PhilGoetz comments on Pascal's wager re-examined - Less Wrong

-8 Post author: PhilGoetz 05 October 2011 08:43AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (117)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 04 October 2011 09:41:57PM 0 points [-]

I think we can take it that we're not in a multiplayer game, since we don't think that we're players. It's possible that players would agree to have their memories wiped before starting the game, but this seems unlikely.

Anyway, the multiplayer game hypothesis is incompatible with the simulation argument. You need only one large multiplayer game for one universe of players, assuming each player can play only one game at a time.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 05 October 2011 07:45:54AM 2 points [-]

First,in a multiplayer game you still can have more NPCs than players. Players do not show that they are special because it would break the rules / spoil the fun / lead to their player character locked up as insane.

Second, maybe they too find it tedious to control every single muscle of the character body. So they gave some weak - by their standards - AI, and control the character via nudging desires and choices. Have you ever felt that you doubt which of a few decision to chose and then suddenly decide? The player has finally clicked a menu item of a few provided by your intelligence.

Third, for huge number of NPCs relative to number of players you could set up a strategy. Not like a Civilization, but like a Dwarf Fortress or SimCity - some ideas suddenly become commonplace and autonomous agents try to implement them.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 05 October 2011 03:57:36PM *  0 points [-]

The issue is not the ratio of NPCs to players. The issue is the number of players per simulation. If you assume a multiplayer game, you don't need as many simulations, and we no longer assign a high probability to us being in a simulation.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 05 October 2011 04:09:42PM 0 points [-]

A multiplayer game may have a reasonable world limit size, and inter-world movement isn't implemented yet (whether it would be inside one universe, as in Eve Online, or between disjunct universes). So the simultaneous simulation count goes somewhat down, but there are still many and new ones are launched as population grows...

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 October 2011 09:49:36PM *  1 point [-]

In the multiplayer game the players might be different deities not different people.