Abortion and Libertarianism

Bostrom's Trilemma I will be arguing that we are most likely in an artificially created universe, and we'll be examining 3 possibilities. These possibilities summarized by Nick Bostrom in the following way; "A technologically mature "posthuman" civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true: 1.The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; 2.The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero; 3.The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one. If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in an ancestor simulation." http://www.simulation-argument.com... I'll be explaining why there is atleast a 51% possibility(though probably closer to 100%) that we are living in an ancestor simulation. The Technological limits of computation This section is a summary of a portion of Bostrom's argument found under the section of the same name, in the following link http://www.simulation-argument.com... (sources provided in the link) Many scientists believe the stage where we can run ancestor simulations is merely a few decades away at most, but the beauty of this theory is that it doesn't have to be close. If it takes 100,000 years before we achieve the ability to create these simulations than we are still most likely living in an ancestor simulation. To ponder whether we will have the ability to create ancestor simulations, we'll use our current understandings of what is possible (though it's laughable to not think we'll continue to discover things that give us even greater abilities with technology. "Eric Drexler has outlined a design for a system the size of a sugar cube (excluding cooling and power supply) that would perform 10 to the power of 21 instructions per second.[3] Another author gives a rough estimate of 10 to the power of 42 operations per second for a computer with a mass on order of a large planet.[4] (If we could create quantum computers, or learn to build computers out of nuclear matter or plasma, we could push closer to the theoretical limits. Seth Lloyd calculates an upper bound for a 1 kg computer of 5*10 to the power of 50 logical operations per second carried out on ~10 to the power of 31 bits.[5] However, it suffices for our purposes to use the more conservative estimate that presupposes only currently known design-principles.)" Operations in the human brain based on the number synapsids can be calculated to be 10 to the power of 16. We need not stimulate the entire universe or things down to the quantum level either, the simulation can wait until something is being viewed through a telescope or a microscope before simulating a visual representation of what's being looked at."While it is not possible to get a very exact estimate of the cost of a realistic simulation of human history, we can use ~1033 - 1036 operations as a rough estimate[10]. As we gain more experience with virtual reality, we will get a better grasp of the computational requirements for making such worlds appear realistic to their visitors. But in any case, even if our estimate is off by several orders of magnitude, this does not matter much for our argument. We noted that a rough approximation of the computational power of a planetary-mass computer is 1042 operations per second, and that assumes only already known nanotechnological designs, which are probably far from optimal. A single such a computer could simulate the entire mental history of humankind (call this an ancestor-simulation) by using less than one millionth of its processing power for one second." Post human civilizations would have plenty of resources to create this sort of simulation easily, and this is assuming everyone is a sentient being when it would be easy to make most of them philosophical zombies, without anybody knowing the difference. Posthuman Motivations The second scenario of the trilemma is one where there isn't much interest in creating an ancestor simulation. This scenario is even less likely than the first scenario. This would mean that on a planet of billions of people, not a single wealthy person or any significant amount of less than wealthy people would be the least bit interested in creating an ancestor simulation. This also goes against our human nature. We create simulations right now to learn more about our world. We simulate parts of the brain in a computer to learn more about it, we've simulated the Big Bang to the best of our ability. We've simulated car accidents. We simulate portions of our world to better understand it. There is no indication that humans will all of a sudden not want to better understand their world and in particular their history. Not that that is the only driving factor for wanting to simulate worlds. The whole sim city gaming franchise plays to our desires to wanna play God by being a very crude simulator of worlds. Even if we don't want to better understand our world for some reason, our desire to play games, to play God, will certainly not go away. Other reasons why a Posthuman civilization wouldn't want to create a simulated world are far less likely. We'd have to assume that the economy might be so bad that almost nobody and no group of people had the means to create a simulated universe. Or we'd have to assume that some laws would be created to prevent a simulated universe scenario, but there is no sign that anybody views anything like this as unethical. We seem to think of human life as a good thing, and certainly creating more human life, if even in a simulated environment would be seen as good, in that sense. We are most certainly living in a simulated universe " It may be possible for simulated civilizations to become posthuman. They may then run their own ancestor-simulations on powerful computers they build in their simulated universe. Such computers would be "virtual machines", a familiar concept in computer science. (Java script web-applets, for instance, run on a virtual machine " a simulated computer " inside your desktop.) Virtual machines can be stacked: it"s possible to simulate a machine simulating another machine, and so on, in arbitrarily many steps of iteration. If we do go on to create our own ancestor-simulations, this would be strong evidence against (1) and (2), and we would therefore have to conclude that we live in a simulation. Moreover, we would have to suspect that the posthumans running our simulation are themselves simulated beings; and their creators, in turn, may also be simulated beings. Reality may thus contain many levels. Even if it is necessary for the hierarchy to bottom out at some stage " the metaphysical status of this claim is somewhat obscure " there may be room for a large number of levels of reality, and the number could be increasing over time." http://www.simulation-argument.com... When you consider the fact that stacked civilizations could exist, and that a society could create several simulated universes, each simulated universe having stacked simulated universes, we have to assume we're most likely simulations. A real universe resembling our own with several advanced societies all with multiple simulated universes, and each one being stacked means that real people are probably vastly outnumbered by simulated people by perhaps 100 to 1. It's not even worth considering the fact we're not simulated seeing as how the likelihood of that is so small. Indicators of a Simulated Universe Even without these additional indicators mentioned, the argument stands on it's own. These indicators just help us to know that the universe is in fact simulated. 1."Dr. James Gates says that within super-symmetrical equations, which is part of string theory, he"s found something that very much resembles computer code. When he looked into these equations, he found computer code invented by Claude Shannon in the 1940s. Shannon was a mathematician who founded digital computer and digital circuit design theory in 1937." http://www.toptenz.net... 2.The universe also looks to be a hologram according to many physicists. It appears that we're actually just a 3 dime soak representation of a 2 dimensional universe. 3. "According to Rich Terrile, the director of the Center for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA"s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the proof that we"re living in a simulation is that the universe is made of pixels." something you'd very much expect to find in a simulated universe 4. Remember when I talked about how computers could use a lot less memory if they only simulated things when you looked at them. Perhaps when you look at an atom it is simulated so you can observe it an be none the wiser, that you were in a simulation? Well evidence that this is taking place is abundant. Matter most definitely does act different when being observed. "1. Matter can act as both a wave and a particle depending on whether or not it is being observed (Wave-Duality Theory) This is the least meaningful implication for you as a macroscopic organism, but nonetheless it"s a pretty crazy concept. 2. Observation can (possibly) affect the outcome of macroscopic events After all, you and everything you know are composed of these microscopic particles, so why couldn"t something large be influenced as well? It would be the sum of a seemingly infinite amount of pieces of matter acting as either waves or particles. Scientists have very mixed opinions on this topic so I"ll just say it makes sense to me that this could happen on a larger scale." http://highexistence.com...