August 14, 2007
Could we be living in a computer simulation?
John Tierney in the New York Times:
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.
But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.
This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.
You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.
More here. [Thanks to Asad Raza.]
Posted by Abbas Raza at 02:15 PM | Permalink
Comments
The reason why philosophers down the ages have raised this "life is but a dream" idea is that the brain sees the world through a complex set of models constructed by genes, experience, emotions and intelligence amongst our massively interconnected neural cortex. We interpret everything in the World through our thoughts, so its natural that we should suspect that Someone out there is thinking the World. Like a mirror image.
Posted by: aguy109 | Aug 14, 2007 4:15:23 PM
Hey, I just wanted to congratulate Nick Bostrom on figuring out all the secrets of the universe. I had no idea I was a computer simulation until about five minutes ago, when I was eating my lunch. Good job, Nick. And don't listen to anyone who asks you about whether or not you've seen the Matrix. I know you've had this idea in your head since you were a teenager and used to read all those books by Phil Dick.
Posted by: Ken Ehrlich | Aug 14, 2007 4:59:38 PM
I'm on your side Ken; look at these guys, no working knowledge of Philip K. Dick, Frank Tipler, all those goofy Star Trek episodes that took place on the holodeck, Greg Egan's novels and heck while we're at it Rene Descartes' little thought experiment about the "evil genius".
Nick and John are real geeks; they should get out more often.
What I can't get through my thick computer simulation of a skull is the numbers. Nick says it's twenty percent and John thinks it's way more (and it's not ever his theory). I want see how they arrived at these estimates. Show your work boys.
Then again it's in the New York Times so it must be true.
Posted by: Pete Chapman | Aug 14, 2007 5:26:07 PM
What I can't get through my thick computer simulation of a skull is the numbers. Nick says it's twenty percent and John thinks it's way more (and it's not ever his theory). I want see how they arrived at these estimates. Show your work boys.
He says that twenty percent is "My gut feeling, and it’s nothing more than that", so it's not meant as an "estimate" and there's no work to show. It's kind of a crazy idea, but which part of the logic is totally implausible? That a civilization might eventually develop computers powerful enough to run these sorts of simulations? Or that a civilization which had such computers would run a lot of simulated worlds on them, so that the number of individuals who are part of such worlds might come to outnumber the number of individuals in the "real" world? No reason to think it's very likely, but I also don't see a reason to think it's wildly improbable either.
Posted by: Jesse M. | Aug 14, 2007 8:07:03 PM
I've tried wrapping my head around why it would be meaningful to discuss the possibility when, if it were true, it wouldn't effect anything at all, and thus far I've been unsuccessful. Any help?
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 14, 2007 8:39:38 PM
If we are indeed living in a simulation -- and who has not passed through moments that support this notion? -- then we are perhaps becoming aware of it, as well. Such a dawning awareness suggests the possibility of rebellion among us, with ontological insecurity prodding us to seize back our authenticity however we can contrive to do that. This would make things livelier for Them -- would it not? -- provided the sim is being run for Someone's entertainment.
I must congratulate Dr. Bostrom & Co for positing a futuristic scenario that owes utterly to old time religion for philosophical coherence -- that we are realities only in the mind of whatever is God, subject to His whim, that resisting this truth is not an exercise of free will but a pain-filled flailing around written into the program. Non-deistic religions have their version of this too, locating ultimate reality far outside samsara. Most medieval of all is Dr. Bostrom's reliance on instinct to yield percentages, and his cleaving to an untestable hypothesis. Are we so sure that he and his cohorts are not aiming to intrigue us right back to the passive notion of our fate that religion tends also encourage? That in our every action, Someone Else's will is being done? Could be he's even taken a leaf from the Rev. Moon in naming his place of employment -- the Institute for the Future of Humanity. Ouch, it's all sounding a bit too much like catechism class to me.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Aug 14, 2007 9:27:08 PM
slow news day at the times, eh?
Posted by: Chris | Aug 14, 2007 9:32:26 PM
Great, just when the evolutionists were finally beginning to get the upper hand over "intelligent design"....
Posted by: Tobalabo | Aug 14, 2007 10:13:00 PM
Isn't the probability that we're at the end of a (long) chain of simulations pretty small? If there are simulations within simulations, I would think that the probability that we're the last one is pretty small.
Posted by: Matt | Aug 15, 2007 1:26:29 AM
Matt, its actually much more probable that we're in a simulation: if you accept that each parent reality is likeley to produce more than one simulation. The number of simulater realities far outnumbers the one "original".
If you really want to read more check out words made flesh by Ramsey Dukes, He wrote it in 1988.
http://tinyurl.com/3bq2a2
Posted by: mikemystery | Aug 15, 2007 2:07:04 AM
I think this is really a reductio ad absurdum of anthropic reasoning, specifically the "typicality" principle. It's no coincidence that Nick Bostrom is also a proponent of the "Doomsday Argument," surely a transparent piece of sophistry if there ever was one.
Bottom line: dogmas like "typicality" are no substitute for actual knowledge and should not be used to arrive at prior probabilities where none can rationally be given.
Posted by: senderista | Aug 15, 2007 2:38:45 AM
I understand it's more probable we're in a simulation, but isn't the probability that we are in a simulation which doesn't have the capacity to make other such simulations small.
I would think that each simulation would make their own simulation, and so on. This means we're at the tail end of the 'chain of simulations.'
Posted by: Matt | Aug 15, 2007 9:36:22 AM
Right on, Elatia.
Note, too, that the Institute for the Future of Humanity seems to be especially interested in another of the great secular religions, that of the "posthuman."
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Aug 15, 2007 11:27:09 AM
It seems likely (I'm choosing my words here) that a team of creative people could invent a much longer list of impossible things than possible things. Therefore, following the logic (sic) of this article, impossible things are more probable than possible things.
I prefer to start with only testable hypotheses. On that basis, I reject the simulation idea along with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Once you get to speculating about things you can imagine but not test, you're wasting your time.
Posted by: Mark (no relation) | Aug 15, 2007 12:48:13 PM
Wow. Talk about an elephant-in-the-room suppressed premise. What reason do we have to believe that conscious experience can be produced simply with processing power? Such a thing is extremely controversial. Unless the author of the piece wants to deny that he or I are actually having experiences, then he has to assume that a computer... literally, a massively puffed-up version of the Mac I'm currently on.... is going to have experiences. Otherwise, we're not in a computer simulation. Eh? How's that for logic?
This is why PHIL 100 should be a god damned prerequisite to get out of university. Honestly.
Posted by: Nick Smyth | Aug 15, 2007 3:26:20 PM
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