news headlines always grab your attention on this one by opening with "Are we living in a computer simulation?"
It's got some attention recently because Elon Musk saying we most likely do:
This is at least a 13 year old idea written originally by Nick Bostrom in 2003, here is a video of him giving a much more in depth explanation of the argument than Musk:
What do the thinkers of LP think? Is the argument valid? If so, how likely is it that we are living in a simulation?
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soberstone United States. Jun 10 2016 02:10. Posts 2662
Matrix gonna Matrix
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soberstone United States. Jun 10 2016 02:22. Posts 2662
The mind-fuck of it is that essentially what he's saying is that theoretically, according to the simulation argument, the moment we mature to the point where we could run such a simulation and choose to do so, is the very moment that it is 100 percent sure that we ourselves are in a simulation.
The flaw that I see in the argument is that there would have to be a first, real/non-simulated reality, and there is no way to prove that we aren't the first. It's just infinitely unlikely, but not impossible.
I'm sure he's accounted for that which is why he says "almost all" instead of "all" civilizations.
A couple of counter-arguments I have come up with:
1. In the future there would have to be some kind of point to create such simulations. It could be the case that by the time we are able to create such simulations they would not provide us with any more insight.
2. There would have to be extremely many simulations running (the more there are the more likely it is we are in one). Again - there might not be a point to do that many.
3. If at this point of our evolution we find the idea of creating a simulation where there would be sentient beings unaware that they are not real unsettling I can only hope that in the future we will have even higher ethical standards. Especially since I'm sure future technology will provide a multitude of moral dilemmas.
4. To expand on the ethical issue of creating such a simulation - the possibility of the beings figuring out they are inside a simulation makes it a lot more disturbing. Unless you rig it in a way where they can never prove it, but placing such a caveat inside the simulation may beat the purpose of it.
Peace of mind cant be bought.
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shootair United States. Jun 10 2016 03:46. Posts 430
OP, you ask: How likely is it that we are living in a simulation?
Ans: About the same as the ratio of two unicorns and a pound of cabbage last tuesday.
But there some theories just as ridiculous that are, in fact, believed to be true by many people.
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Stroggoz New Zealand. Jun 10 2016 04:41. Posts 5330
The argument is extremely speculative and optimistic. Yet he (Elon Musk) says it is one in a billion that we are living in reality.. Ok, you cannot express that much certainty without making the argument scientific, predictive, ect. Here it is just speculation. His confidence is completely unjustified.
There is a theoretical field called digital physics which attempts to show that the laws of physics is mathematically isomorphic to information in computer science. So in other words we can theorize the universe as a Turing machine and simulate it on that. But this is far away from anything like a simulated reality.
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
On June 10 2016 02:30 tomson wrote:
A couple of counter-arguments I have come up with:
1. In the future there would have to be some kind of point to create such simulations. It could be the case that by the time we are able to create such simulations they would not provide us with any more insight.
2. There would have to be extremely many simulations running (the more there are the more likely it is we are in one). Again - there might not be a point to do that many.
3. If at this point of our evolution we find the idea of creating a simulation where there would be sentient beings unaware that they are not real unsettling I can only hope that in the future we will have even higher ethical standards. Especially since I'm sure future technology will provide a multitude of moral dilemmas.
4. To expand on the ethical issue of creating such a simulation - the possibility of the beings figuring out they are inside a simulation makes it a lot more disturbing. Unless you rig it in a way where they can never prove it, but placing such a caveat inside the simulation may beat the purpose of it.
Interesting arguments.
1. I think as time goes on you're right there would be less and less interest in creating such simulations. But it'll also get easier to run sims as time goes on and computing power increases even further; ie. at first only the futuristic version of google can do it, then the top 5 tech groups can do it, then wide commercial use, then enthusiasts and finally average people. Not to say that the same economic model will exist at that time but there will be some similar effect where it's first available to the few and then available to the many as the technology and computing resources improve.
How many simulated people will there be vs non-simulated people at a point it's available to the many? Then if you agree that the time scale the simulated exist on can be sped up to the point where you could watch an entire simulated universe unfold in a short time (minutes, days, weeks) from the time of the big bang until however it ends (or from the evolution of modern humans until our extinction), now how many simulated vs non-simulated?
IMO Musk's estimation of "one in billions" was too generous, it could be some orders of magnitude more (provided we get to to the point we are capable of this technology).
2. This one is interesting. Usually when studying things we'd rather have more data than less right? So I would lean heavily on the side of many simulations being run. Similarly to #1 I think we'd at least run a lot of simulations at first and then run less as we farmed all the knowledge from them.
re: 3/4 - I've considered the morality issue we might have when capable of this technology but I think it would not be enough to deter us because what horrible reality would we really be subjecting these sentient beings to? Life based on the laws of our universe? Is that really so bad? Sure there will be a lot of pain and suffering but not much more than what life on this planet has already experienced up to this point. Maybe some future hippies might argue against running such simulations with this morality argument but ultimately it wouldn't be enough to stop us.
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I think most of your arguments are actually consistent with the simulation argument, they are just arguments for proposition 2 "The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero"
In the end this isn't a verifiable problem, if we accept the argument is sound, we can only assign our personal probabilities to each proposition. After reading Tomson's arguments I'll assign a few tenths of a percentage point more to proposition 2 than before
On June 10 2016 02:46 shootair wrote:
OP, you ask: How likely is it that we are living in a simulation?
Ans: About the same as the ratio of two unicorns and a pound of cabbage last tuesday.
But there some theories just as ridiculous that are, in fact, believed to be true by many people.
If you think there is close to 0% probability then you are saying the argument isn't sound. What is the flaw in the argument?
On June 10 2016 03:41 Stroggoz wrote:
The argument is extremely speculative and optimistic. Yet he (Elon Musk) says it is one in a billion that we are living in reality.. Ok, you cannot express that much certainty without making the argument scientific, predictive, ect. Here it is just speculation. His confidence is completely unjustified.
If you just watched the Elon Musk clip you're missing a lot of information. He emphasized he's spent "A LOT" of time thinking about this more than once and to the point he had to ban it as a conversation topic in some situations because it sounds like it was getting out of hand. Mr. Musk is no fish, he's probably one of the greatest inventor, businessman, smart dudes, etc. of our time and maybe all time, when he has something to say that you don't agree with it's probably worth looking into quite seriously before discrediting.
I don't recommend that format though, it's pretty dull to read. I'd watch Bostrom's video in the OP instead.
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Stroggoz New Zealand. Jun 10 2016 05:09. Posts 5330
The increase in computing power is probably irrelevant imo, unless someone proves NP=P, but that's pretty unlikely and most mathematicians think NP doesn't equal P.
That is, there would be many problems in the universe that are 'NP-Complete', without getting into the technical math jargon behind this, these problems are ones which are too difficult for a computer to solve given that the problem is complex enough. Many of these exist in reality. However if someone proves that they can be reduced to polynomial time complexity (P), then they can be solved by a computer easily enough.
But this doesn't even get us started. Reality has a lot of complex phenomena, things outside of maths, physics, chemistry, and biology which are too hard to understand and encode as inputs into turing machines.
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
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Stroggoz New Zealand. Jun 10 2016 05:41. Posts 5330
On June 10 2016 02:46 shootair wrote:
OP, you ask: How likely is it that we are living in a simulation?
Ans: About the same as the ratio of two unicorns and a pound of cabbage last tuesday.
But there some theories just as ridiculous that are, in fact, believed to be true by many people.
On June 10 2016 03:41 Stroggoz wrote:
The argument is extremely speculative and optimistic. Yet he (Elon Musk) says it is one in a billion that we are living in reality.. Ok, you cannot express that much certainty without making the argument scientific, predictive, ect. Here it is just speculation. His confidence is completely unjustified.
If you just watched the Elon Musk clip you're missing a lot of information. He emphasized he's spent "A LOT" of time thinking about this more than once and to the point he had to ban it as a conversation topic in some situations because it sounds like it was getting out of hand. Mr. Musk is no fish, he's probably one of the greatest inventor, businessman, smart dudes, etc. of our time and maybe all time, when he has something to say that you don't agree with it's probably worth looking into quite seriously before discrediting.
I was being generous.
I havn't studied the topic a lot, but i have understanding of mathematics and philosophy so i can contribute. I listened to his short argument and gave a simple critique, i don't care about weather he was an inventor, businessman or smart dude. That means very little to me. I'm only interested in the content of his argument and weather it holds up or not. You should assume that everyone is wrong until they give good evidence to the contrary anyway.
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
On June 10 2016 02:46 shootair wrote:
OP, you ask: How likely is it that we are living in a simulation?
Ans: About the same as the ratio of two unicorns and a pound of cabbage last tuesday.
But there some theories just as ridiculous that are, in fact, believed to be true by many people.
If you think there is close to 0% probability then you are saying the argument isn't sound. What is the flaw in the argument?
On June 10 2016 03:41 Stroggoz wrote:
The argument is extremely speculative and optimistic. Yet he (Elon Musk) says it is one in a billion that we are living in reality.. Ok, you cannot express that much certainty without making the argument scientific, predictive, ect. Here it is just speculation. His confidence is completely unjustified.
If you just watched the Elon Musk clip you're missing a lot of information. He emphasized he's spent "A LOT" of time thinking about this more than once and to the point he had to ban it as a conversation topic in some situations because it sounds like it was getting out of hand. Mr. Musk is no fish, he's probably one of the greatest inventor, businessman, smart dudes, etc. of our time and maybe all time, when he has something to say that you don't agree with it's probably worth looking into quite seriously before discrediting.
I don't recommend that format though, it's pretty dull to read. I'd watch Bostrom's video in the OP instead.
I really like Musk and honestly would hope that he becomes bigger and more powerful, but this opposite evidence request is no different from saying "we don't know how to explain XYZ so prove me wrong that God doesn't exist". I hear nothing in his argument that would make me think he is on to something. It's an interesting bar discussion for me and not much more.
I remember reading about a definite rebuttal to the simulation theory... was it Laurence Krauss? cant remember well or even the argument but it had something to do with the resolution, anyone have any clue what Im talking about?
On June 10 2016 04:09 Stroggoz wrote:
The increase in computing power is probably irrelevant imo, unless someone proves NP=P, but that's pretty unlikely and most mathematicians think NP doesn't equal P.
That is, there would be many problems in the universe that are 'NP-Complete', without getting into the technical math jargon behind this, these problems are ones which are too difficult for a computer to solve given that the problem is complex enough. Many of these exist in reality. However if someone proves that they can be reduced to polynomial time complexity (P), then they can be solved by a computer easily enough.
But this doesn't even get us started. Reality has a lot of complex phenomena, things outside of maths, physics, chemistry, and biology which are too hard to understand and encode as inputs into turing machines.
So you apply a higher probability to proposition #1? "The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero"
Do you think there is a hard cap on our understanding of any of the things you listed? If not, then won't we get there one day? Whether it's 100 years or 1 million?
On June 10 2016 02:46 shootair wrote:
OP, you ask: How likely is it that we are living in a simulation?
Ans: About the same as the ratio of two unicorns and a pound of cabbage last tuesday.
But there some theories just as ridiculous that are, in fact, believed to be true by many people.
If you think there is close to 0% probability then you are saying the argument isn't sound. What is the flaw in the argument?
On June 10 2016 03:41 Stroggoz wrote:
The argument is extremely speculative and optimistic. Yet he (Elon Musk) says it is one in a billion that we are living in reality.. Ok, you cannot express that much certainty without making the argument scientific, predictive, ect. Here it is just speculation. His confidence is completely unjustified.
If you just watched the Elon Musk clip you're missing a lot of information. He emphasized he's spent "A LOT" of time thinking about this more than once and to the point he had to ban it as a conversation topic in some situations because it sounds like it was getting out of hand. Mr. Musk is no fish, he's probably one of the greatest inventor, businessman, smart dudes, etc. of our time and maybe all time, when he has something to say that you don't agree with it's probably worth looking into quite seriously before discrediting.
I don't recommend that format though, it's pretty dull to read. I'd watch Bostrom's video in the OP instead.
I really like Musk and honestly would hope that he becomes bigger and more powerful, but this opposite evidence request is no different from saying "we don't know how to explain XYZ so prove me wrong that God doesn't exist". I hear nothing in his argument that would make me think he is on to something. It's an interesting bar discussion for me and not much more.
Musk isn't asking for backwards evidence, he's presenting an argument and asking if it's valid or not. Is there some inherent problem with the argument that prevents it from being true? Also you really need to look at a more sophisticated presentation of the argument, Musk's simplified version is missing some important pieces and is more fit for a quick CNN type headline.
I linked some better explanations itt, here is a cut and pasted version that's simple and also good enough to get the main points across:
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Bostrom's trilemma: "the simulation argument"
In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed a trilemma that he called "the simulation argument". Despite the name, Bostrom's "simulation argument" does not directly argue that we live in a simulation; instead, Bostrom's trilemma argues that one of three unlikely-seeming propositions must be true. The trilemma points out that a technologically mature "posthuman" civilization would have enormous computing power; if even a tiny percentage of them were to run "ancestor simulations" (that is, "high-fidelity" simulations of ancestral life that would be indistinguishable from reality to the simulated ancestor), the total number of simulated ancestors, or "Sims", in the universe (or multiverse, if it exists) would greatly exceed the total number of actual ancestors. Therefore, at least one of the following three propositions is almost certainly true:
1. "The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero", or
2. "The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero", or
3. "The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one"
On June 10 2016 07:25 Smuft wrote:
Musk isn't asking for backwards evidence, he's presenting an argument and asking if it's valid or not. Is there some inherent problem with the argument that prevents it from being true? Also you really need to look at a more sophisticated presentation of the argument, Musk's simplified version is missing some important pieces and is more fit for a quick CNN type headline.
He isn't presenting an argument then asking if it's valid or not. You seem to imply that he isn't certain about the topic just because he finished his view with a question. Just because he phrases a question at the end of his reasoning and asks if the reasoning is valid doesn't take away the fact that he states there's a 1 in billion chance that he's wrong. You can't both say there's a 1 in billion chance that X and then pretend like you presented a neutral line of thinking that can still go either way. I watched the other youtube video you linked as well and really don't see the line of thinking that would give them the confidence that this would be a simulation. I don't think any of his argument shows why it would exist, it is just taking technological advancement and then taking a huge leap of basically living in the matrix. I'm too much of a skeptic to actually believe that is the case.
There's plenty of logical reasoning to be had for it such as I don't actually believe technology can create what we're living in (not in 10,000 years either). I can write a bunch of pages just on that point and why I feel that way. This to me is comparable to the idea of traveling at speed of light, something I also don't believe in ever not now and not in 10,000 years. Additionally the ethical implications of putting billions of minds or ai's into a simulation is completely fucked up and would mean that humanity only evolved backwards with its ethics. I also have no idea what the purpose of such a simulation would be besides just fucking with us. More than anything though I don't think there's much point to the argument for me because I think it is just a fancy new age psychological point of reasoning that seems fancy just for the sake of it and is impossible to ever be proven correct (and in that sense it is much like god).
A system being able to generate such amount of data as the observable universe seems highly improbable to me ( its not just the visual stuff but waves and detectable energy and etc etc. ) . Then again we're talking about the indefinite future.
@Stroggoz those things you are mentioning are the only variables that make the existence of a AI still improbable, but if all the pioneers of our time say that the AI will be created, then I'd take a look into history and agree with them as pioneers almost always end up right about advance of technology.
Do you think the simulation started with the big bang theory or what is their starting point?
You almost twin-caracked his AK - JonnyCosmo
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Stroggoz New Zealand. Jun 10 2016 11:03. Posts 5330
On June 10 2016 09:41 Spitfiree wrote:
A system being able to generate such amount of data as the observable universe seems highly improbable to me ( its not just the visual stuff but waves and detectable energy and etc etc. ) . Then again we're talking about the indefinite future.
@Stroggoz those things you are mentioning are the only variables that make the existence of a AI still improbable, but if all the pioneers of our time say that the AI will be created, then I'd take a look into history and agree with them as pioneers almost always end up right about advance of technology.
That's not the case that pioneers are almost always right about the advance of technology.
You can pick out people who were right from history and those who were wrong. History tells you a lot of things. AI happens to have an appalling record of getting it wrong over and over, even from the most intelligent people. There have been people who thought the human mind could be emulated from: 16th century clockwork, telegraph wires, and with the cognitive revolution in the 1950's there were AI researchers at MIT who thought we would have strong AI by the 1980's with computer chips, and they were in the majority.
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Poland. Jun 10 2016 03:30. Posts 1982
