David Sklansky .... Your thoughts?

[PairTheBoard]

This is the same Bostrom who came up with the hybrid model for explaining the Sleeping Beauty Paradox.

PairTheBoard

[chezlaw]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Bostrom

He suggests that if it is possible to simulate entire inhabited planets or even entire universes on a computer, and that such simulated people can be fully conscious, then the sheer number of such simulations likely to be produced by any sufficiently advanced civilization (taken together with his Strong Self-Sampling Assumption) makes it extremely likely that we are in fact currently living in such a simulation.

Pretty interesting idea.

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we might not even be in an actual simulation, merely a simulated one. turtles all the way down.

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its till a bit egotistical to think its a computer geek, far more likely we're just a kids toy left on the shelf. Explains why a moronic seeming god used to get involved but now can't be bothered.

The kids should be told - 'a universe is for life not just for christmas'

chez

[AWoodside]

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This is the same Bostrom who came up with the hybrid model for explaining the Sleeping Beauty Paradox.

PairTheBoard

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Nick Bostrom has come up with several pretty interesting probability applications. For example, check out cars in the next lane really do go faster .

[Jetboy2]

Please apply Baye's Theory!

[AWoodside]

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Please apply Baye's Theory!

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I think I'm confused. In that article all he seems to be asserting is that the average driver spends more of his total driving time in the slow lane, because there is an inverse relationship between lane speed and the density of cars in a given lane. Is there something wrong with this via Baye's Theory? If so, I'd be very interested to hear it.

[soon2bepro]

This is totally possible, but no way it's gonna be in 50 years that we have this capacity. In all likeliness, in 50 years we're not even going to be able to simulate ONE human brain, let alone billions of. And it's not just the human brain that must be simulated, which is complex enough. You have to simulate all the available evidence of the entire universe!!

I'm talking all the evidence about every particle and subparticle of the more than a hundred million galaxies just in the observable universe, each with tens of thousands to a trillion star systems.

Granted, the program could be made to only display information when it's asked for it, but with billions of people making requests every second, the computing power to support such a simulation would be... Well, you can guess. But there's absolutely no way we're gonna get there in 50 years.

An alternative would be if we could simulate existence for only one individual, and the rest were just simulations. Or even real people, kinda like in The Truman Show :P

In any case, this is a good argument for design. I wonder if this is to be the next step in the evolution of religions. It's definitely a much more convincing one, that's for sure.

[TomCowley]

The recursive aspect of the argument is nonsense. A simulation inside a simulation cannot have as much computing power as the first simulation, because they're.. both running on the same "real" computer (well, ok, if the first computer is at half capacity, they can, but it can't go on forever).

Furthermore, the assumption that a civilization will ever reach that level of computing power is... quite optimistic. To simulate to a level of detail where the laws of physics are consistent across essentially infinite observations requires a computer able to store (and continuously process) as much information as exists in the observable universe. 50 years my ass.

[soon2bepro]

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The recursive aspect of the argument is nonsense. A simulation inside a simulation cannot have as much computing power as the first simulation, because they're.. both running on the same "real" computer

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You didn't read through the whole thing... They even take advantage of that to suggest an eventual Armageddon...

[TomCowley]

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They even take advantage of that to suggest an eventual Armageddon...

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Take advantage? As in we're more likely to be in a simulation because of this constraint?!? LOL

[soon2bepro]

No, no. I mean, they're probably creationists, possibly christians too. This is the best way they found to come up with a decent hypothesis of what they believe in.