[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 don't see anything contradictory about it. There's no reason that a simulation that's not of the simulators' past need only contain people incidentally. We can be a simulation without being a simulation created by our descendants.

Personally, if I had the capacity to simulate universes, simulating my ancestors would probably be somewhere down around the twentieth spot on my priorities list, but most of the things I'd be interested in simulating would contain people.

I don't think I would regard simulating the universe as we observe it as ethically acceptable though, and if I were in a position to do so, I would at the very least lodge a protest against anyone who tried.

We can be a simulation without being a simulation created by our descendants.

We can, but there's no reason to think that we are. The simulation argument isn't just 'whoa, we could be living in a simulation' - it's 'here's a compelling anthropic argument that we're living in a simulation'. If we disregard the idea that we're being simulated by close analogues of our own descendants, we lose any reason to think that we're in a simulation, because we can no longer speculate on the motives of our simulators.

0NancyLebovitz13y

Also, simulating one's ancestors would be something that you'd only need to do once, or (more likely) enough times to accommodate different theories. Simulating one's ancestors in what-if scenarios would probably be more common, unless the simulators just don't care about that sort of fun.

14

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

14

14

14

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

14

14