The simulation argument says that if our future descendants create enough (detailed) computer simulations of their ancestors, then you and I are likely to actually be such simulations living in a simulated world, instead of being the year 2011 humans we think we are. My simple variation on this argument concludes that either 1) ordinary people are pretty surely not simulations, or 2) very interesting people pretty surely
It's quite possible that we're merely optimized media-blob search engines and our "consciousness" is merely the query reponse media-blob to the input blob of "what am *I* thinking?" and "what am *I*".
I don't know the answer to that and I won't rule out the possibility that we're not just very sophisticated zimbos.
My reasoning is this: the mediocrity principle states that here and now things are not special. Therefore (if the mediocrity principle is true then) if there exist simulations here and now that I (or others) prefer in which the NPCs are preferrably close to human simulations then there exists some category of simulation designers who would simulate highly detailed NPCs who mimic to some extent consciousness.
i believe the main simulation argument bias is its antropocentric view, but it doesn't need to be like that.
what if the simulation take place on a "computer" in a totally different universe where the continuum exists and is accessible?
in such a universe it will be possible to simulate infinite finite multiverses like ours, with finite energy, limited maximum speed and quantized space and time.
then the whole argument about saving time and resources to pick what to simulate won't be very important.
it would be more important to create agents able to recognize and focus on interesting patterns emerging from the simulation universes.
I guess a sensor tuned on neg-entropia density would do a nice job.
Thanks for a really interesting angle on the Simulation Argument.
In your paper ”How to live in a simulation” you describe how your decisions should be influenced by realizing that you might live in a simulation and by “should” you mention satisfying usual sort of human preferences like wanting to live longer and avoid pain. A lot of your reasoning there hinges upon the assumption that we naturally would want the simulation to last longer.
The problem I see with that reasoning is that the more you come to believe that you are “only” a simulated person the less important would the wish to live longer be. Realizing you’re a computer program wich in significant ways make you immortal might spure a suicidal state of mind. It’s like Bill Murray in that 90’s movie, Groundhog Day. Killing himself or just going to sleep at night will reset and restart his life so that he might improve upon whatever he was trying to achieve.
If you are a computer program “To be or not to be” becomes “To be instantiated as a running process or to be just lying around on the harddrive”. Lying around on the harddrive is not that bad…
You know, I've always felt like an NPC or a minor side character. If I've been singled out for special attention it must be because I'm a good perspective from which to view "interesting times" - I'm relatively secure and comfortable, I've got access to all the best media, and I have lots of people to talk to about them. In other words, I'd have to be what TvTropes calls The Ishmael.
I have very detailed resolves around any of this philosophical technological nonsense. Beginning with this information serves no purpose whatsoever to anyone at this present time, and actually only opens a Pandora's box of angst, anxiety, and unsolved questions to the layperson, who has so falsely been given otherwise demonstrative evidence that this is our reality.First we examine the man's own religious orientation. Agnostic:He believes in God, however to him all organized religions are false, and on scientific, evidence, and examination-based grounds God has seemingly been eradicated. Therefore we have a huge disjuncture, God giving no knowledge of himself, but only to be discovered to exist through a real need, basically a primal drive then, a so called deist view we have here, man to discover God, in which he slyly claims he has discovered its existence, in effect making up his own religion. Why isn't this man being praised for the final evidence of supernatural beings needed to cement their existence. Because he hasn't his evidence is weak, and only adds mindless clutter. That in effect wipes out and destroys all arguments on God, destroys any atheism, brings more and more baggage to the debate, only to fuel thinking minds for the time until this is finally proved wrong or exhausted and they can go think of some more elaborate thing to waste their time on.Next this man creates an argument that he and others apparently will not let die and will attempt to poison all aspects of our lives with its implications.I also have no basic reason to believe any such simulation could be devised it is even far more likely, far more actually then that more simple ones like you are only being simulated. However he or anyone else would be outright disgusted why live then. You alive for a scientists pleasure, but don't worry he has gone out of his way to show you this isn't the case?So he elects to disband all those and now our whole society or whole universe is simulated. Therefore he can say God exists and at the same time rest at night finally knowing that all religions are false simply because they were programmed in by the real God, some alien race?I demand then you and all others worship your computer programmer maybe he'll help you right or not? Or maybe worship his or that universe's or finally to God himself.Furthermore there is no real evidence to suggest why any sentient being would do such a thing. There are far more reasons to suggest he wouldn't as he would assuredly develop more efficient ways at gaining the outcomes of this grossly elaborate simulation or that such simulations are simply not needed, unwanted, impossible, or not allowed.And then all races of intelligent conscious beings would be similarly at fault to these same dilemmas not knowing if a simulation will shut them down or if they'd be turned off or any other nonsense.There is no evidence to believe computer simulation could even manifest to create anything like what we have today.I really am sick and tired of baseless reasoning to support this, such as "The future, the future, anything is possible.""we'll never know, the programmer will never let us know." Which is really far more true then suggesting glitches would arise that would tell us, that would throw off the whole experiment in terms of the need to be no glitches, then if there are glitches, how could we tell? and how do we know how they came to be, then obviously it was time to know them right?Furthermore the real possibility for us to be shut down would have absolutely nothing to do will ancestor simulations although that could be one reason. The more likely one which is suggested is there would be insufficient computing power in this device. Then on these lines we should stop at now any more computations then the limit we have reached or we may trigger an overload and shut our simulation down. Sorry but then we'd have to stop living you wouldn't get to promote your agenda, get your happy feelings, and fuel the ever-growing onslaught of these stupid film and book adaptations on this old age idea, adjusted now to be more believable when in fact its probably less so.From time beginning people have thought this same thing, but now you have common science, knowledge, and technology to finally ram it down our throats that this is real.If your so damned convinced your in a simulation, its time to either sit down and evaluate your entire life and start planning your future in accordance with this belief, or get back into reality!Looking into this I've come across many people who when seriously consider this prospect are very disturbed, and a man of common decency should do no such thing. But a man living in a computer might!Nevertheless this is the intellectual self gratification of not falsifiable claims that waste everyone's time. I could sit here and truly make anything seem believable. I would finally like to see a serious and real rebuttal to this and no more whimsical thinking by a hoard of virtual reality obsessed people or opened ended rebuttals that only allow him to patch up his holes and give the illusion of a strong argument and genuine criticism.Leave this utter nonsense anyone reading this, he has an agenda, his agenda is supported, he feels entitled by this so stop, you'll just feed his ego and agenda. Noteworthy though his ideas were published in the NY TIMES, brings many interesting questions to the table now doesn't it, why this idea, why now when this very same idea could have been formulated since antiquity, and where are the serious rebuttals. Lack of rebuttals and scholarly investigation usually mean its not important to the academic world, has already been investigated in some less sci-fi fashion, or not important really at all or clearly false, wrong, and pointless, just presented to confuse you, bother you, to make you accept any new age or order suggestions they can give you, and on, and to feed the entertainment industry that was lagging after the Matrix on these ideas.Don't worry though he's also slowly colluding with others to create a post-human race and usher in the technological singularity, so he obviously has insecurities as a human and wants to be enhanced probably in all ways imaginable, and is at the same time null and voiding his idea, again we need to compute less not more or we may freeze, shut down, or who knows what.Again I don't know his reasons behind this maybe he simply wants all attention to be on this, to be debated in the public eye, to usher in the NEW AGE or what. But go back to the religions you came from - Christianity I would recommend because this seems to be just one more attack on it coming from a non Christian, or maybe you're other ones, or maybe technology worship like this guy :)
I get the original simulation argument but I don't have my head around this variant quite yet. Could you reconcile it with Aumann's agreement theorem? (Or is that a wrong question?)
I don't want a TOE guy thinking that he's just trying to discover the rules of the simulation he's in. That wouldn't be a TOE.
Assuming that the people of the Earth I know are in one simulation, is it more likely that Lisi is being monitored and will be stopped if he gets too close to an answer, or that he has been added to the simulation to distract us from the truth(s) of a string theory?
I can't see a reason to expect simulations more than real worlds to tend to have people thinking their world is weird. Nor can I see a reason to expect that in a sim the interesting people see their world as more weird as the ordinary people. So the fact that your world seems weird to you doesn't seem evidence that you are in a simulation or that you are interesting.
In fact, the idea that we live in exactly ancestors simulation, is not important for the logic of the argument. We may call it " a simulation of a planet development". So we could be simulated by quite different civilization by its origins.
Also "elves" contargument does not work, because here we dont try to get any information about outside world. We only want to know if we are in the simulation, and if we assume that we in super world of warcraft, we already know that we are in the simulation.
1) If we have matreshka simulation with several layers, we should find our self on the bottom level. Because the bottom layer is most abandon and cheapest. If it is historical multilayer simulation, i.e. 2300 simulate 2200, which simulate 2100, and so on, we could find our selves in the earliest date before any simulation is possible - that is in the beginning of 21 century - and it is true. 2) Because the simulation is cheap it must have many errors and artefacts. see more in my "UFOs as global risk" http://www.scribd.com/doc/1...3) one-person-simulation should be more frequent than all people simulations. 4) Some simulation have high level of control from its host, and some have low. Because we live in cheap simulation, the level is probably low.
All it could be not true, if we incorrectly understand the nature of the universe. If it has computational nature centered around observer (something like Bolzman brains), where is no difference between sim and reality.
I draw a different tentative lesson from this. I'm relatively ordinary, so I have a hard time believing that posthumans will think it worth simulating my inner life. That, plus the fact that I have an inner life, and have seen enough information on each of you relatively interesting people to be convinced that you're as real as I am, leads me to conclude
All we can say for sure is that the simulators have an inordinate fondness for beetles.
I think that you need to factor Moravec's hashlife argument into this. I.e. Ordinary folks are probably a lot easier to simulate, and thus are just as likely to be simulated.
Who's interesting, anyway? Newton, Darwin, Einstein, (and you and I) saw stuff that will be totally obvious to the simulators--they would only need have one parameter for "likely to get it"... I bet Napoleon and Hitler get simulated a lot more often...
If post-humans use simulations for experiments, wouldn't you expect more 'uninteresting' people than 'interesting', since the uninteresting folk would serve as the controls? By analogy, I bet we currently breed more normal labrats than mutant rats...
Only if we agree "I think therefore I am".
It's quite possible that we're merely optimized media-blob search engines and our "consciousness" is merely the query reponse media-blob to the input blob of "what am *I* thinking?" and "what am *I*".
I don't know the answer to that and I won't rule out the possibility that we're not just very sophisticated zimbos.
My reasoning is this: the mediocrity principle states that here and now things are not special. Therefore (if the mediocrity principle is true then) if there exist simulations here and now that I (or others) prefer in which the NPCs are preferrably close to human simulations then there exists some category of simulation designers who would simulate highly detailed NPCs who mimic to some extent consciousness.
I myself prefer my catgirls to be witty.
i believe the main simulation argument bias is its antropocentric view, but it doesn't need to be like that.
what if the simulation take place on a "computer" in a totally different universe where the continuum exists and is accessible?
in such a universe it will be possible to simulate infinite finite multiverses like ours, with finite energy, limited maximum speed and quantized space and time.
then the whole argument about saving time and resources to pick what to simulate won't be very important.
it would be more important to create agents able to recognize and focus on interesting patterns emerging from the simulation universes.
I guess a sensor tuned on neg-entropia density would do a nice job.
I'm interesting, but the simulator is damn stingy on me.
Thanks for a really interesting angle on the Simulation Argument.
In your paper ”How to live in a simulation” you describe how your decisions should be influenced by realizing that you might live in a simulation and by “should” you mention satisfying usual sort of human preferences like wanting to live longer and avoid pain. A lot of your reasoning there hinges upon the assumption that we naturally would want the simulation to last longer.
The problem I see with that reasoning is that the more you come to believe that you are “only” a simulated person the less important would the wish to live longer be. Realizing you’re a computer program wich in significant ways make you immortal might spure a suicidal state of mind. It’s like Bill Murray in that 90’s movie, Groundhog Day. Killing himself or just going to sleep at night will reset and restart his life so that he might improve upon whatever he was trying to achieve.
If you are a computer program “To be or not to be” becomes “To be instantiated as a running process or to be just lying around on the harddrive”. Lying around on the harddrive is not that bad…
You know, I've always felt like an NPC or a minor side character. If I've been singled out for special attention it must be because I'm a good perspective from which to view "interesting times" - I'm relatively secure and comfortable, I've got access to all the best media, and I have lots of people to talk to about them. In other words, I'd have to be what TvTropes calls The Ishmael.
I have very detailed resolves around any of this philosophical technological nonsense. Beginning with this information serves no purpose whatsoever to anyone at this present time, and actually only opens a Pandora's box of angst, anxiety, and unsolved questions to the layperson, who has so falsely been given otherwise demonstrative evidence that this is our reality.First we examine the man's own religious orientation. Agnostic:He believes in God, however to him all organized religions are false, and on scientific, evidence, and examination-based grounds God has seemingly been eradicated. Therefore we have a huge disjuncture, God giving no knowledge of himself, but only to be discovered to exist through a real need, basically a primal drive then, a so called deist view we have here, man to discover God, in which he slyly claims he has discovered its existence, in effect making up his own religion. Why isn't this man being praised for the final evidence of supernatural beings needed to cement their existence. Because he hasn't his evidence is weak, and only adds mindless clutter. That in effect wipes out and destroys all arguments on God, destroys any atheism, brings more and more baggage to the debate, only to fuel thinking minds for the time until this is finally proved wrong or exhausted and they can go think of some more elaborate thing to waste their time on.Next this man creates an argument that he and others apparently will not let die and will attempt to poison all aspects of our lives with its implications.I also have no basic reason to believe any such simulation could be devised it is even far more likely, far more actually then that more simple ones like you are only being simulated. However he or anyone else would be outright disgusted why live then. You alive for a scientists pleasure, but don't worry he has gone out of his way to show you this isn't the case?So he elects to disband all those and now our whole society or whole universe is simulated. Therefore he can say God exists and at the same time rest at night finally knowing that all religions are false simply because they were programmed in by the real God, some alien race?I demand then you and all others worship your computer programmer maybe he'll help you right or not? Or maybe worship his or that universe's or finally to God himself.Furthermore there is no real evidence to suggest why any sentient being would do such a thing. There are far more reasons to suggest he wouldn't as he would assuredly develop more efficient ways at gaining the outcomes of this grossly elaborate simulation or that such simulations are simply not needed, unwanted, impossible, or not allowed.And then all races of intelligent conscious beings would be similarly at fault to these same dilemmas not knowing if a simulation will shut them down or if they'd be turned off or any other nonsense.There is no evidence to believe computer simulation could even manifest to create anything like what we have today.I really am sick and tired of baseless reasoning to support this, such as "The future, the future, anything is possible.""we'll never know, the programmer will never let us know." Which is really far more true then suggesting glitches would arise that would tell us, that would throw off the whole experiment in terms of the need to be no glitches, then if there are glitches, how could we tell? and how do we know how they came to be, then obviously it was time to know them right?Furthermore the real possibility for us to be shut down would have absolutely nothing to do will ancestor simulations although that could be one reason. The more likely one which is suggested is there would be insufficient computing power in this device. Then on these lines we should stop at now any more computations then the limit we have reached or we may trigger an overload and shut our simulation down. Sorry but then we'd have to stop living you wouldn't get to promote your agenda, get your happy feelings, and fuel the ever-growing onslaught of these stupid film and book adaptations on this old age idea, adjusted now to be more believable when in fact its probably less so.From time beginning people have thought this same thing, but now you have common science, knowledge, and technology to finally ram it down our throats that this is real.If your so damned convinced your in a simulation, its time to either sit down and evaluate your entire life and start planning your future in accordance with this belief, or get back into reality!Looking into this I've come across many people who when seriously consider this prospect are very disturbed, and a man of common decency should do no such thing. But a man living in a computer might!Nevertheless this is the intellectual self gratification of not falsifiable claims that waste everyone's time. I could sit here and truly make anything seem believable. I would finally like to see a serious and real rebuttal to this and no more whimsical thinking by a hoard of virtual reality obsessed people or opened ended rebuttals that only allow him to patch up his holes and give the illusion of a strong argument and genuine criticism.Leave this utter nonsense anyone reading this, he has an agenda, his agenda is supported, he feels entitled by this so stop, you'll just feed his ego and agenda. Noteworthy though his ideas were published in the NY TIMES, brings many interesting questions to the table now doesn't it, why this idea, why now when this very same idea could have been formulated since antiquity, and where are the serious rebuttals. Lack of rebuttals and scholarly investigation usually mean its not important to the academic world, has already been investigated in some less sci-fi fashion, or not important really at all or clearly false, wrong, and pointless, just presented to confuse you, bother you, to make you accept any new age or order suggestions they can give you, and on, and to feed the entertainment industry that was lagging after the Matrix on these ideas.Don't worry though he's also slowly colluding with others to create a post-human race and usher in the technological singularity, so he obviously has insecurities as a human and wants to be enhanced probably in all ways imaginable, and is at the same time null and voiding his idea, again we need to compute less not more or we may freeze, shut down, or who knows what.Again I don't know his reasons behind this maybe he simply wants all attention to be on this, to be debated in the public eye, to usher in the NEW AGE or what. But go back to the religions you came from - Christianity I would recommend because this seems to be just one more attack on it coming from a non Christian, or maybe you're other ones, or maybe technology worship like this guy :)
I get the original simulation argument but I don't have my head around this variant quite yet. Could you reconcile it with Aumann's agreement theorem? (Or is that a wrong question?)
I don't want a TOE guy thinking that he's just trying to discover the rules of the simulation he's in. That wouldn't be a TOE.
Assuming that the people of the Earth I know are in one simulation, is it more likely that Lisi is being monitored and will be stopped if he gets too close to an answer, or that he has been added to the simulation to distract us from the truth(s) of a string theory?
I can't see a reason to expect simulations more than real worlds to tend to have people thinking their world is weird. Nor can I see a reason to expect that in a sim the interesting people see their world as more weird as the ordinary people. So the fact that your world seems weird to you doesn't seem evidence that you are in a simulation or that you are interesting.
Guess we should try a Total Perspective Vortex to sort this out.
In fact, the idea that we live in exactly ancestors simulation, is not important for the logic of the argument. We may call it " a simulation of a planet development". So we could be simulated by quite different civilization by its origins.
Also "elves" contargument does not work, because here we dont try to get any information about outside world. We only want to know if we are in the simulation, and if we assume that we in super world of warcraft, we already know that we are in the simulation.
If we continue this logic, we will get:
1) If we have matreshka simulation with several layers, we should find our self on the bottom level. Because the bottom layer is most abandon and cheapest. If it is historical multilayer simulation, i.e. 2300 simulate 2200, which simulate 2100, and so on, we could find our selves in the earliest date before any simulation is possible - that is in the beginning of 21 century - and it is true. 2) Because the simulation is cheap it must have many errors and artefacts. see more in my "UFOs as global risk" http://www.scribd.com/doc/1...3) one-person-simulation should be more frequent than all people simulations. 4) Some simulation have high level of control from its host, and some have low. Because we live in cheap simulation, the level is probably low.
All it could be not true, if we incorrectly understand the nature of the universe. If it has computational nature centered around observer (something like Bolzman brains), where is no difference between sim and reality.
Robin, Garrett, JoSH,
I draw a different tentative lesson from this. I'm relatively ordinary, so I have a hard time believing that posthumans will think it worth simulating my inner life. That, plus the fact that I have an inner life, and have seen enough information on each of you relatively interesting people to be convinced that you're as real as I am, leads me to conclude
I'm not a Sim, and you're not either
..which is more than any of you can say:-)
All we can say for sure is that the simulators have an inordinate fondness for beetles.
I think that you need to factor Moravec's hashlife argument into this. I.e. Ordinary folks are probably a lot easier to simulate, and thus are just as likely to be simulated.
Who's interesting, anyway? Newton, Darwin, Einstein, (and you and I) saw stuff that will be totally obvious to the simulators--they would only need have one parameter for "likely to get it"... I bet Napoleon and Hitler get simulated a lot more often...
If post-humans use simulations for experiments, wouldn't you expect more 'uninteresting' people than 'interesting', since the uninteresting folk would serve as the controls? By analogy, I bet we currently breed more normal labrats than mutant rats...
I didn't assume that.