Simulation Theory

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Typist
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Typist »

If a completely convincing simulation of reality is possible within reality, we might as well be done with the idea of reality altogether.
We could almost say a convincing simulation of reality exists now.

Think of the experience of being in a theater watching a play. The mind meets the simulation half way. If the simulation is meeting some psychological need of the mind, the mind will filter out reality so as to enhance the simulation and make it more realistic.

Ok, I admit it, I'm puzzled. What's so interesting about Bostrom's highly speculative theory which it seems can never be proved or disproved, when we are working pretty hard at creating alternate reality simulations in real life right now?
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Notvacka
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Notvacka »

bytesplicer wrote:
Notvacka wrote:While amusing, the idea of simulations within simulations is meaningless if you must presume some fundamental "reality" at the bottom of it all. That's why I like the "turtles all the way down" anecdote for all the wrong (right) reasons. If a completely convincing simulation of reality is possible within reality, we might as well be done with the idea of reality altogether.
What's really funny is it's meaningless whether you presume a fundamental reality at the bottom or not. Turtles all the way down, or a pipe-smoking badger at the bottom, neither answer gets us anywhere.
I agree. It doesn't get us anywhere, but it boggles the mind in a different way, I'd say. :)
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Notvacka
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Notvacka »

Typist wrote:What's so interesting about Bostrom's highly speculative theory which it seems can never be proved or disproved, when we are working pretty hard at creating alternate reality simulations in real life right now?
I think it's the fact that Bostrom's speculations suggest the possibility of transcendence in a more materialistic, scientific way than the usual religious speculations. Sometimes science fiction seem closer to reality than pure fantasy, so to speak. :lol:
bytesplicer
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by bytesplicer »

Notvacka wrote:I agree. It doesn't get us anywhere, but it boggles the mind in a different way, I'd say. :)
Haha, yeah, nothing like a good boggling to clear the mental cobwebs :)
Typist
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Typist »

I think it's the fact that Bostrom's speculations suggest the possibility of transcendence in a more materialistic, scientific way than the usual religious speculations.
Yes, ok, I see. It's a matter of taste, what level of speculation does one want to explore.

1) Religion - most
2) Bostrom - middle
3) Typist - least

I guess I got wound up in enthusiasm for the journey from religion to Bostrom, and overshot the target. :lol:
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Arising_uk
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Arising_uk »

Notvacka wrote:While amusing, the idea of simulations within simulations is meaningless if you must presume some fundamental "reality" at the bottom of it all. That's why I like the "turtles all the way down" anecdote for all the wrong (right) reasons. If a completely convincing simulation of reality is possible within reality, we might as well be done with the idea of reality altogether.
Definitely not sure what Bostrom points out with his paper, but think he does say that it matters not what hierarchical level we are at as we couldn't tell(but I'll have to recheck as I only reskimmed it). On the whole I'm not sure what Bostroms paper is about in the first place although I do think he has somehow hoisted the 'singularity simulation dreamers' upon their own petard, and I think he does show how a 'new' metaphysic could encompass many of the 'old' religious explanations. Not sure if this 'moves' things on at all? Although I think I agree with your idea that we might as well be done with 'reality' and 'truth' as Physics appears to have done. :)
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Arising_uk
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Arising_uk »

Richard Baron wrote:Yes, the distinction between a deliberate and a non-deliberate simulation (I don't want to say "accidental", that may commit to too much) seems to me to be important, and to fit with my point, for the following reason. If we see a simulation as deliberate, we imagine someone (not necessarily a human being, but some kind of conscious agent) as setting it up. If we imagine that happening, then we automatically imagine a world outside the simulation. So we attach sense to the notion of that world, and we can start to wonder whether the laws in that world match the laws as they appear to us. If we do not think of a simulation as set up deliberately, we lose that automatic route to imagining an outside world.
Which I do agree would be an advancement in Metaphysics. But while I've got you here :) What do you think Bostrom is doing with this paper? As he and it is obviously up to something in Philosophy but I've been out-of-touch(not the easiest thing to get access to the journals :( )

It 'smells' of a Bayesian argument although I don't understand this 'inductive' logic yet, but I can't not like the end bits where he metaphysically 'swallows' a few religions in one go and I think he's shafted(in some way?) the hopeful 'posthumanists'. Where I'm lost is this argument form of using a disjunction and an implication? I then get lost in the formalization as whilst I think I can just about follow the creation of the symbols I've lost the actual rule of inference? Is it maths, axiomization?(they the same nowadays?) If so which type?

Hope this makes sense.
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Richard Baron
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Richard Baron »

Hello Arising

I do not know what Bostrom's own intentions were, but he does push us to take seriously the questions that he raises towards the end. We should not rule out our being in a simulation, therefore we should think hard about how ethics would look if we were. We might then draw lessons from that exercise for how ethics should be even if we are not in a simulation, since, as he points out early on, our own experiences do not give us a clue as to whether we are in a simulation. That is, if experiences are the same in or out, maybe (and this is contentious) ethics should be the same.

As to the maths, I don't think we need to wheel in the Bayesian apparatus.

If we take the fraction at the bottom of page 5 of the pdf version, fpNH/(fpNH+H) (with bars over N, H that I won't attempt to reproduce even if the software could do it), the top line is the number of human-like experience-sets that are simulated (a set is a life or simulated life), and the bottom line is the number that are simulated plus the number that are real. That bottom line is therefore the total number of experience-sets. So the whole fraction is the proportion of experience-sets that are simulated.

The equation marked (*) at the top of page 6 is the same one, with the H cancelled out and with N expanded to fINI. Then, as he says, the large size of NI means that the proportion of experience-sets that are simulated must be close to 1, unless fp or fI is very small.

Then we come on to the indifference principle. The only information you have concerns the proportion of experience-sets that is simulated. You have no clues in your experience-set to help you. So if you want to believe in a probability that your experience-set is simulated, you should take the proportion as that probability.

My apologies if I have missed your concerns here. I am not sure whether I have understood your questions properly.
evangelicalhumanist
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by evangelicalhumanist »

Richard Baron wrote:I take it this is a reference to Nick Bostrom's work:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/

The conclusion is preposterous, but it is hard to say precisely what is wrong with the argument.

My own view is that the argument makes too many assumptions, for example about what future people will be interested in and how computing power will grow, for it to establish the conclusion. So the conclusion is a possibility for which we have no direct evidence - a bit like the existence of God, in fact.
I come late to the debate, I'm afraid, and so I must apologize in advance to any member(s) who may have posted similar (or better) thoughts.

Still, I must say that that "precisely what is wrong with the argument" is that there is no reason to suppose it in the first place. At the end of the day, that is where we so often go wrong. Some person (I was about to write "bozo," but would I be so rude?) has a fantasy about something that might be (including gods, and gods demanding this and that, or spacecraft to pick us up and take us to heaven, or any number of other fantasies), and then suddenly the rest of us are left to try and find a valid "proof" that the argument is invalid.

We only need the one -- there was no actual reason, outside of the author's overactive imagination, to entertain the idea in the first place.
Typist
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Typist »

EH, by your procedure, Hubble would have never suffered from "overactive imagination", and never discovered the 99% of the universe that had been hidden previously.

The scale of that discovery is breathtaking, historic, without match in human history.

And yet only 100 years later, we take it for granted, ho hum, who cares.

How quickly fantasy becomes reality.
evangelicalhumanist
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by evangelicalhumanist »

Typist wrote:EH, by your procedure, Hubble would have never suffered from "overactive imagination", and never discovered the 99% of the universe that had been hidden previously.

The scale of that discovery is breathtaking, historic, without match in human history.

And yet only 100 years later, we take it for granted, ho hum, who cares.

How quickly fantasy becomes reality.
You are quite consistent in missing the essential point. Hubble had observations -- data which could be checked by others. I am always willing to give credence where that is the case.

Now, tell me about Joseph's Smith's observations which could be checked by others...
Typist
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Typist »

No my friend, you are missing the point.

Wild speculation is part of science.
evangelicalhumanist
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by evangelicalhumanist »

Typist wrote:No my friend, you are missing the point.

Wild speculation is part of science.
And you miss the follow-on. The follow-on to all that "wild speculation" is diligent effort to evaluate and test. And that, by the way, is also the difference between science and religion. Both make assumptions, but science goes on to test the assumptions, while religion goes on to assume they must be true and make rules about how everybody should react as a consequence.
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Arising_uk
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Arising_uk »

Hi RB,
Richard Baron wrote:I do not know what Bostrom's own intentions were, but he does push us to take seriously the questions that he raises towards the end. We should not rule out our being in a simulation, therefore we should think hard about how ethics would look if we were. We might then draw lessons from that exercise for how ethics should be even if we are not in a simulation, since, as he points out early on, our own experiences do not give us a clue as to whether we are in a simulation. That is, if experiences are the same in or out, maybe (and this is contentious) ethics should be the same.
I'll have to re-read yet again as I missed this ethical bit?
For myself, I think this a modern update of Descartes 'demon' and Putnams 'brain-in-a-vat', et al, with the added tweak at the 'transhumanists' but with the twist that its based upon not wholly unreasonable assumptions about current technological advance and a fairly unreasonable one about 'consciousness', i.e. its algorithmic(although I tend to agree with this one :) ).
If we take the fraction at the bottom of page 5 of the pdf version, fpNH/(fpNH+H) (with bars over N, H that I won't attempt to reproduce even if the software could do it), the top line is the number of human-like experience-sets that are simulated (a set is a life or simulated life), and the bottom line is the number that are simulated plus the number that are real. That bottom line is therefore the total number of experience-sets. So the whole fraction is the proportion of experience-sets that are simulated.

The equation marked (*) at the top of page 6 is the same one, with the H cancelled out and with N expanded to fINI. Then, as he says, the large size of NI means that the proportion of experience-sets that are simulated must be close to 1, unless fp or fI is very small.
Ta. I should have 'plugged-in' some numbers I guess :oops:
Then we come on to the indifference principle. The only information you have concerns the proportion of experience-sets that is simulated. You have no clues in your experience-set to help you. So if you want to believe in a probability that your experience-set is simulated, you should take the proportion as that probability.
Ah! This is what I meant by my burblings about an inference rule. Does this principle come from anywhere, or used elswhere, in philosophy?
My apologies if I have missed your concerns here. I am not sure whether I have understood your questions properly.
I'm not surprised but you have clarified the mess of my thoughts :) Ta again.
Richard Baron
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Re: Simulation Theory

Post by Richard Baron »

Arising_uk wrote:I missed this ethical bit?
Sorry, I was casually extrapolating from what Bostrom says. He does not set out the issue in those terms. But at the bottom of page 10 and the top of page 11, he suggests that we should carry on as normal. I take that to include the ethical aspect of our lives.
Arising_uk wrote:Ah! This is what I meant by my burblings about an inference rule. Does this principle come from anywhere, or used elsewhere, in philosophy?
I would take it to be a general principle of rationality. If you insist on reaching a conclusion, be guided by the evidence you have. In statistics, for example, your best point estimate of the population mean is the sample mean. Of course, it may be more rational to suspend judgement - to say that the uncertainties are so great (in statistics, that the confidence interval is so wide), that you would rather not reach a conclusion. And if we do get into statistical inference (which we don't in Bostrom's paper because we aren't taking samples), it is of course a substantive mathematical result that you should take the sample mean, and the method of just taking the sample value does not extend to all other parameters - not the standard deviation, for example.
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