[Paper] On the 'Simulation Argument' and Selective Scepticism

Jonathan Birch recently published an interesting critique of Bostrom's simulation argument. Here's the abstract:

Nick Bostrom’s ‘Simulation Argument’ purports to show that, unless we are confident that advanced ‘posthuman’ civilizations are either extremely rare or extremely rarely interested in running simulations of their own ancestors, we should assign significant credence to the hypothesis that we are simulated. I argue that Bostrom does not succeed in grounding this constraint on credence. I first show that the Simulation Argument requires a curious form of selective scepticism, for it presupposes that we possess good evidence for claims about the physical limits of computation and yet lack good evidence for claims about our own physical constitution. I then show that two ways of modifying the argument so as to remove the need for this presupposition fail to preserve the original conclusion. Finally, I argue that, while there are unusual circumstances in which Bostrom’s selective scepticism might be reasonable, we do not currently find ourselves in such circumstances. There is no good reason to uphold the selective scepticism the Simulation Argument presupposes. There is thus no good reason to believe its conclusion.

The paper is behind a paywall, but I have uploaded it to my shared Dropbox folder, here.

EDIT: I emailed the author and am glad to see that he's decided to participate in the discussion below.

Jonathan Birch recently published an interesting critique of Bostrom's simulation argument. Here's the abstract:

Nick Bostrom’s ‘Simulation Argument’ purports to show that, unless we are confident that advanced ‘posthuman’ civilizations are either extremely rare or extremely rarely interested in running simulations of their own ancestors, we should assign significant credence to the hypothesis that we are simulated. I argue that Bostrom does not succeed in grounding this constraint on credence. I first show that the Simulation Argument requires a curious form of selective scepticism, for it presupposes that we possess good evidence for claims about the physical limits of computation and yet lack good evidence for claims about our own physical constitution. I then show that two ways of modifying the argument so as to remove the need for this presupposition fail to preserve the original conclusion. Finally, I argue that, while there are unusual circumstances in which Bostrom’s selective scepticism might be reasonable, we do not currently find ourselves in such circumstances. There is no good reason to uphold the selective scepticism the Simulation Argument presupposes. There is thus no good reason to believe its conclusion.

The paper is behind a paywall, but I have uploaded it to my shared Dropbox folder, here.

EDIT: I emailed the author and am glad to see that he's decided to participate in the discussion below.

I think it's correct that this makes the simulation argument goes through, but I don't believe the "trivial". As far as I can see, you need the simulation code to literally keep track of will humans notice this -- my intuition is that this would require AGI-grade code (without that I expect you would either have noticeable failures or you would have something that is so conservative about its decisions of what not to simulate that it will end up simulating the entire atmosphere on a quantum level because when and where hurricanes occur influences the variables it's interested in), and I suppose you could call this squabbles over terminology but AGI-grade code is above my threshold for "trivial".

[ETA: Sorry, you did say "for a superintelligence" -- I guess I need to reverse my squabble over words.]

As far as I can see, you need the simulation code to literally keep track of will humans notice this

Not necessarily - when you build a particle accelerator you're setting up lots of matter to depend on the exact details of small amounts of matter, which might be detectable on a much more automatic level. But in any case, most plausible simulators have AGI-grade code anyway.

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[Paper] On the 'Simulation Argument' and Selective Scepticism

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[Paper] On the 'Simulation Argument' and Selective Scepticism

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