I haven't been able to read the "Are You Living in a Simulation?" paper
yet (can't locate www.nickbostrom.com) but have some comments on
Samantha's comments...
Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com> wrote:
> However, I find it interesting that now and then in
> every culture there are those who claim to have contacted or
> been contacted by that outside this world/sim. If we were in a
> sim then a lot of systems of spirituality at least in their
> esoteric details could be an attempt to express the nature of
> this world as "illusion" or derivative from some other reality.
Consider we may not be in a perfect sim. If we were in a perfect sim,
then I wouldn't expect such information to leak to humans in such a way
that they could become part of spiritual systems. I also wonder if a
perfect sim would allow people to even consider that they were in a sim.
If we are in an imperfect, or in other ways limited sim, then such leaks
may be the result of tweaking the system.
Perhaps we are helping to make the sim. Simplistically, maybe there's a
'seed sim' which manipulates 'basic' elements like air, earth, water,
fire. These elements aren't broken up into oxygen, carbon, etc, until
someone in the sim 'discovers' them. If the sim is imperfect, then I
would expect the folks running the sim to be observing those people that
are doing scientific experiments to be most closely watched since they
might reveal the nature of the sim. So, when 'oxygen' is 'discovered',
it's made part of the sim (including, perhaps, the past history of the
sim). (Some clues might slip thru, such perhaps as Homeric references to
the 'wine dark sea').
If we consider that the sim is made only for people of earth, then
exploring and colonizing space might be a way to probe the limits of the
sim. Until humans observed the earth from space, there'd be little need
to simulate the earth itself as a planet (unless of course the
astronauts are in a sim within the sim). So the next time a colony ship
full of thousands of people leaves for Mars or whatever, take off your
eyes off the TV screen you're expected to be glued to and take a really
really good look at everyday reality and see if anything wierd happens.
> Another possibility I toy with is that when this world goes into
> Singularity we need in good faith to make a place for those who
> do not want to be in the Singularity for whatever reason. They
> want and/or need to live in a pre-Singularity world.
Given advances in computer graphics, it seems at least possible to me
that we may be able to simulate a singularity before we actually get
one. So maybe those who want to remain in a pre-singularity world will
somehow upload all others into a post-singularity sim.
-Mike
-- ====================================================================== Michael Wiik Principal Messagenet Communications Research Washington DC Area Internet and WWW Consultants http://messagenet.com mwiik@messagenet.com ======================================================================
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