6 ms·

As soon as I saw the title, I knew Nick Bostrom would be involved. And therein lies chaos. First, to clarify something from the article - Bostrom's "posthuman"

As soon as I saw the title, I knew Nick Bostrom would be involved. And therein lies chaos. First, to clarify something from the article - Bostrom's "posthuman" civilization is not strictly about the singularity but about almost unbounded capabilities. Building computers out of planets would be within reach for such a civilization. Think Culture, not Neuromancer. The ratio of simulated people vs people in the actual universe was "addressed" in one of Bostrom's subsequent papers but in a completely ad hoc if-you-do-this-then-you-prove-my-point way. Here's some arguments against it - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Simulation_argument#Calculating_the_Probability_of_Simulation_with_the_Bostrom_Equation http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Simulation_argument#Calculating... All in all, the SimArg is a nice thought but it's so easy to poke holes without first becoming a posthuman civilization that it loses what little stability it might have had.

snowwrestler 13y ago
I feel like Bostrom uses his first 2 conditions to constrain probabilities until the 3rd seems likely. Is this insightful or a trick? I would argue it's a lot closer to a trick, since conditions 1 and 2 are futures we hope for (that we survive and become technologically advanced)--so we tend to overestimate their actual probability. Think of it this way: the total probability that we are in a simulation should be the sum of all future states in which our descendents create adequate simulations, divided by the total number of all possible future states--which is nearly infinite. Therefore the probability that we are in a simulation now is actually nearly zero.
- archivator 13y ago
  I think calling it a trick is unfair. It's not just P(C3), it's really P(C3 | !C1 && !C2), where C1 and C2 are really big events, so the fact they haven't occurred narrows the search space quite a bit. Remember, he's not just talking about any conciousness simulations but a specific type - ancestor simulations, which allows him to pull more rabbits out of his hat than might normally be able to hide in there.

snowwrestler 13y ago

I feel like Bostrom uses his first 2 conditions to constrain probabilities until the 3rd seems likely. Is this insightful or a trick? I would argue it's a lot closer to a trick, since conditions 1 and 2 are futures we hope for (that we survive and become technologically advanced)--so we tend to overestimate their actual probability. Think of it this way: the total probability that we are in a simulation should be the sum of all future states in which our descendents create adequate simulations, divided by the total number of all possible future states--which is nearly infinite. Therefore the probability that we are in a simulation now is actually nearly zero.

archivator 13y ago
I think calling it a trick is unfair. It's not just P(C3), it's really P(C3 | !C1 && !C2), where C1 and C2 are really big events, so the fact they haven't occurred narrows the search space quite a bit. Remember, he's not just talking about any conciousness simulations but a specific type - ancestor simulations, which allows him to pull more rabbits out of his hat than might normally be able to hide in there.