- The 2nd sentence of Bostrom’s paper is: “Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct.” Okay, let’s pretend for a moment that the predictions claimed by “serious technologists and futurologists” are correct. What predictions? That future computing power will become enormous.
- The first question that occurs to me is: What would the enormous computing power require?
- Enormous computing power would require:
- processor technology
- energy efficiency
- data storage
- large-scale computing infrastructure
- The interesting thing about “processor technology” is that the first commercial processor was released by Intel in 1971 here in the U.S. [Processing the History of Microprocessors]. (For the record: In 1971, I was 23 years old.)
- Maybe somebody else around here can tell you more about the large scale computing infrastructure. But my guess is that it would have to be bigger than a laptop or desktop computer.
- Another thing that occurs to me is that there currently are, I am told, about 8.3 billion people in the world. How many of the 8.3 billion do you think are "living’ simulated lives in a simulated world. Or are you worried that you’re the only one?
- Where do you think the computing infrastructure necessary, hypothetically, to simulate all the simulated lives is located?
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- The third sentence in Bostrom’s Introduction is this: “One thing that later generations might do with their super‐powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears.”
- Wait a minute: “might”??? So Bostrom isn’t saying that anybody has run “detailed simulations” of their ancestors yet, but future generations might.
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What if we say, “Meh. Maybe. Maybe not.” And then go on and live our lives as best we can.
We don’t get to decide the reality into which we come to exist. It precedes us, influences us, and will outlast us. None of us has the power to change it - the nature of being - however any of us understands it. Assuming we can understand any of it in any valuable way.
This is not fatalism or nihilism. It’s an acceptance of our smallness and weakness within something so vast, we will never comprehend it all. Which is exactly what Christianity tells us. The best part of Job is God’s speech, in my opinion. It puts Job, and us, in our places.
Jesus is our good guide and teacher, our good Savior, if it’s a simulation or not. He says, “Follow me.” That’s simple enough to comprehend. Yet hard to do.
If you focus on that task you’ve been given, and understanding what Jesus says it means, you will do well. No matter the nature of reality, or hypotheses or conspiracies about it.
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Kendel, I’m with you on the “humility before the vastness of reality.” I fear, though, that the real boogeyman in Bostrom’s simulation argument is not that reality is unknowable, but that the argument rests on several speculative assumptions for which we have no evidence.
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@BuffaloMax17
Max, something worth knowing about simulations comes from the work of Edward Lorenz, who pioneered computer weather modeling in the 1960s. While rerunning one of his weather simulations, he discovered that changing a starting number by a tiny amount—something like 0.506127 to 0.506, eventually produced completely different weather patterns in the model. This became known as the “butterfly effect”: extremely small differences in starting conditions can grow into huge differences later.
The lesson Lorenz drew was that even when you know the equations governing a system, simulations of complex systems are extremely sensitive and difficult to keep aligned with reality. Weather forecasting, for example, becomes unreliable after about a week for exactly this reason. That discovery suggests something important for discussions about simulated universes: reproducing the full behavior of a complex world with perfect fidelity would require extraordinary precision and computational resources—far beyond what people often imagine when they casually talk about simulating entire civilizations.
In other words, the deeper scientists have studied simulations, the more they have discovered how hard it is to simulate complex reality—not how easy it would be to simulate an entire universe.
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Oh, sure. And I didn’t even bother to look at it.
My thinking is that there is no end to ideas like this that are supposed to shake the foundations of faith with the dreaded question: What if _______?
None of us will live long enough to neutralize the barrage. At some point you have to decide, “I am taking this direction, because I think it is the best one. Even if only for me.”
The assurance that we (Christians) are often lead to believe we have - that all doubt can be combatted rationally - is simply untrue. And to try to follow that combat model makes us ineffectual, distracted, combative Christians.
What if, instead of flitting around the alleys where doubt is stoked (redit,
Youtube, twitter, Etc.) Christians - especially young men - spent more time employing their muscle and brains in service, while meditating on Jesus’ service and love in and for the world.
No one is going to worry about life being s simulation, while taking care of the needs of the neighbors they don’t even like and learning to love them.
As @Klax reminded me recently:
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