• Spzi
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    91 year ago

    there would be more sim-universes than real ones

    This ties back to the mediocrity principle. If there are 10 billion people living on Earth, but 10 quadrillion living in simulations, the chances for you to live in the latter is much higher.

    Along goes the simulation argument by Nick Bostrom. If simulation is possible, and practiced, we likely are simulated ourselves.

    Isaac Arthur) noted that housing a population in a simulation is much more efficient than doing so physically. It seems like a convergent choice for powerful civilizations which want to maximize the life supported by fading stars (or energy potentials in general).

    I think it would take the computing power of an entire universe to simulate one of similar complexity

    Two objections:

    1. It might be sufficient to simulate the experience, without fully simulating the underlying physics. That’s how we do 3D games anyways. No one cares if we actually simulate individual air molecules. If the cloth moves indistinguishable as if, that’s as good as the original, for a much lower cost. You can also cull unobserved parts of the universe.
    2. Host and simulation can have completely unrelated laws of nature. Specifically, inhabitants of the simulation cannot study their host environment. As such, I think making assumptions about the host makes no sense.
    • Asimov's Robot
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      1 year ago

      Those are some really interesting points, thanks for your input.