Are You a Sim?
9:49 AM PDT, August 15, 2007, updated at 2:59 PM PDT, August 16, 2007
In a paper that validates decades of hazy, dorm-room theorizing, Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom has put forth the argument that reality for you, me, and the rest of us might just be one big computer simulation.
A New York Times article explains his argument, which states that as human technology advances, computer power will eventually eclipse all of the combined processing power of human brains. He says that these "posthumans" might want to use this power to run ancestor simulations to better understand themselves and their history or maybe just for fun. These simulated ancestors would have no idea that they were just simulations. Bostrom's gut tells him there's about a 20% chance we are in that simulation right now. That's not a real fat chance because of the other possibilities in his argument. An abstract from his website lays it out like this: ...At least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed. But how could we ever know whether or not we're in one of those simulations? Bostrom says that when we get to the point where we have the computer power -- which may be in as little as 50 years -- and we start running these ancestor simulations ourselves, chances are pretty good that No. 3 is true since doing so proves that Nos. 1 and 2 are false. --Porter B. Hall |
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