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UmamiSalami comments on Open thread, 21-27 April 2014 - Less Wrong
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Sorry if this has topic has been beaten to death already here. I was wondering if anyone here has seen this paper and has an opinion on it.
The abstract: "This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed."
Quite simple, really, but I found it extremely interesting.
http://people.uncw.edu/guinnc/courses/Spring11/517/Simulation.pdf
Discussed occasionally: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=%22simulation%20argument%22%20site%3Alesswrong.com
The argument falls apart once you use UDT instead of naive anthropic reasoning: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jv4/open_thread_1117_march_2014/aoym
Maybe I am unfamiliar with the specifics of simulated reality. But I don't understand how it is assumed (or even probable, given Occam's Razor) that if we are simulated then there are copies of us. What is implausible about the possibility that I'm in a simulation and I'm the only instance of me that exists?
In the Tegmark IV multiverse all consistent possibilities exist so there is always a universe in which you are not in a simulation. The only meaningful question is what universes you should pay more attention to.
See also this.
I've seen it. It seemingly ignores the possibility that humanity will not go extinct [EDIT: in the near future, possibly into the tens of megayears] but will also never reach a 'posthuman state' capable of doing arbitrary ancestor simulations.
I think "extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage" covers that also.
True - I guess I was reading it in the context of the usual singulatarian assumptions of quick take-off.