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qmotus comments on [LINK] Why Cryonics Makes Sense - Wait But Why - Less Wrong Discussion

15 Post author: Paul 25 March 2016 11:41AM

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Comment author: qmotus 29 March 2016 12:53:14PM 0 points [-]

I don't believe in nested simulverse etc

You mean none of what I mentioned? Why not?

but I feel I should point out that even if some of those things were true waking up one way does not preclude waking up one or more of the other ways in addition to that.

You're right. I should have said "make it more likely", not "make sure".

Comment author: HungryHobo 30 March 2016 01:29:59PM 0 points [-]

Why not?

Same reason I don't believe in god. As yet we have ~zero evidence for being in a simulation.

You're right. I should have said "make it more likely", not "make sure".

Your odds of waking up in the hands of someone extremely unfriendly is unchanged. You're just making it more likely that one fork of yourself might wake up in friendly hands.

Comment author: qmotus 31 March 2016 07:49:30AM 0 points [-]

As yet we have ~zero evidence for being in a simulation.

We have evidence (albeit no "smoking-gun evidence") for eternal inflation, we have evidence for a flat and thus infinite universe, string theory is right now our best guess at what the theory of everything is like; these all predict a multiverse where everything possible happens and where somebody should thus be expected to simulate you.

Your odds of waking up in the hands of someone extremely unfriendly is unchanged. You're just making it more likely that one fork of yourself might wake up in friendly hands.

Well, I think that qualifies. Our language is a bit inadequate for discussing situations with multiple future selves.

Comment author: HungryHobo 31 March 2016 11:04:13AM 1 point [-]

I find that about as convincing as "if you see a watch there must be a watchmaker" style arguments.

There are a number of ways theorized to test if we're in various kinds of simulation and so far they've all turned up negative.

String theory is famously bad at being usable to predict even mundane things even if it is elegant and "flat" is not the same as "infinite".

Comment author: qmotus 31 March 2016 03:38:22PM 0 points [-]

I find that about as convincing as "if you see a watch there must be a watchmaker" style arguments.

I don't see the similarity here.

There are a number of ways theorized to test if we're in various kinds of simulation and so far they've all turned up negative.

Oh?

String theory is famously bad at being usable to predict even mundane things even if it is elegant and "flat" is not the same as "infinite".

It basically makes no new testable predictions right now. Doesn't mean that it won't do so in the future. (I have no opinion about string theory myself, but a lot of physicists do see it as promising. Some don't. As far as I know, we currently know of no good alternative that's less weird.)

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