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jacob_cannell comments on Updating towards the simulation hypothesis because you think about AI - Less Wrong Discussion

9 Post author: SoerenMind 05 March 2016 10:23PM

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Comment author: jacob_cannell 07 March 2016 08:49:26PM 0 points [-]

Consider three types of universes ...

Your are privileging your hypothesis - there are vastly more types of universes ...

There are universes where life develops and civilizations are abundant, and all of our observations to date are compatible with the universe being filled with advanced civs (which probably become mostly invisible to us given current tech as they approach optimal physical configurations of near zero temperature and tiny size).

The are universes like the above where advanced civs spawn new universes to gain god-like 'magic' anthropic powers, effectively manipulating/rewriting the laws of physics.

Universes in these categories are both more aggressive/capable replicators - they create new universes at a higher rate, so they tend to dominate any anthropic distribution.

And finally, there are considerations where the distribution over simulation observer moments diverges significantly from original observer moments, which tends to complicate these anthropic considerations.

For example, we could live in a universe with lots of civs, but they tend to focus far more simulations on the origins of the first civ or early civs.