
The Simulation Argument and the Simulation Barrier - michaelfeathers
https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/the-simulation-argument-and-the-simulation-barrier
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3pt14159
A long time ago I wrote a blog post called "Statistical Immortality" that led
others to recommend the concept of lazy immortality and the book "Permutation
City" which I highly recommend.

And the very end of the day you have to take something on faith and proceed.
Solipsism is internally inconsistent because it presupposes a mind that can
evaluate a truth whilst simultaneously taking the argument that existence
isn't knowable. Empiricism presupposes that our senses and mind can be relied
upon to some degree. Theocratic foundations for selfhood are rooted in faith
in a higher power.

So in a limited sense I agree with this article's argument. Once you allow
that the simulation argument may be true you invalidate that your mind is
capable of determining if this is likely.

~~~
krageon
As far as I'm aware solipsism only has a core tenet that nothing but you
exists. That is certainly how I was introduced to it when I studied it in
class and the only real overarching principle I could find when reading
different viewpoints on it.

That said, unless you believe your mind can evaluate what is true it has to be
(as far as I can tell) a faith-based stance. That isn't much different from a
religious world-view, except there's not a higher power. There's only you.

~~~
willis936
I’m under the impression that solipsism is the rejection of the assumption
that physical reality is the true reality. Cogito ergo sum. I am not the void.
I can say that for sure. Everything else is up for debate.

This is a very different idea than believing that only the self is real. I
don’t think it’s possible to strongly argue that. However, solipsism is a real
case to make. Prove that your mind and body are connected and you will have
debunked solipsism.

~~~
monktastic1
There's epistemological solipsism (which is what you describe) and
metaphysical solipsism. The latter says that "only I exist." I don't
understand the grandparent's objection in either case.

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scythe
There is a lack of consistency between an implicit premise in Bostrom's
argument and one in Feather's critique:

>any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number
of simulations _of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);_

[emphasis added]

>This _lack of necessary overlap in metaphysics_ between the world that
creates a simulation and the simulation itself could be called the simulation
barrier.

[emphasis added]

Why would there be a lack of necessary overlap in metaphysics between the
world an evolved organism inhabits and a simulation _of its own evolutionary
history?_ Bostrom's reasoning for _why these simulations would exist in the
first place_ clearly depends on extrapolating from various aspects of human
behavior, so his argument necessarily posits that the beings _running_ the
simulations are at least in this way (and probably in others) similar to
humans. The similarity of the Universe, largely, follows.

Furthermore, the simulation argument fails to be really different from the
dream argument when we omit Bostrom's motivation argument. If we can be in a
simulation within matryoshkaed simulations thousands of layers deep, then
surely we might be in a dream within a dream thousands of layers deep. We can
provide all of the necessary metaphysical computational capacity to the
dreamer that we would a simulator, can't we? The whole bit where creatures are
_motivated_ to simulate themselves seems, to me, to be crucial.

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dboreham
I think this is saying that you can't simulate a VAX on a Z-80. But we know
that you can, just not at full speed. But if time created by the simulator
does that matter?

~~~
mojuba
> But if time created by the simulator does that matter?

It probably does for those who created the simulation. Not sure they have
infinite patience to see the outcome of their experiment.

~~~
guramarx11
I heard from someone about the relativity of spacetime, time is slowest near
the center of a huge gravity source like blackhole so out here earth time is
actually relatively fast and are speeding up due to expansion, as the further
our galaxy/universe is flying apart the less mass and less gravity can slow
them down

So our relative spacetime scale of a billion years here, might just be a few
hours inside some of those crazy dense SUPER MASSIVE blackholes

And with that in mind and some loose sense our whole simulation might just
took 1 second of the creator's relative time because...time is relative , just
a loose assumption

~~~
pizzaparty2
The first time I heard of this being noticeable on a human timescale was the
movie Interstellar. But I don't no think in real life there is that much of a
difference between the rate at which time passes near a large mass.

This answer on Quora says the rate at which time passes on Jupiter is only a
few nanoseconds off compared to Earth.

[https://www.quora.com/Will-time-pass-slower-if-we-go-to-
Jupi...](https://www.quora.com/Will-time-pass-slower-if-we-go-to-Jupiter-for-
example)

~~~
_0ffh
IIRC I read that for an outside observer everything that is sucked into a
black hole does never actually pass "into" it. The closer it gets to the event
horizon, the slower it's clock runs (from an outside perspective), and
gradually stops upon approaching the horizon itself. [!] That seems like a
rather large difference.

[!] Disclaimer: I don't know if that interpretation is still considered valid.

Edit: Formatting

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root_axis
What bothers me about the idea of an ancestor simulation is the suggestion
that a computer which exists inside the universe could simulate the universe
with enough fidelity that it could actually serve as a useful ancestor
simulation. An ancestor simulation seems to be a contradiction, like a box
that contains itself within.

~~~
sudosysgen
It's still possible, but you will have statistical inaccuracies. If your
analysis shows that say almost all events in this area can be abstracted up to
this value without losing a significant amount of accuracy that makes the
inner box smaller. Factor in our limited speed of travel and the one way
nature of causality relative to us on the cosmic scale, you get a
theoretically feasible simulation.

~~~
simonh
It _may_ be possible, and the inaccuracies in such a simulation _might_ be
useful to meet some goal, if a valuable use could be determined that would
justify the costs involved, but there's nothing inevitably true about any of
those propositions. It's a bit like the Drake equation, reasonable people can
assign different probability values to the various factors and come to
radically different conclusions.

For example if I think there's a very low chance a valuable enough use for
such a simulation could be found, and there's a low chance such a simulation
would meet the criteria to be useful, and that there's a low chance such a
simulation would need to be so accurate as to have actually conscious
simulated inhabitants to meet those goals, then the chance that we are in a
simulation comes to be vanishingly small.

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cy6erlion
If we are in a simulation it will be difficult to know that we are in a
simulation because what we use to identify the simulation (mind) is itself
simulated, our notion of simulation is acquired within the simulation. We are
in this black box and are trying to see outside.

~~~
mistermann
Since we're talking crazy stuff, what if similar to how we control matter a
super advanced entity could control souls (say, like a form of slavery, or
laboratory testing on animals), gathering them into batches and injecting them
into simulations, that they control, without having control over the subjects?

I'm not proposing this as the situation, but if we're talking simulations,
it's fun to think about.

~~~
bitL
Even more fun is to think that we are a class project of some sophomore at
some university in "outer outside". That would explain a lot of things.
Instead of a super advanced entity just some junior students creating their
first universes.

~~~
setr
In that case, we're probably being started from a snapshot provided by the
teacher

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gorgoiler
What would it take to simulate a conscious mind? Several orders of magnitude
more processing power than is needed to perform the simple tasks we currently
ask of AGI, I believe.

For example, in another part of biology, DNA seems to be a very inefficient as
a data structure and tool for genetic replication. But you’d expect and
forgive that from a system that self organized through chance, iteration, and
a vast amount of time. Evolution has short horizons and lacks the long term
planning required to be economical.

Human engineered systems are by contrast far more efficient with their
resources. You can now sift through photos of cats and not_cats with a GPU and
a few decades of collective technological progress. To get to the stage where
a mind, artificial or natural, has self awareness, I can completely believe
that it would require the level of processing only made available by a
naturally inefficient evolution process.

We have minds that are focused on hunting, gathering, procreating, toolmaking,
and surviving. Humans have succeeded at doing these things by growing vast
brains that only accidentally became good at spotting incoming lions and
finding mates. We are lucky that our complex brains evolved in such a way[1]
as to allow conscious thought to emerge as a side effect.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory)

~~~
eteos
The theory is that the required technological advancement to create such a
simulation is plausible to be achieved in x amount of time, as long as we keep
progressing. Could be a thousand or a million years.

~~~
simonh
A counter-theory is that technology will always be constrained by the physical
limitations of energy and matter. Given the material resources of a solar
system, there's only so much you can do no matter how advanced your
technology. Given that constrained matter/energy budget, how much of those
resources are going to be devoted to ancestor simulations? Possibly not enough
for it to matter.

Ok, you can assume an interstellar hegemonic civilization that can consume the
resources of a galaxy, but if such a thing were possible how come we haven't
already been absorbed by one yet? Ergo such a thing seems to be unlikely to be
possible.

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gnode
The simulation argument in my mind arises from thinking about the universe in
terms of computation. The concept of computing and tractability comes from
limitations and phenomena we see in the universe: energy and the arrow of
time. Yet, the arrow of time doesn't appear to be fundamental to the
constitution of the universe (with the laws of physics being identical in
reverse), but only an emergent property of entropy. Like a human-inspired
sentient creator, the simulation is the most in-reach explanation of creation
for a given perspective.

We could look beyond the limitations of thermodynamics, and consider that the
contents of spacetime may just exist in the same way as the contents of pi or
the Mandelbrot set exists.

Why must the universe be "created" at all by computation, when computation
doesn't even seem to be a fundamental, but only an emergent property of it?

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Frunkdrank
If we are in a sim it seems it render's what is percived by "intelegence" to
stop any inconsistencies revealing themselfs to the observer ( Maybe to save
on processing power, to estimate the overall picture only giving answers to
the very small details when observed). We should look for limitations of this
system that show up these inconsistencies such as Wigner's superposition
thought experiment and many other quantum peculiarities. Could we hack such a
system? maybe using quantum computers is a start? getting past the construct
and utilising the vast processing power that would be needed to create the
sim, getting past the rules of rendering to the observer by seemingly not
looking, If Im in a sim id like to think we could hack the hell out of it, or
at least try.

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kybernetikos
The impossibility of being sure of the rules of the parent reality is why I
find all arguments that we can't be in a simulation because it would take too
long to calculate certain aspects of our reality to be unconvincing.

The computational complexity hierarchy could be different in a parent
universe.

I do wonder though what things might have to be the same. I would be very
surprised if any reality that allowed intelligent life forms able of creating
and running simulations didn't have causality. What about the concept of
number, or certain parts of logic? I think there may well be reasonable
assumptions that can be made about a parent universe, even if they don't reach
the level of complete confidence.

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fyp
Can someone help me imagine what a world with different math is like? It’s
easy enough to imagine a world with different physics (such as in video
games). But math is just a list of rules/axioms and the results of following
those rules. They might find different axioms more applicable but our math
should still work in their universe even if it’s considered pure math with no
applications.

~~~
monktastic1
It's tricky because "world" already makes us imagine a reality whose
fundamental operation works like it does here. In fact, "reality" and
"operation" already come with that baggage. The very mechanism that we know as
"mind" (or at least, intellect) may be incapable of imagining other
possibilities. On the other hand, very strong psychedelic experiences (a la
DMT) or meditation can certainly give the impression that other possibilities
exist. The problem is, you can't bring those possibilities back here via
memory.

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Wowfunhappy
I have an inherent problem with these discussions: I'm not convinced a
simulation can be conscious.

There's an xkcd comic titled "A Bunch of Rocks" at
[https://www.xkcd.com/505/](https://www.xkcd.com/505/). Could dropping rocks
in the sand to simulate a turing machine produce a conscious being? If not,
why can a computer?

~~~
haxiomic
I love the bunch of rocks example and think about it a lot.

If a simulation cannot produce consciousness, what is special about life that
makes it unrepresentable with physics? Where is the boundary between a
conscious system and a non-conscious one?

Conscious minds certainly seem bound by their physicality, you can figure out
how feelings and experiences are represented molecularly and electrochemically
and affect those feelings and experiences experimentally. So far we've not
found anything that cannot be broken down into physics (not to say we won't),
but if we assume there's nothing else _but_ physics – then I think we're left
with:

\- The physics consciousness relies upon is fundamentally uncomputable

\- Consciousness _is_ computable and all the weird consequences that follow
(like sand computers) are true

I lean towards the second option, but I struggle to understand it in any
intuitive sense.

What are your thoughts on why a simulation cannot be conscious?

~~~
IC4RUS
I think you're missing another possibility (and some other posters are too):
maybe it is the case that a simulation can produce consciousness, by
simulating a brain for example, but that it takes a sufficiently powerful
model of computation to do so.

So, consciousness being computable may not necessarily imply that any given
computer could do so. One potential way for this to be the case is if
consciousness is tied to some form of hypercomputation
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation)),
which can provide outputs that are not turing-computable. This would mean that
a traditional computer couldn't simulate consciousness, but that another
hypothetical machine might be able to.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Yes, exactly.

Bostrom is assuming there's a thing called "computation" which is somehow a
fully-specified solved problem. (It isn't).

Worse, he's also assuming that this "computation" can somehow simulate
something called "consciousness" \- which unfortunately for him, is nowhere
near to having the formal rigorous definition that "computation" as we know it
today would require.

And finally after all that, you get something which is _subjectively_
indistinguishable from life itself.

Well - obviously. If you don't define any of your terms and assume your
argument is correct because you don't show your working or get into specifics,
you can argue whatever you like.

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biolurker1
So basically the author did not bother to read the pdf he had referenced at
the bottom. It is short and quite clear.

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hprotagonist
Anselm’s Ontological Argument, redux.

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aaron-santos
What does a blue pill attack look like in this scenario?

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pmontra
All the axioms the argument is based on can be false. It's still interesting
to debate but not necessarily close to reality.

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morelisp
The crux of this article appears to be:

> it seems reasonable to allow that simulations, as experienced by their
> inhabitants, could have entirely different models of math, physics, and even
> consistency.

Which is a (shallow, informal) restatement of Hilary Putnam's work on
externalism and its many responses. Just read some of that instead.

Software developers (or worse, tech entrepreneurs) often assume they have
something to add to the discussion of simulationism just because computation
is the simulation substrate du jour in Bostrom's work. But the philosophical
discussion goes back directly to Descartes and indirectly even further. It's
broad, complex, and not something a dilettante can just jump into after a
teenage diet of scifi.

(This doesn't apply to Bostrom himself - the article's objection is a subset
of his #2 option. If the "necessary overlap in metaphysics" is impossible or
prohibitively expensive future civilizations are not likely to run them.)

~~~
coldtea
> _Software developers (or worse, tech entrepreneurs) often assume they have
> something to add to the discussion of simulationism just because computation
> is the simulation substrate du jour in Bostrom 's work. But the
> philosophical discussion goes back directly to Descartes and indirectly even
> further. It's broad, complex, and not something a dilettante can just jump
> into after a teenage diet of scifi._

So what? People should stop thinking for themselves and relegate it to the
pros, lest they repeat informally something already investigated and rejected?

One could also point out how openness and encouragement of layman
participation and collaboration with field outsiders have also been discussed
extensively, and point people to read the relevant papers/books instead of
your comment...

~~~
morelisp
> People should stop thinking for themselves and relegate it to the pros, lest
> they repeat informally something already investigated and rejected?

I didn't say anything about thinking. But yes, maybe many programmers (and
celebrities and entrepreneurs - also called out by the article itself) should
think more and publicly speak less.

~~~
iainmerrick
Here’s something I’m curious about, hopefully without coming across as too
negative: what is the purpose of philosophical work such as Bostrom’s?

As an argument it may or may not be convincing, but it’s not obviously
actionable. It’s hard to see how it could be tested.

You seem to be saying that amateur philosophers shouldn’t jump in with their
own naive takes on it, as they don’t have the required educational background.
I can certainly believe that, but it takes away another avenue by which we
non-philosophers can potentially engage with the work.

If there has been any notable followup or rebuttal, it hasn’t made nearly as
much of an impact in the public consciousness (and of course the simulation
argument is a pretty niche thing in the first place).

How does, or should, this simulation argument affect the average person? How
might it affect us in future? What does it change?

~~~
morelisp
> what is the purpose of philosophical work such as Bostrom’s?

This is a good question. This paper is _popular_ well in disproportion to its
_impact_ , because it's a sexy scifi topic. I don't know Bostrom but I suspect
it's popular far in disproportion to his desires also - it's just one small
piece of his work on superintelligence, which is in turn only one part of his
work on measuring existential risk.

The paper, it should be noted, is not an argument we are living in a
simulation (it's often taken as one, but the simulation hypothesis predates
Bostrom, the 20th century, etc.). Rather, it's an argument that there is a
trilemma of which two options are material, and potentially even testable - so
in a sense, it does allow the simulation hypothesis to be tested, if you buy
his trilemma and reject the other options. (Based again on his other work, I
suspect Bostrom may personally believe #1 - I personally am suspicious of both
the validity of the trilemma and independently suspect #2.)

So this plays the kind of role in philosophy that a discovery of some unique
way to synthesize a chemical we already have plenty of ways to synthesize in
chemistry. It's a workaday paper - interesting if you are interested in the
field, but of no great impact to most people's lives.

The result is that there's also not a lot of great ways to engage with the
paper, in the same way it's difficult to engage with a refinement of the
equivalence between inertial and gravitation mass.

If you want to engage with the simulation hypothesis and metaphysical realism
more broadly, I would begin with Putnam's _Reason, Truth and History_. The
philosophical work around the simulation hypothesis is maybe best thought of
not as an attempt to actually answer it conclusively, but as particular lens
on the relationship between reality, self-perception, and sense-perception.
Clarifying those relationships is of immense use to the average person.

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Frunkdrank
If we are in a sim, most likely we are part of the sim program and not plugged
in Matrix style.What differences could there be between reality and sim? I
cannot see any plausible reason for a conscious dimension in actual reality,
but we see lots of evidence for the conscious dimension interacting with
reality in the quantum, quantum computing especially should not really be
possible unless you are accessing processing power from else where,it seems to
me very likely we are in a sim that's designed to produce intelegent life, big
bang is someone turning the on switch that produces through the Hawking
inflation theroy infinite combinations for intelegent life to exist within
there created framework, where the sim computer only needs to collapse the
quantum wave function and render what is percived where there is inteligence,
we evan may be an attempt by AI to create conscious but if so our worlds
history remains intact and genuine, but as musk says what's outside the
sim,who created and programed it may have came from a very different universe
than we can imagine, and what is there consciousness like? Would we call that
a creator ?

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guramarx11
While I fancy simulated reality, Bostrom's hypothesis placed constraints and
assumptions that "human" must exist in the least and sim's purpose are about
their "ancestors" and "we" are the reason that ever more simulations will
continue to co-exist

But why must it be post-human from future? why not a "pre-human-ancestor" from
"relatively ages ago" that may have created a simulation to peek into
simulated future?(so they can learn and won't make the same mistakes we did)

You may notice a contradiction in my example is IF the creator are instead
from the past? How can they even be a human at all if they had to exist before
human does?

The thing is chicken and egg "only" if we assume our creator themselves must
be human, on the other hand

Today, we are designing/training artificial intelligence life form barely
resembling us in simulations and most of their purposes are generally
"forecast/solution/learning/gaming"

With the penultimate goal to create ASI to solve problems in nature, perhaps
the reality is our universe may just be one of the branches as a result of
such humble "exploration"

OBTW are you aware "I AM AI" a slogan favored by Nvidia is a cute palindrome
itself that can also be rearranged to "AI AM I", "AM I AI", "AI I AM", "I A I
AM" :D

