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Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

scottaaronson.com

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Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#131

Post by TelmoMenezes »

GuiA wrote: post #107
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #89

Something that most people never consider in these discussions: If you accept the hypothesis that mind is generated by a computation, and that this computation is finite, then the same computation that produces "you" can be performed in different places and at different times. The same computation can be performed inside a simulation, inside a simulation inside a simulation and so on. Whatever environment around you…

Except that your mind is not an isolatable computation - it is influenced by your body, which is in turn influenced by its immediate environment, in turn influenced by the rest of the universe in an ever expanding nested fashion. So if you want to simulate yourself, you have to simulate the universe.

> Except that your mind is not an isolatable computation

This doesn't follow from what you write next. You are saying that the computation needed to generate a mind is very large. I agree that it might be the case, and I would say that nobody knows how large. Do you really need to simulate in minute detail what is going on in every distant galaxy? Seems doubtful, but who knows?

All I'm saying is that if this computation is finite, and the universe-in-the-large-sense (entire timeline, branches if you accept the Many World Interpretation, and so on) is infinite, then infinity wins.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#132

Post by intended »

Ntrails wrote: post #115
GuiA wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that your mind is not an isolatable computation - it is influenced by your body, which is in turn influenced by its immediate environment, in turn influenced by the rest of the universe in an ever expanding nested fashion. So if you want to simulate yourself, you have to simulate the universe.

> So if you want to simulate yourself, you have to simulate the universe. This doesn't gel with me. I go back to brain in a jar stuff - I'm just streaming packets of data from nerves and processing them. Whether the "body" I'm responding to is real is pretty hard to guarentee.

The simple and scientific answer is that you are not a brain in a jar.

Its a mind body system, as much if not more than it is just a mind + body.

The you who makes decisions on a hungry stomach, is a very different person who makes decisions when satiated, and so on.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#133

Post by TelmoMenezes »

GuiA wrote: post #125
Ntrails wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you want to simulate yourself, you have to simulate the universe. This doesn't gel with me. I go back to brain in a jar stuff - I'm just streaming packets of data from nerves and processing them. Whether the "body" I'm responding to is real is pretty hard to guarentee.

There's evidence that your brain is influenced by e.g. certain chemicals in your bloodstream produced by gut bacteria. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/gut-bacte... So the brain in a jar model where the only interface with the real world is through nerves is most probably wrong; now your jar also needs a stomach with a fully developed microbial ecosystem. And that's just one recent mechanism that wa…

Yes, but it doesn't follow that the computation necessary to generate the mind is infinite or impossible to isolate.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#134

Post by wallace_f »

The author writes about exceptional attendees at the conference:

>...from Lenny Susskind and Don Page and [and..., and..., and...]

This is what I don't like about academia. It's equivalent to "shout outs" you see 12-year-olds do in Call of Duty tournament games.

I know everyone knows academia is filled with politics, but if scientists are going to circle jerk, please jerk on ideas, not each other.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#135

Post by caf »

tbabb wrote: post #25
snowwrestler wrote: post #6

Here's what I wrote in a comment here last year about the Bostrom simulation argument specifically: The simulation argument, going back to Bostrom, relies on two flaws. 1) It leverages our optimism to corrupt our understanding of statistics and logic. It essentially says that if you think humanity doesn't destroy itself, then our descendants will probably try to simulate us. But of course if you just take a statistic…

If you tweak Bostrom's argument, it can sort of make sense. For example, if you believe a simulated human mind is "just as good" as a real mind, then it might make sense to colonize uninhabitable planets by building simulations there. It might even be easiest to colonize all planets this way. And if you suppose a future with lots of successful planet colonization, then there could easily be a lot more simulated minds…

An answer to that might be: he is supposing only the existence of an outermost world, and we know that such a world must exist because either it is identical to our own universe or our universe exists as some level of inner world within it.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#136

Post by tempodox »

pilingual wrote: post #33

It's amusing that the point of the blog post was how refreshing it was to be at the Stanford conference with bright minds talking about stimulating new topics; yet the comments here on HN continue to discuss the tired topic.

You couldn't simulate that if you tried.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#137

Post by cousin_it »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #89

Something that most people never consider in these discussions: If you accept the hypothesis that mind is generated by a computation, and that this computation is finite, then the same computation that produces "you" can be performed in different places and at different times. The same computation can be performed inside a simulation, inside a simulation inside a simulation and so on. Whatever environment around you…

The meaningful version of the question "am I in a simulation?" is "how likely am I to observe meddling from simulation masters, as opposed to observing business as usual according to the laws of physics?" The only reasonable answer seems to be "very unlikely, because I haven't observed such meddling before". That reasoning depends only on induction, so it works regardless of how many copies of me exist.

(BTW, I'm pretty convinced that I'm a chorus of infinitely many copies, spread out through space/time/branches/simulations/etc and splitting further on every observation. That seems almost trivially true if you believe the mind is a computation and not something more mystical. The interesting questions are about the relative measure of different copies, and so far it seems like copies in outlandish situations have low measure.)

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#138

Post by saiya-jin »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #93
Swizec wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part where "is this a simulation" becomes an uninteresting question is when you ask "Does it matter?". Would answering the question of whether we're in a simulation have any impact on your behavior, thoughts, and actions? Probably not. So what does it matter? My high school physics teacher once said that, if we ever find something that is outside the universe, then we will obviously be smart enough to call that t…

The part where "is this a simulation" becomes an uninteresting question is when you ask "Does it matter?". Would answering the question of whether we're in a simulation have any impact on your behavior, thoughts, and actions? Probably not. So what does it matter? About the simulation hypothesis in particular, there are still some interesting conversations to be had. For example, you could go into detail about the pro…

I have to agree with poster above - these are academic discussions that changes nothing for real life in real world out there (if you believe it is). not everybody has to overthink every aspect of life and existence. some of us just enjoy the ride while it lasts ;)

and btw there is no higher reason for existence, just existence itself. but most people are unable to accept this (and not get depressed/desperate/suicidal), especially if they were brought up in religious environment.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#139

Post by kobeya »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #89

Something that most people never consider in these discussions: If you accept the hypothesis that mind is generated by a computation, and that this computation is finite, then the same computation that produces "you" can be performed in different places and at different times. The same computation can be performed inside a simulation, inside a simulation inside a simulation and so on. Whatever environment around you…

That argument sidesteps the fundamental issue of whether one should be concerned with an abstract specification of a computation (a recording of the connectome of your brain, for example) or a specific instance of it (YOU, to not put too fine a point on it).

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#140

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

moxious wrote: post #109
planetjones wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. Humans have imagination and some imagine we are part of a simulation. Yes it can't be proven but those who think of what the possibilities may be shouldn't 'get out'.

I have no problem with speculation and wondering, just as long as it's identified as this...it's just that this is a really different activity than making statements about reality. When those activities get confused the audience gets confused, and soon after come proposals about what real people should do in the real world based on that speculation and then we're off the rails

There's an entire universe (metaphorically, if not literally) of unusual experiences which are routinely dismissed by materialists because they "know" they can't possibly happen, and therefore it's completely self-evident that anyone who claims they do happen is either deluded or dishonest.

Therefore no evidence exists, and no investigation is required.

This is not actually a scientific approach to reality at all. It may be economically expedient - resources are limited, after all - but let's not confuse tribal scientific tradition with absolute empirical certainty.

It's even less scientific to assume that the physics of the world in which we might be being modelled is identical to the physics of this reality. That make as much sense as claiming that we can't possibly live in a modelled world because of Lorentz invariance.

I don't think we can even be sure that the math and logic of a possible super-reality is identical to this one. You can't have a universe without rules, and where did the rules for this universe come from? It's a deeper and more interesting question than wondering where energy, matter, and spacetime came from, because it implies that either math exists in some kind of magical eternal Platonic way, or there are processes we don't know about which somehow generate math and logic - before things get real.

The point being that speculation and research are far from useless, either scientifically or philosophically.

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