simulated world
\nTuesday, August 21st, 2007
\nAfter reading a bit of the logic of John Tierney\u2019s argument which relies on Nick Bostrom\u2019s 2003 article, in which, the thesis states, it is likely we are living in a simulation, an interesting turn of my cogitator rewired a familiar (to me) argument. Bostrom\u2019s article gives us a 20% likelihood we are living in an historical simulation of our age. Tierney, says the odds are even.<\/p>\n
In the computing model of the universe, where the entire universe is a single quantum computer producing stars, life, and regularities of all kinds, the requirement for a programmer is implicit. To Tierney the programmer may be some future person. I\u2019m not sure the requirement of a vastly more intelligent computer required for the simulation would explain our universe so easily. I can imagine and have met people smarter than I am. But these are not orders of magnitude smarter. Even though Louis Mackey suggests in the Waking Life, \u201cActually, the gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human. The realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved,\u201d anybody with sufficient rational power sees glimpses of the world of the \u201creal spirit, the true artist, the saint,\u201d etc. However we don\u2019t often actualize that.<\/p>\n
Giving space to the probability of the spike, the singularity in computing power and its inevitable unfolding in our world, the achievement of a universe inside a computing device would require the entire universe as computer to actualize. See some of this argument in Charles Seife\u2019s \u201cDecoding the Universe.\u201d Now that doesn\u2019t mean somebody outside our universe has not created our universe, or that the creator may himself also be created, the reductio ad absurdum paradox holds here. But the universe in which our creator\/hobbyist exists would of necessity be one of a higher order. This is one of the results of Godel\u2019s theory.<\/p>\n
Now, in any case, if this were true, if we were created by some superbeing programming our universe we ought to be able to contact that being and get him to make some changes where his programming has broken down, or the design failed. remember I am not arguing for the existence of God here. This is all conditional. And even if any of these arguments led by logic to an irrefutable proof for the existence of God, that would never lead us to the God of the Christians or Jews, Allah or Krishna. We would have a programmer that would be able to interject snippets of code into the flawed universe.<\/p>\n
More later.<\/p>\n
Posted in Philosophy, Computers, SPS | No Comments \u00bb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
simulated world Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 After reading a bit of the logic of John Tierney\u2019s argument which relies on Nick Bostrom\u2019s 2003 article, in which, the thesis states, it is likely we are living in a simulation, an interesting turn of my cogitator rewired a familiar (to me) argument. Bostrom\u2019s article gives us a … Continue reading august 2007<\/span>