gwern comments on Open Thread: May 2009 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (204)
OK, what if we accept the simulation hypothesis, and we further say that the advanced civilizations are simulating their ancestors? Then we'd expect our simulators to be evolved or derived from humans in some way. It's unlikely we'll change our ideas of fun and entertainment too much, as those are terminal values - we value them for their own sake. This gives us some pretty strong priors, based on just what we know of current human players...
I'm not sure how to interpret that though. Based on players of the Sims, say, we would expect tons of either sadistic deaths by fire in bathrooms and starvation in the kitchen, or people with perfectly lovely lives and great material success. Since we don't observe many of the former, that'd suggest that if we're in a simulation, it's not being run by human-like entities who intervene.