We (probably) live in a simulation

[Jabberwocky]

Beyond proof via maths, are all scientific theories researched via the lens and framework of human ideas redundant?

Mind my ignorance, I am only just beginning to learn about sciences I find interesting. Unfortunately I had a misguided aversion to most stem throughout high school.

 

[Vastness]

My biggest beef with the theory is that it requires an omnipotent ai to be created/generated by humans.

Disagree. The Simulation Argument shines a light on the illusory nature of the distinction between AI and just "I", ie, intelligence evolved from nature or created by the hand of god.

phantomable

I like that word.

Neither energy nor mass are infinite

Forgive me if I'm quoting out of context, or if I misunderstand - but, this seems something that would be unknowable. Within the observable universe, for sure, we have some solid estimations of the mass and energy content which are quite finite. Perhaps this is what you meant? Beyond that though - again. this seems to be unknowable.

 

[nznity]

Yeah and because animals, birds -- origins from dinosaurs does that mean they saw the afterlife? Were they humans too? I don't think. Energy isn't infinite, mass is. So just because space can alter his dimension to be as large as he want that doesn't mean shit. If we were in a simulation, there would be glitches, it's impossible to not have glitches, you can have any kind of technology you want but you will have glitches it's inevitable. You might say well ok we had weird anomalies in the past.. like raining with frogs or inexplicable noises in the Sky and they were proved to be factories around the world. Look, when it's raining right, there's + a - and that where the thunders comes from, that's their origin. You might now say, how about glitches? We have Deja-Vu's, people appearing/disappearin, voices, past-life memories. What's your past-life memories other than your imagination? How can you prove'em? If you say ''past-life'' you already go with Monks, there's no past-life there's only this life. There's a word called ''imagination'' and some people use it more than they need maybe because of FOMO, maybe because they attack the world with what they see in themselves, maybe a lotta things. Flight of fantasies are infinite and senseless for science. If we were in a simulation, doesn't matter how bad the Gov is, if we were in a simulation we would know by now. There's millions but millions of theories out there as how this is a real thing but isn't. While being lonely is the origin of your best ideas, it also might be your rabbit hole if you don't know what you're doing. We are here for a short amount of time so although exploring it's our main purpose in life we might find ourselves in a fox hole. And so if the architects doesn't want us to know, they've failed. So this being said, we have quantum computers -- but we can't run schrodinger's formula. It's way too, how can I say, not big -- it's way to phantomable. It's a dilemma that still havocs the science world even today.

shady, whenver i look at your jack nicholson pic i get goosebumps. XD

 

[Skorpio]

Disagree. The Simulation Argument shines a light on the illusory nature of the distinction between AI and just "I", ie, intelligence evolved from nature or created by the hand of god.

Forgive me if I'm quoting out of context, or if I misunderstand - but, this seems something that would be unknowable. Within the observable universe, for sure, we have some solid estimations of the mass and energy content which are quite finite. Perhaps this is what you meant? Beyond that though - again. this seems to be unknowable.

I'll go bottom up, I honestly think we agree on these points in a way.


I was referring to the energy/mass in the observable/inferrable universe. I am assuming that the simulation exists in a similar universe to our own that follows oue laws of physics. This is quite a large assumption, but saying that the simulation is from another universe with different laws makes it even more un falsifiable.

The lack of difference between a godlike intelligence and artificial intelligence created by humans is why I don't think it is a probable theory. I think it is a very interesting thought experiment, but I don't love how folks like Musk and Rogan and that guy with the hoodie act like it is this inevitability. If it was portrayed as "hey, here's a cool idea," I would be hunky dory, but it is portrayed as this highly probable thing (folks saying that billions of simulated realities mean that ours is almost definately a simulation).

I think this theory is a nice thought experiment like the Roccos basilisk, but it doesn't illuminate anything about the nature of reality other than saying "here is a possible answer".

Finally I do not believe that a computer/anything can simulate/reproduce something as complex as itself.

 

[Vastness]

i will also respond to your points in a somewhat reverse order Skorpio, since it seems most logical to do so...

The lack of difference between a godlike intelligence and artificial intelligence created by humans is why I don't think it is a probable theory. I think it is a very interesting thought experiment, but I don't love how folks like Musk and Rogan and that guy with the hoodie act like it is this inevitability. If it was portrayed as "hey, here's a cool idea," I would be hunky dory, but it is portrayed as this highly probable thing (folks saying that billions of simulated realities mean that ours is almost definately a simulation).

The Simulation ARGUMENT (are formatting options broken here recently?) is a little more rigorous than the "Simulation Hypothesis" that precedes it. The ARGUMENT is essentially based on the premises that begin thus... "IF it is theoretically possible to create a simulation that is indistinguishable from reality, and IF we are not the only species in the universe capable of executing this theory"... then within the observable universe, and within our projected timelines of the evolution of this universe (timelines are important to give weight to the conclusion - and the conclusion, I would argue, is merely a statistical reality) the number of possible simulated realities will ALWAYS outnumber the single "unsimulated" "real" one.

To me - and presumably you, if you can accept the previously noted premises - the conclusion of the SIMULATION ARGUMENT seems self-evident, but I mention it in case it is not for anyone else. Stated explicitly - IF there are some number of species with technological ability matching or exceeding our own, then the number of possible simulated realities will ALWAYS outnumber the single "unsimulated" "real" one.

Finally I do not believe that a computer/anything can simulate/reproduce something as complex as itself.

I do not think that I disagree. "As complex as itself" obviously is the problematic operator here. But it is not necessary for anything to simulate something else at a level of complexity that matches the original. All that matters is that whatever "perceiving entities" inside it cannot distinguish it from the orginal.

For example, in (what we believe to be) our own reality, it would not be necessary to simulate the movements of every atom - broader laws, akin to the "Laws of Physics" could be used to render macro-scale events, with more complicated algorithms kicking in only when needed, such as when the denizens of any given simulated reality were trying to use a simulation of an electron microscope, or a Large Hadron Collider.

I think this theory is a nice thought experiment like the Roccos basilisk, but it doesn't illuminate anything about the nature of reality other than saying "here is a possible answer".

I agree, somewhat. It doesn't illuminate anything about the nature of reality - but as well as offering a possible answer, it also shines a light on deep-seated biases that we might otherwise have overlooked. The most obvious example is the bias between AI and just "natural", biological "I". I was gonna list a few more biases but actually - I think that this primary bias contains within it numerous secondary biases and flawed modes of thought which can be quite easily unpacked... I'll expound on that further if it's not as clear as it seems like it should be to me right now, as honestly I'm not in any fit state to expound on anything right now.



EDIT - actually, I will just delve into one thing - the secondary critically important bias that the simulation argument exposes is the preferential bias towards our own qualia.

Stated another way - the belief that conscious experience AS WE EXPERIENCE IT is something unique and special, and DIFFERENT from the physical events that induce these qualia in our sensory apparatus.

I will make one final attempt to illustrate this point. Let's rephrase the simulation argument somewhat - IF it is possible to create a SIMULATION OF REALITY where the inhabitants do not know that they are in a simulation - and let's stop there.

We already know that it is possible to create a very basic simulation as I described in the prior sentence. But, just as anyone who has played The Sims does not lose any sleep over the death of an avatar, we also cling to pre-rational biases about the status of our own conscious experiences within any "greater reality" that might exist. If our entire reality is a single save state on a transcendental version of The Sims, of course, we will never be able to "break out" of this simulation, and our power over our simulated world is so minuscule as to be meaningless - but this one possible blunt and immutable reality does not devalue the search for a greater meaning and greater understanding of this strange world we find ourselves within.... IMO.



EDIT #2 - hah, something else it occurred to me is worthy of exposition is our bias towards computational REPRESENTATIONS of reality as the only viable "reality simulations". But what if we replace The Sims computer games in the above though experiment with something simpler - to mere drawings on a page. A fixed story where the inhabitants have no autonomy at all - as far as we can tell. No exposure at all to any faint echo of what BEING means to us... as far as we can tell.

Let's scale things back further - let's replace that drawing with something more fleeting and intangible. Instead of a story written in ink, let's think of a story that is not written at all. A story only existing for moments, a flicker in the mind of a being living in a pre-linguistic age, in a lineage that will never evolve to the point of being able to produce spoken language as we would define it, let alone anything written. Let's reduce it further - the story is no longer a thought, but an instinct - an ultra-low-fidelity rendering of one possible scenario among many - a fear reaction in the mind of animal with only the most rudimentary neural structures to govern forward planning and expectation of the outcome of future events. The thought occurs - and then is gone. But this wasn't just a thought - it was a simulation. Just as prehistoric ink in a cave painting that tells a story is a simulation. Just as a novel, or a story told only by voice is a simulation of a perception of a reality. Just as The Sims is a simulation of someone's idea of some possible realities... just as all of our lives, our "consensus reality" that we all cling to so tightly, so convinced of it's elevated status among the countless simulations of reality that we know to exist within our own... might be nothing more than a simulation itself, a low resolution, imperfect reflection of a greater reality that will remain forever inaccessible to us, just as our efforts to understand it and escape it remain as futile as the efforts of a comic book character to leap from the page.

 

[Skorpio]

I think we are in agreement. I am ok with this argument as a thought experiment in the vein of Descartes' evil genius.

I think the two if statements are the reason I get hung up when this is stated without a ton of care (if a sim is possible, and if there are other beings capable of making the simulation). Those are quite big ifs.

Also i think if ai attains consciousness, it may well be very different than biological consciousness. This of course is negated by the initial conditions of the argument. Unless this is done through simulations of neurons and all other squishy bits, I think there could very well be a valid ai consciousness that is fundamentally dissimilar to biology.

It takes insane amounts of computing power to simulate a very small number of molecules in atomic detail, expanding it to all known matter, with the non linear interactions at a larger scale seems absurd to me.

Second it assumes that life on other planets will be at all like humans (actually much more advanced). I feel like even with the constraints of "intelligent", life elsewhere would probably be completely unrecognizable.

With those conditions met though, I am cool with it. I guess my first point could be weakened by some sort of "cheat code" that smoothes over errors and such.

I would like you to expand a little bit on the ai versus biological and qualia biases. I think those are fairly interesting. (My view of the conscious experience is that it is a combination of our perception +errors of physical reality plus some neural circuits that make us self aware. (The sims characters for example are not aware, and are quite a bit more algorithmic than a biological system)).

Also thanks for the back and forth.

i will also respond to your points in a somewhat reverse order Skorpio, since it seems most logical to do so...

The Simulation ARGUMENT (are formatting options broken here recently?) is a little more rigorous than the "Simulation Hypothesis" that precedes it. The ARGUMENT is essentially based on the premises that begin thus... "IF it is theoretically possible to create a simulation that is indistinguishable from reality, and IF we are not the only species in the universe capable of executing this theory"... then within the observable universe, and within our projected timelines of the evolution of this universe (timelines are important to give weight to the conclusion - and the conclusion, I would argue, is merely a statistical reality) the number of possible simulated realities will ALWAYS outnumber the single "unsimulated" "real" one.

To me - and presumably you, if you can accept the previously noted premises - the conclusion of the SIMULATION ARGUMENT seems self-evident, but I mention it in case it is not for anyone else. Stated explicitly - IF there are some number of species with technological ability matching or exceeding our own, then the number of possible simulated realities will ALWAYS outnumber the single "unsimulated" "real" one.

I do not think that I disagree. "As complex as itself" obviously is the problematic operator here. But it is not necessary for anything to simulate something else at a level of complexity that matches the original. All that matters is that whatever "perceiving entities" inside it cannot distinguish it from the orginal.

For example, in (what we believe to be) our own reality, it would not be necessary to simulate the movements of every atom - broader laws, akin to the "Laws of Physics" could be used to render macro-scale events, with more complicated algorithms kicking in only when needed, such as when the denizens of any given simulated reality were trying to use a simulation of an electron microscope, or a Large Hadron Collider.


I agree, somewhat. It doesn't illuminate anything about the nature of reality - but as well as offering a possible answer, it also shines a light on deep-seated biases that we might otherwise have overlooked. The most obvious example is the bias between AI and just "natural", biological "I". I was gonna list a few more biases but actually - I think that this primary bias contains within it numerous secondary biases and flawed modes of thought which can be quite easily unpacked... I'll expound on that further if it's not as clear as it seems like it should be to me right now, as honestly I'm not in any fit state to expound on anything right now.



EDIT - actually, I will just delve into one thing - the secondary critically important bias that the simulation argument exposes is the preferential bias towards our own qualia.

Stated another way - the belief that conscious experience AS WE EXPERIENCE IT is something unique and special, and DIFFERENT from the physical events that induce these qualia in our sensory apparatus.

I will make one final attempt to illustrate this point. Let's rephrase the simulation argument somewhat - IF it is possible to create a SIMULATION OF REALITY where the inhabitants do not know that they are in a simulation - and let's stop there.

We already know that it is possible to create a very basic simulation as I described in the prior sentence. But, just as anyone who has played The Sims does not lose any sleep over the death of an avatar, we also cling to pre-rational biases about the status of our own conscious experiences within any "greater reality" that might exist. If our entire reality is a single save state on a transcendental version of The Sims, of course, we will never be able to "break out" of this simulation, and our power over our simulated world is so minuscule as to be meaningless - but this one possible blunt and immutable reality does not devalue the search for a greater meaning and greater understanding of this strange world we find ourselves within.... IMO.



EDIT #2 - hah, something else it occurred to me is worthy of exposition is our bias towards computational REPRESENTATIONS of reality as the only viable "reality simulations". But what if we replace The Sims computer games in the above though experiment with something simpler - to mere drawings on a page. A fixed story where the inhabitants have no autonomy at all - as far as we can tell. No exposure at all to any faint echo of what BEING means to us... as far as we can tell.

Let's scale things back further - let's replace that drawing with something more fleeting and intangible. Instead of a story written in ink, let's think of a story that is not written at all. A story only existing for moments, a flicker in the mind of a being living in a pre-linguistic age, in a lineage that will never evolve to the point of being able to produce spoken language as we would define it, let alone anything written. Let's reduce it further - the story is no longer a thought, but an instinct - an ultra-low-fidelity rendering of one possible scenario among many - a fear reaction in the mind of animal with only the most rudimentary neural structures to govern forward planning and expectation of the outcome of future events. The thought occurs - and then is gone. But this wasn't just a thought - it was a simulation. Just as prehistoric ink in a cave painting that tells a story is a simulation. Just as a novel, or a story told only by voice is a simulation of a perception of a reality. Just as The Sims is a simulation of someone's idea of some possible realities... just as all of our lives, our "consensus reality" that we all cling to so tightly, so convinced of it's elevated status among the countless simulations of reality that we know to exist within our own... might be nothing more than a simulation itself, a low resolution, imperfect reflection of a greater reality that will remain forever inaccessible to us, just as our efforts to understand it and escape it remain as futile as the efforts of a comic book character to leap from the page.

I think we are in agreement. I am ok with this argument as a thought experiment in the vein of Descartes' evil genius.

I think the two if statements are the reason I get hung up when this is stated without a ton of care (if a sim is possible, and if there are other beings capable of making the simulation). Those are quite big ifs.

Also i think if ai attains consciousness, it may well be very different than biological consciousness. This of course is negated by the initial conditions of the argument. Unless this is done through simulations of neurons and all other squishy bits, I think there could very well be a valid ai consciousness that is fundamentally dissimilar to biology.

It takes insane amounts of computing power to simulate a very small number of molecules in atomic detail, expanding it to all known matter, with the non linear interactions at a larger scale seems absurd to me.

Second it assumes that life on other planets will be at all like humans (actually much more advanced). I feel like even with the constraints of "intelligent", life elsewhere would probably be completely unrecognizable.

With those conditions met though, I am cool with it. I guess my first point could be weakened by some sort of "cheat code" that smoothes over errors and such.

I would like you to expand a little bit on the ai versus biological and qualia biases. I think those are fairly interesting. (My view of the conscious experience is that it is a combination of our perception +errors of physical reality plus some neural circuits that make us self aware. (The sims characters for example are not aware, and are quite a bit more algorithmic than a biological system)).

Also thanks for the back and forth.

@ Larny: I am not sure if we are using the same definitions. Energy can be interconverted (ie nuclear energy to kinetic energy or electromagnetic to chemical energy or chemical energy to love energy (wink)), but energy cannot be created. There are some cases mass and energy can interconvert as well, but there is a finite pool of energy + mass in our universe.

 

[Branggen]

Whats the difference between the 'real world' and a simulation though

 

[F.U.B.A.R.]

It's also possible to go the other way and simplify the whole thing a lot. What if the real version of me just created a simulation version of me inside a simulated world similar enough to the real one that the simulation could be used to help the real me make decisions? So I could make something happen to my simulation and see what the consequences are then decide if I do it in real life. I could also change small details of the world and predict the likely outcome in the real world.

Have you seen the Netflix series 'Devs'?

It covers what you said above. Well worth a watch...

 

[Jabberwocky]

I think we are in agreement. I am ok with this argument as a thought experiment in the vein of Descartes' evil genius.

I think the two if statements are the reason I get hung up when this is stated without a ton of care (if a sim is possible, and if there are other beings capable of making the simulation). Those are quite big ifs.

Also i think if ai attains consciousness, it may well be very different than biological consciousness. This of course is negated by the initial conditions of the argument. Unless this is done through simulations of neurons and all other squishy bits, I think there could very well be a valid ai consciousness that is fundamentally dissimilar to biology.

It takes insane amounts of computing power to simulate a very small number of molecules in atomic detail, expanding it to all known matter, with the non linear interactions at a larger scale seems absurd to me.

Second it assumes that life on other planets will be at all like humans (actually much more advanced). I feel like even with the constraints of "intelligent", life elsewhere would probably be completely unrecognizable.

With those conditions met though, I am cool with it. I guess my first point could be weakened by some sort of "cheat code" that smoothes over errors and such.

I would like you to expand a little bit on the ai versus biological and qualia biases. I think those are fairly interesting. (My view of the conscious experience is that it is a combination of our perception +errors of physical reality plus some neural circuits that make us self aware. (The sims characters for example are not aware, and are quite a bit more algorithmic than a biological system)).

@ Larny: I am not sure if we are using the same definitions. Energy can be interconverted (ie nuclear energy to kinetic energy or electromagnetic to chemical energy or chemical energy to love energy (wink)), but energy cannot be created. There are some cases mass and energy can interconvert as well, but there is a finite pool of energy + mass in our universe.

Thanks for your simple crash course on energy. And the discussion has been interesting! Tis far more informative than blanket agreements imo.

 

[Gnostic Bishop]

If we live in a simulation or matrix-like reality, then, like fractals, there could be many layers of programming.

Gnostic Christianity has always seen gods over gods if such thinking was real.

Hollywood has make a number of movies showing this.

Regards
DL

 

[Jabberwocky]

If we live in a simulation or matrix- like reality, then, likr fractals.
there could be many layers of programming.

Gnostic Christianity has always seen gods over gods if such thinking was real.

Hollywood has make a number of movies showing this.

Regards
DL

So do you think intelligent design fits with simulation theory, or God/s existence is revealed to be a system construct?

 

[Gnostic Bishop]

So do you think intelligent design fits with simulation theory, or God/s existence is revealed to be a system construct?

Absolutely not. We hold no supernatural beliefs.

I said "if" such thinking were real.

Regards
DL

 

[Jabberwocky]

Absolutely not. We hold no supernatural beliefs.

I said "if" such thinking were real.

Regards
DL

Whom is 'we'?

 

[Gormur]

I don't think the simulation of reality is what is us but what controls us, if that makes sense

 

[Gnostic Bishop]

Whom is 'we'?

The vast majority of Gnostic Christians.

Regards
DL

 

[Gnostic Bishop]

I don't think the simulation of reality is what is us but what controls us, if that makes sense

Who do you think is at the top of the reality pyramid and controlling us?

Regards
DL

 

[Gormur]

Who do you think is at the top of the reality pyramid and controlling us?

Regards
DL

Well, I think it's probably our souls that control our existence. If you want to take this simulation idea a step further you could argue that the soul is a type of machine but really a machine and a soul seem like the same thing to my simple mind

Like a will is actually a person but their soul controls their fate, if that makes sense

 

[MidniteMedicineMan13]

 

[Vastness]

@Skorpio, I agree that we do not, I think, actually disagree.

Also i think if ai attains consciousness, it may well be very different than biological consciousness. This of course is negated by the initial conditions of the argument. Unless this is done through simulations of neurons and all other squishy bits, I think there could very well be a valid ai consciousness that is fundamentally dissimilar to biology.

For sure yes, I would expect a true AI, or rather, "AGI" - Artificial Generally Intelligent - entity - to have a very different psychology to a biological being, especially later iterations of AI that were even further removed from their biological progenitors (we might, perhaps, expect the first few to have a structure of mind which somewhat mirrors the only examples that we currently have to work with).

It takes insane amounts of computing power to simulate a very small number of molecules in atomic detail, expanding it to all known matter, with the non linear interactions at a larger scale seems absurd to me.

For sure yes, but it would not be necessary to simulate every single subatomic particle to create a perfectly convincing imitation of reality.

Second it assumes that life on other planets will be at all like humans (actually much more advanced). I feel like even with the constraints of "intelligent", life elsewhere would probably be completely unrecognizable.

I do not see that this assumption has been made, and while I agree that life that evolved on a different planet under an alien sun with a completely different biochemistry and evolutionary history would likely be so different to us that we may find such beings difficult or impossible to relate to, technology is something that should be recognisable universally, because all of us - denizens of this particular universe as we are - are bound to operate by the same laws of physics no matter what planet we were born on.

Bringing it back to the actual discussion about simulated realities, I think that even massive psychological disparities are somewhat irrelevant as far as the likelihood of these societies creating simulations once they have the technology to do so. Simulations are very useful, and we have already created many - even if not of the kind of calibre that people usually envision when the Simulation Hypothesis is discussed. Any species which develops technology and then computation is going to have a non-zero potential to be another progenitor of multiple reality simulations of various flavours and various fidelities.

I would like you to expand a little bit on the ai versus biological and qualia biases. I think those are fairly interesting. (My view of the conscious experience is that it is a combination of our perception +errors of physical reality plus some neural circuits that make us self aware. (The sims characters for example are not aware, and are quite a bit more algorithmic than a biological system)).

I would be happy to expand on this further, it's one of my favourite things to think about!

My point essentially is that the lines we draw when we use terms like "self awareness", "consciousness", etc, are entirely arbitrary and really a lot fuzzier than we typically assume them to be. I would probably agree that the Sims characters are not aware, their behaviours being largely algorithmic. But the behaviour of any conscious, seemingly self-aware entity is entirely algorithmic once you peel back enough layers. Granted, any given human personality is a far more complex algorithmic processor than the code behind the personality of a Sim, but this is a sliding scale with no obvious markers that denote where "self awareness" as we understand it, begins.

It's not possible IMO to discuss the Simulation Hypothesis without also branching into discussion about the nature of consciousness, and the feasibility of digitised consciousness, since obviously if we are all simulated beings, then we are all AIs, unbeknown to us. The "qualia bias" I refer to is using our experience of being as the set point against which any other experience of being must be measured. We are self aware, but a robot that we program (for example) is (we think) probably not. Likely the first AIs to repeatably pass some version of the Turing test will have software minds that have been deliberately written to act in a way that we would expect a human to behave, so there will be various internal software modules devoted to language processing, interpreting emotion, evaluating context, etc, but rather than being a side effect of our evolved intelligence, as in us, they will have been written from the objective of being able to interact in a convincing way with a human - and make it seem like this artificial entity is thinking on it's own. It will presumably be possible for teams of human beings to sift through the code and internal logs during or after a Turing test conversation has taken place and understand exactly what was going on in the software that allowed this simulated conversation to occur. We might assume that this entity does not experience qualia, and perhaps it doesn't.

But it would be possible, and to some extent a necessity, to add hardcoded "self-awareness" functions, so to speak, by which I mean the same entity having this simulated conversation with a human would also have the ability to look inside itself at it's own reasons for responding in a certain way and make tweaks as needed. Is it "self-aware" now? Plenty of software does this already, with built in audits and security layers to catch bugs and unauthorised tampering, for example. These software programs are aware of themselves, in that they are capable of observing the logic processes occurring within them as they run and making adjustments accordingly, but we would probably not say that they are actually self aware, at least not as we understand it - because self awareness to us means experiencing the unique flavours of qualia that our senses and evolved neural architecture provides.

I feel I may be diverging somewhat from the point I'm trying to make, but as I see it the criteria that are typically used to evaluate whether a given entity has it's own internal world is entirely devoid of logic, and essentially based on whether that entity can pull the right strings of our fickle emotional instruments. Once the deliberately coded conversation-simulator AI is developed to the point that it can crack jokes, understand sarcasm, and reel off half ad-libbed, half pre-encoded philosophical musings in response to probing questions about the nature of it's existence - and especially if we give it's robot body a cuddly exterior, then people will start to find it harder to destroy it when it starts pleading with them to please not kill it - even if those pleadings are themselves the result of additions to the code by mischievous hackers, and even if the entire mindscape of this robot could still be laid out on a page and it did not appear that any true introspection or original thought was going on.

At some point of course the complexity of the internal machinations of such a mind would be complex enough that no single human could hope to decipher them, just as it is unlikely any single human could hope to decipher the personality of another living, breathing, biological human even if they were presented with an atom-perfect 3D model of their brain as well as pages and pages of documented interneuronal firings. I believe that this incomprehensible indecipherability is one of the criteria that we unconsciously use to assign self-awareness to the other conversation simulator intelligences around us (by which I mean of course, the other humans ). But there are already AIs that have somewhat written themselves using advanced neural network and machine learning technologies, such as AlphaGo and it's successor, AlphaGo Zero, both idiot-savant AIs with a superhuman ability to win the game Go, with at least somewhat evolved "minds" that no single human could fully understand, or write, even though there are large teams continuing to analyse the exceedingly complex result of aeons of machine-time that the AI spent playing the game with itself. This AI is not generally intelligent, obviously, it cannot hold a conversation - but the complexity of it's "mind" in some ways exceeds that of our own and is in some ways inscrutable to us. Is it therefore possible that this AI has it's own qualia, and internal world of a sort? Existing in a bizarre enclosed universe where it's only goal in life is to play Go endlessly, to the best of it's ability.

Ahem, anyway, I'm getting off track again. But my point is that we have no clue what self awareness really is, and that gap in our understanding of the nature of being leads us to make, in my view, unfounded conclusions about other aspects of reality. I believe that the origin of most religions or belief systems that have some element of the supernatural all stem from this bias towards human qualia - we see our experience of being as something different to nature and pure deterministic causality when it applies to inanimate matter. We see ourselves, or the experience of being human as, in a sense, something "supernatural". And if there is at least one supernatural thing that we know of - that of our experience of being alive - then why not other things too, like gods?

This flawed mode of thought, IMO, is also evident when people discuss the possibility of there being a creator of the universe, and the creation being a deliberate act of will rather than simply a natural event. But will is itself a natural event, and the idea of will as something separate from nature is an illusory one. Say our universe is one of many, sprouting and growing on some kind of cosmic tree in the greater multiverse - or big bangs being the result of random collisions of the multidimensional branes floating in the Bulk, as in String Theory. This seems like a natural event. On the other hand, what if this is true - but the Bulk is contained within some kind of "Grow you own universe!" toy on the shelf of some higher reality - or the Bulk is part of some kind of ornament, such as a lava lamp, the multitude of complexity within it a mere side effect of it's design, unknown to the transcendent manufacturers of this lava lamp, or known but simply irrelevant and of not much interest except to scientists who study brane mechanics as some higher dimensional allegory of fluid mechanics - in this sense, the creation of the multiverse containing our universe is, in a sense, deliberate. But it's also irrelevant. Whatever world, if any, exists "outside" the universe we know is likely so inconceivably incomprehensible to us that we would not be able to distinguish if the Brane pool or "Bulk" is the inside of a lava lamp or simply a puddle on an otherwise lifeless planet - or whatever higher dimensional allegory of a planet makes sense.

In either case, it's a part of nature, and it's tempting to us to try to think of everything beyond the nature that we know and (somewhat) understand in the same terms - but it's likely that distinctions like conscious creation and just random natural occurrences are illusory the further outside of narrow frame of reference we go. It's possible that there are entities with their own "experiences" in some sense, if you go far enough up the reality tree, but these "higher qualia" would be incomprehensible to us, and whatever entities experiencing them would be forces of nature, just as human beings and human civilisation is a force of nature to a bacteria, which has no clue whether it's been grown in a petri dish in a lab, "deliberately" for some incomprehensible purpose, or "naturally" in a muddy puddle somewhere. Equally it's conceivable that bacteria and even viruses or particles have some "experience" of being, or "lower qualia" but this is obviously so different to our own that we generally do not consider it. The same is true for software objects, ie, Sims characters. If it's like something to be an electron, or a rock, maybe it's like something to be a line of code, or a digital avatar in a video game, but this is just so far outside our frame of reference that we don't even bother to consider it. This again is what I mean by "qualia bias" - when we discuss the Simulation Hypothesis, most people (I think) are imagining some higher reality much like our own, or even identical, with aware beings who are aware that we're aware, but this might not be the case, it may not even be very likely at all - our entire reality and everything we experience may seem as irrelevant as the reality of an 8 bit video game like Pong to whatever architects of our reality "created" it, whether they be higher dimensional godlike aliens writing software, or an inanimate event like a splash in the puddle that we call the Bulk, but whatever "gods" above us would simply call "a puddle"... or whatever higher dimensional allegory might apply.

 

[atara]

This means there is only one real world but millions of simulations.

This argument ignores the size of the worlds. Assuming that the "real" world looks anything like ours — and if it doesn't, that's a new hypothesis not included in the argument — but anyway, the output of a computer program is limited by its Kolmogorov complexity:

Kolmogorov complexity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But since physics is computable — or, rather, the argument requires physics to be computable, otherwise you couldn't simulate it — the world itself has a Kolmogorov complexity, and therefore the sum of the Kolmogorov complexities of all of the simulations in any one world must be smaller than the Kolmogorov complexity of the world that contains them. It follows immediately that the sum of the complexities of the entire "tree" of simulations is upper-bounded by the complexity of the real world. The probability argument is then clearly wrong.