6 ms·

That's pretty much the claim, right? Not that this will determine whether or not the universe is a simulation, but that it may determine that it is-- or at leas

by Cushman 14y ago

That's pretty much the claim, right? Not that this will determine whether or not the universe is a simulation, but that it may determine that it is-- or at least probably is. Simulationism is predicated on the hypothesis that we could construct a completely accurate simulation of our universe in our universe, as if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one, so demonstrating that that's possible would be pretty important. Personally, my money's on the universe is a simulation of itself.

jemfinch 14y ago
It's not actually a true statement to say that "if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one." Yes, I've read Bostrom's paper[0], but he misses a key point: the number of rational beings in each simulated universe may decrease exponentially. If, on average over all universes, each rational being simulates only 0.5 rational beings during his or her lifetime, the total number of simulated rational beings would be exactly equal to the total number of unsimulated rational beings, making it equally plausible that we are in the root universe or one of the simulations. The possibility that rational beings diminish in number exponentially as universes are simulated seems not only plausible, but likely given the nature of the simulations necessary to replicate our universe in all its detail. [0] http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
- Cushman 14y ago
  I think it might be heading down the wrong path to talk in terms of "rational beings" as atomic units rather than in terms of energy (or rather information) balance. Remember that you do live in a simulation of the universe so compressed it fits between your ears, and it does contain many simulations of other rational actors. They're nowhere near as complex as your whole universe, but I bet they're complex enough to know that they're complex enough.
  - voodoomagicman 14y ago
    Are you implying that concepts of people in your mind are themselves self aware?
    - ajuc 14y ago
      You are symulating them as self-aware. And what's the difference, if you can predict their actions with high accuracy?
    - bduerst 14y ago
      Do you think that I am self aware? Can you predict where I am going with this line of questioning?
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    I don't see how this philosophical argument is going to change anything. Each human has a rather small finite number of 'rational beings' they can handle processing at once. It doesn't recurse very well, the limit is a total. The exponential argument against simulation is unaffected.
- gwern 14y ago
  Is that flaw covered by http://www.simulation-argument.com/patch.pdf http://www.simulation-argument.com/patch.pdf ?
  - jemfinch 14y ago
    "The glitch arises from the possibility that the average number of people living in the preposthuman phase might be different in civilizations that produce ancestor simulations than in civilizations that do not." No, that's not the problem. The simulation argument essentially depends on the fact that a universe that reaches simulation-capability ends up simulating more rational beings than half of the beings that exist in the universe itself. But it's possible that the simulations themselves are so limited that they can only simulate some fraction of the universes' number of rational beings. In fact, that seems likely: it seems that any simulation of this universe which obeys the same laws as this universe must be smaller than this universe. "How much smaller?" is the glitch. The simulated universes have to be sufficiently large (as measured by the number of rational minds they ultimately simulate) to exceed an average of 0.5 simulated minds per real mind in order for the simulation argument to hold.
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      Exactly. To draw a computing analogy, in order for it to work we'd have to be able to make virtual machines that outperform the machines they're running on, and recursively. In order for it to work, each simulated universe would have to progress to the point we have in ours, and also be able to simulate getting to this point much faster than it took to get there itself. It quickly starts to sound like perfect compression or perpetual motion.
ktizo 14y ago
"if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one" That depends on the probability of a given universe or simulated universe to contain a simulated universe, and what limits there are with the complexity in space and time on each recursive simulation. I suspect that thermodynamics saves us here.
- Cushman 14y ago
  It gets a bit metaphysical, but consider how many more possible universes there are in a universe which is likely to generate a recursive simulation than in one which is not. That is, the probability that the probability of being in a simulation is high in a given possible universe is, itself, high, ad infinitum, if simulation is possible, hence again why being able to simulate our universe is an important point of evidence.
diminoten 14y ago
> Personally, my money's on the universe is a simulation of itself. Does this, literally, mean anything at all? I struggle to find any significant value in having this knowledge. Are there any additional conclusions we can draw based on knowing that the universe is a 'simulation of itself'? It just strikes me as tautological.
- Cushman 14y ago
  > It just strikes me as tautological. Pretty much, yeah. There's as much value in it as in any kind of metaphysics, I guess; it makes it easier to get on with being an ape despite the creeping feeling that being an ape doesn't mean anything. Basically-- I know that my experience of the universe is an interaction of the universe with itself, and that things I perceive also ~perceive me. I create the universe as it creates me, and the idea of "something" "real" "existing" outside of my experience of it doesn't make sense because none of those words make sense outside of my experience. So my experience is a simulation, but what it is being simulated by is, in fact, my experience. Thus: A simulation of itself. It makes about as much sense as anything else. In terms of pragmatic value? Eh. My view of philosophy is that the simplest reason to do something besides philosophy is most likely the best. (I swear I don't sound like a crazy person in real life-- but despite my valediction, I love talking about this sort of thing.)
  - diminoten 14y ago
    Something existing outside of your experience is as simple as two kids in the third world playing together. The abstract concept of events occurring outside of your realm of perception shouldn't be novel or difficult to imagine - just think of the things you do when no one else is around, then reverse that notion. Simulation, to me, means an approximate recreation. To say that your experience is a simulation leads me to wonder what you're a simulation of. An act can't simulate itself as it's not approximately itself, it is itself. Words need uniqueness to be helpful as a form of communication, and if we call simulations anything acting like something else OR itself, then by calling something a simulation, you're just stating its existence, which I can't find a reason to do that can't be accomplished in a more direct way. In other words, yes things exist. Let's not ruin the word 'simulation' trying to say so!
dmorgan 14y ago
>Simulationism is predicated on the hypothesis that we could construct a completely accurate simulation of our universe in our universe, as if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one, so demonstrating that that's possible would be pretty important. Actually it wouldn't have to be "a completely accurate simulation of our universe in our universe". A "somewhat accurate simulation of our universe in our universe" would also do for the statistical purposes of that premise. If you have recursively-simulated universes, even if they are not 100% like each other, it shouldn't change the probabilities, right? That said, I don't fully agree with the main premise: >if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one Sounds to me somewhat akin to the faulty "ontological proof of the existence of God" ("Anselm defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived", and then argued that this being could exist in the mind. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, a greater being is possible—one which exists in the mind and in reality.").
- Cushman 14y ago
  It bears some similarities to the ontological argument, but it's not fundamentally grounded in ontology. It's based on the hypothesis that simulation is possible, which is testable in some sense. Say we cook up a little Earth simulator, and it spontaneously generates a perfect being with both agency and omniscience. That would be a fair bit of evidence for the ontological argument, yes? That's also why I say "completely accurate". A really rigorous argument relies on recursive simulation, since creating a simulation that couldn't be the universe isn't very strong evidence. (I'm typing on one right now, in fact.) If we make a completely accurate simulation, we can skip the step of proving that we can make a simulation of it, because we already did.
- sp332 14y ago
  Anselm's ontological argument isn't faulty, it's just not very useful. It just claims that things that "really" exist are greater than things which exist only in our minds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Anselm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Anselm As you can see the implications are pretty weak. Maybe we should go find the greatest thing that really exists and declare it to be God.

by Cushman 14y ago

jemfinch 14y ago

It's not actually a true statement to say that "if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one." Yes, I've read Bostrom's paper[0], but he misses a key point: the number of rational beings in each simulated universe may decrease exponentially. If, on average over all universes, each rational being simulates only 0.5 rational beings during his or her lifetime, the total number of simulated rational beings would be exactly equal to the total number of unsimulated rational beings, making it equally plausible that we are in the root universe or one of the simulations. The possibility that rational beings diminish in number exponentially as universes are simulated seems not only plausible, but likely given the nature of the simulations necessary to replicate our universe in all its detail. [0] http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

Cushman 14y ago
I think it might be heading down the wrong path to talk in terms of "rational beings" as atomic units rather than in terms of energy (or rather information) balance. Remember that you do live in a simulation of the universe so compressed it fits between your ears, and it does contain many simulations of other rational actors. They're nowhere near as complex as your whole universe, but I bet they're complex enough to know that they're complex enough.
- voodoomagicman 14y ago
  Are you implying that concepts of people in your mind are themselves self aware?
  - ajuc 14y ago
    You are symulating them as self-aware. And what's the difference, if you can predict their actions with high accuracy?
  - bduerst 14y ago
    Do you think that I am self aware? Can you predict where I am going with this line of questioning?
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  I don't see how this philosophical argument is going to change anything. Each human has a rather small finite number of 'rational beings' they can handle processing at once. It doesn't recurse very well, the limit is a total. The exponential argument against simulation is unaffected.
gwern 14y ago
Is that flaw covered by http://www.simulation-argument.com/patch.pdf http://www.simulation-argument.com/patch.pdf ?
- jemfinch 14y ago
  "The glitch arises from the possibility that the average number of people living in the preposthuman phase might be different in civilizations that produce ancestor simulations than in civilizations that do not." No, that's not the problem. The simulation argument essentially depends on the fact that a universe that reaches simulation-capability ends up simulating more rational beings than half of the beings that exist in the universe itself. But it's possible that the simulations themselves are so limited that they can only simulate some fraction of the universes' number of rational beings. In fact, that seems likely: it seems that any simulation of this universe which obeys the same laws as this universe must be smaller than this universe. "How much smaller?" is the glitch. The simulated universes have to be sufficiently large (as measured by the number of rational minds they ultimately simulate) to exceed an average of 0.5 simulated minds per real mind in order for the simulation argument to hold.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    Exactly. To draw a computing analogy, in order for it to work we'd have to be able to make virtual machines that outperform the machines they're running on, and recursively. In order for it to work, each simulated universe would have to progress to the point we have in ours, and also be able to simulate getting to this point much faster than it took to get there itself. It quickly starts to sound like perfect compression or perpetual motion.

ktizo 14y ago

"if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one" That depends on the probability of a given universe or simulated universe to contain a simulated universe, and what limits there are with the complexity in space and time on each recursive simulation. I suspect that thermodynamics saves us here.

Cushman 14y ago
It gets a bit metaphysical, but consider how many more possible universes there are in a universe which is likely to generate a recursive simulation than in one which is not. That is, the probability that the probability of being in a simulation is high in a given possible universe is, itself, high, ad infinitum, if simulation is possible, hence again why being able to simulate our universe is an important point of evidence.

diminoten 14y ago

> Personally, my money's on the universe is a simulation of itself. Does this, literally, mean anything at all? I struggle to find any significant value in having this knowledge. Are there any additional conclusions we can draw based on knowing that the universe is a 'simulation of itself'? It just strikes me as tautological.

Cushman 14y ago
> It just strikes me as tautological. Pretty much, yeah. There's as much value in it as in any kind of metaphysics, I guess; it makes it easier to get on with being an ape despite the creeping feeling that being an ape doesn't mean anything. Basically-- I know that my experience of the universe is an interaction of the universe with itself, and that things I perceive also ~perceive me. I create the universe as it creates me, and the idea of "something" "real" "existing" outside of my experience of it doesn't make sense because none of those words make sense outside of my experience. So my experience is a simulation, but what it is being simulated by is, in fact, my experience. Thus: A simulation of itself. It makes about as much sense as anything else. In terms of pragmatic value? Eh. My view of philosophy is that the simplest reason to do something besides philosophy is most likely the best. (I swear I don't sound like a crazy person in real life-- but despite my valediction, I love talking about this sort of thing.)
- diminoten 14y ago
  Something existing outside of your experience is as simple as two kids in the third world playing together. The abstract concept of events occurring outside of your realm of perception shouldn't be novel or difficult to imagine - just think of the things you do when no one else is around, then reverse that notion. Simulation, to me, means an approximate recreation. To say that your experience is a simulation leads me to wonder what you're a simulation of. An act can't simulate itself as it's not approximately itself, it is itself. Words need uniqueness to be helpful as a form of communication, and if we call simulations anything acting like something else OR itself, then by calling something a simulation, you're just stating its existence, which I can't find a reason to do that can't be accomplished in a more direct way. In other words, yes things exist. Let's not ruin the word 'simulation' trying to say so!

dmorgan 14y ago

>Simulationism is predicated on the hypothesis that we could construct a completely accurate simulation of our universe in our universe, as if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one, so demonstrating that that's possible would be pretty important. Actually it wouldn't have to be "a completely accurate simulation of our universe in our universe". A "somewhat accurate simulation of our universe in our universe" would also do for the statistical purposes of that premise. If you have recursively-simulated universes, even if they are not 100% like each other, it shouldn't change the probabilities, right? That said, I don't fully agree with the main premise: >if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one Sounds to me somewhat akin to the faulty "ontological proof of the existence of God" ("Anselm defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived", and then argued that this being could exist in the mind. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, a greater being is possible—one which exists in the mind and in reality.").

Cushman 14y ago
It bears some similarities to the ontological argument, but it's not fundamentally grounded in ontology. It's based on the hypothesis that simulation is possible, which is testable in some sense. Say we cook up a little Earth simulator, and it spontaneously generates a perfect being with both agency and omniscience. That would be a fair bit of evidence for the ontological argument, yes? That's also why I say "completely accurate". A really rigorous argument relies on recursive simulation, since creating a simulation that couldn't be the universe isn't very strong evidence. (I'm typing on one right now, in fact.) If we make a completely accurate simulation, we can skip the step of proving that we can make a simulation of it, because we already did.
sp332 14y ago
Anselm's ontological argument isn't faulty, it's just not very useful. It just claims that things that "really" exist are greater than things which exist only in our minds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Anselm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Anselm As you can see the implications are pretty weak. Maybe we should go find the greatest thing that really exists and declare it to be God.