From: Samantha Atkins (sjatkins@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Jul 07 2004 - 00:15:43 MDT
I'll bite. How does the non-sim hypothesis predict our world more
strongly than the sim hypothesis?
Granted we don't have anything handy that seems to be explained better
by the sim notion than otherwise. I do wonder about some of the
strange stuff like "dark matter" though. Maybe it is an artifact of
the sim construction - some aspect that could not be made
self-consistent with the rest within the resources available at a
bearable cost. Hmmm.
Of course that isn't a lot better than the "God of the gaps" sort of
apologetics.
- s
On Sun, 04 Jul 2004 15:18:46 -0400, Eliezer Yudkowsky
<sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
> Thomas Buckner wrote:
> >
> > You know, I recall reading on some Singularity-related web page that
> > since possible sim-universes were so numerous, there is a very high
> > likelihood that we are in one. I'm not sure this is provable, but it
> > would explain a *lot*.
>
> Under the Bayesian (that is, the correct) definition of "explanation" the
> simulation hypothesis would explain nearly nothing, since it makes no
> specific predictions. It explains less than the competing hypothesis,
> because the hypothesis of non-simulation predicts our present world far
> more strongly. The only thing that the simulation hypothesis may be said
> to "explain" is, "Why are we ancestral humans, rather than our descendants
> who are presumably far more numerous?" And even here, to call it an
> "explanation" is a disputed point, for both hypotheses predict the
> existence of ancestors like ourselves, asking that very question.
>
> --
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/
> Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
>
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