Fun exercise, try to think of something that would cause a glitch in a system that is capable of simulating an entire universe. The processing power must be unimaginable.
ETA: probably can’t brute force it, paradox seems a bit too easy… break the laws of physics? time travel? It gets really weird really fast.
Oh my god. The Coder is a twelve year old.
I hope later realities demonstrate a lit bit more maturity.
That’s one of the potential weaknesses; the ancestor simulations as proposed by Bostrom’s simulation argument don’t simulate the entire universe from ground-up; they are local simulations. When we go peering through telescopes at the cosmos, the simulation has to create that data on the fly. Similarly, if we peer deeply into the past, the simulation has to create that data as well. Doing so consistently may well be impossible, which is one reason I think it’s unlikely that we live in such a sim. Or, if we do live in such a sim, we might be able to discover inconsistencies if we poke around at the boundaries.
Clearly not a “perfect simulation” of the human, since the human says “i have free will, and I use it to buy a beer”, while the simulation says “I am identical…”. If it was a perfect simulation, it would say the exact same thing as the human. It doesn’t, ergo it isn’t a perfect simulation.
In the context of the simulation argument, “simulation” means “artificial simulation” with a teleological element, so “natural simulation” is a contradiction. Things like Boltzmann brains or holographic projections aren’t “simulations” in that context.
Discussion of the SA tends to rapidly become theological, and indeed many of the arguments (free will /the problem of evil, Deism /Spinoza’s God vs active interventionist simulators) are identical to those of theologians past. It’s interesting though, since it’s one of the first “scientific” arguments for a deity since evolution by natural selection banished the naive argument from design (the other one is the Anthropic coincidences, an updated design argument). With the exception of a few experimental attempts to probe for physical inconsistencies /signatures of simulation (so far all negative), it does vere more towards metaphysics than physics, so some eye-rolling may be justified.
In ancient Indian nondualist (Advaita) philosophy, the Atman equals the Brahman. In other words, YOU are the creator. 
Doesn’t it turn into solipsism at that point?
I don’t think so, no. In Advaita, “self” is consciousness, and is seen as more of a mathematical constant that simply exists, and is a core part of what creates reality at all levels, including our own, including ourselves. The “self” in solipsism implies the self that is just “you” the individual mind.
The main argument in favor of the simulation hypothesis is that the number of simulated universes containing life as we know it might possibly be greater than the number of non-simulated universes containing life as we know it. This is of course pure speculation with no evidence for the actual ratio, but it sells books.
No more or less speculative is that the number of natural simulations (abstract imitations of a materially extant or materially nonexistent reality) might possibly exceed the number of unnatural simulations. I can be just as certain that we’re living in a natural simulation as Bostrom can that we’re living in an “ancestor” simulation…which is to say not at all because neither of us can present any actual evidence other than hypotheses based on purely speculative assumptions.
In this discussion this is the first thing you’ve said with which I completely agree.
So consider free will. Historically theologians have treated it basically as a kind of magic release from the logic of causality, and choice as a kind of unmoved mover not unlike Spinoza’s God - though the ancient Greeks contemplated a Prime Mover long before Spinoza - save insofar as operating within the limits of said Creation. This is, in a word, fantasy. Modern philosophers have done a little better, but still often hew to the term free will, leading to confusion. Like so much of metaphysics, it’s sloppily defined on differing assumptions.
Here we almost agree. It’s pure metaphysics. Which is itself fine. Metaphysics is not a crime. Neither, however, is it physics. As a popular saying in my field goes: shut up and calculate. As the scientific philosophers like to say: shut and contemplate. The two tend to get conflated in these sorts of discussions, to the ultimate detriment of both.
The more limited purview of the theological type of simulation hypothesis you’re concerned with echoes other theological cosmogonies in one very particular way. It ascribes characteristics of the human thinkers to the apparent external universe, despite all evidence so far to the contrary that nature does not reflect our own biases save within ourselves. In short, on top of being metaphysics, it suspiciously resembles projection of the human ego.
The eye-rolling is because the argument is a broken record, going round in circles so often it could wear a rut in limestone. On the Boing Boing forum alone it’s repeated itself at least once a year.
Some snarking gifs and memes are a way of saying here we go again. So when someone condescends towards others for not taking it seriously, particularly with a call to authority and name-dropping, we are not impressed.
“Modern philosophers have done a little better, but still often hew to the term free will , leading to confusion. Like so much of metaphysics, it’s sloppily defined on differing assumptions.”
I’m a hard compatibilist in the Dennett vein, so I don’t find discussions on free will particularly confusing. Usually, just tiresome.
Since experiments have been conducted (and more have been suggested) to find evidence of simulation, how do you justify classifying it as pure metaphysics? Pure metaphysics should not be amenable to experimental investigation.
As with the incompatibility between GR and QM, evidence of the limits of human understanding is not proof of God or a simulation. Interpretation is not empirical science, it’s metaphysics.
Welcome to our world.
My point being that because there are several schools of which compatibilism is but one, and people rarely define their assumptions, discussions of free will nearly always devolve into a mess. So it is with theology and the simulation argument.
You’ve lost me there. There is quite the difference between, for instance, varying interpretations of QM (Copenhagen vs Everett, etc, which are not amenable to experiment) and experiments designed to discover evidence for simulation (or, similarly, to find evidence for bubble wall collisions in the cosmic background, for instance). The latter seem to have little to do with “interpretation”. If you can do experiments, you are no longer doing metaphysics.
As far as I’m aware, the proposed experiments all center around searching, so far unsuccessfully, for what could be explained by the Simulation Hypothesis. Specifically searching for resolution limits above the Planck scale that, still inconclusively, would suggest a discreet space-time structure. Unfortunately for the simulation argument, the Simulation Hypothesis is not the sole possible explanation, and it violates Occam’s Razor which, while not a hard a fast law, if rarely a good sign.
Even David Chalmers has conceeded that, “You’re not going to get proof that we’re not in a simulation, because any evidence that we get could be simulated." A non-falsafiable hypothesis is not physics, and as far as we know, the Simulation Hypothesis is non-falsifiable.
In contrast, a real empirical experiment such as perhaps the most famous in modern physics, Michelson-Morley conclusively disproves something, AKA falsifies it, such as the luminiferous aether.
Descartes fell into this trap nearly 400 years ago and some very clever people people are still finding ways to fall into it today.
Something about this seems incongruous. It sounds like saying you can’t possibly take a picture of a building because there aren’t enough atoms in the camera & film to replicate the building. While the latter half of that statement may be true, it doesn’t imply the former half at all.
To be, or not to be, or to be and not be, or not to be and not be, or to just pass the tortilla chips and get on with it, that is the question.
Or just that we don’t know everything yet. “Dunno, some ineffable superbeing must’ve done it.” is the easy way out. But as we learn more we find the need for that explanation less.
Get cats. They ponder a lot.
It would be something innocuous like trying to pull 257 napkins from a napkin dispenser that is completely irrelevant to the plot. Something no one would think to test and wouldn’t get any budget.
As an old friend once said here, if we’re living in a simulation, the writers are on a three martini lunch.
Now where did I put my towel? 
Spoken like a true Popperian. While I agree with you that the simulation argument is not the sole possible explanation, plenty of people disagree that falsifiability is the be-and-end-all of science; I think Sokal and Bayesianism are more reasonable accounts of how science actually works; evidence can support a hypothesis, even if the hypothesis is unfalsifiable. And as science pushes up against the limits of falsifiability in cosmology and elsewhere, Popper is revealing his limitations. The point remains…once you are doing experiments, while it may be less than ideal physics to a hard line Popperian, it is no longer pure metaphysics. You might call it “impure physics”. Max Tegmark has made the same argument about the multiverse, which collects its own share of disapproval as unfalsifiable, and yet gets increasing acceptance among cosmologists. Not that the simulation argument deserves similar regard, by any means.
I specified empirical science for a reason. Science, as I’m sure you know, is just borrowed Latin for knowledge. Physics, however, is an exercise in empirical falsifiability, a narrower remit.
For now cosmology and especially physics are victims of their own success.
Indeed he has. Acceptance is fine. I’m not telling anyone not to accept the possibility of the multiverse anymore than I’m telling them not to accept the possibility of God. Empirical science it nonetheless is not.
The assorted multiverse theories have the benefit that they’re not encumbered by resembling the projection of human ego. Indeed, they seem downright Copernican in spirit, which is a large part of their appeal. The far more critical difference however is that one of the phenomenon grouped under the term multiverse might yet one day be discovered to be falsifiable. The Simulation Hypothesis is unfalsifiable in principle for the reason given above.
Perhaps another way to define this is to classify all simulations as realities, and declare reality Simulation Zero – that is, the reference point for all simulations. The highest level of detail a simulation can achieve. Which circles back to what I said earlier, about what we perceive as reality is really a simulation in our mind, based upon all sensory inputs. Asking what is beyond Simulation Zero is really like asking what was before the Big Bang.
Or to put it another way: if you are playing World of Warcraft, our latest Plato’s Cave stand-in, what tools does your Avatar have to find out about the world outside of the computer? Are there any ways to replicate this knowledge with only in-game resources, to test statements about how reality exists beyond the game, from within the game?
Strictly speaking, your reason implies that nothing is falsifiable; since any evidence at all could be simulated, not just evidence for the SA. This is skepticism. Not empirical science? Continuing to bang the drum, once you are doing experiments, you are doing empiricism. But not falsifiable science, I will agree.
Anyway, I think we’ve found a middle ground between “it’s pure metaphysics” and “it’s falsifiable science”, even if it’s somewhat muddy ground.
