The Simulation Argument – How likely is it that we are living in a simulation?

The simulation hypothesis doesn’t seem to be a terse parsimonious explanation for the universe we live in. If what is most important is to simulate ancestors, what’s the motivation for all the hugely detailed rendering of space? Why not just simulate earth or our solar system or our galaxy?

People often jump to the conclusions and assume* that the great simulators have infinite computing power. Infinity – another thing we have never been able to measure 🙂 Max Tegmark wrote an interesting piece about why infinity is probably not real. Until we do have evidence of infinities in the real world, I believe we should treat all thought experiments that rely on infinities as mere intuition pumps.

Without the assumption that potential simulators have infinite computing power, but assume instead they have a finite amount – it seems logical that there would be a cost/benefit trade-off between computation and simulation, detail/number of sims that would need to be taken into account. Limits to available computation would decrease the motivation for building huge amounts of simulations and/or highly detailed simulations.

People think their way around the astronomical computational waste and add yet another extra assumption* that the simulation may grow to fill all the spaces we probe and interact with – though this would still increase the computational requirements to run the simulation. With this assumption, we should believe that if we are in a simulation, compared to just 500 years ago, it is costing the simulators a whole lot more to run now that we can stare into the depths of physics and peer about the universe. It has been argued that we should avoid building big computers or perform certain experiments because the simulators may decide to turn off our simulation because it begins costing them to much to run.

If we are in a simulation – many argue for the most part, it probably doesn’t matter. Based on Newcomb’s problem – even if we are in an elegant simulation, then the simulated laws of physics will behave just as they would if they were actual laws
If we feel compelled to put an estimate on it – the more we develop empirically informed naturalistic explanations for the universe, the lower our estimates should be that we are in a simulation.

If there are considerable costs to creating simulations with the detail of our universe – why simulate ancestors if it costs so much?
What is so important about ancestor simulations to justify the expense?

* the more assumptions we add to a hypothesis, the less certain we should be about it

The Seminal Nick Bostrom Interview

Here is the interview I did with Bostrom in 2012:

Why so much confidence that we are in a simulation?

I hear reports that Bostrom’s confidence that we are in a simulation have decreased over the years (less than 10% I heard recently – can’t find a direct reference right now) – while others, after he wrote the seminal paper, have increased their confidence quite dramatically. Based on various article headlines I am fairly certain that many latch onto a surface level understanding of the arguments that support their existing biases. So its probably best to read the paper and understand the Simulation Hypothesis and the Simulation Argument before hand waving about what Bostrom thinks.

How much credence should we give sound arguments that are empirically unfalsifiable?

I’d say some – not everything can be falsified – generally I rank arguments with empirical evidence higher than those that don’t.

I Wonder what do the Intelligent Design movement think of this?

Some atheists may be worried that such a philosophical implications – but most seem to think the Simulation Argument is cool.

Resources

Various links on the simulation argument and hypothesis curated by Bostrom – including the original paper: http://www.simulation-argument.com/