Ruben Van Havermaet's personal annotations on this page
Rubyrubyruby bookmarked
on 2009-01-28
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It
may be possible for simulated civilizations to become posthuman. They may then
run their own ancestor-simulations on powerful computers they build in their simulated
universe. Such computers would be “virtual machines”, a familiar concept in computer
science. (Java script web-applets, for instance, run on a virtual machine – a
simulated computer – inside your desktop.) Virtual machines can be stacked: it’s
possible to simulate a machine simulating another machine, and so on, in arbitrarily
many steps of iteration. If we do go on to create our own ancestor-simulations,
this would be strong evidence against (1) and (2), and we would therefore have to conclude that we live
in a simulation. Moreover, we would have to suspect that the posthumans running
our simulation are themselves simulated beings; and their creators, in turn, may
also be simulated beings.Reality
may thus contain many levels.
This link has been bookmarked by 27 people . It was first bookmarked on 25 Jun 2006, by someone privately.
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Amira's notesThis paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.
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This
paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1)
the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number
of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are
almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that
there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations
is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences
of this result are also discussed.
-
-
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It
may be possible for simulated civilizations to become posthuman. They may then
run their own ancestor-simulations on powerful computers they build in their simulated
universe. Such computers would be “virtual machines”, a familiar concept in computer
science. (Java script web-applets, for instance, run on a virtual machine – a
simulated computer – inside your desktop.) Virtual machines can be stacked: it’s
possible to simulate a machine simulating another machine, and so on, in arbitrarily
many steps of iteration. If we do go on to create our own ancestor-simulations,
this would be strong evidence against (1) and (2), and we would therefore have to conclude that we live
in a simulation. Moreover, we would have to suspect that the posthumans running
our simulation are themselves simulated beings; and their creators, in turn, may
also be simulated beings.Reality
may thus contain many levels.
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Aart StaartjesThis paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simu
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This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.
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jeunium jeuniumBertrand’s paradox
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