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