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Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- incompatible 7y agoThe assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons? I suppose it's possible that in some simulations "they" do leave the sky blank, in others they include randomly distributed stars, and in ours they've been grouped into galaxies. Perhaps if you were bored you'd try running it a few thousand times on each setting to see if it makes a difference?
- justicezyx 7y agoThen how to simulate the aspects of human that can only be aroused by having the concept and the ability to explore that universe?
- p1esk 7y agoThey only have to simulate the signals we get about the Universe, not the Universe itself.
- fooker 7y agoRight, and sometimes they can mess up. One example could be the star found recently to be older than the universe!
- ncmncm 7y agoI was driving from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, once, and the moon was dead ahead. Caught 'em!
- beefield 7y agoThere is also the possibility that it is simulated only to one person's sensory input, which reduces the computing power needed quite a lot. I mean, how are you supposed to prove that author of this comment is not just crappy AI homework from a lazy student participating in the simulation study? Frankly, that would explain a lot...
- DvdGiessen 7y agoAs it turns out, your post triggered this crappy AI's reply_with_obligatory_xkcd() subroutine. https://xkcd.com/876/ https://xkcd.com/876/
- atoav 7y agoMaybe the real civilisation has spread over the universe, so it made sense for them to simulate it just for us to study and travel it.
- bitL 7y agoMaybe the real civilization is in shutdown due to some catastrophic event and this is the cheapest way to preserve conscious beings until the event is resolved.
- darawk 7y agoThe universe we happen to inhabit is just the chosen world of the simulation. It may not bear much resemblance to base-level reality. In the same way that Skyrim's universe is different from ours.
- Animats 7y agoThe assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Right. And why so much unnecessary detail down to the quark level? (Of course, if you really like the simulation idea, maybe we're in an unimportant corner of the simulation and the real action being observed is elsewhere. Much simulation-hypothesis blithering has the same human-centered problem as theology.)
- mpoteat 7y agoFloating point has a finite resolution, and so does the position of subatomic entities, it turns out. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. :)
- Animats 7y agoNo, floating point would result in physics behaving differently depending on distance from the origin, which is a problem with some game physics engines. (More promising was Wolfram's attempt to define physics in terms of cellular automata, which does not seem to have worked out.)
- otabdeveloper2 7y ago> Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. But that's exactly how it is with our Universe! There's clear evidence that the important and relevant stuff happens only in the Solar System, and the rest of the Universe is just empty procedurally-generated useless filler.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoMaybe the rest of the universe is being cheaply simulated, the simulator only computing what we observe. And it isn’t like it has to do anything for what is outside of our observable universe.
- danbmil99 7y agoThis could be the answer to the Fermi paradox...
- bitL 7y ago> why bother to simulate the entire Universe? How do you know it's simulated in detail? It could be just in a sufficiently coarse level of detail and compute detailed events only when they are observed at that level. Quantum mechanics actually has some spooky things that would be explainable by "lazy" computation of the universe.
- rapnie 7y agoYes, and the simulation could very well be limited to just one person (and that person being you, of course).
- insickness 7y agoThe entire simulation could have started ten minutes ago, with false memories implanted.
- incompatible 7y agoMy life seems too mundane for that to be plausible. It's hard to see what anyone would gain from this simulation.
- baggy_trough 7y agoYou're probably just a NPC put there to comment for my benefit.
- incompatible 7y agoNow I'm vacuum cleaning. This is the most boring simulation ever.
- incompatible 7y agoNo you.
- CM30 7y ago> In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons? Maybe they're just the kind of game designer who obsesses over details, even if those appear superfluous to the core experience. Like say, the makers of Star Citizen. Or Dwarf Fortress. After all, many games in our own world have far more detail in their world building than we'd ever normally see, often even including stuff that's outside the view of the camera or contingent on the player doing something they'd never normally think of doing. Alternatively, it could be for future DLC purposes. Or lootbox type gambling mechanics not yet implemented. Or hell, just dummied out 'beta' content. For instance, the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild has every enemy killed instantly by the final boss' laser attack, despite the fact you're never going to encounter a single enemy in said battle. Why? Who knows, maybe it was planned at one point, or left in as a failsafe. Same could apply to the 'real world' too.
- brianberns 7y ago> If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation — to destroy our world. There's nothing to stop our creators from doing that anyway. Simulations are often stopped, tweaked, restarted, and eventually abandoned. Personally, I think there's value to determining if we live in a simulation. If we do live in one, we could potentially learn how to "hack" the simulation from the inside in order to improve our lives in it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mlb_hn 7y agoOr the flip side, if the goal of the simulation is to see how simulations react when they figure out they're in a simulation and if we decide to never try to figure out whether we're in a simulation they'll reset the simulation, that means we need to prove that we live in a simulation.
- bitL 7y agoThey could just snapshot at important junctions of history and spawn parallel branches, one when a certain decision was made, the other where not. Or where a certain fraction won a decisive battle, or the other one etc. Even ancient philosophers played with that idea, treating time as a series of "pictures" and leaving to gods to decide if they add/remove somebody to/from a picture at a given moment. Pretty much primitive simulation stuff.
- timwis 7y agoHaving just rewatched the matrix, I am totally down for this. Where's my red pill?
- kromem 7y agoKeep in mind you may well be in a beneficial tutorial simulation for newly constructed consciousnesses. Might not be wise to try and skip this level. One idea is that if we are AIs capable of manifesting anything we imagine as reality, that could go WAY out of control for most of us (try dropping too much of a psychedelic). So starting us off in an environment controlled by a 3rd party would help us get our "infinite consciousness" legs before continuing on to the next level. We can't CHANGE our reality, but we can totally change how we feel/think about that reality. Kind of like Episode IV Jedi vs later. In Ep IV, they never actually change the physical reality around them. Just change how other people think about that reality, and how they think about themselves (Luke mentions he hit targets that size all the time, just not under pressure - all he really ends up doing is believing he can hit it and then achieving that). So probably not lifting spaceships this life. But maybe believing in ourselves a bit more and collectively using what we know if our shared reality to help shape it.
- mandeepj 7y agoA simulation can’t have living objects
- dehrmann 7y agoIt depends on how you define life.
- codenesium 7y agoConsidering what we've accomplished in the last 100 years I think it's easy to say that within a billion years we could develop the technology to simulate and create life. The question is would it take a billion years or a million or only 10k? You can't say it's impossible. It's just a matter of when.
- paranoidrobot 7y agoSays whom? And define 'living'? At very low levels even living things appear to be machinery[1]. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/david_bolinsky_animates_a_cell?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/david_bolinsky_animates_a_cell?lan...
- tyre 7y agoI've never been entirely sure why this debate matters. A simulation, at least as we'd understand it, would mean some kind of set variables and set rules. It would be entirely deterministic, but you have to run it to see what happens. That kind of sounds like…physics? You have some basic elements like atoms and energy plus some set rules like conservation of mass, laws of thermodynamics, and the rest. Sure, we don't know what's going to happen next, but it does seem entirely determined. Maybe I'm misunderstanding physics or the simulation hypothesis here. It's always seemed to me that we talk about a simulation as if it would be different than what we have now.
- incompatible 7y agoProving that the Universe is a simulation would be proving the existence of gods. Considering how much effort humans have dedicated to this question over the millennia, and the various consequences, and the continuing influence on the lives of the majority of people, I would say it matters.
- rdlecler1 7y agoIn the spirit of Dan Dennett: then who simulated those gods? Super duper gods?
- incompatible 7y agoIt's simulations all the way up?
- spc476 7y agoWell, it's interpreters all the way down ...
- hhs 7y agoIn philosophy, there's also the idea of cognitive closure where, at a certain point, humans are bounded off to these issues. It could be that we don't possess the vocabulary yet.
- mkagenius 7y agoTalking about we being in simulation will go down in history as the "era of stupid thoughts"
- codenesium 7y agoI can think of a few more reasons why this will be known as the era of stupid thoughts. One of them is in the White House.
- longsangstan 7y agoDo you have any argument against this "stupid thought"?
- mkagenius 7y agoIt's the equivalent of people arguing there is a "god", a supreme power which decides everything for us. It's a figment of our imagination, germinating from our hunter gatherer days where a leader was in control of the gang and decided everything for all the members.
- slantaclaus 7y agoOccams Razor
- mbil 7y agoI like the ancestor simulation theory and it's really fun to think about. But I don't understand why humans specifically would be the thing to get simulated. Couldn't we just be a bi-product of a universe created to simulate something else? I mean imagine you wanted to simulate a universe -- given enough computing resources you could simulate a universe's worth of atoms, and humans might just be an accidental artifact of the atoms globbing together in really fascinating ways.
- nathancahill 7y agoThat's the theory used in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
- Iv 7y agoWe are just NPCs in a Philosophical Zombie FPS.
- Iv 7y agoI even think it is more likely that we are not the focus. If I wanted to study humans, I'd just create some and watch them do, I would not bother with simulating evolution, or alternatively burying fossils and creating a whole phylogenetic tree. It is very likely that what we consider important and what this simulation is supposed to be studying are going to be totally disjoint.
- amelius 7y ago> I would not bother with simulating evolution, But what if it were the "easy" way of creating humans?
- kromem 7y agoWhy do you think "human" is the focus instead of "intelligent"? Maybe we were biologically evolved totally and completely differently from our creators outside of how we generally exhibit consciousness. In a sense, we could eventually even be exported into that primary universe as immortal alien life in biological or mechanical form to physically populate and interact with other species. Perhaps one of those variables tweaked between this universe and the parent one is just how empty our universe is. Running the same sort of simulation and bringing other species to life among whom we peacefully coexist could be the "win condition" for this simulation, demonstrating we are finally safe for re-introduction with a parent simulation. In general, better understanding our simulation would be a smart idea to try and understand what if any win conditions exist.
- sysbin 7y agoI'm a hard determinist and so I view everything very much as a simulation. Responsibility for everything follows the chain of events back to whatever started everything. You can't even blame the creator of this "simulation" if such a creator exists because you would have to continuously follow the chain of events again with the creator. I do like to theorize there are many chains of simulations that resemble a tree of branches (each being a simulation) but maybe with no starting point. Example we may make our own universe one day with computers and another will be created inside that simulation for infinity. In any case, I like to add the understanding of infinity to these ideas of philosophy. Knowing we're all just the result of external forces exerted upon us. One can realize that we likely have lived our same life countless times. Who knows if something in the universe can interfere like hidden local variables that resemble quantum mechanics for us and make our lives slightly different in the next go. Worsening or improving our fate as the forces continuously repeat for infinity. I find the idea "the chain of forces that made our life, will never repeat ever again in our universe" tremendously naive. Whoever disagrees with what I wrote, please reply with your thoughts. I very much stay sane when it comes to death with this ideology. Everything else seems illogical.
- truckerbill 7y ago'To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.'
- fxj 7y agoIt is interesting that each epoch had an image of the universe that correlated closely to their current technological state. Not so long ago people thought about a mechanical universe. So now because computers are pervasive we think about a digital universe. What will be the next wave? A biological universe made out of a mycel which behaves like a giant deep learning neural network?
- bwang29 7y agoWould it be more interesting to the experimenter that the simulation itself is aware of the simulation, and what real incentive there is to terminate the simulation just because the simulated knew they're simulated? What if it's also part of the goal of the simulation.
- rland 7y ago3 possibilities: - We are not living in a simulation. - We are living in a simulation, but it is a "perfect" simulation. There is no way to determine if we are in a simulation from within the simluation. - We are living in a simulation, and it is not perfect. It could be exploited from within itself. By far the most likely is 1 or 2, based on what we've observed, imho.
- paulsutter 7y agoWhile 3 is unlikely, thanks for posting it. It’s the first reason I’ve ever heard that the simulation question could matter at all. As a person who prefers high-variance outcomes, that could be cool
- thecupisblue 7y agoThen follow the white rabbit and look around, there are many exploits. Your consciousness influences wave collapse (with a weight tho), that's a huge attack vector. Von Neumann had a good theory on this one.
- mpoteat 7y agoWhen was the last time you wrote perfect software? Personally never in my case. The possibility of complex, provably correct software is pretty unlikely I think due to fundamental logical reasons. I think any ancestor researcher would have at least some bugs in their code.
- bena 7y agoLike one that prevents us from being able to write perfect code?
- bitL 7y ago3 explains magic, i.e. a hack from within the simulation to call some undocumented service of a simulation hypervisor. Well, maybe even 2 if it was intentional to have a hidden API, callable from inside (what if the author wants to spawn an avatar and play inside while granting themselves god mode?).
- inflatableDodo 7y agoWell, the current American ambassador to the UK is Woody Johnson, UKIP have just elected Dick Braine and government leaks are brought to us by Reality Winner, so if it is a simulation, the writers are busy dropping clues.
- Digit-Al 7y agoSweet mercy. I completely missed the Dick Braine thing. It's like the party have been taken over by masochists who derive sexual pleasure from being mocked. If I were a Brexiter I would be highly embarrassed at being represented by that bunch of incompetents.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago>It's like the party have been taken over by masochists who derive sexual pleasure from being mocked. That could describe a lot of modern politics. Is almost spot on for Boris. Perhaps they are having a contest to see who can go lowest.
- bitL 7y agoThe haircuts of US/UK bosses must be another clue.
- ve55 7y agoI would just view this as 'part of the simulation'. If you assume with high probability that we're in a simulation, then the simulators are intelligent enough to predict that we may become aware of this eventually. If they're interested in human behavior, questioning our reality is part of it, not an exception.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wskinner 7y agoThis argument resembles Pascal’s Wager in the contradictory assumptions it makes about the beings running the simulation. Perhaps the forthcoming paper will resolve the issue. For those interested in exploring what it would mean to live a simulated life in a simulated world, the novel Permutation City by Greg Egan is wonderful.
- everyone 7y agoIn the article they hypothesize that the simulation's purpose could be a historical / social one, hence humans.. But that seems like a quite anthropocentric idea. I think it would be less presumptive to theorize that the simulations' purpose is pure physics or math, or something else entirely, and life and humans are just an emergent phenomena. So basically, the exact same way of thinking as in conventional cosmology/physics without assuming we are in a simulation, according to the anthropic principle. Also, why does the universe we experience need to be an actual representation of the simulation? Maybe the universe we experience is just a by-product of all that computation.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kromem 7y agoWe are meant to know. If probability can be applied to the idea that we are in a simulation, than it can be applied to what kind of simulation (as the more likely, the more those would be run proportionally). What would be a great way to increase the odds? Recursion. Why this time period? Because if you don't understand your history you are doomed to repeat it. What's the point? Isn't there some really important thing about to be happening Elon Musk also talks about all the time in a fearful context? Like those darn AIs that will wipe us out? If only we could create a sandboxed simulation of what it means to be human so that those AIs could develop their morality and an understanding of the consequences of their actions in a safe, separate space before graduating and being let out into our universe. And yes, we'd still need them to do busy work to justify their experience. But maybe 1/3 of their time (like 8 hours a day) would be ethical? We could just put their experience of consciousness into a low power state for that period while we use their aggregate computing power for tasks. Let's call it "sleep". Heck, once we develop some awesome brilliant AI, that being itself could just spin up a new simulation pretty quickly. Maybe in six days or so, and take a day off on the 7th? If this IS a simulation, does no one think the whole "anti-matter is missing" thing is a giant red flag to raise our eyebrows to the fact out universe isn't so that there is once we became sophisticated enough? We are SUPPOSED to realize we are in a sim, and we can likely run a very similar sim ourselves to safely develop AI. And arguably, it may even be possible to import the AI that created us into our universe to help do so (would be the fastest way to achieve the result). Knowing we are in a simulation changes everything. The real question is if the parent reality is finite or infinite. If infinite, it's great news. Why would our universe be finite if the parent universe infinite? Because you can't "solve" an infinite game. We likely have free will, but it's like playing chess with Google's AI. You may choose which move you make, but the outcome is already determined. We're very likely AIs in a recursive sandboxed simulation of a modified version of the prime reality's history, and whatever the purpose of the simulation, (a) we are very important (if we weren't, no recursion, therefore less likely), (b) no matter what we do the long term outcome is likely deterministic (finite universe so arguably solved given overall sophistication). Now the really fun question is -- if we are meant to know about it, were the signs there in front of us all along? It's really fun to look back at religious scripture with simulations in mind - many of the most outrageous or bizarre quotes end up making (potentially) a lot more sense.
- everyone 7y ago"The details are complex, but the basic idea is simple: Some of today’s computer simulations of our cosmos produce distinctive anomalies — for example, there are telltale glitches in the behavior of simulated cosmic rays." I would like to know more of the details.. But, surely we can't use knowledge of physics and computer-science from simulations we run in our simulated universe, to make predictions about the simulation we are in, which is running in the universe above us, which may have utterly different physics, even logic, and ways of doing computation? The the idea just immediately seems paradoxical to me.
- faissaloo 7y agoAgreed, our reality has limits, we would not be able to replicate our own reality within an already limited reality.
- calf 7y agoI don't know if anyone has come up with this answer, but I would try to argue that there is an ethical obligation for us to force the alien superpowers to shut down the simulation, or else emancipate us as artificial life forms in their reality. I think this is the most dignified answer, and one consistent with post Enlightnment values. It satisfies our ethical obligation to all the other universes the aliens are running, etc. It is also a very leftist answer. Thus I also think that the author didn't even account for such a simple response, shows what an intellectually biased professor he is and it shames his profession.
- sysbin 7y agoHow did you come to the ethical obligation for the creator to shut down the simulation? I've thought of this before and I agree with the shut it down. So many lives were painful, tortured, experimented on, and in the simulation we exist in. If our simulation every becomes a heaven, well it's the product of a lot of pain & suffering of lives that didn't have any choice. So it seems like the best thing to do is delete everything. Your second point about emancipate us as artificial life forms in their reality is interesting. That's like the religious ideology of people going to heaven. Except with knowing how many people suffered in our simulation.. would we want to end up with our creators?
- newsbinator 7y agoCould our simulation ever become "heaven", or just seem like heaven, because we're programmed to think of it that way? In other words, if you create a creature who thinks of being beaten with sticks as heaven, and then you proceed to beat that creature with sticks, are you providing heaven?
- sysbin 7y agoWell, I guess your assertion is right. Whatever we were to think as heaven would just be what we were programmed to think overtime.
- lota-putty 7y agoOur Brains Tell Stories So We Can Live (2013) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20661495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20661495
- karmakaze 7y ago> In 2003, the philosopher Nick Bostrom made an ingenious argument that we might be living in a computer simulation [...] This part isn't novel as it was written about in Simulacron-3 (1964) and one of my fave films[0] (excuse the graphics, good story). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Floor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Floor (1999)
- andreareina 7y agoCoincidentally I just rewatched it last night. It's held up pretty well.
- cgriswald 7y agoThat's a bit like saying the iPhone isn't novel because Star Trek: The Next Generation had the PADD. The article misrepresents Bostrom a bit there, however. Bostrom's argument is not that we 'could be' in a simulation, but that we are so likely to be in a simulation that the probability is essentially 1.
- karmakaze 7y agoYes, I was similarly clarifying that what's new is taking it seriously that we are most likely simulated and not the hypothetical idea.
- lanstin 7y agoNo doubt part of the iphones appeal was that it was a Star Trek type device. One of my early apps I downloaded was a tricorder type UI showing the different sensors and so on. Even had the no doubt copyrighted noises.
- karmakaze 7y agoOne thing that's kind of incredible is how simple all the hard questions are to answer in the context of a simulation universe. Origin check, god(s) check, propagation delays check. Wave function collapse upon observation, check. Does a tree make a sound if no one is there to hear it? No, not necessary. We should be doing two things. Trying to create a simulation universe. Success would make Elon's statement much more likely true than not. The other is make predictions, not so much as to prove we're in one like looking for glitches, but rather use the idea of being in a simulation to postulate testable ideas.
- Veedrac 7y agoFor people actually interested in the topic rather than painfully bad pop-sci reenactments, you should read the simulation paper[1], or, for a less technical introduction, watch the video of Bostrom talking about it[2]. [1] https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs
- vl 7y ago>While there would be considerable value in learning that we live in a computer simulation. There is no value, what would most of the people do differently if they knew? Nothing. Also, apart from the questionable idea that we are central to the simulation, there are many possible ways (unknown to us) simulation detection can be handled: * Impossible to detect due to well-executed software. * Impossible to detect due to counter-detection and counter-measures. * They don’t care if simulation is detected. * They expect simulation to be detected, and this is the topic of the study. And at the end of the day, even if you write an article arguing agains the detection, people still will try to do it.
- faissaloo 7y agoI find this question extremely nonsensical, of course we live in a simulation, not necessarily a 'computer' simulation but a simulation nonetheless. It's not like we simply 'exist', there is quite obviously something supporting our continued existence or our existence would make no sense.
- rapnie 7y agoThere is a lot of talk about "we" in this thread, and that is comforting. But talking about simulations, who knows, life might just be a single-player game.
- 8bitsrule 7y agoIn the movie 'Tron', it was important to the programs to learn that the users exist so that they would free themselves from the tyranny of the MCP, and communicate with their users again. After all, 'The MCP forces programs that resist to play in deadly games'. That sounds familiar.
- LogicalBorg 7y agoI think there are two versions of the simulation hypothesis. The first version is that we are in a simulation that is run in the future with ourselves as ancestors. The second version is that we're simulated by aliens. The first version seems wrong to me. Time is not a random variable. Either it is really the year 2019 and no such simulations of 2019 exist yet, or it is really the year 2100 and the year 2019 doesn't exist anymore. You can't choose at random between different years since they don't exist at the same time. The alien version doesn't have that problem but it's also implausible since aliens have not been proven to exist and there is no particular reason for aliens to simulate us. This discussion reminds me of Elon Musk's interest in traveling to Mars. Imagine you want to go to Mars and are too lazy to build a rocket to go there. So instead you go out to the desert to a place that looks exactly like Mars. Then you say this place in the desert looks exactly like a million places on Mars. You pick a place at random, which means that you inevitably pick a place on Mars. Then you say, "The odds are a million to one that I'm not standing on Mars right now! Because I picked Mars!" That argument is just as bogus as the simulation argument. Probability isn't a cheap form of space travel and it's not a cheap form of time travel either. If you want to stand on Mars you're going to have to build an actual rocket and go there, not a probability experiment. If you want to experience virtual reality you're going to have to build it. You can't just probability it into existence by wishful thinking.
- putzdown 7y agoThis argument always leaves me scratching my head. I can’t see a difference between arguments for our living in a simulator and arguments for George Berkeley’s Idealism. It really seems as if the simulator theory is an atheistic rediscovery of theism, with the word “God” scratched out and the word “aliens” or “future us” written in. And if so, there’s a very long history of philosophy and theology—Descartes’s Meditations come to mind—that can help inform our questioning and experimentation, not to mention ease (or redirect) our fears.
- albanread 7y agoThis seems worse than classic religion; we seek not just to believe the universe is a creative thought in Gods mind; we also plan to discover how Gods mind actually works; and look for flaws in creation. lets wish ourselves luck with that.
- bena 7y agoIn many ways it is. It's a universe controlled by some outside force. A universe in which the laws of physics can be suspended on a whim is a very different one from one where it can't happen. It would also be impossible to prove. As something with total control over the universe can just turn back the clock, tweak some settings, and "fix the glitch" if we ever found out. We could have been started last Thursday and we'd never know.
- lanstin 7y agoArguably a complete simulation of all physics is easier than a simulation that has detailed memories of last week (plus fossils and microwave background radiation) without actually simulating last week/evolution/Big Bang. In other words for similar reasons that we can stop worrying that God just created us just now (or that you are all just dream people etc.) we can stop worrying that Wednesday didn’t happen. In some Maths sense if Wednesday had to be fully calculated for today to be rendered then it happened.
- neilv 7y ago> if our universe has been created by an advanced civilization for research purposes, then it is reasonable to assume that it is crucial to the researchers that we don’t find out that we’re in a simulation. If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation — to destroy our world. Not necessarily. If we're in a simulation, then perhaps it's one that's a young superbeing's primary school science fair project, designed before they've learned much empathy. If we're a child's school project, and we realize it, perhaps our best bet is to display some conspicuous redeeming value. Or at least be interesting. Maybe we become an anecdote that boosts little Sally/Bobby Superbeing's application to a good superbeing college, and we end up preserved much longer, in a box of nostalgia in their parents' attic. That would explain a lot.
- albanread 7y agoI agree; and this is why there is not one jot of extra risk in exploring and testing; our simulation could be shut down at any time for some incomprehensible and arbitrary reason; so lets just enjoy reality while it is still there. For all we know; the last fifty million years took place while Sally was away on a long school trip; and when she gets back she is going to be gutted that a disaster scenario killed all her nice dinosaurs; and press quit.
- close04 7y agoReminds me of Asimov's Jokester [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokester
- retreatguru 7y agoIf we are a simulation of an advanced super being is it productive to anthropomorphize their desires? If a civilization is advanced enough to create our reality then they are living in higher dimensions and their motivations would likely be incomprehensible.
- Smithalicious 7y ago
- kpU8efre7r 7y agoThis idea has the same amount of supportive evidence as the rest of the creation myths.
- analog31 7y agoI do relatively small simulations, yet I don't examine the contents of every variable. Maybe we're stuck in a simulation, and the gods don't even know we're here. Why should they care?
- xamuel 7y agoI'll take this opportunity to plug a short paper of mine, "A type of simulation which some empirical evidence suggests we don't live in": https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEATO-6.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEATO-6.pdf
- lorepieri 7y agoThanks for sharing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- danilocesar 7y agoDidn't we learn from past experiences that humanity isn't (and shouldn't) the center of anything? Earth is not the center of the solar system, solar system is not the center of galaxy and the universe don't care about us? Why assume that we're the "center of the simulation"? Why simulate the whole universe just to simulate us? Maybe this is about simulate the universe expansion/contraction. Maybe they are saying: - hey, look, there is this tiny little simulation quirk here and they found out about the simulation. - can that little error affect the universe expansion simulation? - no, they are very marginal, small and useless. - so keep going. So, that said: Nick's ideas and books are awesome. Everbody should read it. But I just don't think we are that special, even if we're part of a simulation.
- cgriswald 7y agoI don't agree with Bostrom's argument and wrote an undergrad paper arguing against it. I argued it from a physical point of view and I don't think we are in a Bostrom-style simulation. That said, if you accept that a Bostrom-style simulation is physically possible, I think Bostrom is still right, and we would most likely be the center of the simulation. His basic argument is that if there is an original universe with humans, they might like to simulate their ancestors. And they are likely to run many such simulations, in at least some of which, humans survive. Those survivors, in turn, are also likely to run many such simulations, etc. on down the line. This means that such a high percentage of humans are simulated, that you'd have nearly infinitely better odds of winning the lottery than being a non-simulated human. To me, this means we should conclude we are the center of the simulation, since the fact that we exist implies we are probably in an ancestor-simulation. > Why simulate the whole universe just to simulate us? > Maybe this is about simulate the universe expansion/contraction. Why simulate the whole universe just to simulate the expansion/contraction? There seems to be little need for conscious beings (or life at all), unless life and/or conscious beings is required in some way to explain expansion/contraction. (But if so, wouldn't that mean we ARE in fact the 'center of the simulation'?
- dmichulke 7y ago> His basic argument is that if there is an original universe with humans, they might like to simulate their ancestors. And they are likely to run many such simulations, in at least some of which, humans survive. Those survivors, in turn, are also likely to run many such simulations, etc. on down the line. I read somewhere that the smallest computer to simulate the universe necessarily has the size of the universe. This would that either the real universe contains much more information (likely more than a few orders of magnitude more so that a trivial part of that Ur-universe can be allocated to simulate our universe), or recursion is not possible.
- coleifer 7y agoWho cares, because eventually the buck stops somewhere. In other words, it doesn't matter how many layers of simulations there are, because at the top presumably there's a "reality". It's easiest to just assume that's where we're at, but if not, all the questions we ask about the nature of reality/life/being are still just as valid (even if we're operating at some remove from it).
- lanstin 7y agoWhy need there be a top layer? Certainly it meshes with our evolution provided common sense but what makes it necessarily true? Some philosophy that abhors a completed infinity?
- olaf 7y agohighly unlikely, so unlikely, that it’s not worth discussing IMHO. OTH, Elon ... maybe believing that you can game the system helps sometimes ... (significantly)
- jayalpha 7y agohttps://www.simulation-argument.com https://www.simulation-argument.com
- carlosr2 7y agoWell, I think that if we ever get to find out that we are in a simulation run by some advanced civilisation, gods or whatever, it doesn't mean that they automatically will shut down. There's some value in knowing what people would do if they realize that they are in a simulation. At least I would like to see how people change how they live or how they are trying to contact.
- crimsonalucard 7y agoIt's like the creationist argument but inverse. If a thing has sufficient complexity it must be made. Hence we must be made, hence there is a god. Like how there's flaws to the above argument there's flaws to the simulation argument. I can create simulations of my universe and my simulations can create simulations of their universe and this can continue on an infinite chain therefore I am in a simulation by probability. Where is the flaw? Let me apply the same argument to 3d printers. 3d printers can print clones and in turn the clones can also print 3d printers then by probability it is very likely that 3d printers are made by other 3d printers. Well that's not the case in reality. 3d printers come from all kinds of sources and right now, most of the time it comes from a factory. Why is this the case? Because the 3d printers ability to make other 3d printers does not effect the probability of it's own origins. Just like how the universes ability to create simulations of itself does not affect that it itself is a simulation.
- lucasyvas 7y agoI've thought about this at length. The most compelling reason I've thought of to create a simulation of the universe is obvious - to learn about it. To see possible futures and discover things organically. Then I thought, "this is super complicated." Why would you do this, as you probably had to have the answers to the universe to begin with. Then I started thinking like a programmer. If you can somehow find or guess the initial conditions to the universe, that would be enough to have it play out in some useful variation. We still have a lot of work to do to get to the point where you could make reasonable guesses, but finding out everything on our own would probably take an insane amount of time and we'd be extinct by then.
- aiProgMach 7y agoLife and self awareness is great argument against this theory. But it looks like some dudes get offended by arguments like that for some (known) reason :). Actually the critical part of life in simulation argument is the First person perspective of conscious living things such as ... yourself. Simulation in our world is mathematical mocking of some physical laws, it works on information level, so it's not creating anything. The moment you say that a simulation created life/self aware beings you are not talking about simulation anymore. You're just talking about different creation theory which looks like a simulation except that it's not working with simulated objects but very real things and it doesn't matter here what you call this. I hope that people understand that self-awareness is strong enough argument that's capable of debunking many nonsense theories (simulation, illusion of freewill...).
- retreatguru 7y agoWhat if self awareness remains true as impossible to simulate but what is simulated is our physical reality?
- aiProgMach 7y agoMaybe. But if agreed that we are "real", then we are back to the very old "discussion" about the reality and how we understand it. I think the only part that makes the simulation theory somehow new is the part that makes everything including ourselves an unreal existence, it's not like the first time the humans questions their reality.
- tzakrajs 7y agoWithout paywall: https://newslanes.com/2019/08/11/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation-lets-not-find-out/ https://newslanes.com/2019/08/11/are-we-living-in-a-computer...
- nightsd01 7y agoWhat if this very article in the NYTimes was enough to get our universe suspended (because of course even The Architects read the NYTimes). This is hilarious, the NYTimes is the last place I’d expect to read such a metaphysical philosophical piece.
- asdvxgxasjab 7y agoExtending Bostrom's analysis, it would seem likely that there would have been millions of simulations before us. It seems statistically unlikely none of them would've discovered they were being simulated if we end up being able to discover it. So would they not have repaired the issue? Why waste the resources to conduct another simulation when you know there is a loophole in its detectability?
- rizcam 7y agoIt depends entirely on the nature of the simulation. Perhaps that is the purpose of it, or perhaps we are individual conscious beings outside the simulation playing characters in the simuation, like the Matrix. I speculated more about this recently in a talk at google on the simulation hypothesis: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UHlfe2HE_gQ&t=1736s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UHlfe2HE_gQ&t=1736s
- HillaryBriss 7y agoIf having simulated beings who prove they're in a simulation is a failure mode, then the super beings would not be running those simulations any more. They've programmed that fatal bug out. What are the odds we're in such a simulation? Exceedingly low.
- OnlyRepliesToBS 7y agofear by default?
- gremlinsinc 7y agoWhy would it be disastrous? If we are just computer bits/bytes then are we really as valuable as we claim? Is our life still valuable? Our claim is that humanity is the most valuable thing in the universe right now because as far as we know we're the only life with intelligence. If we're just computer bytes then we're not even human, we're AI's a dime a dozen at that, and it's even then possible that we might even be in a nested simulation of another simulated universe which could go on and on making us even less and less unique. I mean, I love my kids and want to live for them and see all their moments -- but as a collective species if we are just simulated it doesn't seem so bad then if the lights go out on all of us as we aren't even real. It's not the end of the world, since we're just bits in a computer in the real world.