Strangeness Heuristic
Yesterday’s New York Times article on if we live in a computer simulation draws heavily from our Nick Bostrom, and at one point mentions me:
Maybe, as suggested by Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, you should try to be as interesting as possible, on the theory that the designer is more likely to keep you around for the next simulation.
Interestingly, many blog reactions seem to be mainly disappointed that God might be a nerd – I guess they were hoping for a jock God. Also interesting, blog posters seem less skeptical than blog commentors (such as the 300+ at the related NYT blog). Apparently, blog posters defer more to the authority of the NYT, while commentors rely more on a strangeness heuristic:
Make a vivid mental picture of your best guess of how the world is, and compare that to a similar picture of someone else’s claim of how the world is, was, or will be. The larger the difference in impressions these pictures make on your mind, the less likely is the claim.
This heuristic, for example, penalizes scenarios where planes flap their wings, or where sidewalks are colored purple, or where many people walk down the street talking to small boxes. This heuristic is relatively easy to apply and is valid on average. So it offers a nice reference point to measure the other authorities you listen to: For each authority, such as the NYT, the journal Nature, this blog, your own math analysis, etc., ask what is the strangest scenario that authority could convince you?
I suspect many authorities are reluctant to endorse even strongly supported strange claims, for fear of losing credibility with strangeness-heuristic-following audiences. So bravo to the NYT here.
will perkins: The original paper shows that, according to our laws of physics, it's probable that we're living in a computer simulation. If it can be shown that our physics allow it, then it's a legitimate argument that we're likely to live in one - otherwise it's just a repetition of the millenia-old argument that it's possible for us to be living in a hallucination.
If one wants to make a plausible case for this, you have to start from our laws of physics and establish that it's likely according to them. Once you have already established that it's likely, then you can go around speculating about the physics in other worlds, because you've shown that there is at least one universe in which the argument holds (and the people simulating us might be living in a similar universe).
Isn't the whole premise of the original paper a little wrong? He claims that the probability of our being in a simulation depends on whether or not humans will eventually be able to simulate full worlds. But the two are unrelated. It is not our future descendants or 'post-humans' who would be simulating us, it is someone in a completely different universe with different laws of physics.
Think of it like this - the fact that the little Sims in SimCity are simulated has nothing to do with their ability to create a simulation inside the game.