vastly more intelligent post-human life) “running ancestor simulations.” Imagine chimpanzees talking about what humans would do. It’s very strange for me to hear Bostrom talk about future civilizations (i.e. You are just as likely to be in a bowl of alphabet soup as you are to be living in a simulation created by super-intelligence aliens. Replace “Simulation” with “sword and bow.” Replace it with “fruit salad”, who cares. Our petty current concepts are in no way sufficient to house “reality”, to bound any kind of real understanding of things. We are as ignorant and ridiculous as those before us. Were the Greek gods not conjured up when bows and swords were not the most advanced technology of war, and cattle not the most advanced and sophisticated kind of currency? So our own analogies – comparing things to “computers” and “simulations” are valid – while we can safely smile looking back on the silliness of ancient people, or naive “futurists” from the year 1900.īut wait a minute. We laugh because, of course, we live in a time of the most advanced understanding of the sciences, and of the furthest developments of technology. Even people who practice common religions blatantly ignore the embarrassingly anachronistic language and references therein. Sitting farther ahead in time, we laugh at the naive and limited ideas of people before us. Visions of the year 2000 – predicted in 1900 – depict men with mustaches and top hats using remarkably1900’s-looking buttons and levers to operate machines. The Greek gods got drunk on wine, fought with swords and bows, and valued livestock as a store of value. The simulation argument doesn’t make this any more mysterious.Ģ – A “Simulation” is a Ridiculous, Anachronistic Analogy We have never had some eternal access to “base reality,” and even with brains a thousand times beyond our own, we may never reach an understanding of this “base” in the first place. That 2% is the difference between peeling bananas and throwing dung – and space travel, nuclear war, and Shakespearian sonnets.ĭo you really suspect that our present ideas about reality or art will all hold true? All our fettered hominid notions about physics, about consciousness (which we have woefully little understanding of), about morality – it’ll all still hold true? Think about the mere 2% genetic difference between chimpanzees and homo sapiens – and how drastically different our understanding of the world is. How much higher is the understanding of humanity, really? They have no concept of physics, of how light and sound operate, of what atoms are, of the shape or size of earth, of the sun, or of the Milky Way itself. Maybe neither brains nor vats actually exist and this jumble of senses you experience have led you to believe in these concepts.Īn earthworm’s perception of reality is unbearably fettered. You don’t know if you’re a brain in a vat. You have no idea if every sense perception you’ve ever had is the result of the Cartesian evil genius. You never knew what “reality” you were in in the first place. Let us treat men and women well treat them as if they were real perhaps they are. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. I function in the world, in society, but I operate on the bleeding edge of solipsism at all times. The simulation hypothesis is only jarring if you’ve ever considered yourself to be in “base reality” in the first place.īut anyone with brains can tell that there is no escaping Hume’s Fork: There are things that are true in themselves (“a triangle has three sides”) – and there is knowledge from the senses. 1 – We Were Never Certain of “Base Reality” Anyway I simply believe that the simulation argument isn’t worth speculating about – as it doesn’t take us much further into the inquiry of our condition than Hume or Descartes or the Greek skeptics took us. some concrete “real” world that is not simulated) and are certainly not simulated – but nothing could be further from the truth. When people hear me say that I don’t agree with the simulation argument, or I consider it wrong, they presume that I make the argument that we live in base reality (i.e. That said, I consider much of the simulation argument to be a waste of time, neither particularly jarring nor interesting. I agree with a great many of his ideas, and have been influenced my many of his essays over the last decade, from What is a Singleton? to Utopia and beyond. I have a great respect for Bostrom, and genuinely believe him to be one of the most important thinkers alive today.
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