[extropy-chat] Atheists launch inquisition...

[Emlyn]

Mike Lorrey wrote:
> > > If such people are so intent on holding onto their atheism, then
> > they
> > > are going to need to rationally and logically answer the Simulation
> > > Argument, demolishing its premise that we are likely in a
> > simulation,
> > > and otherwise prove conclusively that a posthuman society would
> > never
> > > run ancestor simulations, or that intelligent technological
> > societies
> > > always destroy themselves short of reaching post-humanity. This is
> > the
> > > challenge. In the years since Bostrom, Hanson, and others have
> > > developed the concept, I have not seen any significant attempt by
> > the
> > > atheist community to try to disprove the simulation fork of the
> > > argument.

The simulation argument is quite flimsy. First of all, it's quite
possible that it is extremely difficult or impossible to reach the
level of technology to make a simulation of equivalent complexity to
the universe you are in. If you can't do that, you are doomed to see
nested sims degrading in complexity until they are useless, and the
simulation argument relies on arbitrarily deep levels of nesting.

Secondly, you have to assume that civilisations would find some reason
to let universes run indefinitely. Remember that this argument say not
only that we are basically assured of being in a sim, but that
(because of the reliance on arbitrary depth of nesting) we must be
arbitrarily deeply nested. So we rely on some probably very large
number of enclosing universes not being shut down by the levels above.

Thirdly, if you buy all of this, who is in the base level universes?
Isn't it infinitely improbable that anyone could exist in one? In that
case, can they exist, or must it necessarily be turtles all the way
down? If we actually have an infinite amount of universes enclosing
ours, and each has a non zero probability of shutting down it's next
level down at any moment, then it follows that we have no chance of
existing at all. But we do exist.

Finally, the simulation argument assumes things about the nature of
reality which are not really supportable. What can exist as a
universe? Just us? Just universes like us? Or can wildly different
universes exist? Does everything that you can imagine exist somewhere
in some fashion, plus a lot of stuff that you can't? In fact, what
does it even mean to exist at all? If every logically possible
universe exists in some fashion (where "logic" is taken to mean all
possible systems of logic, and "possible" stands for something a human
probably can't define), and there's no reason to suppose that they
don't, then the set of simulated universes are a negligible subset of
this infinite (aleph-infinity?) set of realities, thus the simulation
argument cannot hold.

Once we start talking about other universes or realities or types of
existence, we find very quickly that we are not in Kansas any more,
Dorothy.

-- 
Emlyn

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