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>Apparently too many people dismiss the second possibility and forget reporting about it when discussing the topic. I doubt most people even HN types have read

>Apparently too many people dismiss the second possibility and forget reporting about it when discussing the topic. I doubt most people even HN types have read the actual argument. > I can think of several limits of physics and complexity that could make either hypothesis less than plausible No one is saying this is feasible in the short term and no offense but I highly doubt that you are privy to the physics available to humans hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

TuringTest 8y ago
I doubt the limits of physics themselves will change in the future :-P There might be more knowledge on how to work around those limits to achieve efficiency closer to the theoretical limits. But to assume that a future civilization will have access to nearly infinite computing power (to the point of not caring about throwing several world-computers to a simulation side-problem), well, that's magical thinking. I'm not saying that it can't happen. I'm saying that it's not the most likely possibility given our current understanding of how the universe works (which while not perfect, is quite a lot). It all boils down to the first step in your version of the argument: if simulations are improving fast now, they will keep improving forever and reach any arbitrary level of power given enough time. It's the fallacy of infinite growth, ignoring the likely possibility of the growth process meeting some inner limits that will make it end.
- dubya23 8y ago
  I think you are seriously overestimating our current understanding of the universe/physics. For instance we don't even know if our universe is finite or not, if it's infinite then your point is moot and you literally would have access to infinite compute. I disagree, I have seen research indicating that it's reasonable to have a computing system with on the order of 10^69 bits. There doesn't seem to be anything magical about this thinking at all. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.03394.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.03394.pdf

TuringTest 8y ago

I doubt the limits of physics themselves will change in the future :-P There might be more knowledge on how to work around those limits to achieve efficiency closer to the theoretical limits. But to assume that a future civilization will have access to nearly infinite computing power (to the point of not caring about throwing several world-computers to a simulation side-problem), well, that's magical thinking. I'm not saying that it can't happen. I'm saying that it's not the most likely possibility given our current understanding of how the universe works (which while not perfect, is quite a lot). It all boils down to the first step in your version of the argument: if simulations are improving fast now, they will keep improving forever and reach any arbitrary level of power given enough time. It's the fallacy of infinite growth, ignoring the likely possibility of the growth process meeting some inner limits that will make it end.

dubya23 8y ago
I think you are seriously overestimating our current understanding of the universe/physics. For instance we don't even know if our universe is finite or not, if it's infinite then your point is moot and you literally would have access to infinite compute. I disagree, I have seen research indicating that it's reasonable to have a computing system with on the order of 10^69 bits. There doesn't seem to be anything magical about this thinking at all. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.03394.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.03394.pdf