nixomatos  09-03-2002
11:46 PM ET (US)
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I think the reality is that we are all living in the dream of some guy, and when he wakes up we will all disappear.
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chico haas 09-03-2002
09:34 PM ET (US)
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rusty - tweak my pre a little for that asian gal at the gym. You know the one...
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rusty 09-03-2002
07:56 PM ET (US)
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My simulated life isn't kick-ass? I beg to differ. I'm having a great time.
The only reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that you're all living in a simulation specifically designed by the post-human me, who obviously gave the pre-post-human me an easy ride, and apparently has it in for the rest of you. My pre-post-condolences.
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gregor-e 09-03-2002
07:18 PM ET (US)
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Most likely this instance of your life is sub-optimally-kick-ass because the simulation is of every possible quantum outcome; a multiverse. So there exists a nearly infinite number of "you", some of whom are living the most kick-ass life that turns out to be possible within some very fuzzy definition of "you". It was just your bad luck that all those sextillions of quantum outcomes that affected your life ended up just this way. Better luck next time.
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Chris Smith 09-03-2002
07:09 PM ET (US)
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Thinking about this will make your head hurt. If that doesn't happen, you aren't thinking hard enough.
Questions like this go back through DesCartes, and quite likely beyond.
As to why it isn't more kick-ass? How about - the individualism processes have been perfected, and your existence is as kick-ass as it's going to get, given the limitations of co-simulating with all the other processes who are ALSO trying for kick-ass perfection. Trying the simulation alone takes you somewhere between insanity and loneliness. So you co-sim ... and this is what you get.
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Stefan Jones 09-03-2002
06:37 PM ET (US)
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"If your life were twice as kick-ass, would that clinch for you the argument that this must be a fabricated reality?"
Hey, maybe we're in a simulation that IS twice (or 100) times as kick-ass as normal, but since it's our nature to quickly become jaded we're left feeling cheated by the mandaneity of it all.
Or maybe the game is: Make everything really normal, then shove in one disparate element, like a lower-case letter "q" on the third line of page 57 of an old paperback novel that occasional changes color, blinking out messages in morse code. ("B . . . E . . . S . . . U . . . R . . . E . . . T . . . O . . . D . . . R . . . I . . . N . . . K . . . Y . . . O . . . U . . . R . . . . O . . . V . . . A . . .")
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Gordon Mohr 09-03-2002
04:19 PM ET (US)
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Cory asks, roughly, if this is a simulation, why isn't it more kick-ass?
Perhaps your posthuman progenitor has reasons unfathomable to the currently constrained you. Perhaps you're just a bit player in someone else's simulation, so it wasn't designed with your satisfaction in mind.
Perhaps it's as simple as the idea that intelligences prefer mysteries and challenges in their games/entertainment, to obvious and trivially easy alternatives. If you had a virtual eternity to design and play any game you'd like, would you choose tic-tac-toe?
Perhaps your posthuman progenitor chose a competitive, adversarial environment. Perhaps it's a masochist.
Perhaps the simulation has been finely tuned to keep you just-this-side of doubt about its true nature. (If your life were twice as kick-ass, would that clinch for you the argument that this must be a fabricated reality? How about 100 times as kick-ass?)
Perhaps it's not an entertainment simulation for your benefit, but a training or testing ground. (Maybe you're a posthuman AI being inculcated with human values by "walking in the creators' shoes" for a lifetime or two. Maybe if you don't get properly socialized by this experience you'll be discontinued/selected-out.)
Perhaps it's just a giant oulipo exercise.
We can't really know. We're "0wnz0red" processes in this universal machine.
(BTW, great story, Cory... I really thought it was going in this "world-is-a-simulation" direction at the bottom of page 2, the idea that we ourselves are running inside a Palladiumized environment, and Liam had broken back in to let Murray in on the secret... until it went in the other direction!)
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nrb 09-03-2002
03:38 PM ET (US)
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I've never understood why my posthuman self would be interested in running a simulation of me ver. 1.0, but perhaps it would be a nostalgia thing. Or a tribute. Hard to say, since I'm either the simulation and am not programmed with the ability to understand this, or I'm not and had too much sugar this morning to think clearly.
What's remarkable about this paper is that it's serious. Those of us who have wasted large portions of our mental lives tooling around in other people's SF (and even those of us who have written some) are twiddling our thumbs compared to guys like Bostrom, which is probably why he seems somewhat off. But then, the whole extropian/posthuman meme is a bit much for me. I like flesh too much. Although I could use a few upgrades.
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nixomatos 09-03-2002
02:28 PM ET (US)
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In any case, I bow down to our monkey gods.
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Wiley Wiggins 09-03-2002
02:27 PM ET (US)
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Or that you could turn off when you got bored of it or offended by it without having to consent to suicide.
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Stefan Jones 09-03-2002
02:27 PM ET (US)
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Perhaps we're living in a postcanine hell-simulation, where Bad postcanine software-entities are forced to live a ersatz biological existence as docile, neutered, dumb beasts who think nothing of drinking from toilets and having their bellies scratched by stinky simulated sapient primates. Edited 09-03-2002 04:05 PM
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zangdesign 09-03-2002
01:31 PM ET (US)
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Somebody's forgotten to take his dried frog pills. Or perhaps he took too many.
Either way, if this life is a simulation, then I want a software upgrade. Albert 2.0 should include a greater tendency to exercise, stronger willpower, and sexy, intelligent women flinging themselves at me on weekends.
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nixomatos 09-03-2002
12:41 PM ET (US)
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That Yale guy probably saw the Matrix one too many times.
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Dog Buddha 09-03-2002
12:20 PM ET (US)
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It is my contention that this hypothesis makes no less sense than the original:
This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the canine species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “postcanine” stage; (2) any postcanine civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the transcanineist dogma that there is a significant chance that we will one day become postcanines who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.
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