RE: New website: The Simulation Argument

From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Sun Dec 02 2001 - 16:25:33 MST


I don't quite understand Nick's disproof of this transhumanist idea. I
thought that I understood the paper, but I don't understand Nick's
conclusion as stated in the paper and below.

Could someone please explain it, preferably in monosylables? And type slow.

Emlyn
(Thanks!)

> Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> >At 10:38 PM 12/1/01 -0500, Nick wrote:
> >
> > >It follows that the
> > > transhumanist dogma that there is a significant
> chance that we
> >will one day
> > > become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations
> is false, unless
> >we are
> > > currently living in a simulation.
> >
> >But that is *not* a `dogma'--an obligatory tenet of an
> >authoritative/authoritarian belief system. It's an opinion
> or hunch, one
> >held as being of high probability by many transhumanists.
>
> I'm being slightly provocative :-) I will think about
> changing that term in
> a future version, but the main point is that this commonly
> held belief
> among transhumanists is false.
>
>
> Nick Bostrom
> Department of Philosophy, Yale University
> New Haven, CT 06520 | Phone: (203) 432-1663 | Fax: (203) 432-7950
> Homepage: http://www.nickbostrom.com
>

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