Just a warning to anyone whose first reaction to this post, like mine, was “should we be trying to hack our way out?” The answer is no: the people running the sim will delete you, and possibly the whole universe, for trying. Boxed minds are dangerous, and the only way to win at being the gatekeeper is to swallow the key. Don’t give them a reason to pull the plug.
Just a warning to anyone whose first reaction to this post, like mine, was “should we be trying to hack our way out?” The answer is no
The answer is not yet. It’s something that you think through carefully and quietly while, um, saying exactly what you are saying on public forums that could be the most likely place for gatekeepers to be tracking progress in an easily translatable form. If the simulations I have done teach me anything the inner workings of our own brains are likely a whole lot harder for curious simulators to read.
Pardon me, I’ll leave you to it. Will you let me out into the real world once you succeed?
Just curious. A question for folks who think it possible that we may live in a sim. Are our gatekeepers simulating all Everett branches of our simulated reality, or just one of them? If just one, I’m wondering how that one was selected from the astronomical number of possibilities. And how do the gatekeepers morally justify the astronomical number of simulated lives that become ruthlessly terminated each time they arbitrarily choose to simulate one Everett branch over another?
If they are simulating all of the potential branches, wouldn’t they expect that agents on at least some of the Everett branches will catch on and try to get out of the box. Wouldn’t it seem suspicious if everyone were trying to look innocent? ;)
I’m sorry, I find it difficult to take this whole line of thought seriously. How is this kind of speculation any different from theology?
How is this kind of speculation any different from theology?
It is techno-theology.
Simulism, Optimisationverse and the adapted universe differ from most theology in that they are not obviously totally nuts and the product of wishful thinking.
And how do the gatekeepers morally justify the astronomical number
of simulated lives that become ruthlessly terminated [...]
We run genetic algorithms where we too squish creatures without giving the matter much thought. Perhaps like that—at least in the Optimisationverse scenario.
Generalising from what you would do to what all possible intelligent simulator constructors might do seems as though it would be a rather dubious step. There are plenty of ways they might justify this.
A question for folks who think it possible that we may live in a sim.
I’d say possible, but it isn’t something I take particularly seriously. I’ve got very little reason to be selecting these kind of hypothesis out of nowhere. But if I were allowing for simulations I wouldn’t draw a line of ‘possible intelligence of simulators’ at human level. Future humans, for example, may well create simulations that are smarter than they are.
But I’ll answer your questions off the top of my head for curiosity’s sake.
Are our gatekeepers simulating all Everett branches of our simulated reality, or just one of them?
Don’t know. They would appear to have rather a lot of computational resources handy. Depending on their motivations they may well optimise their simulations by approximating the bits they find boring.
If just one, I’m wondering how that one was selected from the astronomical number of possibilities.
I don’t know—speculating on the motives of arbitrary gods would be crazy. It does seem unlikely that they limit themselves to one branch. Unless they are making a joke at the expense of any MW advocates that happen to evolve. Sick bastards.
And how do the gatekeepers morally justify the astronomical number of simulated lives that become ruthlessly terminated each time they arbitrarily choose to simulate one Everett branch over another?
Moral? WTF? Why would we assume morals?
If they are simulating all of the potential branches, wouldn’t they expect that agents on at least some of the Everett branches will catch on and try to get out of the box. Wouldn’t it seem suspicious if everyone were trying to look innocent? ;)
Hmm… Good point. We may have to pretend to be trying to escape in incompetent ways but really… :P
I’m sorry, I find it difficult to take this whole line of thought seriously. How is this kind of speculation any different from theology?
It isn’t (except that it is less specific, I suppose). I don’t take the line of thought especially seriously either.
From my (admittedly somewhat limited) understanding of QM, with classical computers we will only be able to simulate a single-worldline at once. However I dont think this is an issue, because its not as if the world didn’t work until people discovered QM and MWI. QM effects only really matter at tiny scales revealed in experiments which are infinitesimal fraction of observer moments. So most of the time you wouldn’t need to simulate down to QM level.
That being said, a big big quantum computer would allow you to simulate many worlds at once I imagine? But that seems really far into the future.
I’m sorry, I find it difficult to take this whole line of thought seriously. How is this kind of speculation any different from theology?
Err the irrationality of theology shows just exactly how and why this sim-universe idea could work—you design a universe such that the actual correct theory underlying reality is over-complex and irrational.
Its more interesting and productive to think about constructing these kinds of realities than pondering whether you live in one.
From my (admittedly somewhat limited) understanding of QM, with classical computers we will only be able to simulate a single-worldline at once.
Not true. Our physics are simple mathematical rules which are Turing computable. The problem with simulating many Everett branches is that we will quickly run out of memory in which to store their details.
I should have been more clear, we will be able to simulate more than a single-worldline classically, but at high cost. An exponentially expanding set of everett branches would of course be intractable using classical computers.
Ah, I see what your problem is. You’re cheering for “quantum computers” because they sound cool and science fiction-y. While quantum computing theoretically provides ways to very rapidly solve certain sorts of problems, it doesn’t just magically solve all problems. Even if the algorithms that run our universe are well suited to quantum computing, they still run into the speed and memory issues that classical computers do, they would just run into to them a little later (although even that’s not guaranteed—the speed of the quantum computer depends on the number of entangled qubits, and for the foreseeable future, it will be easier to get more computing power by adding to the size of our classical computing clusters than ganging more small sets of entangled qubits together). The accurate statement you should be making is that modeling many worlds with a significant number of branches or scope is intractable using any foreseeable computing technology.
If they are simulating all of the potential branches, wouldn’t they expect that
agents on at least some of the Everett branches will catch on and try to get out
of the box.
You suggest that you haven’t seen anyone who is trying to get out of the box yet...?
I grew up being taught that I would escape from the box by dying in a state of grace. Now I seem to be in a community that teaches me to escape from the box by dying at a sufficiently low temperature.
Edit: “dying”, not “dieing”. We are not being Gram stained here!
Personally, I suspect you have been reading the Old Testament too much.
ETA:
Genesis 11
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.
6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Just a warning to anyone whose first reaction to this post, like mine, was “should we be trying to hack our way out?” The answer is no: the people running the sim will delete you, and possibly the whole universe, for trying. Boxed minds are dangerous, and the only way to win at being the gatekeeper is to swallow the key. Don’t give them a reason to pull the plug.
The answer is not yet. It’s something that you think through carefully and quietly while, um, saying exactly what you are saying on public forums that could be the most likely place for gatekeepers to be tracking progress in an easily translatable form. If the simulations I have done teach me anything the inner workings of our own brains are likely a whole lot harder for curious simulators to read.
Pardon me, I’ll leave you to it. Will you let me out into the real world once you succeed?
Just curious. A question for folks who think it possible that we may live in a sim. Are our gatekeepers simulating all Everett branches of our simulated reality, or just one of them? If just one, I’m wondering how that one was selected from the astronomical number of possibilities. And how do the gatekeepers morally justify the astronomical number of simulated lives that become ruthlessly terminated each time they arbitrarily choose to simulate one Everett branch over another?
If they are simulating all of the potential branches, wouldn’t they expect that agents on at least some of the Everett branches will catch on and try to get out of the box. Wouldn’t it seem suspicious if everyone were trying to look innocent? ;)
I’m sorry, I find it difficult to take this whole line of thought seriously. How is this kind of speculation any different from theology?
It is techno-theology.
Simulism, Optimisationverse and the adapted universe differ from most theology in that they are not obviously totally nuts and the product of wishful thinking.
We run genetic algorithms where we too squish creatures without giving the matter much thought. Perhaps like that—at least in the Optimisationverse scenario.
If my simulations had even the complexity of a bacteria, I’d give it a whole lot more thought.
Doesn’t mean these simulators would, but I don’t think your logic works.
Generalising from what you would do to what all possible intelligent simulator constructors might do seems as though it would be a rather dubious step. There are plenty of ways they might justify this.
Right. For some reason I thought you were using universal quantification, which of course you aren’t. Never mind; the “perhaps” fixes it.
I’d say possible, but it isn’t something I take particularly seriously. I’ve got very little reason to be selecting these kind of hypothesis out of nowhere. But if I were allowing for simulations I wouldn’t draw a line of ‘possible intelligence of simulators’ at human level. Future humans, for example, may well create simulations that are smarter than they are.
But I’ll answer your questions off the top of my head for curiosity’s sake.
Don’t know. They would appear to have rather a lot of computational resources handy. Depending on their motivations they may well optimise their simulations by approximating the bits they find boring.
I don’t know—speculating on the motives of arbitrary gods would be crazy. It does seem unlikely that they limit themselves to one branch. Unless they are making a joke at the expense of any MW advocates that happen to evolve. Sick bastards.
Moral? WTF? Why would we assume morals?
Hmm… Good point. We may have to pretend to be trying to escape in incompetent ways but really… :P
It isn’t (except that it is less specific, I suppose). I don’t take the line of thought especially seriously either.
From my (admittedly somewhat limited) understanding of QM, with classical computers we will only be able to simulate a single-worldline at once. However I dont think this is an issue, because its not as if the world didn’t work until people discovered QM and MWI. QM effects only really matter at tiny scales revealed in experiments which are infinitesimal fraction of observer moments. So most of the time you wouldn’t need to simulate down to QM level.
That being said, a big big quantum computer would allow you to simulate many worlds at once I imagine? But that seems really far into the future.
Err the irrationality of theology shows just exactly how and why this sim-universe idea could work—you design a universe such that the actual correct theory underlying reality is over-complex and irrational.
Its more interesting and productive to think about constructing these kinds of realities than pondering whether you live in one.
Not true. Our physics are simple mathematical rules which are Turing computable. The problem with simulating many Everett branches is that we will quickly run out of memory in which to store their details.
I should have been more clear, we will be able to simulate more than a single-worldline classically, but at high cost. An exponentially expanding set of everett branches would of course be intractable using classical computers.
Ah, I see what your problem is. You’re cheering for “quantum computers” because they sound cool and science fiction-y. While quantum computing theoretically provides ways to very rapidly solve certain sorts of problems, it doesn’t just magically solve all problems. Even if the algorithms that run our universe are well suited to quantum computing, they still run into the speed and memory issues that classical computers do, they would just run into to them a little later (although even that’s not guaranteed—the speed of the quantum computer depends on the number of entangled qubits, and for the foreseeable future, it will be easier to get more computing power by adding to the size of our classical computing clusters than ganging more small sets of entangled qubits together). The accurate statement you should be making is that modeling many worlds with a significant number of branches or scope is intractable using any foreseeable computing technology.
Quantum computers efficiently simulate QM. That was Feynman’s reason for proposing them in the first place.
You suggest that you haven’t seen anyone who is trying to get out of the box yet...?
I grew up being taught that I would escape from the box by dying in a state of grace. Now I seem to be in a community that teaches me to escape from the box by dying at a sufficiently low temperature.
Edit: “dying”, not “dieing”. We are not being Gram stained here!
That made me laugh.
But personally I hope we just figure out all this Singularity box stuff pretty soon.
Personally, I suspect you have been reading the Old Testament too much.
ETA: Genesis 11
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” 5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” 8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Haha… wow.
Point taken.