My sense from talking with Professor Dafoe is that he is primarily interested in recruiting people based on their general aptitude, interest, and dedication to the issue rather than relying heavily on specific educational credentials.

https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/vacancies-for-research-assistants/ It was not up on the website at the time you asked, but it is up now.

I agree with you about the inside / outside view. I also think I agree with you about the characteristics of the simulators in relationship to the simulation.

I think I just have a vaguely different, and perhaps personal, sense of how I would define "divine" and "god." If we are in a simulation, I would not consider the simulators gods. Very powerful people, but not gods. If they tried to argue with me that they were gods because they were made of a lot of organic molecules whereas I was just information in a machine, I would suggested it was a distinction without a difference. Show me the uncaused cause or something outside of physics and we can talk

Sure, but how is that relevant? There are people who want to accelerate the destruction of the world because that would bring in the Messiah faster -- so what?

By analogy, what are some things that decrease my credence in thinking that humans will survive to a “post-human stage.” For me, some are 1) We seem terrible at coordination problems at a policy level, 2) We are not terribly cautious in developing new, potentially dangerous, technology, 3) some people are actively trying to end the world for religious/ideological reasons. So as I learn more about ISIS and its ideology and how it is becoming increasingly popular, since they are literally trying to end the world, it further decreases my credence that we will make it to a post-human stage. I am not saying that my learning information about them is actually changing the odds, just that it is giving me more information with which to make my knowledge of the already-existing world more accurate. It’s Bayesianism.

For another analogy, my credence for the idea that “NYC will be hit by a dirty bomb in the next 20 years” was pretty low until I read about the ideology and methods of radical Islam and the poor containment of nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. My reading about these people’s ideas did not change anything, however, their ideas are causally relevant, and my knowledge of this factor increase my credence of that as a possibility.

For one final analogy, if there is a stack of well-shuffled playing cards in front of me, what is my credence that the bottom card is a queen of hearts? 1/52. Now let’s say I flip the top two cards, and they are a 5 and a king. What is my credence now that the bottom card is a queen of hearts? 1/50. Now let’s say I go through the next 25 cards and none of them are the queen of hearts. What is my credence now that the bottom card is the queen of hearts? 1 in 25. The card at the bottom has not changed. The reality is in place. All I am doing is gaining information which helps me get a sense of location. I do want to clarify though, that I am reasoning with you as a two-boxer. I think one-boxers might view specific instances like this differently. Again, I am agnostic on who is correct for these purposes.

Now to bring it back to the point, what are some obstacles to your credence to thinking you are in a simulation? For me, the easy ones that come to mind are: 1) I do not know if it is physically possible, 2) I am skeptical that we will survive long enough to get the technology, 3) I do not know why people would bother making simulations.

One and two or unchanged by the one-box/Calvinism thing, but when we realize both that there are a lot of one-boxers, and that these one-boxers, when faced with an analogous decision, would almost certainly want to create simulations with pleasant afterlives, then I suddenly have some sense of why #3 might not be an obstacle.

My issue with this phrasing is that these two (and other) types are solely the product of your imagination. We have one (1) known example of intelligent species. That is very much insufficient to start talking about "types" -- one can certainly imagine them, but that has nothing to do with reality.

I think you are reading something into what I said that was not meant. That said, I am still not sure what that was. I can say the exact thing in different language if it helps. “If some humans want to make simulations of humans, it is possible we are in a simulation made by humans. If humans do not want to make simulations of humans, there is no chance that we are in a simulation made by humans.” That was the full extent of what I was saying, with nothing else implied about other species or anything else.

Which new information?

Does the fact that we construct and play video games argue for the claim that we are NPCs in a video game? Does the fact that we do bio lab experiments argue for the claim that we live in a petri dish?

Second point first. How could we be in a petri dish? How could we be NPCs in a video game? How would that fit with other observations and existing knowledge? My current credence is near zero, but I am open to new information. Hit me.

Now the first point. The new information is something like: “When we use what we know about human nature, we have reason to believe that people might make simulations. In particular, the existence of one-boxers who are happy to ignore our ‘common sense’ notions of causality, for whatever reason, and the existence of people who want an afterlife, when combined, suggests that there might be a large minority of people who will ‘act out’ creating simulations in the hope that they are in one.” A LW user sent me a message directing me to this post, which might help you understand my point: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/l18/simulation_argument_meets_decision_theory/

People believing in Islam are very relevant to the chances of the future caliphate. People believing in Islam are not terribly relevant to the chances that in our present we live under the watchful gaze of Allah.

The weird thing about trying to determine good self-locating beliefs when looking at the question of simulations is that you do not get the benefit of self-locating in time like that. We are talking about simulations of worlds/civilizations as they grow and develop into technological maturity. This is why Bostrom called them “ancestor simulations” in the original article (which you might read if you haven’t, it is only 12 pages, and if Bostrom is Newton, I am like a 7th grader half-assing an essay due tomorrow after reading the Wikipedia page.)

As for people believing in Allah making it more likely that he exists, I fully agree that that is nonsense. The difference here is that part of the belief in “Am I in a simulation made by people” relies CAUSALLY on whether or not people would ever make simulations. If they would not, the chance is zero. If they would, whether or not they should, the chance is something higher.

For an analogy again, imagine I am trying to determine my credence that the (uncontacted) Sentinelese people engage in cannibalism. I do not know anything about them specifically, but my credence is going to be something much higher than zero because I am aware that lots of human civilizations practice cannibalism. I have some relevant evidence about human nature and decision making that allows other knowledge of how people act to put some bounds on my credence about this group. Now imagine I am trying to determine my credence that the Sentinelese engage in widespread coprophagia. Again, I do not know anything about them. However, I do know that no other recorded human society has ever been recorded to do this. I can use this information about other peoples’ behavior and thought processes, to adjust my credence about the Sentinelese. In this case, giving me near certainty that they do not.

If we know that a bunch of people have beliefs that will lead to them trying to create “ancestor” simulations of humans, then we have more reason to think that a different set of humans have done this already, and we are in one of the simulations.

The probability is non-zero, but it's not affecting any decisions I'm making. I still don't see why the number of one-boxers around should cause me to update this probability to anything more significant.

Do you still not think this after reading this post? Please let me know. I either need to work on communicating this a different way or try to pin down where this is wrong and what I am missing….

Also, thank you for all of the time you have put into this. I sincerely appreciate the feedback. I also appreciate why and how this has been frustrating, re: “cult,” and hope I have been able to mitigate the unpleasantness of this at least a bit.

I don't think this is true. The correct version is your following sentence:

A lot of people on LW do not

People on LW, of course, are not terribly representative of people in general.

LW is not really my personal sample for this. I have spent about a year working this into conversations. I feel as though the split in my experience is something like 2/3 of people two box. Nozick, who popularized this, said he thought it was about 50/50. While it is again not representative, of the thousand people who answered the question in this survey, it was about equal (http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl). For people with PhD’s in Philosophy it was 458 two-boxers to 348 one-boxers. While I do not know what the actual number would be if there was a Pew Survey, I suspect, especially given the success of Calvinism, magical thinking, etc. that there are a substantial minority of people who would one-box.

What matters, as an empirical matter, is that they exist.

I agree that such people exist.

Okay. Can you see how they might take the approach I have suggested they might? And if yes, can you concede that it is possible that there are people who might want to build simulations in the hope of being in one, even if you think it is foolish?

If we want to belong to the type of species

Hold on, hold on. What is this "type of species" thing? What types are there, what are our options?

As a turn of phrase, I was referring two types. One that makes simulations meeting this description, and one that does not. It is like when people advocate for colonizing Mars, they are expressing a desire to be “that type of species.” Not sure what confused you here….

And if we find ourselves building large numbers of these simulations, it should increase our credence that we are in one.

Nope, sorry, I don't find this reasoning valid.

If you are in the Sleeping Beauty problem (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty_problem), and are woken up during the week, what is your credence that the coin has come up tails? How do you decide between the doors in the Monty Hall problem?

I am not asking you to think that the actual odds have changed in real time, I am asking you to adjust your credence based on new information. The order of cards has not changed in the deck, but now you know which ones have been discarded.

If it turns out simulations are impossible, I will adjust my credence about being in one. If a program begins plastering trillions of simulations across the cosmological endowment with von Neumann probes, I will adjust my credence upward. I am not saying that your reality changes, I am saying that the amount of information you have about the location of your reality has changed. If you do not find this valid, what do you not find valid? Why should your credence remain unchanged?

it will have evidential value still.

Still nope. If you think that people wishing to be in a simulation has "evidential value" for the proposition that we are in a simulation, for what proposition does the belief in, say, Jesus or astrology have "evidential value"? Are you going to cherry-pick "right" beliefs and "wrong" beliefs?

Beliefs can cause people to do things, whether that be go to war or build expensive computers. Why would the fact that some people believe in Salafi Jihadism and want to form a caliphate under ISIS be evidentially relevant to determining the future stability of Syria and Iraq? How can their “belief” in such a thing have any evidential value?

One-boxers wishing to be in a simulation are more likely to create a large number of simulations. The existence of a large number of simulations (especially if they can nest their own simulations) make it more likely that we are not at a “basement level” but instead are in a simulation, like the ones we create. Not because we are creating our own, but because it suggests the realistic possibility that our world was created a “level” above us. This is just about self-locating belief. As a two-boxer, you should have no sense that people in your world creating simulations means any change in your world’s current status as simulated or unsimulated. However, you should also update your own credence from “why would I possibly be in a simulation” to “there is a reason I might be in a simulation.” Same as if you were currently living in Western Iraq, you should update your credence from “why should I possibly leave my house, why would it not be safe” to “right, because there are people who are inspired by belief to take actions which make it unsafe.” Your knowledge about others’ beliefs can provide information about certain things that they may have done or may plan to do.