Odds are we're living in a simulation, says Elon Musk

theverge.com/2016/6/2/11837874/elon-musk-says-odds-living-in-simulation

>"If a civilization stops advancing then that may be due to some calamitous event that erases civilization," Musk said, presenting two options. "Either we're going to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will cease to exist."

What did he mean by this?

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qntm.org/responsibility
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This is why the LessWrong types will never be taken seriously.

Odds are we are all bananas and will one day be eaten with peanut butter.

the universe is only going to exist for so long
what is the motive of this hypothetical civilisation to create this kind of simulation
why is it so certain it will be created when it is costly, ethically questionable, of dubious use, etc.

Who are they and why, please explain?

his claims don't hold any more dirt than any other person off the street

>This is why the LessWrong types will never be taken seriously.
I don't necessarily disagree but what does lesswrong have to do with anything?

simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
Save this post for a future yourself.

My god, those sloppy Fermi estimates. How these autists can take this seriously?

How does he get people to believe otherwise?

He has a lot of money and so far goo business practice towards science fiction like ideas. But it's mostly money.

then why am I still POOR. tell the game masters to send me some upgrades

It's a numbers game. It would not be costly at all. We already model the world in simulations ourselves. The ethics are spooks long forgotten. We evolved in the simulation entirely.
Because there could theoretically be infinite simulations inside simulations and only one real world it's almost certain we would be in a simulation

I think it's bullshit, but your reasons are retarded and actually the strengths of their argument

>yfw the ride never ends

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and good chums with Elizer Yudowsky and various assorted cranks and autists like Mencius Moldbug. Thiel is even trying to build his own floating seasted principality. Sillicon Valley is an abomination of the worst aspects of the 60s counterculture grafted in with Ayn Rand and industrial amounts of autism

If life's a game I've failed. The only redeeming quality about me is that I'm tall, but otherwise I'm a gay skinny kissless virgin

This is the best putdown of Silicon Valley I have ever read

This

Remember, Anons, that the Forms are the most real things. The physical, observable world is only shadows and reflections of the higher reality.

Civilization will be destroyed because of people like Musk.

>le rokos basilisk

It's not a complete loss. You'll walk away with all kinds of diseases after repeatedly taking in the cab from strangers at truck stops after dressing like Minnie Pearl or whatever it is you fags do these days.

But in your example what is the difference between a 'real world' and a 'simulation'? Is it just a matter of whatever came first is the 'real' world?

lesswrong are where the (wannabe) high priests of this form of thinking likely to hang out

and people still like to claim that analytic philosophy is not poison
>kek

Looks like someone just got finished playing star ocean 3...or hes got schizophrenia

Your overflowing spooks yourself

...

i hate this elon musk cult worhsip, the guy is the trump of STEM autists

Sounds like a shitty combo

this is the same person

Ultimately it only depends on whether there was a simulation in the first place. If there wasn't, we aren't in one, regardless of the huge likeliness.

You still have potential. Some don't and never will. Or, like you, they don't realize it.

you can invent any unverifiable claims, this particular one is not new and was rather popularized by the matrix movie, but unless you can prove them they are just... a fodder for the occam razor

my dad bought sugar-free peanut butter it suks ass

It's best eaten salty, you woman

>Because there could theoretically be infinite simulations inside simulations
That's some serious implied implications there

>i am addicted to sugar
the post

Enjoy sucking skippy out of a tube fag.

I think the mistake of this view is that it assumes that a simulation would be anything more then data on a machine. Even if it was sophisticated enough to simulate every single molecule in the universe that doesn't mean that the simulation has any physical basis to it. The simulation of single-celled organisms evolving into intelligent life would still just be a mathematical system and just because some math formulas ended up making parts of the program act as though they had free will doesn't mean that they are conscious because its still just a bunch of numbers being calculated by a machine.

Since we experience consciousness ourselves it seems unlikely that we are in a program IMO because mathematical formulas can't be given consciousness. A program that allows a component of the simulation to act as though the component is conscious doesn't mean it actually is.

What? Are you clinically retarded?

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We need to kidnap a few special forces operatives and observe them for anomalous behaviour.

If you have an objection to my position then post it instead of attempting to insult me.

>gay skinny kissless virgin
How skinny? Like Brevitas from dorkslapped? Would I have to be careful not to clothesline my throat on your protruding collar bone if I went in for a hug?

What a retard

Why don't people who don't understand jack fucking ass about philosophy and the humanities try to work together with people who have absolutely no grasp on science, math and engineering work together with each other? Why do both groups just have smug circle jerks over how much better they are than the other?

What bugs me about Musk is that his idea of simulation is pisspoor. His argument that the evolution of pong to contemporary video games is going to lead to "well crafted" simulations is unnecessary. If we were all inside a simulation, if it was all we knew, there would be no need for it to be well crafted. It could be totally bonkers, and none of us would question it's realness.

Further, our ability to misperceive the world, our ability to create fiction and illusion, this is enough to hypothesize simulation. There is no need for a computer, when the brain and culture is enough.

tldr: Musk should go read some Plato and Baudrillard, and the hacks in the technology/science press do themselves a disservice by giving a shit about his weak-ass metaphysics.

as a denizen of silicon valley this is the most accurate description of this tendency I have ever read

>tldr: Musk should go read some Plato and Baudrillard, and the hacks in the technology/science press do themselves a disservice by giving a shit about his weak-ass metaphysics

It's just a question of technology making theoretically plausible what could only be proposed on metaphysical grounds earlier. Reading Plato and Baudrillard is unlikely to impact eg the mathematical simulation argument, which forms the basis of most "We're probably in a simulation" arguments. If only because, unlike Plato and Baudrillard (and Berkeley, if you squint a bit), the simulation hypothesis still posits an ultimate underlying reality about which no direct claims are made, though implicitly it's often assumed that its nature will have in some way informed the design of our 'reality'.

>I think the mistake of this view is that it assumes that a simulation would be anything more then data on a machine. Even if it was sophisticated enough to simulate every single molecule in the universe that doesn't mean that the simulation has any physical basis to it.
>data on a machine
>no physical basis
Here's your problem. The physical basis of Babbage's mechanical computer is a lot easier to see and understand than a modern one, but they are all purely physical phenomena.

I don't believe there is a god, but I do believe there is a monster in the sun of equal or greater power.

Is this some kind of advertisement-by-meme-I-was-only-pretending-to-be-

qntm.org/responsibility

Baudrillard's simulation is more radical, which is why I prefer it. For Baudrillard, there is no real beneath the simulation, there was *maybe* a real before the simulation, but we have no way of knowing it at this point.

Musk's simulation (like that of the Matrix), relies on an external device to create the illusion. Something that creates our misperceptions, our reality. Baudrillard skips the need for an external, by positing that our 'misperception of reality and our recreation of it through culture, is the full illusion, no need for a projector.

Maybe our creators reality is totally batshit and we're in experiment in something more sane.

>ctrf-f
>no Nick Bostrom

Fuckin pls Veeky Forums

Musk could certainly be right, but he's bad at philosophy. Bull-shit "singularity" logic about super-tech. There are literally dozens of more interesting philosophers out there to ask about the nature of reality. This is just our culture's hardon for scientists, looking to them for answers beyond their ability to deal with.

Seriously, why would anyone listen to a scientist/technologist about metaphysics, something he'll likely deny?

>If we were all inside a simulation, if it was all we knew, there would be no need for it to be well crafted. It could be totally bonkers, and none of us would question it's realness.
Maybe it is totally bonkers but we just don't realise. We don't have anything to compare it to. You're certainly being unquestioning about its realness.

Yeah, that's my point. We could totally be inside a simulation. So Musk's reliance on materialist logic of "muh computerz", is stupid. Why would you need super-tech for everything to be an illusion? We teach children to believe in Santa Claus, just by taking them to the shopping mall to see a man with a fake beard. We're capable of misperception.

Arguably if you don't believe in magic then technology is a more conceivable way through which simulations could be achieved. That said, maybe in real reality simulations can happen through magic. Or is that what you mean? I'm tired.

There's no reason to believe perfect simulations of reality are possible through technology in this universe, the computing power required would be immense to the point it would need quantum computing, which is probably impossible.

Maybe we're just all the creation of a man slowly walking up river and meditating on his imagination, sitting in circular ruins.

There is no need for the simulation to be perfect, since you'd have nothing to compare it against.

Baudrillard's Simulacra requires neither magic or "technology", at least in the sense of super-computer artificial reality tech. All it requires is the human brain's capability to both misperceive and it's ability to recreate reality through simple fiction and illusion.

>i hate this elon musk cult worhsip, the guy is the trump of STEM autists
elaborate

He makes comments on subjects he never studied outside of the internet and spouts them out with confidence like any other moron on the internet. Except it's more annoying because people take him seriously because he has a lot of money and invests in unrealistic ideas.

I don't really know why people keep calling this 'metaphysics' except in a very technical sense. I mean, the idea that we're just in a simulation innately presupposes the existence of a real physical universe within which the simulation is taking place (even if that universe is itself simulated, there has to be a ceiling).

example?

The thread topic.

>Why would you need super-tech for everything to be an illusion?

I don't think he's arguing that you 'need' it so much as he's arguing that this specific instance is more likely. It's hard to say he's wrong.

Not the poster you're replying to, but Musk is venturing into areas he knows nothing about: Metaphysics. His view of simulated reality isn't even as well developed as Plato's, who at least gets credit for essentially inventing the idea.

Its like asking Trump for political advice, or asking a priest for advice on treating schizophrenia. Scientists are experts, but we should be careful about over-blowing their expertise into other realms.

The western world looked to priests for all their answers for thousands of years, now we look to scientists to explain things like politics, ethics, philosophy. Why?

No, this is why I find his opinions on simulation laughable. Technology is not needed. It is no more likely before or after advanced artificial reality.

Metaphysics isn't anti-physics. It's physics "over 9000". If the world is a simulation, the materialist logic of science is cut off from it. Simulation requires assumptions about the nature of reality, beyond what is provable with physics. Scientific Materialism (which is what I'd call Musk's viewpoint) is already a metaphysical philosophy.

Interesting that nobody has referenced the Chinese Room argument. Musk's theory, which is a blatant copy of Bostrom's 2003 paper, takes it as given that entities withing computer simulations posess consciousness, when the evidence that computers have experience is dubious at best. It relies strongly on the idea that brains are reducible to computers, ignoring the possibility that biological systems exhibit emergent properties irreducible to computation.

When did Gnosticism have a comeback?

>Technology is not needed.

Again, no-one is saying it's needed.

>It is no more likely before or after advanced artificial reality.

It clearly becomes more 'likely', whatever we mean by that, once a given means of attaining it is provably instantiable. We're not there yet but we have a plausible path to it.

I know what metaphysics is, dude. My point is that it's quite dubious to call this a metaphysical claim. It's conceivably accessible empirically, for one thing.

>tall gay skinny kissless virgin
B O S T O N ?
O
S
T
O
N
?

I don't get this meme

its a joke on how if you find someone youre interested in online, chances are they live nowhere near you irl. its a joke by and for desperate neets.

ohhh

Chicago

But Plato's Cave is proof in concept enough that reality could be a simulation. The widespread belief in deities is also proof. Misperception+Fiction is enough to hypothesize simulation. Relying on the materialism of technology is silly, considering it's part of the simulation too.

"accessible empirically". Simulation is not empirically accessible, since to trust any observation means that there must be something fundamentally true about what we call reality, that the laws of physics aren't arbitrary inventions or clever ruses of a superior intelligence, or our own inferior misperception of reality. Why theorize simulation within the rules of materialism, science, technology, when the hypothesis itself throws all of that into question? Simulation is a metaphysical question, not a physical one. Even if you do manage to pierce the illusion, get beyond it's deception and prove reality is a simulation, you'd then have to ask yourself the exact same set of questions about that external position from which you did disproved reality.

>But Plato's Cave is proof in concept enough that reality could be a simulation.

I will not repeat again that nothing anybody has said ITT contradicts this. I don't know what part of that you're not understanding.

>Simulation is not empirically accessible

There are possible instantiations which are not. There are possible instantiations which are. Hence, conceivably accessible empirically.

>Simulation is a metaphysical question, not a physical one. Even if you do manage to pierce the illusion, get beyond it's deception and prove reality is a simulation, you'd then have to ask yourself the exact same set of questions about that external position from which you did disproved reality.

The entire point is that it has hitherto been metaphysical, but may no longer be, or may cease to be in the future. The latter part is simply an iteration, which isn't a problem, or is simply an epistemological issue.

>le we could be in the MATRUXXX OMG

A little too hard on the demiurge

What a cutie t b h

Read De Landa philosophy and simulation. Computer simulations can result in emergent properties.

this is what happens when someone in the hard sciences thinks they can be an epik philosipher because of their superior STEM intellect

>*dibs fegora*

protip: quit smoking weed

Normal people call this "believing in God": something much greater than us made the universe we live in, and has control over it.

See also: solipsism. Doesn't it satisfy occam's razor much better if you suppose that the only thing that exists is your own mind? Yet clearly you are not consciously deciding things into and out of existence, therefore you have a subconscious which presents these things to you: a being which is of your mind but separate from your consciousness and has total power over the universe you observe. God again.

Speculations on the ultimate nature of the universe are a waste of time. There's no point in worrying about whether we're in a simulation until we see some actual evidence one way or the other.

>>Speculations on the ultimate nature of the universe are a waste of time. There's no point in worrying about whether we're in a simulation until we see some actual evidence one way or the other.
>>"evidence"

materialist detected

>Normal people call this "believing in God"

This is different, honestly, though I can see the family resemblance. It's entirely reasonable to suppose that the master universe contains beings that are on some level 'like' us - that's hardly true of God. It's even possible to believe that the universe in which our simulation is being run was itself created by a God.

Also, this is a "turtles all the way up" argument.

If you accept this reasoning, that we're far more likely to be in a simulation than in the "real world", then the same reasoning applies to the world in which our simulation is being run: it's also far more likely to be simulated than a real world of its own, and so on, ad infinitum.

According to Musk's reasoning, the deeper the layers of the universe being a simulation in a simulation are, the more probable the theory is.

Yet the more layers to the simulation, the sillier the theory is, the more it goes against occam's razor, adding features to the universe unnecessary to explain our observations of it.

>beings that are on some level 'like' us - that's hardly true of God.
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
-- Genesis 1:26-27 (KJB)

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Come on, Fred, it'll be awesome. Our own little universe full of people to fuck with. I bet it would impress the hell out of Liz."
"Jehova, even if you buy the computer yourself with your lawn-cutting money, your parents will flip when they see the electricity bill. I could set it up, but you're going to need to get an after-school job flipping manna."

>Let us make man in our image, after our likeness

That's the majestic plural, for one thing. "God" is posited as a necessary being, the entities that made our simulated universe are contingent (or, if they are not, then they are indeed simply God, the point is that they can be).

Musk the personification of developing meaningless technologies that satisfy some bizarre science fiction fantasy.

These rational logicians have conflated human progress with ever more ridiculous sandbox style playing.

Did we really need an electric sports car?

Can these people just be confident enough in their masculinity that they don't feel the need to act out a Freudian wet dream of faux intellectualism and obsession with the phallus?

They are children.

The more we depend on technology to construct our understanding of the world, and the less we understand that technology, the more likely technology is forming a quasi-Gnostic projection of reality we naively believe.

That's the basic gist of Silicon Valley gnosticism.

See elsewhere Musk has stated creating a true AI would be "summoning the demon."

youtube.com/watch?v=Tzb_CSRO-0g

The possibility that our senses will inevitably be redirected by technology is, I think, essentially correct. The existence of eyeglasses has already led to a deterioration in vision (also see Socrates' arguments against text, because memory); technologies such as Google and VR simply extend this same trenchant dependence on technology to augment our senses further.

why would a magic space-race who can simulate entire little sub-universes use 20th century style computers instead of tachyon cross-membrenal hypercomputers, or glabglorp xzzzts who have no similarity to our simulated physics whatsoever, which would be just as complex or more than our cellular neural network

this

What do you think he meant by this?

what the fuck has elon musk even done

all of a sudden this overgrown teenager started popping up all over the place for trying to kill people on mars or something

That's not even the main problem. The main problem is the ridiculous assumption that the sort of consciousness we possess could be generated by a simulation. We simply have no reason to think that.

We have no reason to think anything.

>Implying that a knowledgeable reality exists
So what if it's a simulation?