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elfsImportant 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.
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.
