Gods in our own right!

I am sure many of you have heard of Nick Bostrom’s “simulator argument” which puts forward the hypothesis that we are living in a computer simulation. The Simulation ArgumentThis idea opens up the question which is similar to the time travel one, that being if people can travel back in time they would already be here or if humans in their entire history of existence are ever able to create simulations they would already have been created and thus the chances are that we are living in the simulation not the original.I myself think that it is highly likely that this idea is probably correct (or a concept very similar to that of the simulation argument) but we have to ask the question why would we want to live in a simulation or create them in the first place?What reasoning would we ever have to live in a simulation? By definition we would be unable to grasp the reasons why anything outside of this universe would ever do it but we can ask the question why would humans, people like you and I ever want to create/live in a simulation.I gave this some thought and came up with a number of reason as to why people may choose to live in simulations if and when we have the ability to create them.With in say a few hundred and at most a thousand years we can probably conclude that humans will be immortal. With genetic engineering and other scientific breakthroughs’ we will probably be able to for all practical purposes live forever the only loop hole being death by way of an accident which results in the destruction of the body and conciseness e.g. dying of smoke inhalation in a fire and the fire destroying your entire body.When humans get to this stage and realize that immortalizm is within their grasp they will fear death even more then you and I fear it today because its now become evitable. With this I believe people will do everything they possibly can to avoid dying and will try and limit their exposure to such an outcome and look into all possible remedies in an effort to preserve their conciseness. One of these remedies would be to confine oneself to living in a computer simulation with your body/conciseness in a secure environment.Fear of death wouldn’t be the only reason to flee to a simulation, boredom would be another. With immortality comes an almost infinite amount of time and what are you going to do with all that time? After all death is the only thing that gives meaning to life! You can only see the Pyramids and Stonehenge a certain number of times before they become boring and ordinary. Then what? We have all heard the stories about the upper class in Europe in the Middle Ages almost driven mad with boredom due to their life style of being rich with nothing really to do but count their money and court prostitutes. Moving to a simulation would give you endless paths to travel and worlds to explore and thus escape the boredom of your infinite life.Another thing to consider which I think maybe linked to this whole simulator idea is the fact that we have not made contact with advanced civilizations. That famous saying which was coined about 50 years ago “So where is everybody” with regards to the fact that there should be hundreds if not thousands of civilizations in our galaxy more advanced then ours. After all there are billions of stars which are hundreds of millions and even billions of years older then our sun which would have given ample time for a civilizations to become hundreds of millions of years more advanced then human civilization.So why have we not met any of them yet? It maybe due to them preferring the bliss of the simulator then exploring the galaxy/universe. After all they are probably seeking happiness as much as you and I and if they can create “heaven” in a computer who’s going to give a stuff about exploring the universe when you could be in heaven?Is this current universe one of these simulations? As Nick Bostrom said we will be able to test this theory in the future if we in this universe create simulators of our own. If we do create them we would have to answer that in all likely hood we are living in a simulation.It makes the mind boggle.I know it’s a bit long and I am not very articulate but I am just hoping to bounce these ideas of you people in here and see what you think?

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Hi, WaveDancer.Welcome to EvC! I think the major flaw in this possibility is that there is death in our lives now. So, clearly this computer simulation (if it is one), was not made by people trying to escape death. It could have been made, however, by people trying to deal with the psychological trauma of death, but death doesn't seem quite prevalent enough for that to make sense. Not to put too much of a Mormon spin on things, but the next thing to bring meaning to something is showing it to somebody else, especially your children. (This is a reason why God creates us: to watch us discover what He already knows, and thus, lets Him relive the "glory days").Back to the topic, now: I personally see this computer simulations concept as a likely direction for the future, given the steadily increasing prevalence of video games in peoples' lives.Still, I think there's always going to be at least a sizable majority that are driven by a craving to find the answers to real questions about the universe. Wherever there are adventure- and science-minded people, there will be explorers and colonists. And, wherever there is an advanced society, there is bound to be a very large number of scientists.So, if somebody else is out there that is beyond us, they are almost definitely exploring the universe. Maybe they haven't found us because they're living under the Federation's Prime Directive, and can't make contact until we've achieved warp-speed engines. The problem with this argument is that it derives purely from statistics, then makes a definitive, absolute conclusion, even though statistics doesn't have the power to make a 100% absolute conclusion.Given the amount of time that has been available, it is highly possible that advanced species could have spread across the galaxy already. But, that doesn't mean it can't be otherwise. So, the argument isn't good enough evidence to base any theories on.-----P.S. For new people, just in case you don't know already, you can make quote boxes and stuff using dBCodes, which can be located in the "Reply to Message" page on the left-hand column, beside the window where you're entering your text.You can push the "peek" button at the bottom of a message to see what codes were used in that message.Have fun at EvC!

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hey BluejayHave read many of the other topics and find EvC a very interesting place with many people here who seem to know a lot about cosmology. Death is relative from your view point. If you wanted to live in a simulation which allows you to experience all facets of life living on earth in 2008 death would be merely one of those facets.If we are living in simulations and we die in this universe do we really die? To give a bad example if your character dies in a game you are playing you dont actually die only the character does.Also if this is a simulation what % of the other people in this world are conscious? The only person we know for sure is conscious is ourselves. If we wanted to live ina realistic simulation we would give the perception that everybody else is conscious as well. So the perception of somebody dying may just be that. I think if everybody lives for a long time we will all get a chance to see these things as many times as we like. I am sure your kids will get sick of seeing them after the 20th visit. Sadly I think you are wrong about this. You and I maybe more interested in answering questions about the universe but I think the average Joe is more interested in hearing about who Paris Hilton is sleeping with this week then answering some of the greatest questions known to man. You are right with this on Bluejay but after all thats all we have to go on. I would not call it an absolute 100% conclusion I think it would be more in the realm of an educated guess.Seeing all the places life has evolved on here on earth from the darkest depths of the ocean to the highest mountain tops you would have to give it a VERY high chance that life is common through out our galaxy and the universe.All the best.

It's because the universe is a pretty big place. Numerous civilizations could easily have flourished and vanished and we still won't have their radio/tv waves reach us yet. This is a bit like an inverted version of the 'uncausable cause' argument put forward by religious posters. By that reasoning one should assume that the people who created the simulation were likely to be living in a simulation themselves and so would the people who created their simulation and so on and so forth, ad infinitum.Even if the simulation hypotheses was true, at the end of the day as long as we're all part of the same simulator it doesn't make any difference at all. The simulation is our reality.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Legend - Billions of years have passed since potential civilizations could have come into existence you cant tell me that the actual beings of that civilization or in a more likely case the machines/computers of that civilizatin could not have already gone to all corners of our galaxy? Off the top of my head I think the milkway is only 10 000 light years across so even at 10% the speed of light they could have gone to all corners of our galaxy hundreds of millions of years ago.I agree this sim is our reality but what I think maybe the case is that we created the sim ourselves thats why I called the topic gods in our own right.I think this becasue in the not to distant future we will have the potential to be gods ourselves being immortal and having huge amounts of power at our fingertips.What do immortal gods do with all that power and spare time seeing that they are going to live forever? Maybe they create another universe and see what it is like to be a mortal again?

Hi, WaveDancer. Well, it could be.But, if the point of the simulation would be to escape death, then the one we're living in is a really stupid design, because it doesn't allow us to escape death. It doesn't even allow us to feel safe from death. So, the only thing this simulation could do is make us live through the trauma of death multiple times. There have been many discussions on EvC that involve very similar concepts, particularly with a long-time member here named Iano. A lot of people will use the idea that we can't really be certain that the external reality is really real as proof for creationism, which is really just a way to shrug off all the physical evidence as irrelevant.But, like Legend said, what benefit do we gain in this life (or this simulation, or whatever) from learning that we're actually in the Matrix, or something? If the simulation is the only thing we are capable of experiencing, what difference does it make whether it's real or just a simulation? Does the real or artificial quality of it change the functions and processes that occur within it?Not really. So, there's no real benefit of considering this kind of model scientifically. Well, okay, but your children will have children, too. And, if you're immortal, you could have a whole lot of children. I actually meant to write, "a sizable minority," but I blew it.You're right about the "average Joe." However, historically, the "average Joe" has not been the force behind human progress (rather the opposite in many cases), so I'm not sure he is the one you should be basing your assumptions about future progress on.In the end, if scientists and adventurers want to study the planets orbiting Sigma Draconis, they're going to find a way to do it, even if the "average Joe" is sitting in a chair, having his reality fed to him through a computer terminal. And, I submit that the adventurer's mindset will always be present at a respectible level in the human population, so, as long as there are humans, there will be people who want to study the frontiers. Well, Fermi's paradox was presented using numbers that Fermi assigned pretty much arbitrarily. He only has one data point (i.e., one biological system, one planet, one intelligent species, etc.), and he extrapolated this into a pattern. It's the equivalent of using a single desert rock to extrapolate the geological characteristics of the entire desert: there just isn't enough data out there.We don't know how likely it is that an earth-like planet even forms in an earth-like location. We don't know how important the rest of the solar system's members are to the process of life's emergence. We don't know how many different types of life even could emerge, let alone the conditions under which each type would emerge. We don't know how likely human-level intelligence is.The bottom line is that Fermi's model predicts that we would have come into contact with an alien civilization by now, but we haven't. Obviously, then, there is something wrong with Fermi's model. A lot of people have suggested other factors that could make Fermi's model still accurate, but, until there is any sort of evidence involved, all of that is just apologetics.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

That's extremely unlikely. Like I said, the universe is a vast place, an estimated 28 billion light years in diameter and that's just the visible part. We can't even see beyond that horizon, there could be an even larger part beyond that that's totally invisible to us.The estimated Milky Way size is some 100,000 light years across last time I checked. A civilization only 11000 light years away from us that started emitting 10000 yrs ago would still be unknown to us and will be for another 1000 yrs. And that's assuming that the radiation they emmit contains patterns that we can recognise as artificial in the first place.There could feasibly be thousands of civilisations that we are unaware of within our own galaxy, let alone the whole universe. what makes you think so? Isn't it more likely that we'll have been eradicated off the planet by either our own hand or some cosmic accident? I don't know. Next time I see one I'll ask them. maybe, perhaps, possibly, who knows? If we're going to venture into wild speculation let's try to guess which Wall Street bank will be collapsing next week. Because that's something we can do something about.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

If humans are that advanced technologically then wouldn't a better answer to this just to be to take regular 'brain backups'? A download of the conscious mind that can be restored into a physically new body (mechanical or biological). The day to day existence of the average person (billions of them) is pretty mundane. Arguably much more mundane than someone who could simulate almost any fantasy would willingly bear. As has been described abley by others the physical barriers to such contact are immense. Statistically I would say the odds are against humans ever reaching the point where we can shoot around visiting other galaxies. The odds are arguably against us surviving long enough to achieve this even if such things are ultimately possible. Well I have always felt that there was more to the world..... Call me Neo and give me that red pill.

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But, if the point of the simulation would be to escape death, then the one we're living in is a really stupid design, because it doesn't allow us to escape death. It doesn't even allow us to feel safe from death. So, the only thing this simulation could do is make us live through the trauma of death multiple times.

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We escape death in that other world to live a life in this one. Who knows bluejay when things start looking grim for you, you might just decide to pull the plug and start a new life elsewhere.

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Well, okay, but your children will have children, too. And, if you're immortal, you could have a whole lot of children.

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I would be running for the sim if my life was going to be showing kids around tourist attractions for all eternity.With regards to fermi's paradox or the drake equation you are right it is tough to know from our stand point whether there are other civilizations out there. But I think the odds are very much stacked in favor of other civilizations due to the vastness of the universe and the fact that there are now hundreds of planets known to be circling other stars. And these planets are only the very big ones many of which are much larger then Jupiter.If the Earth was the only "rock" or "solid" planet in our solar system I think the chances of other such planets around other stars would be much lower but we have 3 planets which could have potentially had life on them if there orbits had been similar to earths. Some of the moons around Jupiter and Saturn could also pass as potential spots for life to evolve. So we have half a dozen potential sights for life and one of them as we know it has come up with the goods that being earth.Do you think that our solar system would be unique in the fact that we would be the only one in our whole galaxy sporting potentially habitable planets?

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what makes you think so? Isn't it more likely that we'll have been eradicated off the planet by either our own hand or some cosmic accident?

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I dont think this will happen. If we had another asteroid induced ice age or a nuclear one I doubt if everyone on the planet would die and after a few thousand years we would probably be back to where we are today and try it all again.Our civilization could fail a thousand times over a few million years but eventually I think we will get there and a few million years is nothing when looking at the age of the universe.Legend I dont put it down to wild speculation I just think this due to the fact that I believe that humans will become for all practial purposes gods in the next millenia. So I try to look at what people will be doing then and how will people pass the time seeing they will live forever! The list of things to do is endless and since you have an endless amount of time creating a universe to see how those poor bastards living back in the year 2008 faired would be one of those things to do.

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humans are that advanced technologically then wouldn't a better answer to this just to be to take regular 'brain backups'? A download of the conscious mind that can be restored into a physically new body (mechanical or biological).

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I have herd this but I dont know if you can back up your conciseness. Until we can work out what conciseness is backing up our memory would be of little use unless we can take the conciseness with it.

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The day to day existence of the average person (billions of them) is pretty mundane. Arguably much more mundane than someone who could simulate almost any fantasy would willingly bear.

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Only from your view point! The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. This life may seem very mundane to you but give me an example of an exciting life? One where there is much war, suffering and thus excitement?

Hi, WaveDancer.First, it's kind of weird to reply to everybody at once, but I can understand why you did it. If you do that, it's best to us "qs" boxes instead of "quote" boxes, because you can type "qs=person's name," and the box displays the name of the person you're quoting. That way everyone can keep it all straight. I'm not sure I understand how living a life in this world escapes death, though, because this life inevitably ends in death. Everybody's a different person, though, and an alien civilization is likely to be very different from you or me, so extrapolating our own opinions and viewpoints onto them isn't going to avail us much. A few million years is enough time for us to evolve into something else, especially if our population becomes fragmented by calamities and stuff. We could even become multiple species. Can you be sure this would apply to an alien species, though?I'll admit that your idea is at least plausible. I see no reason why "god"-like people couldn't be using computer simulations. But, I also see no reason to assume that we are in one, or to assume that this practice would even be widespread. After all, there are just so many other possibilities to consider.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Bluejay thanks for the heads up with regards to how things are done on this forum. If this really is a sim you must have th option to not experience death if that is what you choose. Yes you are right which makes it even more logical with regards to the idea that we live in sims. It does not even need to be a human civilization which makes these sims it could be anyone in any universe. The more Ithink about it the more plausiable it seems to be as in idea. I simply went through these scenarios and came to that conclusion.Q: Do you think humans will ever advance to a time in which they will be able to cure all diseases and thus give themselves practically life everlasting? (we already know that soon we will be able to grow all the parts and organs of the human body tailor made for each individual.)A: Yes I do think that, I dont know when this will occur but eventually I think it will.So ask yourself some social questions. With nano tech and robotics and AI advancements humans will probablly not be needed in the workforce or at least a very lareg percentage. Lets say maybe unemployment would be at 80%. What are these people who wont die and have all the spare time of that of welfare recipient of today do with that time?Initially I think it will casue huge social uproar with a big jump in alcohol related crime and the such. We will see a similar problem in the whole of society as we do in groups of long term unemployed today. These problems will get worse and worse until somebody comes up with an idea that gives people something to do to cure their boredom.From my standpoint today I cant see anyway of abating this huge problem then giving people the option to live "other lives" in sims.
And the idea of living a life in the year 2008 is just one of an infite number of things they could do.As I said its like the time machine idea. If people can travel back in time they would already be here. If we can create other univerese it would already be done thus this is most likly one of those other universes.Another use for a sim is to escape a big rip or big crunch (for quite a long time). We could program the sim to go at the speed of - 1 second of normal time outside the sim is 1 trillion years inside the sim. It may also give us the time we need to find a solution to this problem.

If their planets have moons, they'd have to get rid of their moons to eventually rid their planets of tectonic plate movements. Tectonic plate movements would eventually interfere with whatever physical system that hosts their simulation.Another thing to consider is they'd want to destroy any chance of a space faring civilization emerging somewhere in their galactic vicinity. Why? Once they are in a simulation, they'd be helpless. They'd be open to extermination by anyone that stumbles onto their physical host. So, destroying any chance of a space faring civilization emerging could come in a form of sending out cobalt bombs blowing up planets that look like they might have intelligent life in the future.Anyway, enough fantasy for me in one night.Added by edit. It bugs the hell out of me everytime someone says something like "if time travel is possible we should be seeing tourists from the future swarming our resorts". There is a perfectly good explanation for time travel being possible and we'd still not find future tourists around us. Actually it's common sense. The people of the future would probably have the common sense to realize that their own existence depends on the past. Interfering with the past would ultimately compromise their own existence. Ever heard of the temporal prime directive?Same thing with aliens visiting Earth. "If aliens are here how come they haven't knocked on my doors?" is not a valid reason to deny the existence of visiting aliens! For all we know, they could have something similar to the prime directive. For all we know, they could have a lot more sense than the spanish conquistadores that exterminated whole civilizations in the americas.Please don't use the "if it's possible how come we don't already see them" reason again or you will find me reaching out of your monitor screen and grab your throat.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

That's a very thin premise. There's no reason to assume that if other universes can be created then a) it has been done and b) ours is one of those universes.What you're effectively putting forward is a spin-off on the 'Creator' argument. The trouble with that is that you'll need to justify how the Simulator-Creators themselves aren't simulated, otherwise one could follow your argument through into an infinite loop of people creating simulations while they already live in a simulation. i.e. an infinite recursion with no known initialisation point. I'd imagine they'd do pretty much what welfare recipients already do now. Which isn't inventing virtual microcosms!

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

I am not saying that all of them all of the time would be in these sims for the reasons you state and for other reasons it would be a good idea to have quite afew people available in case of an emergency. You would not want to leave the show to be run by computers.These sims would be something fun,enlightning and exciting to do for people who have trillons of years to kill. I was not infering that I was just using it as a common example which people would be familiar with. After all who needs to travel back in time when you could do it in a sim?