Re: effing the ineffable

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Jul 13 2001 - 00:07:41 MDT


I think Chris Hibbert wrote:

> I realize that it's possible that that is how this reality is
> implemented. At this point, I don't see any reason to lend more
> credence to that hypothesis than to the one that suggests that
> there's an omnipotent, omniscient being who doesn't interfere
> in our affairs very often.

You need to be much more rigorous in your thinking.
If one agrees that an "omnipotent, omniscient" 'being' violates
known laws of physics, then it isn't even worth discussing (while
we are at our current level of development). What one wants to
discuss are *what* are the capabilities and capacities of a
full nanotech-enabled superintelligence relative to our level
of civilization such that they could appear to be quasi-omnipotent
or quasi-omniscient such that they could interfere with our
affairs undetectably at a high frequency.

Then Brian Atkins wrote:
> You might want to ask Nick Bostrom about that... he seems to find
> evidence supporting the life-in-sim conclusion. If you found out you
> were living in a sim, would that bother you?

I'll one-trump Brian's comments by pointing out some unpublished
arguments by Robert Freitas (that ignore Bayesian probabilities
regarding ancestor sims) suggest that with we are living in
a simulation at a higher than 99.9999% probability.

While these arguments are open to debate (because the sims
could be arranged to suggest that the physical computational
capacity of the 'simed' universe is actually greater or less than
that that is really available) it raises the point that must
be considered that if the real universe has sim capacity >=
the capacity of our perceived universe, then the probability
that this reality is a sim has to merit serious consideration.

Robert



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