Is the Universe a Vast Computer Simulation? - A Galaxy Classic

Philosophy is a vital study for the human race - from the ancient Greeks to the modern day, some of the finest thinkers have examined the human condition and produced valuable insights and conclusions on what it means "to be."  Unfortunately much of the other work in the field is dubious, including a recent paper which argues that we're all living in a vast computer simulation.  Yes, it WAS written after the first Matrix film but before the sequels.  Funny that.

Unfortunately this isn't a fanfic: it's a refereed paper published in the Philosophical Quarterly, which must have been hurting for content.  It was written by, Nick Bostrom, the Director of the "Future of Humanity Institute" at Oxford University, the sort of person we'd generally assume to be above such things.  But we suppose that even those pondering the fate of the species need publicity and funding too - probably more than most people, in fact.

Reading the paper (link at the bottom of this article) is a fun game of "Spot the logical flaws" for all the family, with bonus points for every "Warning sign of BS paper" picked out.

The most egregious flaw is the use of a form of the fantastically annoying Bayesian argument: the idea that if we suppose there far more B-type of people  than A, then we're more likely to be born as a B than A.  It's been which has been used to argue everything from the imminent end of the species to this simulation silliness despite:

a) assuming that we're all somehow stacked up waiting to exist like capsule toys in a spiritual vending machine.
b) Statistics Error No 1: confusing probability with actual fact, and arguing that nothing but the most common option should exist.  For example, by the Bayesian argument you and everyone you know is Asian.
c) It's been an equally (in)valid at every stage in human history since we first dropped out of the trees, and was wrong then too.

Other warning signs:

- The "I'm right whatever happens" opener of this paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:....(1) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (2) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation."

For those of you unwilling to dig through philosophical page-filler, this states "Either a) future people won't run simulations or b) they will".

- The "even if you disagree with this, the methods used are interesting" statement in the introduction.  If you can't even open the paper without admitting it's probably garbage that's a bad sign, and if your methods were that good you wouldn't need to point it out.

- The use of hideously underdeveloped math to make your wordswordswords look more scientific, combined with the "make this number very large" style of extrapolation.  Which works in some situations, which this isn't any of.

The main weakness of the paper is the usual "You can't prove if it isn't" argument, the same one that's been used for religion since forever.  But in cases like this it's not the skeptic's job to logically disprove an argument that has never been logically proved. If we state "The Earth, below a depth of ten miles, is composed entirely of pink candyfloss", you don't have to hire a drilling rig and a rogue team of lovable geologists to venture into the planets core to disprove us.

Likewise, if we say "We are living on Earth" and somebody else says "We (are part of a vast future simulation that goes to enormous trouble to make it seem like we are) living on Earth", you don't exactly need Occam's Razor to cut away the unsupported dross from that statement. Occam's blunt butter knife is more than sufficient.

Posted by Luke McKinney from a remote arm of the Milky Way.

Source:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation

Unfortunately this isn't a fanfic: it's a refereed paper published in the Philosophical Quarterly, which must have been hurting for content.  It was written by, Nick Bostrom, the Director of the "Future of Humanity Institute" at Oxford University, the sort of person we'd generally assume to be above such things.  But we suppose that even those pondering the fate of the species need publicity and funding too - probably more than most people, in fact.

Reading the paper (link at the bottom of this article) is a fun game of "Spot the logical flaws" for all the family, with bonus points for every "Warning sign of BS paper" picked out.

The most egregious flaw is the use of a form of the fantastically annoying Bayesian argument: the idea that if we suppose there far more B-type of people  than A, then we're more likely to be born as a B than A.  It's been which has been used to argue everything from the imminent end of the species to this simulation silliness despite:

a) assuming that we're all somehow stacked up waiting to exist like capsule toys in a spiritual vending machine.
b) Statistics Error No 1: confusing probability with actual fact, and arguing that nothing but the most common option should exist.  For example, by the Bayesian argument you and everyone you know is Asian.
c) It's been an equally (in)valid at every stage in human history since we first dropped out of the trees, and was wrong then too.

Other warning signs:

- The "I'm right whatever happens" opener of this paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true:....(1) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (2) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation."

For those of you unwilling to dig through philosophical page-filler, this states "Either a) future people won't run simulations or b) they will".

- The "even if you disagree with this, the methods used are interesting" statement in the introduction.  If you can't even open the paper without admitting it's probably garbage that's a bad sign, and if your methods were that good you wouldn't need to point it out.

- The use of hideously underdeveloped math to make your wordswordswords look more scientific, combined with the "make this number very large" style of extrapolation.  Which works in some situations, which this isn't any of.

The main weakness of the paper is the usual "You can't prove if it isn't" argument, the same one that's been used for religion since forever.  But in cases like this it's not the skeptic's job to logically disprove an argument that has never been logically proved. If we state "The Earth, below a depth of ten miles, is composed entirely of pink candyfloss", you don't have to hire a drilling rig and a rogue team of lovable geologists to venture into the planets core to disprove us.

Likewise, if we say "We are living on Earth" and somebody else says "We (are part of a vast future simulation that goes to enormous trouble to make it seem like we are) living on Earth", you don't exactly need Occam's Razor to cut away the unsupported dross from that statement. Occam's blunt butter knife is more than sufficient.

Posted by Luke McKinney from a remote arm of the Milky Way.

Source:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation

Comments

[Natural Philosopher]

You know, the only reason I tolerate your insulting, bigoted tones is because your feeds do point to fantastic material... but as a blurb-writer, you SUCK. You assume the intelligence of the reader is at your frat-boy mentality of Newtonian physics, and you constantly make very bad jokes -- quite often at others' expense.

I see your game here, taking Science feeds and routing them onto your ad site... then getting the suckers at Myspace to sanction it as a widget/app? If only Galaxy had an engaging, mature, and actually funny author.

[nomatter]

Here is a statistical fact for you:

There is a high positive correlation between how crappy an article becomes and how much of it was written by you

[Sagan]

Nothing "bigoted" about this article at all. Saying so is silly on your part, philosopher.

The "Simulation Argument" is transparently meaningless and no more "proof" of anything than the assertion about pink floss. Really.

It's less of an argument and more of an inconsequential daydream.

[Damion]

"It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation."

Isn't it bloody OBVIOUS that Bostrom is making an unabashed attempt to HAVE IT BOTH WAYS??

He's basically saying "Either I'm right or I'm right".

Someone explain to me, if we REALLY ARE just living in an ancestor simulation, WHY wouldn't his faulty logic have applied EXACTLY THE SAME WAY to the presumed civilization who developed to the point where they could run "ancestor simulations" in the FIRST PLACE???

In other words, if we're just an ancestor simulation, then doesn't that mean that THE REAL ANCESTORS OF THE "POST-HUMANS" WHO CREATED US ALSO HAD A REAL NICK BOSTROM WHO PUBLISHED A PAPER POSTULATING THAT THE UNIVERSE WAS REALLY AN ANCESTOR SIMULATION?

So I guess that means that the REAL Nick Bostrom ancestor (who is being simulated by the program we live in) must have been full of crap the first time.

LOL....

[Duncan]

You guys are missing the point. What's of interest here is not the investigation of whether the universe is a simulation. What is interesting is whether the universe could be a simulation.

It is possible to prove that the universe is not a simulation. The absence of a Planck length or Planck time come to mind. In order for the universe to be computable (and thus possibly a simulation) there must be a upper bound on precision (assuming that the universe holding the simulation is in 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time).

Another interesting point is that the universe is not deterministic. This does not defeat the universe-as-simulation argument, but it makes it less plausible. A deterministic universe would be much easier to simulate than a non-deterministic one.

More reading: http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/reality_universe_computer.asp

[E]

Wow... Posts like this are just classy. Perhaps instead of saying "A Galaxy Classic," you could affix "Opinion" to the post title. It would be a lot more accurate and perhaps deflect a lot of the criticism garnered by posts like these.

That being said, Duncan's right: The interesting thing to think about is if reality could be a simulation, not whether it is or isn't. As with most modern philosophical arguments, the point isn't to discover empirical fact. It's to discuss possibilities, and, via the whittling away of extraneous and unnecessary arguments and assertions until what's left is a series of postulates (which cannot currently be disproven) and the conclusion one arrives at as a result. If that doesn't sound like something you're interested in, that's fine. But that's what it is.

As a sidenote, just so you're aware, it's not actually possible to logically prove anything. One can only disprove things. So that ridiculous paragraph about proving or disproving things is pointless and even a bit embarrassing.

[Albert E.]

Why is the universe not deterministic? If we could construct a computer powerful enough to hold all of the universe's known variables including the input of all interacting dimensions, and run the "laws of physics" program... Wouldn't it act the same as the universe we live in? The only problem I see is probing the universe variables at quantum level until some kind of indirect measurement device is developed.

- God does not play dice with the universe

[Chris]

My favorite is Iain M. Banks' argument (in "Matter") against the universe-as-a-simulation. Basically he reckons that no bastards sufficiently advanced enough to create a universe simulation would be morally reprehensible enough to create one as crummy and full of bad things, pain, and rough hairdos as our universe is. I like it because it's basically a classic atheism argument applied to our presumably god-like future selves.

[toto]

this article again? Saw the same one, few months ago. Even the comments looks the same, CHrist!

[SiliconJon]

LOL, Luke - you have a following! Though I admit this article was too heavy on the cynacism for me, and a bit rough on the composure. Just a little contructive for ya, there...as for the clown car on your tail, may I recommend a good Spy Hunter vehicle?

[Ivar Nielsen]

- It had to happen! Just because the modern science in cosmology and astrophysics use the PC-simulations more than their common sense, of course we also must have a game on the subjects.

But what is the point of asking a lots of cosmological and philosophical answers to this and that - when the questions are based on other PC- simulations and not fully understood and direct contradictive cosmological phenomenons?

I´ll rather go for Mythology in order to understand this and that. It makes much more holistic and cyclic sense to me to compare ancient Myths with modern science.

Natural Philosopher
Ivar Nielsen, Denmark
www.native-science.net
www.cosmology-unified.net

[Narendra Nath]

Has science reached the end of any topic on which it started working on? We only tend to know more and more but never seem to finalize anything for all times in the future. Thus, the search, curiousity and eagerness continue to motivate us. that is good enough a past time for we human beings. There is really no need to be determinitic, as science will go on reaching better and better relative knowledge/truth about each problem it tries to solve. The finality of anything to me is not fascinating. It is continuous search that constitutes a human life in all spheres of activity. 'Life is a struggle' and let us leave it at that. The 'whys' are impossible to answer in this universe. We mostly deal with 'whats' and 'whys'. Why do we want to end as God?Perfection is not human, let us enjoy the imperfections in each of us, plenty of variety exists tom make lifev intersting!

[Paul]

The Universe is a video game. Period.

[sam]

What would be really interesting and certainly a new computational model would be if the universe was a computer simulation.

However the computation was from within itself.

The universe creates itself by simulating itself from within.

kind of like that Dr Who episode:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logopolis

[Jack Butler]

For the record, I enjoy Luke McKinney's jokes, as well as his generally irreverent attitude.

There is a huge indicator--not a "proof," just a good reason to question the assertion--that the universe us not a computer simulation, an idicator which does require the (actually very cogent) observation about Planck lengths and Planck intervals:

Humans invented computers, not the other way around. It is a human tendency (for the overly enthusiastic and insufficiently skeptical) to interpret all of existence in terms of the latest scientific discovery. (Poets call this metaphor, and understand that although metaphor is helpful, it 1) has limits, 2) does not constrain reality, and 3) does not constitute logical proof.)

When Mary Shelley wrote about Frankenstein's monster, the latest widely-publicized discovery was "galvanism," that bodies actually conducted electrical currents--the famous twitching of a dead frog's legs. So guess what brand-new scientific discovery was taken to be the secret of life, so much so that a novelist could imagine even a collection of dead parts could be "re-animated" by the application of sufficient electrical current?

It is suggestive to notice the resemblance between certain systems in the universe and certain systems in computers. But a reasonable human might ask whether those resemblances do not occur because the computer successfully mimics the behavior of parts of the universe, rather than because the universe IS a computer.

I never cease to be amazed at the hubris of those who declare the part can fully explain the whole.

[Duncan]

@Albert E.

The universe is not deterministic precisely because of quantum effects. Quantum weirdness is not deterministic because even given "sufficient" knowledge of the current state of a system, the next state cannot be computed without the addition of a computational dependence on the state of an external system (a random number generator, for instance).

Even though quantum weirdness happens only at a quantum scale, chaos theory states that these minute occurrences must have a small, but not insignificant, effect on the large-scale events of the universe.

[Narendra Nath]

In my previous comment on this item, i made a mistake in saying that man can only deal with 'whats' and 'why's'. It should read 'whats' and 'hows'. 'Whys' are not what we can investigate? The Universe exists. We have nothing to do with its creation as to how it got created and the way it evolved and the way it is now. In fact we ourselves are an outcome of its creative intelligence. Big Bang theory is a mere postulation of how it got created but it ia also silent on what existed prior to the Big Bang! In fact there are other theories regarding the creation of the Universe but somehow the available data on early universe available to us does not satisy these theories as well as the Big Bang. Thus, one can not yet be sure if the Big Bang provides the final answer. As one gets more precise data on the earlier constituents of the Universe, closerand closure to 14 billion years of its existence, we can assure ourselves of better relative TRUTH?

[Brian M Williams]

MANS DIGNITY LIES IN THOUGHT PASCAL

[Brian M Williams]

I should add that is the only reality

[Gloria Lloyd]

Why the sarcastic, they-obviously-should-have-published-me-instead tone? Write up what you have to say and if your arguments are as good as you say they are here, I'm sure Philosophy Quarterly will jump up and down to publish you. You can disagree with someone without resorting to insults.

Why put Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute in quotes, as if Bostrom made it up or something?

[Brian M Williams]

watch this space

[Brian M Williams]

Part one -
Having fallen on my dignity I will attempt to get off of it. Albeit that Pascals penses included the caution that if you want people to think well of you - don`t speak and now, perhaps don`t blog! Another encouraged you not to let your natural curiosity be dampened even if you end up in error for you will be joining oters just as opinionated. We are very opinionated and almost inveriably wrong. I am reminded of Freud`s assistant forever polishing his glass but never actually putting them on.
I we are living meaning existing egoicty emboided intersubjectively with others from microbe to man reliant upton electromagnetism for survival in a vast computer simulated universe is this vatsness infinite? If so are we still subatomic participating and information carrying many dimensional entities both physically and metaphysically.

[Brian M Williams]

2 Particle Physicts tell us that we are a mixture of oscillating interacting particles with virtual ones.... ones that possibly aretravelling backwards in time lending energy to be paid back by so caled real ones with wave lenght properties. Particles are able to communiate across spacetime faster than light with instructions to spin up or down according to their polarity. Einstein initally playfully called it SPOOKY....at a distance but was unable to his chagrin to disprove it. The EPR paradox. Is this spookyness computer simulated? or does the sub atomic world mimic computers inthe same way as mimicry amongst the higher primates including ourselves ofteen before such action begins? This smulation caused by mirror neurons at the quantum level we now understand producing interactive empathy before being fully aware of such feelings.The mechanism forsuch action was knownsince the ancient days of wisdom and non egocentric trandscentalism by such goups as native Americans, aboriginal tribes long before the cognative technologalical terms were in use. Many eastern phylosophies Taoism Confusism Indo Tibetism japonese etc feature intersubjective simulation as a basis for compassion.AS we are part of a continuous and infinite particle interaction filing all of space time and although we are unable to prove mathemactically that the infinte exists can we dertministically rule out a mystical or metaphysical absolute? part 3 to follow

[Brian M Williams]

3 A Principal tenance 0f Buddhaism is compassion coupled with wisdom in an I/thou relationship rather than an I/it one. The zen buddhist Albert LOWE however stateswhe that we cannot be and know-somewhat in the same vein as the famous saying of Heraticlus that you cannot step into the same river twice for renewing fresh waters will wash over you. All is thus ex potentia determinded by our Kantian perspective of reality in aworld of becomming. God eternity souls made up of tiny robots as per a quotation in a book called Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennent,ourselves described as survival machines -robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules (Alfie Kohn) known as genes, are all concepts of the mind.
Part 4 to follow

[Brian M Williams]

Part 4
Professor Whitehead said some hundred years ago that we tend to mistake the abstract for the concrete. If this is so do we live in a world where the physical intrudes upon the metaphysical and not the other way round. Evidence for such is because the physical sciences have paved the way to Silicon Valley and the social sciences left out. The mechanical singularity may be near as we are living in a transhuman world, however a post human stage may not necessarily follow if we take into account the ticking timebomb underneath Yellowstone Park. However the post human stage may alredy exist in a parelell universe. The idea of such univers Richard Dawkins finds wasteful but it has a potential because of its interdeterminism. The thought of everyday things such as rivers,mountains,building etc has been said since ancient times determined by our own consciouness.
It is self evident that alongside the transhuma stage there exists a GREED CULTURE....to be continued