From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Tue Aug 05 2003 - 10:52:49 MDT
Anders wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 04:36:02AM -0400, Wei Dai wrote:
>>
>> So we have one prominent extropian telling us to live for today, and
>> another one telling us to live for the far future. Who is right? It
>> occurs to me that we should take a probability-weighted average of
>> the two positions. If the simulation argument is correct, there is a
>> tiny probability that we live in root reality and what we do today
>> affects an astronomical number of potential future individuals
>> (including all future simulated individuals), and a near 1
>> probability that we live in a simulation and our actions affect
>> relatively few people. We need to take both possibilities into
>> account when making decisions. When we do, I think the two positions
>> cancel out somewhat and we can live a more "normal" life.
>
> Assume there are n people living within the average sim (perhaps
> around 10^10 or so) and N people living in the root reality. Root
> reality runs X sims, making the total amount of lives in it N+nX.
> The probability of living in a sim (if you are randomly selected) is
> nX/(N+nX). So if you don't know where you live, the expected number
> of people to be utilitarian about (all people in the "universe"
> you can reach) is n^2 X/(N+nX) + N^2 /(N+nX).
>
> If X is small the second term will dominate, as well as if
> n sqrt(X) << N. In this case we will likely live in root reality and
> should act that way. If we have reason to believe that n sqrt(X) >>
> N, then we should act more like sims.
>
> Can we estimate N and X? A basic (and minimal) guess of the future
> superciv would be something on the order of an M-brain. Robert
> calculated that it could do an ancestor sim in 1e-5 cpu seconds,
> which presumably has n=10^11 or so. It could likely sustain around
> 1e16 human-level entities, so N=1e16 if all activity is used for
> beings. If the fraction f of resources is used for sims, we get
> N=(1-f)10^16 and X=f 10^5. But these are numbers per second; if we
> assume T repetitions of this we get X = f T 10^5, N=(1-f)10^16
> (since the entities are likely immortal and do not depend on T). T
> is on the order of trillions of years, so we set T=1e19
>
> We get
> 10^27 f T /((1-f)10^16+f T 10^16) + (1-f)^2 10^32 /(10^16(1-f+fT))
> = 10^11 fT/(1-f+fT) + (1-f)^2 10^16/(1-f+fT)
> = 1e30 f/(1-f+f1e19) + (1-f)^2 1e16 /(1-f+f1e19)
> ~= 1e11 + 1e-3 (assuming f >> 1e-19)
>
> So the answer seems to be that we should behave like sims. But this
> is largely based on the idea that the M-brain inhabitants (N) are
> just immortal - if they have generations shifting, then they also
> get a sizeable T factor and they will be dominant - hence morality
> should be root reality oriented.
### I wonder what would happen if you tried to take into account the
inflationary model of our universe's creation - say, if there is a
continuous front of inflation producing a bubble, then the volume of space
freshly produced would be much higher than the volume of space produced a
longer time ago. The amount of fresh galaxies, with root reality-dwelling
civilizations and no sims would be possibly higher than the volume of space
with older races and simulations, for any point in time since the initiation
of the inflation.
If you add to it the uncertainties about the amount of resources that are
going to be used for simulation rather than root-reality experience (to give
an answer here you need an advanced course in posthuman psychology, maybe
even applied theology), the number of orders of magnitude we have to take
into account in trying to answer the reality/simulation question becomes
totally unmanageable.
Rafal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Aug 05 2003 - 08:01:40 MDT