In LessWrong contributor Scott Alexander's essay, Espistemic Learned Helplessness, he wrote,
Even the smartest people I know have a commendable tendency not to take certain ideas seriously. Bostrom’s simulation argument, the anthropic doomsday argument, Pascal’s Mugging – I’ve never heard anyone give a coherent argument against any of these, but I’ve also never met anyone who fully accepts them and lives life according to their implications.
I can't help but agree with Scott Alexander about the simulation argument. No one has refuted it, ever, in my books. However, this argument carries a dramatic, and in my eyes, frightening implication for our existential situation.
Joe Carlsmith's essay, Simulation Arguments, clarified some nuances, but ultimately the argument's conclusion remains the same.
When I looked on Reddit for the answer, the attempted counterarguments were weak and disappointing.
It's just that, the claims below feel so obvious to me:
- It is physically possible to simulate a conscious mind.
- The universe is very big, and there are many, many other aliens.
- Some aliens will run various simulations.
- The number of simulations that are "subjectively indistinguishable" from our own experience far outnumbers authentic evolved humans. (By "subjectively indistinguishable," I mean the simulates can't tell they're in a simulation. )
When someone challenges any of those claims, I'm immediately skeptical. I hope you can appreciate why those claims feel evident.
Thank you for reading all this. Now, I'll ask for your help.
Can anyone here provide a strong counter to Bostrom's simulation argument? If possible, I'd like to hear specifically from those who've engaged deeply and thoughtfully with this argument already.
Thank you again.
We have to create a map of possible scenarios of simulations first, I attempted to it in 2015.
I now created a new vote on twitter. For now, results are:
"If you will be able to create and completely own simulation, you would prefer that it will be occupied by conscious beings, conscious without sufferings (they are blocked after some level), or NPC"
The poll results show:
The poll had 11 votes with 6 days left'
Yes. But I never experienced in my long life such intense sufferings.
No. Memory about intense sufferings are not intense.
Yes, only moments. The badness of not-intense sufferings is overestimated, in my personal view, but this may depend on a person.
More generally speaking, what you presenting as global showstoppers, are technical problems that can be solved.
In my view, individuality is valuable.
As we don't know nature of consciousness, it can be just side effect of computation, not are trouble. Also it may want to have maximal fidelity or even run biological simulations: something akin to Zoo solution of Fermi paradox.
We are living in one of the most interesting periods of history which surely will be studied and simulated.