The last to know: The Simulationist Argument

[elfs]

Important technological and cultural paradigm shifts usually come out of nowhere: some tiny subculture that suddenly grabs an important mindshare of the population, then the media, and finally the legislature.

For a long time, The Simulationist Argument has been floating around the transhumanist community. It goes something like this: in the near future, our ability to simulate reality for a single individual will be complete. Touch, taste, sight, smell, and sound-- the inputs of reality-- will be replicable to a sufficient degree that the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Once we acheive the capacity to do that once, we acheive the capacity to do it over and over again: all you need then is the infrastructure and energy to pull it off.

Nick Bostrom then posited the idea that once we've got that capacity, the creatives will go all-out and create simulations of all kinds of strange things: World of Warcraft and Second Life are just the beginning of simulation worlds. But one genre of simulation will be ancestral: we'll want to visit the world as best as we recall it from, oh, let's say the Nixon era through until the Singularity.

Over time, and given the amount of resources a properly matrioshka'd solar system can produce, it's reasonable to believe that there would be far more simulations of reality than there would be one, uh, "real reality," the substrate on which all of these simulations run. They don't even have to be comprehensive: they don't have to run a complete simulation of the universe, just enough to fill in the perceptual needs of the individuals.

So here's the kicker: if at some time it will be possible to run a signficant number of Matrix-like simulations of reality within the context of an ordinary universe, then the likelihood that we are already running within such a simulation is extremely high.

The Simulationist Argument hit the New York Times this morning. I wonder what the literati will make of it.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Yet if we do not know that we are living in a simulation -- indeed, do not know whether or not our culture will ever gain the power to run such simulations -- it behooves us to live our lives on the assumption that they are real and singular.

*kicks a rock*

Thus, Berkeley, I refute thee! :D

[amberite2112.livejournal.com]

"So here's the kicker: if at some time it will be possible to run a signficant number of Matrix-like simulations of reality within the context of an ordinary universe, then the likelihood that we are already running within such a simulation is extremely high."

for a really good treatment of that idea, see the movie "the thirteenth floor". it came out in the same year as the matrix, but because of having no particular special effects, and focusing more on the effects of this on one or two people, telling the story slowly, sank out of sight rather quickly. there was no major, explosive violence in this movie, either, which may also have led to its falling off the radar. the scope of imagination of this movie was not evident to me till, well, that would be spoiling, and i won't do that.
i do hope you get a chance to see it, and enjoy it when you do.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Yes, The Thirteenth Floor was great, because it followed the implications of its assumptions to their logical conclusion. Another great story about (in part) the possibilities of a sufficiently complex simulated reality is John C. Wright's Golden Age sf novel trilogy, which includes an example of a simple simulated world that grows beyond its creator's original intentions.

[kyriani.livejournal.com]

I always assume in a modern matrix-like simulation scenario I would have a bit more control over my (virtual) reality than I have over my current (real?) reality. At least thats the way I would design the system. I'm sure I would be dealing with the same issues, but in a more forgiving environment. Its what I would really want a virtual reality environment for, ultimately, for forcing myself to work through something I can't deal with in real life.

[fallenpegasus]

The simulationist argument isn't that we are really actually people out there. We are WoW AI creatures.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't assume control. Control requires a conscious level of knowledge of what would be best / have the highest utility for a person, and then the knowledge to implement it. What I would expect, if this were a simulated reality, either it would be better adapted to me or I would be better adapted to it.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

Remember the quote from The Matrix? The first version allowed people to do whatever they wanted, and as a result, whole crops failed. That was why they redesigned it to be like the late 20th century. People fail to assume they were anywhere they could have that kind of major control over the system, and so they don't tend to become aware of it.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

the creatives will go all-out and create simulations of all kinds of strange things

So... they would reject our reality and substitute their own? ;)

I think that because of that very fact, the liklihood that we are currently living in such a simulation is exceedingly low to nonexistant. Otherwise you'd have some very creative friend who would come by your house one day and say "Hey man, lookit what *I* can do!" and then whisk you off into BubbleWorld or something like that.

[fallenpegasus]

That's only if the people in the "more real" substrate layer are running around as a "Player Character".

If this is a "fishbowl simulation", and non of the WoW AI creatures (thats us) have access to the simulation API, then no, we won't have people whisking off to BubbleWorld.

[cyber-pagan.livejournal.com]

What you describe is a voluntary system. Like buying the latest gee whiz software. But what you end with is the possibility that we are in an involuntary sim, like the matrix. But there is a third possibility, that we are PART of the sim, and don't really exist at all.

[fallenpegasus]

That was the point. "We" don't have any existance or presense or even standing in the substrate reality that is executing the simulation of our own.

We are basically WoW AI creatures.

The question is, are their any Player Characters running around, or is this universe a fishbowl, and the "real people" are peering in thru a debugging / display interface?

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

But there is a third possibility, that we are PART of the sim, and don't really exist at all.

Then we would exist at the reality-level of the sim. That isn't the same as "not existing at all."

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

If we're in a simulation, oour simulation includes the history.

And the Bible.

[mundens.livejournal.com]

Which may merely be emergent properties of running the simulation for long enough, or it maybe a carefully constructed original substrate started around about when Bishop Usher said it was. Or later.

Maybe the bible is the revealed "word" of the original sysadmin? :)

One of the lovely ideas from The Matrix was that the original Matrix was a paradise, only it was too good for the humans to believe it, so they made it less paradise-like so we could accept it. The parallels with Eden were lovely, I thought.

It also reminds me of the sim in Red Dwarf, known as "Better Than Life", in which the protagonist proved to himself he was stuck in the sim by dropping buttered toast multiple times and having it always land butter-side up. Of course, he was able to do that because he was a PC, and knew what the "real" world was like.

An integral AI would probably would not have the knowledge to make that comparison.

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

It doesn't take much looking to find details about the reality I inhabit that are both tough to simulate and seemingly pointless. For example, just now, before writing this comment, I stared out a window to look at the blue sky and noticed a floater in my eyeball, and in particular the diffraction rings that comprised its image. You just can't do that with ray-tracing; you have to have a wave propagation algorithm, with amplitude and phase data on a nanometer-scale over large regions of space in real time for that to work. Even if you invoke quantum computing, the complexity of the computer required has to be at least as great as the system being modeled.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The strange thing is that quantum physics reveals that our Universe is grainy -- that there is a "resolution limit" to reality. And the strangest thing is the new discovery of "metamaterials," which can do seemingly magical things by messing with the pixels ...

Solipsism

[(Anonymous)]

Solipsism is a very old idea. Variations on it are no more interesting than the original. Its only use is as a rationalization for one's own pychopathology.

Re: Solipsism

[elfs.livejournal.com]

What gives you the idea that this is solipsism?

This isn't solipsism: there is a shared reality. The only difference here is that the shared reality exists on a substrate assumed to be preexist because of creatures no more divine than we are.

It's simply a functional metaphysics with some interesting reasoning behind it, but don't toss out "Oh, it's just solipsism" when Bostrom's argument is anything but solipsistic.

[ewhac.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine, having read this argument, postulated that the best way therefore to make contact with extraterrestrial life was for our planet to advertise leveling-up services (gold farming, character leveling, etc.).

[(Anonymous)]

The limits of our technology to simulate a reality don't apply for two reasons -
First there could be an advance waiting to happen that could blow quantum computing out of the water, and many things have been thought impossible then become common. Supersonic flight for one. Second even if we can't simulate a reality due to the simulation's complexity needing to be equal to that of the reality it simulates what makes you think our universe's laws apply to the universe outside should we be in a simulation? Or that this might not be a way of preventing us from nesting realities if they would find it undesireable for whatever purpose they had.

I don't think you can rationally prove or disprove this theory, and if you truly think about how it works it just makes your head hurt.

As to gold farming and levelling services, rofl I like the idea.