I think the elephant in the room is the purpose of the simulation.
Bostrom takes it as a given that future intelligences will be interested in running ancestor simulations. Why is that? If some future posthuman civilization truly masters physics, consciousness, and technology, I don’t see them using it to play SimUniverse. That’s what we would do with limitless power; it’s taking our unextrapolated, 2017 volition and asking what we’d do if we were gods. But that’s like asking a 5-year-old what he wants to do when he grows up, then taking the answer seriously.
Ancestor simulations sound cool to us- heck, they sound amazingly interesting to me, but I strongly suspect posthumans would find better uses for their resources.
Instead, I think we should try to reason about the purpose of a simulation from first principles.
At any rate, let’s assume the simulation argument is viable- i.e., it’s possible we’re a simulation, and due to the anthropic math, that it’s plausible that we’re in one now.
Although it’s possible that we are being simulated but for no reason, let’s assume entities smart enough to simulate universes would have a good reason to do so. So- what possible good reason could there be to simulate a universe? Two options come to mind:
(a) using the evolution of the physical world to compute something, or
(b) something to do with qualia.
In theory, (a) could be tested by assuming that efficient computations will exhibit high degrees of Kolmogorov complexity (incompressibility) from certain viewpoints, and low Kolmogorov complexity from others. We could then formulate an anthropic-aware measure for this applicable from ‘within’ a computational system, and apply it to our observable universe. This is outside the scope of this work.
However, we can offer a suggestion about (b): if our universe is being simulated for some reason associated with qualia, it seems plausible that it has to do with producing a large amount of some kind of particularly interesting or morally relevant qualia.
I think the elephant in the room is the purpose of the simulation.
Bostrom takes it as a given that future intelligences will be interested in running ancestor simulations. Why is that? If some future posthuman civilization truly masters physics, consciousness, and technology, I don’t see them using it to play SimUniverse. That’s what we would do with limitless power; it’s taking our unextrapolated, 2017 volition and asking what we’d do if we were gods. But that’s like asking a 5-year-old what he wants to do when he grows up, then taking the answer seriously.
Ancestor simulations sound cool to us- heck, they sound amazingly interesting to me, but I strongly suspect posthumans would find better uses for their resources.
Instead, I think we should try to reason about the purpose of a simulation from first principles.
Here’s an excerpt from Principia Qualia, Appendix F: