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ike comments on Open thread Jan. 5-11, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: polymathwannabe 05 January 2015 12:48PM

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Comment author: ike 05 January 2015 10:10:56PM *  9 points [-]

I suppose the best thing to do is to tell you to shut up now, right?

This (your hypothesis) appears wrong, however. Assuming the simulation is accurate, the fact that we can think about the simulation hypothesis means that whatever is being simulated would also think about it. If there's an accuracy deficiency, it's no more likely to manifest itself around the simulation-hypothesis than any other difference in accuracy.

Although that depends on how we come by the hypothesis. If we come by it like our world did, which is philosophers and other people making argument without any evidence, then there's no special reason for us to diverge from the simulated, but if we would have evidence (like the kind proposed in http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847 or similar proposals) then we would have a reason to believe that we weren't an exact simulation. In that case, we'd also have evidence of the simulation and not been shut down, so we'd know that your theory is wrong. OTOH, if you're correct we shouldn't try to test the simulation hypothesis experimentally.