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Psychohistorian comments on We are not living in a simulation - Less Wrong
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This proves that we cannot be in a simulation by... assuming we are not in a simulation.
Even granting you all of your premises, everything we know about brains and qualia we know by observing it in this universe. If this universe is in fact a simulation, then what we know about brains and qualia is false. At the very most, your argument shows that we cannot create a simulation. It does not prove that we cannot be in a simulation, because we have no idea what the physics of the real world would be like.
I'm also rather unconvinced as to the truth of your premises. Even if qualia are a phenomenon of the physical brain, that doesn't mean you can't generate a near-identical phenomenon in a different substrate. In general, John Searle has some serious problems when it comes to trying to answer essentially empirical questions with a priori reasoning.
Like pjeby, you're attacking a claim much stronger than the one I've asserted. I didn't claim we cannot be in a simulation. I claimed that if we are in a simulation, then the simulator must be of a sort that Bostrom's argument provides us no reason to suppose is likely to exist.
There's nothing wrong with trying to answer empirical questions with deductive reasoning if your priors are well-grounded. Deductive logic allows me to reliably predict that a banjo will fall if I drop it, even if I have never before observed a falling banjo, because I start with the empirically-acquired prior that, in general, dropped objects fall.
Then the title, "We are not living in a simulation" was rather poorly chosen.
Observation gives you, "on Earth, dropped objects fall." Deduction lets you apply that to a specific hypothetical. You don't have observation backing up the theory you advance in this article. You need, "Only biological brains can have qualia." You have, "Biological brains have qualia." Big difference.
Ultimately, it seems you're trying to prove a qualified universal negative - "Nothing can have qualia, except biological brains (or things in many respects similar)." It is unbelievably difficult to prove such empirical claims. You'd need to try really hard to make something else have qualia, and then if you failed, the most you could conclude is, "It seems unlikely that it is possible for non-biological brains to have qualia." This is what I mean when I disparage Searle; many of his claims require mountains of evidence, yet he thinks he's resolved them from his armchair.
These things are not identical.
So you would assert that we can be in a simulation, but not living in it...?
Try reading it as "the probability that we are living in a simulation is negligibly higher than zero".
I tried it. It didn't help.
No joke -- I'm completely confused: the referent of "it" is not clear to me. Could be the apparent contradiction, could be the title...
Here's what I'm not confused about: (i) your post only argues against Bostrom's simulation argument; (ii) it seems you also want to defend yourself against the charge that your title was poorly chosen (in that it makes a broader claim that has misled your readership); (iii) your defense was too terse to make it into my brain.
dfranke means, I think, that he considers being in a simulation possible, but not likely.
Statement A) "We are not living in a simulation": P(living in a simulation) < 50%
Statement B) "We cannot be in a simulation": P(living in a simulation) ~= 0%
dfranke believes A, but not B.
No, rather:
A) "We are not living in a simulation" = P(living in a simulation) < ε.
B) "we cannot be living in a simulation" = P(living in a simulation) = 0.
I believe A but not B. Think of it analogously to weak vs. strong atheism. I'm a weak atheist with respect to both simulations and God.
Ah, got it. Thanks.
Thanks.
That may be dfranke's intent, but categorically stating something to be the case generally indicates a much higher confidence than 50%. ("If you roll a die, it will come up three or higher.")
That I agree with, though not for reasons brought up here.
Then it's from your title that people might get the impression you're making a stronger claim than you mean to be.