From: Peter de Blanc (peter@spaceandgames.com)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2008 - 19:40:59 MST
On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 19:10 -0500, Thomas McCabe wrote:
> These are good, but they've already been added:
>
> "* We might live in a computer simulation and it might be too
> computationally expensive for our simulators to simulate our world
> post-Singularity.
> o Rebuttal synopsis: This scenario can be used to argue for,
> or against, any idea whatsoever. For idea X, just say "What if the
> simulators killed us if we did X?", or "What if the simulators killed
> us if we didn't do X?". "
This is not a rebuttal. Just because an idea can be misused to argue for
all sorts of things does not make it false (consider evolution, quantum
mechanics).
Hypothesis 1: We are in a computer simulation, and it will be shut down
if it becomes much more computationally expensive.
Hypothesis 2: We are in a computer simulation, and it will be shut down
_unless_ it becomes much more computationally expensive.
Is hypothesis 2 exactly as plausible as hypothesis 1? I would say it's
much less plausible.
IMO, the simulation argument should not be dismissed.
- Peter de Blanc
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