[ExI] Fermi question

Dan dan_ust at yahoo.com
Thu Dec 22 18:42:32 UTC 2011


On Wednesday, December 21, 2011 3:32 PM Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 12:30 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
[snip]
>>> 3)  Perhaps the most bizarre reason for the Fermi problem is the world
>>> as we know it being a simulation.  There are probably ways to test for
>>
>> Yes, but this is religion. We don't do religion here.
>
> I disagree. This is philosophy, not religion. And we do philosophy here.
> Nick 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_argument

It might be philosophy, but I think it doesn't really decide this issue because as Olson pointed out there might, in a simulation be simulated aliens. Thus, you'd have to answer not so much whether you were in a simulation because why your simulation has no aliens or no evidence of aliens. This merely pushes the problem to another place and doesn't resolve it.

[snip]
> Occam actually comes down on the side that we're already in a
> simulation... if you really think about it hard enough.

In my view, Ockham* seems to come down on the side of no simulation for now. This might not be what people here would like, but it seems to be the correct application of Occam's razor here.

Regards,

Dan

* Aristotle seems to have gotten the principle first: Cf. Ph 1.4.188a17-18; 6.189a14-15; 8.6.259a10-12.
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