You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

gjm comments on Newcomb, Bostrom, Calvin: Credence and the strange path to a finite afterlife - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: crmflynn 02 November 2015 11:03PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (84)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Lumifer 05 November 2015 05:04:55AM -1 points [-]

Consider a different argument.

Our world is either simulated or not.

If our world is not simulated, there's nothing we do can make it simulated. We can work towards other simulations, but that's not us.

If our world is simulated, we are already simulated and there's nothing we can do to increase our chance of being simulated because it's already so.

Comment author: gjm 05 November 2015 10:02:47AM 2 points [-]

That might be highly relevant[1] if I'd made any argument of the form "If we do X, we make it more likely that we are simulated". But I didn't make any such argument. I said "If societies like ours tend to do X, then it is more likely that we are simulated". That differs in two important ways.

[1] Leaving aside arguments based on exotic decision theories (which don't necessarily deserve to be left aside but are less obvious than the fact that you've completely misrepresented what I said).