CAJ: The Simulation Theory – 4.) Nick Bostrom and the Simulation Argument

When immersing yourself in the topic of Simulation Theory, you cannot go past this man: Nick Bostrom. He is a Swedish philosopher and transhumanist. 

Nick Bostrom (source: http://research.lifeboat.com/bostrom.htm)

 

Currently he is professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University. Further, he is founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute and of the Program on the Impacts of Future Technology within the Oxford Martin School.

He is the co-founder of two non-profit organizations. In 1997, he founded the World Transhumanist Association, now Humanity+, together with David Pearce (see Post3). In 2004, he founded the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies together with bioethicist James Hughes. The aim of the institute is to spread ideas about the influence of technological progress on democratic societies and individuals, locally and globally. Therefore, the work of international thinkers is regularly published.

Nick Bostrom is famous for his work on “existential risk” which means he addresses the question of humanity’s long-term survival, on transhumant-related issues like artificial intelligence and cloning and of course for his Simulation Argument which will be discussed in this post.

In 2003, he published an article called “Are you living in a computer simulation?”. In this article, he develops three options about our future and argues that one of them has to be true. 

1. Humans (or human-like species) become extinct before they achieve simulation-producing technology.

2. Post-human civilizations have only little interest in making or using this technology.

3. We are probably living in a computer simulation.

The basic idea of the Simulation Argument, as Bostrom calls it, is fairly simple. It says that numerous technologists and futurologists as well as various works of science fiction predict that, in the future, enormous amounts of computing power will be made available to humankind. Bostrom goes on by assuming that our decedents might use their super computers to run simulations of their ancestors and because of their power they could run a great amount of them. Further, he supposes that the people inside these simulations are conscious. The result of which is that it would be likely to think that the vast majority of people would belong to the simulated ones and not to the original race, as Bostrom calls it in its paper. If this is true than we could also argue that we are much more likely to be among the simulated people rather than among the original biological ones. However, if we do not believe that we are currently living in a simulation, we also have no point in arguing that our descendants will create them. 

In general, the Simulation Argument involves probability theory but basically Bostrom explained in an interview that if option one and two do not attain, there would be many more simulated people than non-simulated ones. So it is rational to think that we are living among the simulated rather than among the few exceptional non-simulated ones.

Along with the Simulation Argument comes the Simulation Hypothesis saying that simulated civilizations could themselves create simulations – other simulated civilizations. This would be called “nested simulation” which means having many simulations inside one simulation. However, the Simulation Argument itself does not imply the Simulation Hypothesis; it is just an exceptional extra.

The Simulation Argument imposes a constraint in what you can coherently believe about the future and about our place in the world.

It is a philosophical argument but it clearly differs from others. Neither does it start from a position of doubt, nor does it challenge someone to prove it beyond doubt. It simply assumes that everything is as it seems. It assumes that science tells about the world and that we have computers that are getting faster and better. By assuming these scientific facts, all the Simulation Argument does is thinking what capabilities will eventually be available to a mature civilization. Next it draws out the implications of that and ends up with recognizing that one of the three options mentioned at the beginning is true and that in particular the Simulation Hypothesis seems worth to be taken seriously. 

When Nick Bostrom was interviewed he said that we did not have very strong evidence for or against any of the three options. So he believes that we have to distribute our credence evenly between them. 

In the last section of his paper he interpreted the findings.

Taking a look at option 1, we can see that it is fairly straight forward. If 1 is true, humankind will almost certainly fail to reach a posthuman level. There are many hypothetical situations which might cause us to fail. For example, we could find out that we are about to be hit by a giant meteor or we could go extinct due to the development of powerful but dangerous technology like molecular nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is the science of modifying objects at the atomic or molecular level. 

Option 2 suggests that only a too small number of our ancestors will be interested in creating simulations. In order for 2 to be true, there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations. In general, virtually no posthuman civilizations would decide to use their resources to run large numbers of ancestor-simulations. So they would all lack individuals who have enough resources and interest to run the simulations. Or maybe they have laws which would prevent such individuals from creating simulations. There are different forces that could cause convergence. For example, it could be prohibited for ethical reasons to create ancestor simulations. However, from our present point of view, it is not clear that creating a human race is immoral. Another possible force creating convergence might be the loss of interest to run ancestor-simulations. Today, there are certainly a lot of people who would love to create simulations if they could, for example historians. Maybe if a civilization reaches a posthuman stage, the present desires will be regarded as silly. So the scientific value of ancestor-simulations to a posthuman civilization is negligible which is not too farfetched given their intellectual superiority. So a general conclusion which follows from option 2 is that posthuman societies will be very different from human societies.

Option 3 is clearly the most fascinating one. If we are living in a simulation, then the cosmos which we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence. We cannot be sure if the universe of the people simulating us really resembles the universe we consider as our world. It would be possible for simulated civilizations to become posthuman and run their own simulations on powerful computers. These computers would be virtual machines which is a familiar concept in computer science. It is possible to simulate a machine simulating another machine etc. So if we become able to create our own simulations, we would have found very strong evidence against option 1 and 2 and we would therefore have to conclude that we live in a simulation. Furthermore, we would have to believe that the people simulating us would themselves be simulated by their creators and so on. So reality must contain many levels and the number could be increasing over time. This leads us to a point were analogies with religious conceptions of the world can be drawn. The posthumans running simulations are like gods in relation to the people inhabiting the simulation. They create the world we see and are of superior intelligence. They can interfere in the courses of our world even in ways that violate its physical laws. They can also monitor everything that happens. So in a way there would develop a hierarchy which could lead to the feeling of everybody that their actions would be punished of rewarded by their “gods”, maybe based on moral criteria. But as no one would know whether they are at the basement level of the hierarchy, even the basement civilization would have a reason to behave ethically. There is also the chance of simulators abridging certain parts of the mental lives of simulated individuals and giving them false memories. So if this would be true, then the solution to all evil would be that there is no suffering in the world and all memories of suffering are illusions. Of course this is farfetched as Bostrom says. In general, if option 3 were to be true, we should not go crazy and just carry on living our lives by making plans for the future.

Nich Bostrom gives a small conclusion at the end of his paper. He says that considering all the facts mentioned above, humans might be likely to hope that 3 is true because it would decrease the probability of 1. But if simulators are in favor of ending a simulation before it reaches a posthuman level, then our best hope would be that 2 is true. 

Sources:

https://www.ted.com/speakers/nick_bostrom
http://ieet.org/
http://humanityplus.org/
http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/about/staff/
http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/members/research_staff/bostrom_nick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs
http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html