If there was just one 'real' observer, you'd need full data fidelity for the surface area that observer would experience up close during his/her lifetime, and this cost dominates. Let's say that's S, S ~ 100 km^2.
I feel like this would make you a terrible video game designer :-P. Why should we bother simulating things in full fidelity, all the time, just because they will eventually be seen? The only full-fidelity simulation we should need is the stuff being directly examined. Much rougher algorithms should suffice for things not being directly observed.
Most importantly, you're assuming that all circuitry performs computation, which is clearly impossible.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Does all of the circuitry of the brain perform computation? Over time, yes. The most efficient brain simulations will of course be emulations - circuits that are very similar to the brain but built on much smaller scales on a new substrate.
Heh, my ability to argue is getting worse and worse. You sure you want to continue this thread? What I meant to say (and entirely failed) is that there is an infrastructure cost; we can't expect to compute with every particle, because we need lots of particles to make sure the others stay confined, get instructions, etc. Basically, not all matter can be a bit at the same time.
It is entirely practical to store 1 bit (or more) per molecule.
Again, infrastructure costs. Can you source this (also Lloyd?)?
For the rest, I'm aware of and don't dispute the speeds and densities you mention. What I'm skeptical of is that we have evidence that they are practicable; this was what I was looking for. I don't count previous success of Moore's Law strong evidence of that we will continue getting better at computation until we hit physical limits. I'm particularly skeptical about how well we will ever do on power consumption (partially because it's such a hard problem for us now).
I think this is evil, but I'm not willing to say whether the future intelligences will agree or care.
Evil? Why?
The idea that I did not have to live this life, that some entity or civilization has created the environment in which I've experienced so much misery, and that they will do it again and again makes me shake with impotent rage. I cannot express how much I would rather having never existed. The fact that they would do this and so much worse (because my life is an astoundingly far cry from the worst that people deal with), again, and again, to trillions upon trillions of living, feeling beings...I cannot express my sorrow. It literally brings me to tears.
This is not sadism; or it would be far worse. It is rather a total neglect of care, a relegation of my values in place of historical interest. However, I still consider this evil in the highest degree.
I do not reject the existence of evil, and therefore this provides no evidence against the hypothesis that I am simulated. However, if I believe that I have a high chance of being simulated, I should do all that I can to prevent such an entity from ever coming to exist with such power, on the off chance that I am one not simulated, and able to prevent such evil from unfolding.
Why should we bother simulating things in full fidelity, all the time, just because they will eventually be seen? The only full-fidelity simulation we should need is the stuff being directly examined. Much rougher algorithms should suffice for things not being directly observed.
Of course you're on the right track here - and I discussed spatially variant fidelity simulation earlier. The rough surface area metric was a simplification of storage/data generation costs, which is a separate issue than computational cost.
If you want the most bare-bones effici...
Many folk here on LW take the simulation argument (in its more general forms) seriously. Many others take Singularitarianism1 seriously. Still others take Tegmark cosmology (and related big universe hypotheses) seriously. But then I see them proceed to self-describe as atheist (instead of omnitheist, theist, deist, having a predictive distribution over states of religious belief, et cetera), and many tend to be overtly dismissive of theism. Is this signalling cultural affiliation, an attempt to communicate a point estimate, or what?
I am especially confused that the theism/atheism debate is considered a closed question on Less Wrong. Eliezer's reformulations of the Problem of Evil in terms of Fun Theory provided a fresh look at theodicy, but I do not find those arguments conclusive. A look at Luke Muehlhauser's blog surprised me; the arguments against theism are just not nearly as convincing as I'd been brought up to believe2, nor nearly convincing enough to cause what I saw as massive overconfidence on the part of most atheists, aspiring rationalists or no.
It may be that theism is in the class of hypotheses that we have yet to develop a strong enough practice of rationality to handle, even if the hypothesis has non-negligible probability given our best understanding of the evidence. We are becoming adept at wielding Occam's razor, but it may be that we are still too foolhardy to wield Solomonoff's lightsaber Tegmark's Black Blade of Disaster without chopping off our own arm. The literature on cognitive biases gives us every reason to believe we are poorly equipped to reason about infinite cosmology, decision theory, the motives of superintelligences, or our place in the universe.
Due to these considerations, it is unclear if we should go ahead doing the equivalent of philosoraptorizing amidst these poorly asked questions so far outside the realm of science. This is not the sort of domain where one should tread if one is feeling insecure in one's sanity, and it is possible that no one should tread here. Human philosophers are probably not as good at philosophy as hypothetical Friendly AI philosophers (though we've seen in the cases of decision theory and utility functions that not everything can be left for the AI to solve). I don't want to stress your epistemology too much, since it's not like your immortal soul3 matters very much. Does it?
Added: By theism I do not mean the hypothesis that Jehovah created the universe. (Well, mostly.) I am talking about the possibility of agenty processes in general creating this universe, as opposed to impersonal math-like processes like cosmological natural selection.
Added: The answer to the question raised by the post is "Yes, theism is wrong, and we don't have good words for the thing that looks a lot like theism but has less unfortunate connotations, but we do know that calling it theism would be stupid." As to whether this universe gets most of its reality fluid from agenty creators... perhaps we will come back to that argument on a day with less distracting terminology on the table.
1 Of either the 'AI-go-FOOM' or 'someday we'll be able to do lots of brain emulations' variety.
2 I was never a theist, and only recently began to question some old assumptions about the likelihood of various Creators. This perhaps either lends credibility to my interest, or lends credibility to the idea that I'm insane.
3 Or the set of things that would have been translated to Archimedes by the Chronophone as the equivalent of an immortal soul (id est, whatever concept ends up being actually significant).