3 ms·

Why the Simulation Argument is Invalid

3 points by rosser 14y ago

gojomo 14y ago
Yes, it looks computationally difficult to us, with what we know, to make a universe simulation. But if we're in a simulation, everything we know is a parameter of the simulation. We know nothing about the energy/computational capabilities of the simulation host system. So the main argument made here assumes the conclusion: if we're not a simulation -- our perception is accurate the 'real' limtis to computing -- then we're not in a simulation.
coldtea 14y ago
>Rarely do I speak with such certainty. I have spoken against only dualism, nonreductionism/creationism with such certainty in the past. However, as I will show, this argument clearly is a form of creationism and therefore must be dispensed with in the same forceful and rigorous manner as we treat other forms of creationism. Unfortunately, these “arguments”, purported to be “good philosophy” by many gullible thinkers, are not respectable arguments for a serious philosopher. Rather, they are superstitious drivel and metaphysical nonsense redressed in scientific-sounding jargon and mathematical-looking notation, making a mockery of both science and philosophy, and they must be regarded as a source of embarrassment by any intellectual worth his material. This is mostly "rigorous hand-waving". Nothing argumentative or serious about the above "argument" (it's not even an argument -- it's mostly vague accusations of "badness"). While we might dispense with "creationism" in the biblical sense of the anti-evolution zealots, nothing in science or philosophy tells us we should dispense with all notions of "creationism" in general too, for example the Simulation Argument. This, the way he states it, is an a priori, knee-jerk reaction, which is not scientific or philosophical at all. >Let us review the premises before we get to deeper mistakes and methodological errors common with this sort of ontological argument. There is, first of all, absolutely no reason why the first premise [civilizations don’t reach post-human stage] should not be true. There might be no 100% certain reason why it should not be true, but sure there are signs that we're getting there ourselves, hence it has a high probability of being proven wrong in practice soon-ish. After all we have some kinds of AI, cloning, computer simulations etc already. >Bostrom’s assumption in the paper that it is possible to create a virtual reality prison somewhat like in the movie “The Matrix”, of the entire Earth is acceptable. Such a computer would likely require enormous resources, but it is possible given access to stellar energy sources in the future, given energy-efficient computers, and energy drawn from blackholes, etc. This takes for granted OUR resources and energy needs, which would only be a criterion if we were the originating world. What about the resources of a "host" system? Those kind of energy needs could be peanuts there. >The suggestions in his analysis are all far off. They disregard how much information the human brain processes and the resolution of our perceptual and scientific apparatus, and what sort of complexity would be ultimately distinguishable to human observers, leaving out obvious artifacts that would show the world to be a simulation. Human observers maybe, but why would the "inhabitants" of the simulation notice any issues? They would be conditioned/programmed not to, after all, in the same way we take for granted the Kantian a priori forms (as limitations to our perception of transcendental reality), the speed of light limit, the limits of our vision compared to the full frequency spectrum etc. >The obvious thing is that quantum events work everywhere, we have our atomic microscopes and various quantum devices, and for those to work you need a complete and consistent physical simulation This just tells us about the level of detail of the simulation (of which we cannot say anything in absolute terms: e.g the Plank's constant could be laughable crude unit in the "host" universe). >That is, Bostrom thinks such simulations will be relatively cheap. Well, this is the second part that is troublesome. Such simulations are never going to be too easy to program or run. Simulating quantum systems requires a lot of computational speed and memory, that cannot be easily shrunk down as Bostrom thinks (his first major mistake). A universal quantum computer of that size would cost a lot of energy and space-time no matter how you design it. "And 640K should be enough for everybody". We simply don't know that. And even if it was true, it would only be critical if we are to assume we are a host world, and not a simulation. But there's another issue. He says: "One problem here is that we do not even know if constructing an enormous universal quantum computer is possible. If not, that is a big obstacle, because simulating n qubits would take asymptotically more space and time (say it might require n squared units given current quantum computing theory)." You don't even need an "enormous universal quantum computer", given the principle of Turing completeness. You could do it with a current PC + storage + time. It would just take longer time. Not to mention that the simulation doesn't have to simulate everything in the universe. Like Chess AI does, or more like 3D ray tracers do, it could "smartly" prune stuff that is not of importance in the current step of the simulation or is obscure by other stuff. E.g if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to listen to it, the simulation could sidestep the sound producing routines. The things behind us could go "un-rendered" when we don't look at them. Remote galaxies could be rendered with fewer resources, as a crude general vector of influences towards us, as opposed to at the quantum level of detail. >* What is the numerical sense here? The laws of physics can likely be encoded in under 1000 bits. Possibly less than that but we are exaggerating for the sake of argument. In reality, we know much shorter universal codes, digital physicists claim very compact universal machines to encode the entirety of physical law, which would amount to under 100 bits. However, an intelligent design scenario, that is a world designed by an intelligent agent smarter than a human requires an initial state of at least the complexity of human brain and civilization required to get it to post-human level, which is many orders of magnitude larger than 1000 bits.* Err, those "digital physicists" though are very close to the simulation argument, that is they argue that the universe is an automaton for example. In that case, it being an automaton inside another automaton does not require any additional complexity. >If we were in a simulation, this would be discovered sooner or later. However, for that one requires evidence, for extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and Bostrom’s SA fails miserably in providing such an extraordinary evidence. What about the extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claim that "if we were in a simulation, this would be discovered sooner or later"? But what mechanism would it magically "discovered sooner or later"? Do entities in Box2D simulations ever discover they are C++ classes? Why assume that we are that better than a hypothetical simulation environment we could be in than Box2D objects are in relation to Box2D and it's programmer? >SA is wrong also because it is just a theory of turtles all the way down. It offers absolutely no valid theory of cosmology. It doesn't have to. It can either keep our theory of cosmology, and apply it to a parent system (or consider us the starting simulation), or it can say that at some point the simulation chain breaks and there's a cosmology in action there of which we cannot really say about (but it's inhabitants might). >[SA is wrong also because] It doesn’t answer what the age of the cosmos is, what its extent is, how much energy there is, what the energy distribution of the cosmos is, how much entropy there is and so forth. That's circular reasoning. If SA is right, then it doesn't matter if our science "answers what the age of the cosmos is, what its extent is, how much energy there is, what the energy distribution of the cosmos is, how much entropy there is and so forth", because that answer would be false anyway. I could go on, but the whole article is juvenile, filled with ad-hominem, circular reasoning and hand waving.

3 points by rosser 14y ago

Yes, it looks computationally difficult to us, with what we know, to make a universe simulation. But if we're in a simulation, everything we know is a parameter of the simulation. We know nothing about the energy/computational capabilities of the simulation host system. So the main argument made here assumes the conclusion: if we're not a simulation -- our perception is accurate the 'real' limtis to computing -- then we're not in a simulation.

coldtea 14y ago

>Rarely do I speak with such certainty. I have spoken against only dualism, nonreductionism/creationism with such certainty in the past. However, as I will show, this argument clearly is a form of creationism and therefore must be dispensed with in the same forceful and rigorous manner as we treat other forms of creationism. Unfortunately, these “arguments”, purported to be “good philosophy” by many gullible thinkers, are not respectable arguments for a serious philosopher. Rather, they are superstitious drivel and metaphysical nonsense redressed in scientific-sounding jargon and mathematical-looking notation, making a mockery of both science and philosophy, and they must be regarded as a source of embarrassment by any intellectual worth his material. This is mostly "rigorous hand-waving". Nothing argumentative or serious about the above "argument" (it's not even an argument -- it's mostly vague accusations of "badness"). While we might dispense with "creationism" in the biblical sense of the anti-evolution zealots, nothing in science or philosophy tells us we should dispense with all notions of "creationism" in general too, for example the Simulation Argument. This, the way he states it, is an a priori, knee-jerk reaction, which is not scientific or philosophical at all. >Let us review the premises before we get to deeper mistakes and methodological errors common with this sort of ontological argument. There is, first of all, absolutely no reason why the first premise [civilizations don’t reach post-human stage] should not be true. There might be no 100% certain reason why it should not be true, but sure there are signs that we're getting there ourselves, hence it has a high probability of being proven wrong in practice soon-ish. After all we have some kinds of AI, cloning, computer simulations etc already. >Bostrom’s assumption in the paper that it is possible to create a virtual reality prison somewhat like in the movie “The Matrix”, of the entire Earth is acceptable. Such a computer would likely require enormous resources, but it is possible given access to stellar energy sources in the future, given energy-efficient computers, and energy drawn from blackholes, etc. This takes for granted OUR resources and energy needs, which would only be a criterion if we were the originating world. What about the resources of a "host" system? Those kind of energy needs could be peanuts there. >The suggestions in his analysis are all far off. They disregard how much information the human brain processes and the resolution of our perceptual and scientific apparatus, and what sort of complexity would be ultimately distinguishable to human observers, leaving out obvious artifacts that would show the world to be a simulation. Human observers maybe, but why would the "inhabitants" of the simulation notice any issues? They would be conditioned/programmed not to, after all, in the same way we take for granted the Kantian a priori forms (as limitations to our perception of transcendental reality), the speed of light limit, the limits of our vision compared to the full frequency spectrum etc. >The obvious thing is that quantum events work everywhere, we have our atomic microscopes and various quantum devices, and for those to work you need a complete and consistent physical simulation This just tells us about the level of detail of the simulation (of which we cannot say anything in absolute terms: e.g the Plank's constant could be laughable crude unit in the "host" universe). >That is, Bostrom thinks such simulations will be relatively cheap. Well, this is the second part that is troublesome. Such simulations are never going to be too easy to program or run. Simulating quantum systems requires a lot of computational speed and memory, that cannot be easily shrunk down as Bostrom thinks (his first major mistake). A universal quantum computer of that size would cost a lot of energy and space-time no matter how you design it. "And 640K should be enough for everybody". We simply don't know that. And even if it was true, it would only be critical if we are to assume we are a host world, and not a simulation. But there's another issue. He says: "One problem here is that we do not even know if constructing an enormous universal quantum computer is possible. If not, that is a big obstacle, because simulating n qubits would take asymptotically more space and time (say it might require n squared units given current quantum computing theory)." You don't even need an "enormous universal quantum computer", given the principle of Turing completeness. You could do it with a current PC + storage + time. It would just take longer time. Not to mention that the simulation doesn't have to simulate everything in the universe. Like Chess AI does, or more like 3D ray tracers do, it could "smartly" prune stuff that is not of importance in the current step of the simulation or is obscure by other stuff. E.g if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to listen to it, the simulation could sidestep the sound producing routines. The things behind us could go "un-rendered" when we don't look at them. Remote galaxies could be rendered with fewer resources, as a crude general vector of influences towards us, as opposed to at the quantum level of detail. >* What is the numerical sense here? The laws of physics can likely be encoded in under 1000 bits. Possibly less than that but we are exaggerating for the sake of argument. In reality, we know much shorter universal codes, digital physicists claim very compact universal machines to encode the entirety of physical law, which would amount to under 100 bits. However, an intelligent design scenario, that is a world designed by an intelligent agent smarter than a human requires an initial state of at least the complexity of human brain and civilization required to get it to post-human level, which is many orders of magnitude larger than 1000 bits.* Err, those "digital physicists" though are very close to the simulation argument, that is they argue that the universe is an automaton for example. In that case, it being an automaton inside another automaton does not require any additional complexity. >If we were in a simulation, this would be discovered sooner or later. However, for that one requires evidence, for extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and Bostrom’s SA fails miserably in providing such an extraordinary evidence. What about the extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claim that "if we were in a simulation, this would be discovered sooner or later"? But what mechanism would it magically "discovered sooner or later"? Do entities in Box2D simulations ever discover they are C++ classes? Why assume that we are that better than a hypothetical simulation environment we could be in than Box2D objects are in relation to Box2D and it's programmer? >SA is wrong also because it is just a theory of turtles all the way down. It offers absolutely no valid theory of cosmology. It doesn't have to. It can either keep our theory of cosmology, and apply it to a parent system (or consider us the starting simulation), or it can say that at some point the simulation chain breaks and there's a cosmology in action there of which we cannot really say about (but it's inhabitants might). >[SA is wrong also because] It doesn’t answer what the age of the cosmos is, what its extent is, how much energy there is, what the energy distribution of the cosmos is, how much entropy there is and so forth. That's circular reasoning. If SA is right, then it doesn't matter if our science "answers what the age of the cosmos is, what its extent is, how much energy there is, what the energy distribution of the cosmos is, how much entropy there is and so forth", because that answer would be false anyway. I could go on, but the whole article is juvenile, filled with ad-hominem, circular reasoning and hand waving.