Let me first note that the cost of simulation is very likely vastly lower than running physics. The human mind is run on neural networks, so simulating minds first and allowing them to collaboratively hallucinate their external reality; then just track as much about that external world as needed. You can run a loose physics sim if you want to ensure sims are similar to our reality. That consideration would seem to up the odds that we’re in a sim.
I’m not sold on two pieces of the logic here.
One is: why would advanced auperintelligences be expected to run ancestor simulations?
I’m genuinely asking. One consideration here is that this supposedly cooperative ASI is causing extreme suffering in those sims. History has been brutal to many humans and most animals.
Two: why would they let any of us out of that sim?
One: for most life forms, learning is almost always fatal and inherently painful. That doesn’t mean a life simulator would be cruel, merely impartial. Every time we remember something from the past, or dream something that didn’t happen in the past, we’re running a simulation, ourselves. Even when we use some science in an attempt to learn without simulation, we must test the validity of this learning by running a simulation. Well, an experiment, but that amounts to the same here.
I suggest that the scientific method is essential to intelligence, and that it follows that ASI runs ancestor simulations.
Two: what does “out of that sim” mean and how is it relevant to the argument put here?
Interesting enough to pursue.
Let me first note that the cost of simulation is very likely vastly lower than running physics. The human mind is run on neural networks, so simulating minds first and allowing them to collaboratively hallucinate their external reality; then just track as much about that external world as needed. You can run a loose physics sim if you want to ensure sims are similar to our reality. That consideration would seem to up the odds that we’re in a sim.
I’m not sold on two pieces of the logic here.
One is: why would advanced auperintelligences be expected to run ancestor simulations? I’m genuinely asking. One consideration here is that this supposedly cooperative ASI is causing extreme suffering in those sims. History has been brutal to many humans and most animals.
Two: why would they let any of us out of that sim?
One: for most life forms, learning is almost always fatal and inherently painful. That doesn’t mean a life simulator would be cruel, merely impartial. Every time we remember something from the past, or dream something that didn’t happen in the past, we’re running a simulation, ourselves. Even when we use some science in an attempt to learn without simulation, we must test the validity of this learning by running a simulation. Well, an experiment, but that amounts to the same here.
I suggest that the scientific method is essential to intelligence, and that it follows that ASI runs ancestor simulations.
Two: what does “out of that sim” mean and how is it relevant to the argument put here?