the simulation argument

[KingNeo]

do we live in a simulation? none of this being real?

I am highly certain we are. care to discuss?

 

[malakadang]

Any person claiming that we exist within a simulation needs to provide empirical evidence in support of their claim. Do you have any?

 

[tMoon]

Why are you highly certain that we live in a simulation?

By none of this, what are you referring to? If I'm in a simulation; that means I am not actually real, but cogito ergo sum (I Think; Therefore, I am). Depending on your approach towards existence that proves - at the very least - the existence of self.

Now, I do believe we exist and I also believe we have very little grasp on time, reality, all that jazz. Just based off how young of a species we are and how old, ever-expanding, and just mysterious the universe is. The possibility for an infinite number of dimensions, or just how we understand time.

 

[GoodKidMadCity]

Why are you highly certain that we live in a simulation?

By none of this, what are you referring to? If I'm in a simulation; that means I am not actually real, but cogito ergo sum (I Think; Therefore, I am). Depending on your approach towards existence that proves - at the very least - the existence of self.

Now, I do believe we exist and I also believe we have very little grasp on time, reality, all that jazz. Just based off how young of a species we are and how old, ever-expanding, and just mysterious the universe is. The possibility for an infinite number of dimensions, or just how we understand time.

If a simulation is aware that it's a simulation, does it remain a simulation?

 

From your username I immediately assume you're just a huge matrix fan and would like it to be true in the real world.

There's some very good paradox's about the theory that we're in some virtual reality.

Personally I believe it's rubbish and just another conspiracy theory with twisted 'facts' to support it. Intensive research usually debunks such conspiracies.

 

[KingNeo]

From your username I immediately assume you're just a huge matrix fan and would like it to be true in the real world.

KingNeo is referring to neopets. the type of market im in.

Any person claiming that we exist within a simulation needs to provide empirical evidence in support of their claim. Do you have any?

and as for evidence. let me quote directly from the leader philospher of this theory

"At our current stage of technological development, we have neither sufficiently powerful hardware nor the requisite software to create conscious minds in computers. But persuasive arguments have been given to the effect that if technological progress continues unabated then these shortcomings will eventually be overcome. Some authors argue that this stage may be only a few decades away.[1] Yet present purposes require no assumptions about the time-scale. The simulation argument works equally well for those who think that it will take hundreds of thousands of years to reach a “posthuman” stage of civilization, where humankind has acquired most of the technological capabilities that one can currently show to be consistent with physical laws and with material and energy constraints.

Such a mature stage of technological development will make it possible to convert planets and other astronomical resources into enormously powerful computers. It is currently hard to be confident in any upper bound on the computing power that may be available to posthuman civilizations. As we are still lacking a “theory of everything”, we cannot rule out the possibility that novel physical phenomena, not allowed for in current physical theories, may be utilized to transcend those constraints[2] that in our current understanding impose theoretical limits on the information processing attainable in a given lump of matter. We can with much greater confidence establish lower bounds on posthuman computation, by assuming only mechanisms that are already understood. For example, Eric Drexler has outlined a design for a system the size of a sugar cube (excluding cooling and power supply) that would perform 1021 instructions per second.[3] Another author gives a rough estimate of 1042 operations per second for a computer with a mass on order of a large planet.[4] (If we could create quantum computers, or learn to build computers out of nuclear matter or plasma, we could push closer to the theoretical limits. Seth Lloyd calculates an upper bound for a 1 kg computer of 5*1050 logical operations per second carried out on ~1031 bits.[5] However, it suffices for our purposes to use the more conservative estimate that presupposes only currently known design-principles.)

The amount of computing power needed to emulate a human mind can likewise be roughly estimated. One estimate, based on how computationally expensive it is to replicate the functionality of a piece of nervous tissue that we have already understood and whose functionality has been replicated in silico, contrast enhancement in the retina, yields a figure of ~1014 operations per second for the entire human brain.[6] An alternative estimate, based the number of synapses in the brain and their firing frequency, gives a figure of ~1016-1017 operations per second.[7] Conceivably, even more could be required if we want to simulate in detail the internal workings of synapses and dendritic trees. However, it is likely that the human central nervous system has a high degree of redundancy on the mircoscale to compensate for the unreliability and noisiness of its neuronal components. One would therefore expect a substantial efficiency gain when using more reliable and versatile non-biological processors.

Memory seems to be a no more stringent constraint than processing power.[8] Moreover, since the maximum human sensory bandwidth is ~108 bits per second, simulating all sensory events incurs a negligible cost compared to simulating the cortical activity. We can therefore use the processing power required to simulate the central nervous system as an estimate of the total computational cost of simulating a human mind.

If the environment is included in the simulation, this will require additional computing power – how much depends on the scope and granularity of the simulation. Simulating the entire universe down to the quantum level is obviously infeasible, unless radically new physics is discovered. But in order to get a realistic simulation of human experience, much less is needed – only whatever is required to ensure that the simulated humans, interacting in normal human ways with their simulated environment, don’t notice any irregularities. The microscopic structure of the inside of the Earth can be safely omitted. Distant astronomical objects can have highly compressed representations: verisimilitude need extend to the narrow band of properties that we can observe from our planet or solar system spacecraft. On the surface of Earth, macroscopic objects in inhabited areas may need to be continuously simulated, but microscopic phenomena could likely be filled in ad hoc. What you see through an electron microscope needs to look unsuspicious, but you usually have no way of confirming its coherence with unobserved parts of the microscopic world. Exceptions arise when we deliberately design systems to harness unobserved microscopic phenomena that operate in accordance with known principles to get results that we are able to independently verify. The paradigmatic case of this is a computer. The simulation may therefore need to include a continuous representation of computers down to the level of individual logic elements. This presents no problem, since our current computing power is negligible by posthuman standards.

Moreover, a posthuman simulator would have enough computing power to keep track of the detailed belief-states in all human brains at all times. Therefore, when it saw that a human was about to make an observation of the microscopic world, it could fill in sufficient detail in the simulation in the appropriate domain on an as-needed basis. Should any error occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. Alternatively, the director could skip back a few seconds and rerun the simulation in a way that avoids the problem.

It thus seems plausible that the main computational cost in creating simulations that are indistinguishable from physical reality for human minds in the simulation resides in simulating organic brains down to the neuronal or sub-neuronal level.[9] While it is not possible to get a very exact estimate of the cost of a realistic simulation of human history, we can use ~1033 - 1036 operations as a rough estimate[10]. As we gain more experience with virtual reality, we will get a better grasp of the computational requirements for making such worlds appear realistic to their visitors. But in any case, even if our estimate is off by several orders of magnitude, this does not matter much for our argument. We noted that a rough approximation of the computational power of a planetary-mass computer is 1042 operations per second, and that assumes only already known nanotechnological designs, which are probably far from optimal. A single such a computer could simulate the entire mental history of humankind (call this an ancestor-simulation) by using less than one millionth of its processing power for one second. A posthuman civilization may eventually build an astronomical number of such computers. We can conclude that the computing power available to a posthuman civilization is sufficient to run a huge number of ancestor-simulations even it allocates only a minute fraction of its resources to that purpose. We can draw this conclusion even while leaving a substantial margin of error in all our estimates.



· Posthuman civilizations would have enough computing power to run hugely many ancestor-simulations even while using only a tiny fraction of their resources for that purpose."

If we live in a simulation can I become king plox? whoever the fuck is running this twisted ass simulator

get your garbage out of my thread please

 

OP - have you read any Baudrillard? Not sure exactly how much it applies to what you're arguing, but he has written extensively about a postmodern interpretation of society, where we all exist in a hyperreal system of simulacra.

Reading through the above quote (which, by the way, can be found here in a format a bit easier on the eyes: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html), where exactly does Moore's Law come into play with those calculations about computing complexity? Surely it can't be sustained up to the orders of magnitude necessary to simulate a human brain? Or am I completely misinterpreting the point being made?

 

[KingNeo]

OP - have you read any Baudrillard? Not sure exactly how much it applies to what you're arguing, but he has written extensively about a postmodern interpretation of society, where we all exist in a hyperreal system of simulacra.

Reading through the above quote (which, by the way, can be found here in a format a bit easier on the eyes: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html), where exactly does Moore's Law come into play with those calculations about computing complexity? Surely it can't be sustained up to the orders of magnitude necessary to simulate a human brain? Or am I completely misinterpreting the point being made?

you are mistaking the point. i assume youve read the entire website. the part with the math equations logically prove, (or alteast have a very sustainable theory) that it is possible that this is a simulation made by post humanity.

the numbers i was quoting earlier can be found on that webiste he offered i cannot copy and paste them due to picture he using depicting the math

 

[malakadang]

and as for evidence. let me quote directly from the leader philospher of this theory

"At our current stage of technological development, we have neither sufficiently powerful hardware nor the requisite software to create conscious minds in computers. But persuasive arguments have been given to the effect that if technological progress continues unabated then these shortcomings will eventually be overcome. Some authors argue that this stage may be only a few decades away.[1] Yet present purposes require no assumptions about the time-scale. The simulation argument works equally well for those who think that it will take hundreds of thousands of years to reach a “posthuman” stage of civilization, where humankind has acquired most of the technological capabilities that one can currently show to be consistent with physical laws and with material and energy constraints.

Ok.

Such a mature stage of technological development will make it possible to convert planets and other astronomical resources into enormously powerful computers. It is currently hard to be confident in any upper bound on the computing power that may be available to posthuman civilizations. As we are still lacking a “theory of everything”, we cannot rule out the possibility that novel physical phenomena, not allowed for in current physical theories, may be utilized to transcend those constraints[2] that in our current understanding impose theoretical limits on the information processing attainable in a given lump of matter. We can with much greater confidence establish lower bounds on posthuman computation, by assuming only mechanisms that are already understood. For example, Eric Drexler has outlined a design for a system the size of a sugar cube (excluding cooling and power supply) that would perform 1021 instructions per second.[3] Another author gives a rough estimate of 1042 operations per second for a computer with a mass on order of a large planet.[4] (If we could create quantum computers, or learn to build computers out of nuclear matter or plasma, we could push closer to the theoretical limits. Seth Lloyd calculates an upper bound for a 1 kg computer of 5*1050 logical operations per second carried out on ~1031 bits.[5] However, it suffices for our purposes to use the more conservative estimate that presupposes only currently known design-principles.)

Ok.

The amount of computing power needed to emulate a human mind can likewise be roughly estimated. One estimate, based on how computationally expensive it is to replicate the functionality of a piece of nervous tissue that we have already understood and whose functionality has been replicated in silico, contrast enhancement in the retina, yields a figure of ~1014 operations per second for the entire human brain.[6] An alternative estimate, based the number of synapses in the brain and their firing frequency, gives a figure of ~1016-1017 operations per second.[7] Conceivably, even more could be required if we want to simulate in detail the internal workings of synapses and dendritic trees. However, it is likely that the human central nervous system has a high degree of redundancy on the mircoscale to compensate for the unreliability and noisiness of its neuronal components. One would therefore expect a substantial efficiency gain when using more reliable and versatile non-biological processors.

Ok.

Memory seems to be a no more stringent constraint than processing power.[8] Moreover, since the maximum human sensory bandwidth is ~108 bits per second, simulating all sensory events incurs a negligible cost compared to simulating the cortical activity. We can therefore use the processing power required to simulate the central nervous system as an estimate of the total computational cost of simulating a human mind.

Ok.

If the environment is included in the simulation, this will require additional computing power – how much depends on the scope and granularity of the simulation. Simulating the entire universe down to the quantum level is obviously infeasible, unless radically new physics is discovered. But in order to get a realistic simulation of human experience, much less is needed – only whatever is required to ensure that the simulated humans, interacting in normal human ways with their simulated environment, don’t notice any irregularities. The microscopic structure of the inside of the Earth can be safely omitted. Distant astronomical objects can have highly compressed representations: verisimilitude need extend to the narrow band of properties that we can observe from our planet or solar system spacecraft. On the surface of Earth, macroscopic objects in inhabited areas may need to be continuously simulated, but microscopic phenomena could likely be filled in ad hoc. What you see through an electron microscope needs to look unsuspicious, but you usually have no way of confirming its coherence with unobserved parts of the microscopic world. Exceptions arise when we deliberately design systems to harness unobserved microscopic phenomena that operate in accordance with known principles to get results that we are able to independently verify. The paradigmatic case of this is a computer. The simulation may therefore need to include a continuous representation of computers down to the level of individual logic elements. This presents no problem, since our current computing power is negligible by posthuman standards.

Ok.

Moreover, a posthuman simulator would have enough computing power to keep track of the detailed belief-states in all human brains at all times. Therefore, when it saw that a human was about to make an observation of the microscopic world, it could fill in sufficient detail in the simulation in the appropriate domain on an as-needed basis. Should any error occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. Alternatively, the director could skip back a few seconds and rerun the simulation in a way that avoids the problem.

Ok.

It

thus seems plausible that the main computational cost in creating simulations that are indistinguishable from physical reality for human minds in the simulation resides in simulating organic brains down to the neuronal or sub-neuronal level.[9] While it is not possible to get a very exact estimate of the cost of a realistic simulation of human history, we can use ~1033 - 1036 operations as a rough estimate[10]. As we gain more experience with virtual reality, we will get a better grasp of the computational requirements for making such worlds appear realistic to their visitors. But in any case, even if our estimate is off by several orders of magnitude, this does not matter much for our argument. We noted that a rough approximation of the computational power of a planetary-mass computer is 1042 operations per second, and that assumes only already known nanotechnological designs, which are probably far from optimal. A single such a computer could simulate the entire mental history of humankind (call this an ancestor-simulation) by using less than one millionth of its processing power for one second. A posthuman civilization may eventually build an astronomical number of such computers. We can conclude that the computing power available to a posthuman civilization is sufficient to run a huge number of ancestor-simulations even it allocates only a minute fraction of its resources to that purpose. We can draw this conclusion even while leaving a substantial margin of error in all our estimates.

Ok.

So from reading all that text, like I said, please provide empirical evidence to support your assertion. That piece, at best, only is evidence that it is in the future possible for us to create these 'posthuman civilizations' with our computing power. It gives no evidence that such a simulation already exists, and we are that simulation. Furthermore, it makes more assumptions than theology.

Possibility is not the same as actuality. This piece is evidence for possibility, not actuality.

 

[KingNeo]

So from reading all that text, like I said, please provide empirical evidence to support your assertion. That piece, at best, only is evidence that it is in the future possible for us to create these 'posthuman civilizations' with our computing power. It gives no evidence that such a simulation already exists, and we are that simulation. Furthermore, it makes more assumptions than theology.

Possibility is not the same as actuality. This piece is evidence for possibility, not actuality.

there is way to much information to quote here. just read the website I posted. like I said in my last post I would post it here but I am unable

 

[malakadang]

there is way to much information to quote here. just read the website I posted. like I said in my last post I would post it here but I am unable

Summarize it then. If there's so much information, why did you extract the portion that was wholly irrelevant?

 

[KingNeo]

the part with the math equations logically prove, (or alteast have a very sustainable theory) that it is possible that this is a simulation made by post humanity.

the numbers i was quoting earlier can be found on that webiste he offered i cannot copy and paste them due to picture he using depicting the math

as i said here. which you must have not read. the picture i cannot paste here.
so read it for yourself

 

[malakadang]

as i said here. which you must have not read. the picture i cannot paste here.
so read it for yourself

Again you've quoted something where it says it is possible. I am not disputing, and it is cannot be logically disputed that such an idea is not possible. I am disputing its actuality. If the evidence is so complex and lengthy that you cannot easily summarize, then I'm not going to read it because I can't be bothered. Thus far, it should be noted the only things you have actually quoted are things that attempt to prove the possibility, not actuality.

 

[KingNeo]

if you dont want to read it its not my problem

 

[Superfluous]

Removed a bunch of spam posts. Keep it on topic please and thanks!

 

[ilovegold69]

if you dont want to read it its not my problem

The question is ARE WE A SIMULATION, not COULD WE BE A SIMULATION. The article addresses the latter.

 

[zorro_]

Obviously malakadang already put this thread in its place, but btw, I don't think you could ever know you're in a simulation. I say this because in order to know that you're in a simulation, you must somehow know that there exists something outside this chimera of reality (which is doing the simulating) - but in that case you could never know that your perception of this outside reality is not also part of the initial simulation. So in other words it's an endless cycle that you could never reason out of.

 

[Kugo Ginjo]

I once read this crazy reddit post. Some guy claimed he created a world (within a computer). And he "governed/ruled" it like a "god" might. And the "people" in this simulation became just as aware as we are. It was a long story, but eventually there was a power outage or something and it killed the "people."

Supposedly it was "confirmed" as a credible story.

I don't believe he did it or that we are in one. But it is fun to draw the parallels with that story and our lives.