So, there is a 20% chance we are Sims

[G01]

Yes, that's right, 20% chance we are living in a computer simulation!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/s...l=1&adxnnlx=1187226223-em0iJRR21yqb9WQLoq0rog

The whole 20% number is just a "gut feeling." Why quantify something if you are just going to make up numbers?

 

[Gza]

Yes, that's right, 20% chance we are living in a computer simulation!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/s...l=1&adxnnlx=1187226223-em0iJRR21yqb9WQLoq0rog

The whole 20% number is just a "gut feeling." Why quantify something if you are just going to make up numbers?

He's a philosopher; I wouldn't give him much credit for understanding the nature of his misapplication of bayesian inference (but then again, i don't give philosophers credit for much )

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

Well let's just hope they have installed good surge protectors ;-). I want to finish our game of chess before our computer simulation shuts down Go1. :-(

 

[G01]

Well let's just hope they have installed good surge protectors ;-). I want to finish our game of chess before the computer shuts down Go1. :-(

Hehe, alright, it's chess time!

 

[russ_watters]

I saw this movie - it's called The Thirteenth Floor and it is pretty good.

So if the odds would have it that our decendents would make simulations, what are the odds they'd screw with the simulation?

 

[G01]

So if the odds would have it that our decendents would make simulations, what are the odds they'd screw with the simulation?

This is only a gut feeling, but I'd say 113.867% (See I can make up numbers too...)

 

[rocomath]

i think i would have been deleted by now ...

 

[Chi Meson]

My gut feeling is that philosophy is 98% crap. I took a class on Hegel once, and I found that it reminded me of Jazz. A lot of talent, and plenty of logical tricks, puzzles, insight, and even lots of interesting long passages. But on the whole, it is just rambling about desks and trees.You don't like the current philosophical trends? Just wait a minute...

 

[ranger]

Yes, that's right, 20% chance we are living in a computer simulation!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/s...l=1&adxnnlx=1187226223-em0iJRR21yqb9WQLoq0rog

The whole 20% number is just a "gut feeling." Why quantify something if you are just going to make up numbers?

When I read it in the Science section of the New York Times the first thought that came to me was that these people are really in need of some real science news. The funny part of the article (IIRC) was that TIERNEY speculates that these posthumans would reply entirely on silicon (but later redeems himself by pleading ignorance). Nevertheless, this crackpot actually has website:http://www.simulation-argument.com/
And the paper: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

 

[ranger]

So if the odds would have it that our decendents would make simulations, what are the odds they'd screw with the simulation?

According to the article, they already are:

My gut feeling is that the odds are better than 20 percent, maybe better than even. I think it’s highly likely that civilization could endure to produce those supercomputers. And if owners of the computers were anything like the millions of people immersed in virtual worlds like Second Life, SimCity and World of Warcraft, they’d be running simulations just to get a chance to control history — or maybe give themselves virtual roles as Cleopatra or Napoleon.

It’s unsettling to think of the world being run by a futuristic computer geek, although we might at last dispose of that of classic theological question: How could God allow so much evil in the world? For the same reason there are plagues and earthquakes and battles in games like World of Warcraft. Peace is boring, Dude.

 

[daveb]

I saw this movie - it's called The Thirteenth Floor and it is pretty good.

That was an amazingly cool movie. Even though The Matrix was more popular, Thirteenth Floor was a better "OMG we all live in acomputer" movie.

 

[Aether]

Yes, that's right, 20% chance we are living in a computer simulation!

Estimates have been made for the computing power necessary to fully emulate the human brain...a real-time emulation of one human brain is said to require between 10^{16} and 10^{19} calculations per second (see Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, 2005). Today's supercomputers do approach the low-end of this capability, and within forty years from now it is estimated that a $1,000 PC will have the raw capability to fully emulate all human brains that have ever existed at a rate of 10,000 X real-time.

 

[George Jones]

Can we force a reboot?

Can we hang the computer?

Force it into the blue screen of death?

 

[Aether]

The "ultimate laptop" would have enough raw computing capacity to simultaneously emulate the brains of every human being who ever lived at a rate that is 10^{21} X real-time. At that rate, an emulation could fully reproduce the last 10,000 years of human history in just over 17 nanoseconds using a 1kg laptop computer. The ultimate laptop runs very hot though, so a cold version might be more practical which would do the same job in microseconds to milliseconds.

The 'ultimate laptop' is a computer with a mass of 1 kg and a volume of 1 l, operating at the fundamental limits of speed and memory capacity fixed by physics.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6799/fig_tab/4061047a0_F1.html

Can we force a reboot?

Can we hang the computer?

Force it into the blue screen of death?

Hmmm...that may depend on whether we are running on: A) a Windows machine in Bill Gates' closet; B) a Macintosh in Steve Jobs' closet; C) a Linux machine in Linus Torvalds' closet; or D) none of the above, we have "first mover" advantage.

...it’s bad news for the futurists who think we’ll have a computer this century with the power to simulate all the inhabitants on earth. We’d start our simulation, expecting to observe a new virtual world, but instead our own world might end — not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a message on the Prime Designer’s computer.

It might be something clunky like “Insufficient Memory to Continue Simulation.” But I like to think it would be simple and familiar: “Game Over.”

 

[Chi Meson]

Can we force a reboot?

Can we hang the computer?

Force it into the blue screen of death?

For Mac users, it's the "spinning pizza cutter of death."

 

[G01]

Can we force a reboot?

Can we hang the computer?

Force it into the blue screen of death?

For Mac users, it's the "spinning pizza cutter of death."

I'm sure someone who would go out of his way to make a simulation of the universe would do it on a LINUX machine.