for us being in a simulation? I’ve never heard of humans wanting to “simulate” history. Civilization doesn’t play even remotely like a simulator and never claimed to be. The information equivalent to an entire world would have to be converted into data storage for such a project and what possible motive could there be for that? I’ll follow Occam’s Razor on this one- the more assumptions you make, the more likely you are to be wrong unless you have some sort of evidence.
No civilization will reach a level of technological maturity capable of producing simulated realities.
No civilization reaching aforementioned technological status will produce a significant number of simulated realities, for any of a number of reasons, such as diversion of computational processing power for other tasks, ethical considerations of holding entities captive in simulated realities, etc.
Any entities with our general set of experiences are almost certainly living in a simulation.
The disjunct made up of the three statements seems fairly solid and many of us have lowish priors for the first two disjuncts, and so assign a highish probability to the third disjunct.
I’ve never heard of humans wanting to “simulate” history.
I want to simulate history.
I’m a human.
Therefore, some humans want to simulate history.
Civilization doesn’t play even remotely like a simulator and never claimed to be. The information equivalent to an entire world would have to be converted into data storage for such a project and what possible motive could there be for that? I’ll follow Occam’s Razor on this one- the more assumptions you make, the more likely you are to be wrong unless you have some sort of evidence.
The rest of your comment seems incredibly...uninformed of the relevant literature, to say the least.
The disjunct made up of the three statements seems fairly solid and many of us have lowish priors for the first two disjuncts, and so assign a highish probability to the third disjunct.
The simulation argument makes many assumptions, like: “a non-simulated person and a simulated person have the same chance of subjective experienced existence” and also “we can actually count number of simulations meaningfully”.
Which is really really problematic—for example what’s the difference between a single simulation double-checking every computation vs two simulations of the same thing? What’s the difference between a simulation running on circuitry of 2nm width, vs two simulations running on circuitry of 1nm width each?
We don’t really have a clue about how to count and compare probabilities of existence.
You want to run a model history, but you don’t want to simulate it in enough detail that it actually contains people who experience history, if you have the slightest scrap of ethics.
No civilization will reach a level of technological maturity capable of producing simulated realities.
No civilization reaching aforementioned technological status will produce a significant number of simulated
realities, for any of a number of reasons, such as diversion of computational processing power for other tasks, ethical considerations of holding entities captive in simulated realities, etc.
Any entities with our general set of experiences are almost certainly living in a simulation.
The disjunct made up of the three statements seems fairly solid and many of us have lowish priors for the first two disjuncts, and so assign a highish probability to the third disjunct.
Reductio ad absurdum.
I clicked on the PDF and found the first few chapters to be rather childish, to be blunt. Assuming we can transform large amounts of matter into thinking material than what conceivable reason would there be for an ancestor simulation to be made? Do you imagine that we could create simulations on our laptops? Please tell me how we will be able to conjure infinite information out of nothing. “we don’t know that it can’t happen” is hardly an answer and isn’t really unprovable either.
Also, what would the point be in creating humans to be in the sim? Why not just have them be controlled by some AI and have them act as humans do (assuming that it isn’t for “research purposes” which is ridiculous as well because a transhuman civilization of that level wouldn’t actually need the information from it)?
I want to simulate history.
I’m a human.
Therefore, some humans want to simulate history.
This doesn’t actually invalidate my statement. I don’t see how it makes a difference, though, unless you can prove that a lot of people are very interested in creating ancestor simulations- enough to utilize large amounts of resources to achieve that end- or that one day you’ll be able to create worlds on your personal computer.
The rest of your comment seems incredibly...uninformed of the relevant literature, to say the least.
The article held up Civilization as a precursor to future ancestor sims. I pointed out how ridiculous that was. I suppose Occam’s Razor works if you believe in an infinite reality, which I’m not certain of.
Pardon me, my hypotheses left out “An intended deduction that is, in fact, fallacious” (I had thought including it would be impolite). Normally I would let conflation of oneself with multiple people pass in casual speak but if people start bring out bullets with formal “Therefore” and the fancy ansi character that represents it I find it jarring if the logic just doesn’t follow. If it’s worth bullets and symbols it’s worth one of “probably”, “some humans are similar to me in this regard” or “at least one human”.
An important consideration is the definition of the word some. In logic, some refers to “one or more”, which could mean “all”. Therefore, the statement “Some S is P” does not guarantee that the statement “Some S is not P” is also true.
I have done no such thing. Rather, I have used ‘some’ to mean ‘one or more’, which is conventional in math, logic, and philosophy more generally.
The ‘some’ is fine and if the replacement with symbols was intended as a correction rather than a denial then it would be fine. However, when writing complete sentence replies to others speaking English philosophers still use plurals correctly.
A philosopher could correctly write “Wedrifid is just some human” but is unlikely to write “Wedrifid is just some “humans”. Suppose that there happens to be a subculture (philosophy or otherwise) where it is conventional to write “humans” where English only permits the singular. Even then, when making a retort to a user speaking the colloquial form it would be required to include some reference to the language variant. In the same way when someone goes around declaring “Carbon is a metal!” to a general audience it is necessary to include something like “in the astronomical sense”.
I may be shooting an allied soldier here but as it stands this is a valid argument but this was not a valid argument. It was a misleading response to the preceeding comment, regardless of how flawed that comment may have been.
Well, I don’t want to go through all of that just to find where it talks about my specific objections… but let me ask, how many people here believe this?
What evidence is there for us being in a simulation? I’ve never heard of humans wanting to “simulate” history. Civilization doesn’t play even remotely like a simulator and never claimed to be. The information equivalent to an entire world would have to be converted into data storage for such a project and what possible motive could there be for that? I’ll follow Occam’s Razor on this one- the more assumptions you make, the more likely you are to be wrong unless you have some sort of evidence.
Bostrom’s trilemma is as follows:
No civilization will reach a level of technological maturity capable of producing simulated realities.
No civilization reaching aforementioned technological status will produce a significant number of simulated realities, for any of a number of reasons, such as diversion of computational processing power for other tasks, ethical considerations of holding entities captive in simulated realities, etc.
Any entities with our general set of experiences are almost certainly living in a simulation.
The disjunct made up of the three statements seems fairly solid and many of us have lowish priors for the first two disjuncts, and so assign a highish probability to the third disjunct.
I want to simulate history.
I’m a human.
Therefore, some humans want to simulate history.
The rest of your comment seems incredibly...uninformed of the relevant literature, to say the least.
The simulation argument makes many assumptions, like: “a non-simulated person and a simulated person have the same chance of subjective experienced existence” and also “we can actually count number of simulations meaningfully”.
Which is really really problematic—for example what’s the difference between a single simulation double-checking every computation vs two simulations of the same thing? What’s the difference between a simulation running on circuitry of 2nm width, vs two simulations running on circuitry of 1nm width each?
We don’t really have a clue about how to count and compare probabilities of existence.
You want to run a model history, but you don’t want to simulate it in enough detail that it actually contains people who experience history, if you have the slightest scrap of ethics.
Reductio ad absurdum.
I clicked on the PDF and found the first few chapters to be rather childish, to be blunt. Assuming we can transform large amounts of matter into thinking material than what conceivable reason would there be for an ancestor simulation to be made? Do you imagine that we could create simulations on our laptops? Please tell me how we will be able to conjure infinite information out of nothing. “we don’t know that it can’t happen” is hardly an answer and isn’t really unprovable either.
Also, what would the point be in creating humans to be in the sim? Why not just have them be controlled by some AI and have them act as humans do (assuming that it isn’t for “research purposes” which is ridiculous as well because a transhuman civilization of that level wouldn’t actually need the information from it)?
This doesn’t actually invalidate my statement. I don’t see how it makes a difference, though, unless you can prove that a lot of people are very interested in creating ancestor simulations- enough to utilize large amounts of resources to achieve that end- or that one day you’ll be able to create worlds on your personal computer.
The article held up Civilization as a precursor to future ancestor sims. I pointed out how ridiculous that was. I suppose Occam’s Razor works if you believe in an infinite reality, which I’m not certain of.
This is one of: an inference expressed as a deduction, a deduction with a premise left out or a deduction with a qualifier left out.
i is S
i is H
∴ some S is H
Are you denying that this is a valid argument?
Pardon me, my hypotheses left out “An intended deduction that is, in fact, fallacious” (I had thought including it would be impolite). Normally I would let conflation of oneself with multiple people pass in casual speak but if people start bring out bullets with formal “Therefore” and the fancy ansi character that represents it I find it jarring if the logic just doesn’t follow. If it’s worth bullets and symbols it’s worth one of “probably”, “some humans are similar to me in this regard” or “at least one human”.
I have done no such thing. Rather, I have used ‘some’ to mean ‘one or more’, which is conventional in math, logic, and philosophy more generally.
According to Wikipedia:
The ‘some’ is fine and if the replacement with symbols was intended as a correction rather than a denial then it would be fine. However, when writing complete sentence replies to others speaking English philosophers still use plurals correctly.
A philosopher could correctly write “Wedrifid is just some human” but is unlikely to write “Wedrifid is just some “humans”. Suppose that there happens to be a subculture (philosophy or otherwise) where it is conventional to write “humans” where English only permits the singular. Even then, when making a retort to a user speaking the colloquial form it would be required to include some reference to the language variant. In the same way when someone goes around declaring “Carbon is a metal!” to a general audience it is necessary to include something like “in the astronomical sense”.
I may be shooting an allied soldier here but as it stands this is a valid argument but this was not a valid argument. It was a misleading response to the preceeding comment, regardless of how flawed that comment may have been.
Dwarf Fortress.
Please read the referenced articles by Bostrom. See simulation-argument.com
Well, I don’t want to go through all of that just to find where it talks about my specific objections… but let me ask, how many people here believe this?
According to the 2011 survey results, the median reported probability for “We’re living in a simulation” is 5%.