Hi everyone! I just joined this discussion list, which looks great by the way. I'm a philosopher by trade (mostly working on what we mean by things like 'reasons', 'ought's and 'values'), but I read a lot of science, including singularity stuff, in my spare time.
I actually think there is reason to think we are not living in a computer simulation. From what I've read, inflationary cosmology seems to be very well supported. (Early exponential expansion of the universe explains things like observed flatness, homogeneity across distances, rarity of magnetic monopoles, and scale invariance of primordial density fluctuations.) Mathematical models of inflation point towards the process being eternal. There is some energy in space-time itself, which when dense enough causes expansion of space-time. But since that space-time will also have that vacuum energy, it fuels the expansion even more making it an exponential process. (Total energy is conserved because it is counterbalanced by gravity.) The upshot is that you have this multiverse expanding exponentially. Certain regions of it will, through quantum fluctuations, decay into a lower vacuum energy state that slows down the expansion and turns that energy into ordinary matter and energy. Thus, we get a universe like our's. Any spacetime regions that undergo decay, however, is more than made up for by the exponential expansion. Every second, there are 10^37 *more* universes being "born" than there were before. Thus, at any given time, the vast majority of the universes that exist are very young. So, I grant that it is *possible* that we are in a universe in which some other civilization has evolved enough to run simulations and we are just living in that simulation. But it will take a *lot* of seconds for that civilization to evolve. And each second, it will be vastly outnumbered by younger universes. The anthropic principle says to place an equal probability on being an observer with the same evidence set as you. Since there are so many more observers with these observations who are living in the real world rather than a simulation (given that young universes predominate), we have most reason to believe we are not in a simulation. I think this could also explain why we have not seen alien civilizations. Among all the universes in which there are observers who share our evidence set about our history, evolution, etc., there will be many more universes in which we were the first civilization to evolve than in which we came significantly after some other civilization. John Ku Philosophy Graduate Student University of Michigan http://www.umich.edu/~jsku On 3/1/07, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
--- Jef Allbright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 3/1/07, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > --- Jef Allbright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > On 3/1/07, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > What I argue is this: the fact that Occam's Razor holds suggests that > the > > > > universe is a computation. > > > > > > Matt - > > > > > > Would you please clarify how/why you think B follows from A in your > > > preceding statement? > > > > Hutter's proof requires that the environment have a computable > distribution. > > http://www.hutter1.net/ai/aixigentle.htm > > > > So in any universe of this type, Occam's Razor should hold. If Occam's > Razor > > did not hold, then we could conclude that the universe is not computable. > The > > fact that Occam's Razor does hold means we cannot rule out the possibility > > that the universe is simulated. > > Matt - > > I think this answers my question to you, at least I think I see where > you're coming from. > > I would say that you have justification for saying that interaction > with the universe demonstrates mathematically modelable regularities > (in keeping with the principle of parsimony), rather than saying that > it's a simulation (which involves additional assumptions.) > > Do you think you have information to warrant taking it further? > > - Jef There is no way to know if the universe is real or simulated. From our point of view, there is no difference. If the simulation is realistic then there is no experiment we could do to make the distinction. I am just saying that our universe is consistent with a simulation in that it appears to be computable. One disturbing implication is that the simulation might be suddenly turned off or changed in some radical way you can't anticipate. You really don't know anything about the world in which the simulation is being run. (The movie "The Matrix" is based on this idea). Maybe the Singularity has already happened and what you observe as the universe is part of the resulting computation. My argument is that if the universe is simulated then these possibilities are unlikely. My reasoning is that if we know nothing about this computation then we should assume a universal Solomonoff prior, i.e. a universal Turing machine programmed by random coin flips. This is what Hutter did to solve the problem of rational agents. I am applying the idea to understanding a universe about which (if it is not real) we know nothing, except that shorter programs are more likely than longer ones. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=11983
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