Query the LessWrong Hivemind

D_Malik

Often, there are questions you want to know the answers to. You want other people's opinions, because knowing the answer isn't worth the time you'd have to spend to find it, or you're unsure whether your answer is right.

LW seems like a good place to ask these questions because the people here are pretty rational. So, in this thread: You post a top-level comment with some question. Other people reply to your comment with their answers. You upvote answers that you agree with and questions whose answers you'd like to know.

A few (mostly obvious) guidelines:

For questions:

Your question should probably be in one of the following forms:
- Asking for the probability some proposition is true.
- Asking for a confidence interval.
Be specific. Don't ask when the singularity will happen unless you define 'singularity' to reasonable precision.
If you have several questions, post each separately, unless they're strongly related.

For answers:

Give what the question asks for, be it a probability or a confidence interval or something else. Try to give numbers.
Give some indication of how good your map is, i.e why is your answer that? If you want, give links.
If you think you know the answer to your own question, you can post it.
If you want to, give more information. For instance, if someone asks whether it's a good idea to brush their teeth, you can include info about flossing.
If you've researched something well but don't feel like typing up a long justification of your opinions, that's fine. Rather give your opinion without detailed arguments than give nothing at all. You can always flesh your answer out later, or never.

This thread is primarily for getting the hivemind's opinions on things, not for debating probabilities of propositions. Debating is also okay, though, especially since it will help question-posters to make up their minds.

Don't be too squeamish about breaking the question-answer format.

This is a followup to my comment in the open thread.

A few (mostly obvious) guidelines:

For questions:

Your question should probably be in one of the following forms:
- Asking for the probability some proposition is true.
- Asking for a confidence interval.
Be specific. Don't ask when the singularity will happen unless you define 'singularity' to reasonable precision.
If you have several questions, post each separately, unless they're strongly related.

For answers:

Give what the question asks for, be it a probability or a confidence interval or something else. Try to give numbers.
Give some indication of how good your map is, i.e why is your answer that? If you want, give links.
If you think you know the answer to your own question, you can post it.
If you want to, give more information. For instance, if someone asks whether it's a good idea to brush their teeth, you can include info about flossing.
If you've researched something well but don't feel like typing up a long justification of your opinions, that's fine. Rather give your opinion without detailed arguments than give nothing at all. You can always flesh your answer out later, or never.

Don't be too squeamish about breaking the question-answer format.

This is a followup to my comment in the open thread.

On your argument, there is little need to flawlessly compute the universe. If a civilization sees that their laws are inconsistent with their observations, then they will change their laws to reflect their observations. Because there is no way to conclusively prove your laws are correct, it is impossible for a simulation to state that "Our laws are correct, therefore there is a flaw in the universe". Furthermore, on the probability that our ancestors have obtained the computing power of running a simulation:

An estimate for the power of a (non-quantum) planet sized computer is 10^42 (R. J. Bradbury, “Matrioshka Brains.”) operation per second. Its hard to pin down how many atoms there are in the universe, but lets put it at around 10^80, and with 128 bits needed to hold each coordinate, to the degree of one pm, and another for its movement, that puts it at around 10^83 operations to run a simulation.

So at first it looks impractical to compute a universe, but this computer need to perform its operations in a seconds time. (Practical value of a computer that runs infinitely slowly), it can compute its values infinitely slowly. And so, no matter the size of the universe, a computer can simulate it. And because it can compute its values infinitely slowly, it can compute an infinite number of universes.

So in conclusion, there is a very low probability that a civilization evolves to the point where it can simulate a universe, and the motives are also dubious. But, because of that fact that if it does, there is no upper bound to the number of universes the civilization can simulate, and so we are almost certainly in a simulated universe, because the probability of us being in a simulated universe is determined by n/p, where p is the probability of a universe being simulated, and n is the number of universes being simulated, that ends up being a probability of infinity, and so we are most likely part of a simulated universe.

You seem to be assuming that we'd be simulated by a universe which is physically like our own.

Our simulations, at least, are of much simpler scenarios than what we're living in.

I'm not sure what properties a universe would need to have to make simulating our universe relatively cheap and easy. I'm guessing at smaller and faster fundamental particles.

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