Arguments

From Simulism

Jump to: navigation, search

This page lists all the arguments that are either in line with Simulism or that may contradict it.

Contents

[edit] Arguments

[edit] The Simulation Argument

This site/article by Nick Bostrom explains, in a very academic way, that either we are living in a simulation, or we will never develop the means to run complex simulations.

[edit] The Expanding Simulation

This essay takes some of the features of the universe around us, and maps them to Simulism.

[edit] Universal mastery

Technological advances could overcome most objections.

[edit] Religion

Simulism is in line with familiar concepts from most major religions.

[edit] Technology

See how technology is evolving to a level that a simulated reality seems more and more plausible.

[edit] 'Motivational, Ethical and Legal Issues'

This paper assumes that, based on Ray Kurzweil's projections of Moore's Law, the necessary technology will be available on a widespread basis by about 2050.

Abstract:

A future society will very likely have the technological ability and the motivation to create large numbers of completely realistic historical simulations and be able to overcome any ethical and legal obstacles to doing so. It is thus highly probable that we are a form of artificial intelligence inhabiting one of these simulations. To avoid stacking (i.e. simulations within simulations), the termination of these simulations is likely to be the point in history when the technology to create them first became widely available, (estimated to be 2050). Long range planning beyond this date would therefore be futile.

(More on 'stacking' can be found here.)

[edit] Counter Arguments

[edit] Complexity

The world around us is so immensely complex, that it is unlikely that this can be covered by a simulation.

Chaotic physical phenomena such as weather resist simplification.

Because we have no idea about the scale of the computational power available to the simulation, this argument is weak. Furthermore, the simulation might be able to take a considerable number of shortcuts (e.g., don't bother simulating something unless someone is looking at it) that would vastly reduce the processing power required. (See: Optimization)

[edit] Awareness

One of the counterarguments is that if we were living in a simulation, we would've been already told we are. There are however good reasons why the simulation would be designed to hide knowledge of whether or not a simulation was in effect. Consider software simulators like Subterfugue, which, in order to fulfill their purpose, attempt to provide a convincing environment that appears to the subject of the simulation not to be a simulation. (One could also argue that the mere fact that we are thinking about such things might be a sort of joke being perpetrated by the operators of the simulation we're living in. This is hardly evidence, but it is an amusing thought.)

One simplification of this argument follows, labelled for discussion:

1. If we are living in a simulation generated by operators who have motives, one of the following must be true: (A) the operators do not want us to know we are simulations, or (B) the operators don't care if we find out we are simulations.
2. If (B) is true, we could test for being in a simulation by simply asking "Am I in a simulation?" Try it. Unless you got a "Yes", (B) is false.
3. If (A) is true, the operators would censor any clues (e.g. flaws in the simulation) that would help us detect our status as simulations.
4. Given that the operators have not censored publications and discussions on the topic of simulation, it follows that (A) is false.
5. Since both (A) and (B) are false, we are not living in a simulation generated by operators who have motives.

This argument, however, has some weaknesses:

Statement (1) is a false dilemma. There may be a spectrum of preferences from "the operators will take all necessary steps to prevent us from knowing" to "the operators will allow us to discover our situation, but only through their preferred process" to "the operators will immediately notify us that we are simulations."

The 'question' as posed to disprove B is not really solid though, as this raises some questions:

Who/what would you ask this to? Asking another person within the simulation simply moves the test to that person. Ultimately someone must ask outside the simulation to the operators.
This can be viewed as similar to asking the question 'Does god exist?'. If another person answers 'yes' to your question, would you believe it? If not, by what means do you expect the operators and/or god(s) to respond? If they want to respond, they could do so by altering the simulation in any of the ways a virtual reality could be programmatically altered, such as by causing an object with a message to spontaneously appear, or introducing an unsourced sound such as the word "Yes".

Also, there are historical events that might be interpreted as attempts to tell people they are living in a simulation. More on this on the 'Awareness' page.

Option A is claimed false because the operators have not censored any publications; yet, there is no proof to be found; it could be that they don't care about discussions and publications, as long as nothing is proved to be true. Finally; if the simulation is run for historical and/or educational purposes, even though they wouldn't like the inhabitants to know about the simulation, they might not want to intervene as that would ruin the accuracy of the simulation.

[edit] 'Against the argument that we are living in a simulation'

In his article 'Against the argument that we are living in a simulation', Henry R. Sturman gives 8 arguments why it is unlikely that we are living in a simulation. The article itself, as well as a discussion about it, can be found here.

[edit] Bostrom's Argument & the Liar's Paradox

I would like a critique of the following, if anyone is interested leave a message

Bostrom bases his premises on our collective experience of this 'reality'. From this he deduces that there are three possible events, only one of which must occur. One of these is that this 'reality' in fact is all probability is a simulation. If this is true, then the premise of the argument is false, as we cannot extrapolate to events outside this simulation, and events 1 and 2 have no validity.

In fact Bostrom disputes this, claiming that if this were a simulation, it merely establishes that at least one simulation exists, confirming his point (3), and if we are not in a simulation, then the argument follows, and we are highly likely to be living in a simulation.

However, Bostrom's argument has at its heart two distinct flaws: Flaw (A) refers to the way that Bostrom calculates the total number of human-type experiences. He assumes that the average number of individuals that have lived in a civilisation before it reaches a posthuman stage is the same no matter whether that civilisation is real, or whether it is simulated. But why should this be? It could take a very long time for civilisations to reach posthuman-type situations, or it might be that simulations are only run for very short periods. Whatever is the case, it is unlikely that the time would be approximately the same. This means that Bostrom's probability calculation needs to be amended. Interestingly, when one follows this argument through, it merely has the effect of slightly reducing the probability that we are living in a simulation, rather than reducing it to zero. The only way that Bostrom's original argument holds is if civilisations tend to run ancestor-type simulations for extended periods of time, much longer than their evolution time to posthumanity, which seems unlikely.

Flaw (B) is that within the probability argument, Bostrom claims that "The average number of ancestor-simulations run by interested civilisations is extremely large", and attributes this to their computing power. If we are in a simulation, then we cannot know anything about then number of technologically-capable or interested civilisations, other than there exists at least one of these. Following the Anthropic reasoning principle, this 'reality' will have been manufactured specifically to contain us, and therefore we are predisposed to thinking that simulations will be a commonplace. It may be that there are a myriad other civilisations out there who have not created simulations, the fact that we are living in a simulation cannot be used as evidence for the argument one way or the other. This negates Bostrom's counter-argument

A clearer way to understand Bostrom's argument is to simplify it, and to reformulate it as follows:

Only one of the following is true:

(1) Almost all Civilisations reach a point where they are either incapable of, or lack interest in creating artificial worlds.

(2) This 'reality' which we inhabit is an artificial world created by a civilisation about which we have no knowledge.

The probability argument which this rests on is identical to Bostrom's, and we conclude the probability of (1) is approximately zero or the probability of (2) is approximately 1.

However, If (2) is true, then we cannot discuss whether or not it is either (1) or (2) which is true, as this precludes us from knowing anything about other civilisations. Therefore we cannot conclude anything.

If however (2) is false, then we are living in a 'reality' rather than a simulation of one. This allows us to draw conclusions about the way that civilisations behave. In other words, we can pursue Bostrom's argument, and reduce it to the two-stage argument given above. From the discussions earlier, we can draw conclusions for our experience of this 'reality': it would appear that civilisations will become both technologically mature enough and interested enough in creating artifical worlds. In other words, (1) is false. However, Bostrom's reduced argument would then have us conclude that (2) is true. This clearly leads to a contradiction.

So the conclusions are: Either the argument is self-contradictory, or we cannot draw conclusions from it. In either case the argument does not hold water.

[edit] Many Worlds

From a blog post:

Assumptions:

  • The strong many-worlds theory is correct (i.e. all consistent mathematical systems exist as universes, a.k.a "everything exists")
  • The many-worlds immortality theory is correct (i.e. for every conscious state there is at least one smooth continuation of that state in the many-worlds)

Given these assumptions, it doesn’t matter if we are in a simulation because our conscious state exists in many simulations and many non-simulated worlds that look identical to us (but are different in imperceptible ways). Even if all the simulations stopped, there would still be a continuation of our conscious state in a non-simulated world consistent with our observations to date.

Further, it seems that there are more non-simulated worlds than simulated worlds. This is because there are many ways a mathematical model can exist so that it cannot be formulated in a finite way, and therefore not simulatable by an intelligent entity. It might even be that simulatable world are of measure zero in the many-worlds.

Views
Personal tools
Advertisements
Toolbox