6 ms·

Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

34 points by edu 18y ago

avner 18y ago
I find the theory full of holes... 1) Just think about the amount of power needed by a system to maintain such a virtual world 2) Consider the magnitude of the power needed to further maintain a nested system/S within itself??? [....besides.. i doubt amazon ec2 could scale this kind of thing anyway \)
- a-priori 18y ago
  That doesn't bother me. Presuppose a fancy, futuristic computer that can handle it, and -- bam -- problem solved. What bothers me is that it's tautological. It's meaningless and banal.
  - edu 18y ago
    Well, nowadays philosophy is often meaningless. But I think it's a good exercise only to train our mind to think about non-conventional theories. Probably it's a lite version of 'What you can't say' http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html. Evidently, it's a question whose answer is unreachable and, in my opinion, completely irrelevant (i really don't care if there is/isn't god, if we are a computer simulation, or if I'm a potato).
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
  - ericb 18y ago
    It's no worse than religion, and more likely to be true, from my perspective. I have trouble understanding how the meaning of our existence or lack thereof is banal.
noonespecial 18y ago
After having just spend a bunch of time reading the "Why are geeks atheists" thread, this article cast an entirely new image of the phrase "Jesus saves" into my mind...
aswanson 18y ago
No.
metatronscube 18y ago
do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon.
nreece 18y ago
Whoa. Déjà vu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality#We_are_living_in_a_simulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality#We_are_living... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/01/10/is-the-universe-a-computer/ http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/01/10/is-the-universe-a-compu...
a-priori 18y ago
Not this again...
andr 18y ago
From the FAQ: Do you really believe that we are in a computer simulation? No. I believe that the simulation argument is sound.
- gojomo 18y ago
  That he thinks the argument is sound but does not agree with "(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation" means Bostrom believes either: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage; or (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof).
  - hugh 18y ago
    No, he may be entirely agnostic on all three, neither believing nor disbelieving any of them. That seems like a pretty sensible attitude to have, actually.
    - gojomo 18y ago
      In the FAQ, Bostrom says he personally assigns about 20% probability to the idea we are living in a simulation, and that he views (2), that the posthumans are unlikely to run ancestor simulations, a bit more likely than the others. Colloquially, it would be fair to say he 'believes' (2) -- as in the most likely of exclusive options, if he had to make one choice, if he had to bet, etc. And he definitely believes Union(2+3) more than (1).
manny 18y ago
man you all really hate this idea. why? I hope its not just because its a thought experiment you guys are afraid to think about. I personally love this thought experiment and the consequences one can reach from it.
- gizmo 18y ago
  It's not that this is shockingly new, it's that it's exceptionally unoriginal. Every 15 year old has done all these thought experiments already. Brain in vat. What happens to personalities when you clone? What happens if you copy a brain on the molecular level - do you get two different people or not? Are you the same person you were 20 years ago? Even though every cell your body has been replaced? It's just psych 101. Not topics you can discuss over and over again. The computer simulation model is uninteresting because you can't use the model to make predictions that can be tested. And if you can't make useful (or interesting) predictions the model stinks.
  - ericb 18y ago
    What psych 101 class did you take?
    - gizmo 18y ago
      Philosophy. Not psychology. My bad.
  - jsmcgd 18y ago
    What is interesting though is that no matter how unoriginal the question are we still don't have accepted answers, which suggests that it isn't time to stop asking the questions (which is unfortunate for those who are sick of the questions).
mrtron 18y ago
Throughout my youth, I always considered a similar thought experiment. Make the assumption you were some higher power with no concept of 'time' (or lived forever in our concept of time). What would you do? Well, I believe you would get very bored quickly, and the only logical solution is to run some experiments. I would start small (lets for arguments sake say at the molecular level, but almost certainly it would be at a smaller level in our perceived world) and create every possibility. That would not take very long - so you would have to create an infinite number of expanding test areas. Each one of these you could equate to what we consider our universe. So basically you are testing every possible 'path' that could exist. I haven't put it very well to words here due to time constraints - but basically it seems like a logical conclusion that we exist in one of these 'paths'.
- m0nty 18y ago
  "Make the assumption ... it seems like a logical conclusion" For me, that sums up the problem with this kind of thing. Assumptions don't lead to logical conclusions, but "meta-assumptions" which have grown out of your original one. You can't put assumptions in one end of your experiment and get facts out the other, unless you can test your ideas. Incidentally, I'm not hostile to your idea or the others discussed here. It's fascinating, but (like anything for which we can't acquire proof) my own belief is that it's not very useful.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
stcredzero 18y ago
Before you start on this, what about the problem of consciousness? If the simulations can't give rise to consciousness, then I know this isn't the case.
mynameishere 18y ago
It depends if the universe is capable of computation.
kaos 18y ago
It's just another mind trick, enveloping the whole universe in something that we now understand (discret computer simulations). Anyway, reality is an opinion, so any model is a valid model.
- immad 18y ago
  "reality is an opinion" I like it. Can you explain further?
  - kaos 18y ago
    Off course immad, is based in the believe that using our brains as measurement tools for experiencing the universe we can only make models of it, partial maps (filtering a lot of information in the meanwhile). In this process we use our senses, experience, conditioning, prior beliefs, and other non-objective factors to create our unique map. Every brain make his own reality tunnel (or reference frame) to experience the universe, and we may share some of it with other brains around (also called culture). So if reality depends of the observer there must be more than one.
jacobbijani 18y ago
What argument would have been made 100 years ago? Are we living in a steam engine?
- zach 18y ago
  That we are living in a book. Note that the popular plot device of being trapped in one (or more) books survived intact as being trapped in the TV and being trapped in a virtual reality game. If you watch kid's cartoon series, you know that this plot device is as inevitable as the Freaky Friday contrivance.
  - jacobbijani 18y ago
    Yeah, that's precisely the point I was trying to make (I think). It's the same basic mental model, "we ARE the technology we use." As it evolves, so does the theory.
    - kaos 18y ago
      Like McLuhan said, "We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us."
- kaos 18y ago
  Exactly. Different observer, different models.
eyudkowsky 18y ago
The Simulation Argument is not that we are living in a computer simulation. It is that you must reject at least one of the 3 propositions: (1) we are not living in a computer simulation (2) the human species will give rise to descendants that have the power to run lots of simulations (3) at least a few of them will run ancestor simulations. Which of these three do you think is untrue? Alternatively you could reject the Simulation Argument that says the three propositions are mutually incompatible - but if so, how?
- hugh 18y ago
  Personally I really doubt (2). I work in theoretical condensed matter physics, and it's awfully hard to accurately simulate anything with more than a very small number of atoms. Sure, computers will continue to get faster for a while, but these problems scale very badly with the size of the system, and we're not all many orders of magnitude away from the fundamental limits of computation. I suspect that even if you were to convert the whole mass of the solar system into one big computer, you probably still couldn't run a decent simulation of any system on the scale of 10^23 atoms. It's possible you might be able to run a somewhat dodgy simulation which doesn't work on the atomic scale unless it has to (e.g. when your simulated person decides to do some atomic-scale experiments, it would suddenly launch a proper simulation, and otherwise it could get away with a neuron-level simulation). But I still don't think that we'll ever get the computing power needed to make these kinds of simulations trivially easy.
  - michaelneale 18y ago
    well perhaps a few options: * Assume humans are the target of the simulation - our senses are fairly constrained (eg our focal point is only a tiny area where hi resolution is required etc...) * What about non classical computing (quantum computing) - it may end up being nothing, but it seems to have some interesting promise in going beyond the raw computation power of atoms at least.
  - danteembermage 18y ago
    One possible solution is to elongate the time-steps; if we take a million years to simulate one second of simulation time you could get by with a lot less computing power.
rms 18y ago
Yes.
danx0r 18y ago
I think the fallacy here is the definition of "ancestor simulations". What does that really mean? I think it's more likely that posthumans will run simulations of whatever interests them at the time, which will probably not be the past. What they will want to know is what lies ahead. Therefore, my scifi mythology is that we are in a simulation created by some other culture (ie not human).

34 points by edu 18y ago

avner 18y ago

I find the theory full of holes... 1) Just think about the amount of power needed by a system to maintain such a virtual world 2) Consider the magnitude of the power needed to further maintain a nested system/S within itself??? [....besides.. i doubt amazon ec2 could scale this kind of thing anyway \)

a-priori 18y ago
That doesn't bother me. Presuppose a fancy, futuristic computer that can handle it, and -- bam -- problem solved. What bothers me is that it's tautological. It's meaningless and banal.
- edu 18y ago
  Well, nowadays philosophy is often meaningless. But I think it's a good exercise only to train our mind to think about non-conventional theories. Probably it's a lite version of 'What you can't say' http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html. Evidently, it's a question whose answer is unreachable and, in my opinion, completely irrelevant (i really don't care if there is/isn't god, if we are a computer simulation, or if I'm a potato).
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
- ericb 18y ago
  It's no worse than religion, and more likely to be true, from my perspective. I have trouble understanding how the meaning of our existence or lack thereof is banal.

noonespecial 18y ago

After having just spend a bunch of time reading the "Why are geeks atheists" thread, this article cast an entirely new image of the phrase "Jesus saves" into my mind...

aswanson 18y ago

No.

metatronscube 18y ago

do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon.

nreece 18y ago

Whoa. Déjà vu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality#We_are_living_in_a_simulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality#We_are_living... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/01/10/is-the-universe-a-computer/ http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/01/10/is-the-universe-a-compu...

a-priori 18y ago

Not this again...

andr 18y ago

From the FAQ: Do you really believe that we are in a computer simulation? No. I believe that the simulation argument is sound.

gojomo 18y ago
That he thinks the argument is sound but does not agree with "(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation" means Bostrom believes either: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage; or (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof).
- hugh 18y ago
  No, he may be entirely agnostic on all three, neither believing nor disbelieving any of them. That seems like a pretty sensible attitude to have, actually.
  - gojomo 18y ago
    In the FAQ, Bostrom says he personally assigns about 20% probability to the idea we are living in a simulation, and that he views (2), that the posthumans are unlikely to run ancestor simulations, a bit more likely than the others. Colloquially, it would be fair to say he 'believes' (2) -- as in the most likely of exclusive options, if he had to make one choice, if he had to bet, etc. And he definitely believes Union(2+3) more than (1).

manny 18y ago

man you all really hate this idea. why? I hope its not just because its a thought experiment you guys are afraid to think about. I personally love this thought experiment and the consequences one can reach from it.

gizmo 18y ago
It's not that this is shockingly new, it's that it's exceptionally unoriginal. Every 15 year old has done all these thought experiments already. Brain in vat. What happens to personalities when you clone? What happens if you copy a brain on the molecular level - do you get two different people or not? Are you the same person you were 20 years ago? Even though every cell your body has been replaced? It's just psych 101. Not topics you can discuss over and over again. The computer simulation model is uninteresting because you can't use the model to make predictions that can be tested. And if you can't make useful (or interesting) predictions the model stinks.
- ericb 18y ago
  What psych 101 class did you take?
  - gizmo 18y ago
    Philosophy. Not psychology. My bad.
- jsmcgd 18y ago
  What is interesting though is that no matter how unoriginal the question are we still don't have accepted answers, which suggests that it isn't time to stop asking the questions (which is unfortunate for those who are sick of the questions).

mrtron 18y ago

Throughout my youth, I always considered a similar thought experiment. Make the assumption you were some higher power with no concept of 'time' (or lived forever in our concept of time). What would you do? Well, I believe you would get very bored quickly, and the only logical solution is to run some experiments. I would start small (lets for arguments sake say at the molecular level, but almost certainly it would be at a smaller level in our perceived world) and create every possibility. That would not take very long - so you would have to create an infinite number of expanding test areas. Each one of these you could equate to what we consider our universe. So basically you are testing every possible 'path' that could exist. I haven't put it very well to words here due to time constraints - but basically it seems like a logical conclusion that we exist in one of these 'paths'.

m0nty 18y ago
"Make the assumption ... it seems like a logical conclusion" For me, that sums up the problem with this kind of thing. Assumptions don't lead to logical conclusions, but "meta-assumptions" which have grown out of your original one. You can't put assumptions in one end of your experiment and get facts out the other, unless you can test your ideas. Incidentally, I'm not hostile to your idea or the others discussed here. It's fascinating, but (like anything for which we can't acquire proof) my own belief is that it's not very useful.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]

stcredzero 18y ago

Before you start on this, what about the problem of consciousness? If the simulations can't give rise to consciousness, then I know this isn't the case.

mynameishere 18y ago

It depends if the universe is capable of computation.

kaos 18y ago

It's just another mind trick, enveloping the whole universe in something that we now understand (discret computer simulations). Anyway, reality is an opinion, so any model is a valid model.

immad 18y ago
"reality is an opinion" I like it. Can you explain further?
- kaos 18y ago
  Off course immad, is based in the believe that using our brains as measurement tools for experiencing the universe we can only make models of it, partial maps (filtering a lot of information in the meanwhile). In this process we use our senses, experience, conditioning, prior beliefs, and other non-objective factors to create our unique map. Every brain make his own reality tunnel (or reference frame) to experience the universe, and we may share some of it with other brains around (also called culture). So if reality depends of the observer there must be more than one.

jacobbijani 18y ago

What argument would have been made 100 years ago? Are we living in a steam engine?

zach 18y ago
That we are living in a book. Note that the popular plot device of being trapped in one (or more) books survived intact as being trapped in the TV and being trapped in a virtual reality game. If you watch kid's cartoon series, you know that this plot device is as inevitable as the Freaky Friday contrivance.
- jacobbijani 18y ago
  Yeah, that's precisely the point I was trying to make (I think). It's the same basic mental model, "we ARE the technology we use." As it evolves, so does the theory.
  - kaos 18y ago
    Like McLuhan said, "We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us."
kaos 18y ago
Exactly. Different observer, different models.

eyudkowsky 18y ago

The Simulation Argument is not that we are living in a computer simulation. It is that you must reject at least one of the 3 propositions: (1) we are not living in a computer simulation (2) the human species will give rise to descendants that have the power to run lots of simulations (3) at least a few of them will run ancestor simulations. Which of these three do you think is untrue? Alternatively you could reject the Simulation Argument that says the three propositions are mutually incompatible - but if so, how?

hugh 18y ago
Personally I really doubt (2). I work in theoretical condensed matter physics, and it's awfully hard to accurately simulate anything with more than a very small number of atoms. Sure, computers will continue to get faster for a while, but these problems scale very badly with the size of the system, and we're not all many orders of magnitude away from the fundamental limits of computation. I suspect that even if you were to convert the whole mass of the solar system into one big computer, you probably still couldn't run a decent simulation of any system on the scale of 10^23 atoms. It's possible you might be able to run a somewhat dodgy simulation which doesn't work on the atomic scale unless it has to (e.g. when your simulated person decides to do some atomic-scale experiments, it would suddenly launch a proper simulation, and otherwise it could get away with a neuron-level simulation). But I still don't think that we'll ever get the computing power needed to make these kinds of simulations trivially easy.
- michaelneale 18y ago
  well perhaps a few options: * Assume humans are the target of the simulation - our senses are fairly constrained (eg our focal point is only a tiny area where hi resolution is required etc...) * What about non classical computing (quantum computing) - it may end up being nothing, but it seems to have some interesting promise in going beyond the raw computation power of atoms at least.
- danteembermage 18y ago
  One possible solution is to elongate the time-steps; if we take a million years to simulate one second of simulation time you could get by with a lot less computing power.

rms 18y ago

Yes.

danx0r 18y ago

I think the fallacy here is the definition of "ancestor simulations". What does that really mean? I think it's more likely that posthumans will run simulations of whatever interests them at the time, which will probably not be the past. What they will want to know is what lies ahead. Therefore, my scifi mythology is that we are in a simulation created by some other culture (ie not human).