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The simulation argument by Nick Bostrom neglects an important (probable) reality. While the number of simulated universes may vastly the exceed the size of the

The simulation argument by Nick Bostrom neglects an important (probable) reality. While the number of simulated universes may vastly the exceed the size of the real universe, the size of these universes may diminish faster than the increased number can make up for. Bostrom's argument is that we're likely in an ancestor simulation, but if the size of the simulated universes decreases faster than the number of simulations increase, it could easily be the case that the the probability that we're a simulated person is lower than the probability that we're a real person: real people may vastly exceed the number of simulated people.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
Interesting argument! It makes sense - without some unexpected breakthrough in computer science, it takes a proportionate amount of energy and materials to run a simulation. Even if computing power, speed, and storage improve in the next million years to densities approaching the Planck length, power requirements approaching Landauer's limit [1], and cycle rates approaching the Planck time[2], the requirement that it can't be bigger on the inside still holds (at least in our universe, under our physics). Thinking about it for a few minutes, we would have to do at least one thing to make it work: 1. Make it more granular, so our sub-subatomic storage could record the states of atoms without being as large or larger than the stored data. 2. Make it slower, so our faster-than-light computer could have time to simulate all interactions. 3. Make it simpler, so our complicated computer mechanism operating on some exotic principle wouldn't have to simulate the same principle. 4. Make it smaller than our computer. It's easy even now to simulate a few atoms with a computer consisting of several kilos of matter, but I can hardly imagine any universe devoting a significant fraction of its mass to ancestor simulations. These restrictions would eventually limit the ability of child universes to simulate grandchildren, but I am not convinced that it significantly reduces the number of sentient beings (simulated and non-simulated) which is the key to our estimate of whether or not we are in a simulation. If in the parent simulation, room-temperature superconductors are common, cold fusion is easy, there is no speed of light in the parent universe, Landauer's Limit does not hold, and computers are built on a scale far below quantum mechanics, our (apparently) large universe could easily be one of trillions of ancestor simulations. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time
bmh_ca 10y ago
> real people may vastly exceed the number of simulated people ... presuming that the outer simulator consists of fundamental laws that support more than one identity.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

Interesting argument! It makes sense - without some unexpected breakthrough in computer science, it takes a proportionate amount of energy and materials to run a simulation. Even if computing power, speed, and storage improve in the next million years to densities approaching the Planck length, power requirements approaching Landauer's limit [1], and cycle rates approaching the Planck time[2], the requirement that it can't be bigger on the inside still holds (at least in our universe, under our physics). Thinking about it for a few minutes, we would have to do at least one thing to make it work: 1. Make it more granular, so our sub-subatomic storage could record the states of atoms without being as large or larger than the stored data. 2. Make it slower, so our faster-than-light computer could have time to simulate all interactions. 3. Make it simpler, so our complicated computer mechanism operating on some exotic principle wouldn't have to simulate the same principle. 4. Make it smaller than our computer. It's easy even now to simulate a few atoms with a computer consisting of several kilos of matter, but I can hardly imagine any universe devoting a significant fraction of its mass to ancestor simulations. These restrictions would eventually limit the ability of child universes to simulate grandchildren, but I am not convinced that it significantly reduces the number of sentient beings (simulated and non-simulated) which is the key to our estimate of whether or not we are in a simulation. If in the parent simulation, room-temperature superconductors are common, cold fusion is easy, there is no speed of light in the parent universe, Landauer's Limit does not hold, and computers are built on a scale far below quantum mechanics, our (apparently) large universe could easily be one of trillions of ancestor simulations. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time

bmh_ca 10y ago

> real people may vastly exceed the number of simulated people ... presuming that the outer simulator consists of fundamental laws that support more than one identity.