From: nuzz604 (nuzz604@gmail.com)
Date: Sun May 21 2006 - 10:44:54 MDT
I don't particularly buy in to the Simulation Argument. I am by no means an expert at math or formal logic, but to me that argument is still assumptions and speculation, no matter how you look at it. It doesn't seem like there is any immediate practical application to this hypothesis. Even if we do become post human, does that mean we are living in a simulation?
Will: A) Posthumanity allow us to determine if we are living in such a simulation through increased intelligence,
or B) Will we assign a high(er) probability to the fact that we are living in a simulation upon reaching posthuman status?
I would expect neither of these will occur, until some new evidence can be found. Intelligence alone may not be enough to see evidence that isn't there, and the Simulation Argument alone may not and probably will not be enough to predict the existence of such a simulation.
Going even further, (and I did think long and hard about this a few years back, just before I learned of the Singularity), trying to envision a universe outside of our own (our own being a simulation), seems even more of a mystery than envisioning a world 100 years after the Singularity (with a capital S). It may still be just as large of a mystery in the posthuman era. I expect that such an outer world could be unspeakably different from our own.
If there was a simulation, when would they (the operators) reveal themselves? Have they already in the form of God(s), or perhaps in other more subtle forms? When will they shut down? Tomorrow? Just before or just after human-level or smarter-than-human AI is created? At the beginning of the post human age? 10 million years from now? Never? I don't think that there is any use arguing about any of these questions. Only new evidence will give us clues, and perhaps superintelligence may be able to answer some of these questions.
So unless superintelligence finds the deliberate clues that are already there, maybe only noticeable by superintelligence, or the simulators reveal themselves (I expect this will only be a deliberate act), we have no information.
I can offer something that may help.
If our universe is a simulation, then the proof or evidence of the simulation (and it's simulators) will not reveal itself by accident, neither to humanity nor posthumanity. Any observable evidence exists within our simulated universe and is completely under control by the operator(s), and only by a deliberate act will any hard evidence be collected.
Mark Nuzzolilo
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