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The argument is of course not Musk's, but Nick Boström's:

ABSTRACT. This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

http://www.simulation-argument...

I cannot find any flaws in the statistics. I thus agree we're _likely_ living in a simulation.

The hiccup is not in the statistics but the assumption that the seemingly increasing and never-ending improvement in technology will result in such a simulation capability in the future. Is this assumption true? We need far more than a system that passes the Turing test. We are already hitting the limits of technology scaling, and we have barely progressed beyond ELIZA.

Not that you care, but it isn't my claim, the math proofs have been done and so far no one has shown them to contain any errors or alternate proofs that are more accurate.

http://www.simulation-argument...

Without any evidence of your own, and with your failure to provide maths showing an error in the theory, you will not be taken very seriously in the scientific community.

The argument is of course not Musk's, but Nick Boström's:

ABSTRACT. This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

http://www.simulation-argument...

I cannot find any flaws in the statistics. I thus agree we're _likely_ living in a simulation.

The argument that there's a high probability we live in a simulation has been seriously discussed by philosophers such as Nick Bostrom. See http://www.simulation-argument.com/. I disagree with the argument but it isn't by itself a wacky idea or one we should dismiss out of hand.

If you are really interested in this topic than probably the best place to review the current thinking is: http://www.simulation-argument... .

Personally I don't find it useful to spend much time thinking about it. The idea we are in a simulation is pretty much the same as "everything is a dream." Even if it's true it's untestable with no clear implications for how we relate to the world or make decisions. As William James said, "A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all."

Dear /.

the underlying doubt comes from Descartes' deliberations on how to obtain knowledge (chapter 3, "meditations"):

http://plato.stanford.edu/entr...

The re-loaded version for the 21st century can be found here:

http://www.simulation-argument...

The guy who wrote it got his own department at the University of Oxford (to study "existential risk" -- earth and life on it are threatened by the power button on a space-age playstation ...):

https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/

Best regards,

Oliver

Actually Bostrom doesn't say and does not believe that we are living in a simulation.

From a science standpoint arguing that we are living in a computer simulation is no different than arguing god created the universe.

That's a ridiculous claim. The simulation argument is based on some very reasonable assumptions and simple math that no one disputes. Comparable proofs of a deity's existence are nowhere near as convincing.

Remind me, what does "proof" mean again in philosophy?

The same thing it means in every other discipline: a logical argument proceeding from assumptions to conclusions. Bostrom's simulation argument is a very convincing proof, and I highly recommend reading it. Abstract:

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

Basically, if you accept the proposition that humans will continue to exist long into the future, and you accept that future humans have just as much interest in simulating their ancestors as we have in simulating our ancestors, then we are almost certainly living in a simulation.

Nick Bostrom has similar thoughts (2003): http://www.simulation-argument...

http://www.simulation-argument...

He isn't doing anything other than saying that Nick Bostrom (who presented a proof) might be right.

http://www.simulation-argument... But the idea has far older roots, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I, of course, didn't RTFA. But isn't Tyson just repeating the Bostrom simulation argument?

If you accept the statistical nature of QM, then you might want to consider that we are just apes trying to understand QM. What if QM has a random number generator seed behind it (i.e. a C program) or the random number generator is encrypted with something we just haven't quite figured out yet? The hidden variables theory from Einstein implies that there might be state (i.e. Einstein was literally claiming we are a C program, but he didn't know how to program.. so he didn't realize what he was implying, only I realize it...well me and Nick Bostrom).... While people are busy cracking games and creating keygens, some of us are busy cracking the universe encryption... script kiddies become universe kiddies.

http://simulation-argument.com...

Enjoy the red pill - I'll give you some milk so that the pill goes down well.

There is a professor at Oxford University, England, Nick Bostram, who has been arguing it for years: http://www.simulation-argument...

http://www.simulation-argument...

But, that does not make it any less real-seeming to all of us being simulated...

And of course, the universe simulator could be simulated, etc....

It might be simulated turtles all the way down. :-)

I've always found this interesting: http://www.simulation-argument...

ABSTRACT. This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/...
"ishanda --- Kerbal Space Program Apr 17, 2013 @ 2:29am; If you REALLY want Star Trek Style impulse engines why not mod them yourself? All you really need is to make copies of the relevant part files, change the name of the Xenon Tank to "Deuterium" and change the Ion Engine to "Impulse Engine" and then change a few values to make them super efficient. Done."

Still looking forward to seeing how the real device pans out though... Just like I'm still wondering about all the claimed cold fusion results which may also be exploring new areas of physics and chemistry with the behavior of hydrogen atoms at the edges of metal lattices or in cracks in them perhaps in interaction with electro-magnetic pulses ...
http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

I'm still waiting on "Tom Swift and his Space Solartron" though: :-)
http://www.tomswift.info/homep...
"The main invention in this book is, of course, the Space Solartron. The Space Solartron was probably Tom Swift's most amazing -- and far-fetched -- invention. Its purpose was to make space travel practical by creating oxygen, water, and food from sunlight -- not a simple task, to be sure."

I've mused about even better tech that will extract energy and mass from zero point energy. Although we might then get a "tragedy of the commons" as so much mass and energy is created in nearby outer space as to collectively form a black hole? Now that might be another good mode for the multi-player version of Kerbal Space Program to see what happens politically as that "tragedy" plays out as the outer space equivalent of anthropogenic global warming? :-)
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/11...

Perhaps that political problem might already be playing out at the core of out galaxy? :-)
http://science.slashdot.org/st...

Back to the EmDrive device, it would not surprise me if the impulse provided by the microwave device is much less than the impulse imparted by photons and/or solar wind on any satellite's solar panels to capture needed electricity. But that might be a non-issue if you have a small "Mr. Fusion" fusion reactor or cold fusion LENR device onboard the satellite? :-)

Of course, station keeping is even easier if you have a "HyperEdit" debugger hook into the simulation. :-)
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/11...
"If you still think MechJeb is cheating, take a look at HyperEdit. It is cheating. Install it, tap Alt+H, and you're given a menu full of options that let you tweak and edit the game. With a few clicks, you can teleport your craft to the orbit of any planet on the solar system, then use the landing options to gracefully touch down. Alternatively, you can instantly replenish your fuel, obliterate a selected craft, or readjust Kerbin's gravity to make escaping its atmosphere unnaturally difficult. HyperEdit is a flexible toolbox that, when used without restriction, completely destroys the difficulty. With a little imagination, though, you can use it to create your own custom scenarios. It's as simple as popping an abandoned craft on a distant planet, and suddenly you've got the basis for a tricky retrieval mission."

See also:
http://www.simulation-argument...
"This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct

http://www.simulation-argument...

because we are almost surely living in simulation. and in that simulation, things just have to be so for us to be simulated.

First, Star Trek meets circa 2000 Earthlings (YouTube): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

On your question, I guess there is a big difference between "wants" and "needs". It's true they shade into each other though, so it is not black and white. It also depends on context and culture.
http://frugalliving.about.com/...

Also, they could easily give that guy his own star ship on a Holodeck (or via some direct brain stimulation that would be even cheaper), and he may never have noticed unless they told him (as with Moriarity in "Ship in a Bottle"). Of course, if the universe is a simulation, we all may be in that situation already:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wik...
http://www.simulation-argument...

Many more: http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

I agree that we should be concerned about the issue of virtual slavery...

And not just because we ourselves may be AIs...
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Well, greater minds than mine have spent more time on it than I'm inclined to.

Lots of exhilarating reading on Wikipedia about the Simulation Hypothesis. ... and an article about the probability thing.

I have the same gut reaction... This research as described in the article summary seems to twist together aspects of horror, torture, and slavery.

But then again, I feel somewhat the same way about the development of AI... And we all may be simulated humans already:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

But somehow that it is not quite the same visceral feeling as thinking about small human brains being created to do arbitrary experiments on...

By the way, on the person who brought up the Parkinson's question:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/lack_of_DHA_linked_to_Parkinsons.aspx
"According to the researchers, among the mice that had been given omega-3 supplementation - in particular DHA - omega-3 fatty acids replaced the omega-6 fatty acids in their brains. Due to the fact that concentrations of other omega-3s (LNA and EPA) had maintained levels in both groups of mice, the researchers suggested that the protective effect against Parkinson's indeed came from DHA.2"

Although that was experiments on mice... Not to say mice don't suffer or probably dream too...

Going far down the slippery ethical slope...

That said, somehow I doubt all scientists will abstain from this research. A couple ideas on scientists:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence. (Albert Einstein)"

So, what is the moral foundation for our work in any profession?

So what? It's true JP Hogan pushed he envelope on some things, but that does not make his other observations incorrect. Go look at some of the stuff someone like Isaac Newton wrote, where we just remember and honor what he was right about.

JP Hogan liked to support the underdog against the establishment, to ask for a fari hearing for ideas that he felt were unfairly dismissed as heretical. Sometimes the heretic ends up being right, sometimes they are indeed wrong. His concern was more about critical thinking and working from the evidence, as he makes clear in various novels, including his first.

Besides, if the universe is a computer simulation, it may well have been designed, and may well have been started recently (including from a backup) -- and I say that as someone who was in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution.
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Whatever one can say about what really went on around 1776 in North America, in theory, the whole meaning of a democratic republic is supposedly that it is "government of the people, by the people, for the people".

As John Gardner wrote in "Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society", every generation must learn anew for itself the meaning of the world carved in the stone monuments.
http://books.google.com/books?id=U5hXpnwUmW4C&printsec=frontcover

Or as he wrote here:
http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/aaker/pages/documents/JohnGardner-RoadtoSelf-Renewal2.pdf
"We cannot dream of a Utopia in which all arrangements are ideal and everyone is flawless. Life is tumultuous -- an endless losing and regaining of balance, a continuous struggle, never an assured victory. Nothing is ever finally safe. Every important battle is fought and refought. You may wonder if such a struggle, endless and of uncertain outcome, isn't more than humans can bear. But all of history suggests that the human spirit is well fitted to cope with just that kind of world."

Or, as Edmund Burke said, "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

So, the struggle against bad government , to ensure the government remains responsive and accountable and appropriately effective, is a bit like fighting mildew in a bathroom -- a never ending struggle. Still, we also need both hierarchy and meshworks in our lives, and indeed, we always have a mix of them as they keep turning into each other:
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm

And if the Earth does become one big thinking war machine (like in "Colossus: The Forbin Project") then the algorithms running on its internal homogenous API interfaces become the new actors struggling for resources and democratic accountability (in a purely computational meshwork/hierarchy context).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project

Of course, we "people" all may be such already. :-)
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

How many googols of years has this been going on?
"The World Was Probably Already Destroyed"
http://www.digitalcosmology.com/Blog/2012/12/06/t/
"Some people wonder if our planet will be destroyed on December 21, 2012. I have friends asking me every day whether I think the world will end in a few weeks. But it is possible that our planet was already destroyed and before that occured its scientists managed to send a capsule in space with a supercomputer running its simulation. ... Will the destruction happen again in the simulation? Probably not since the conditions that caused it were of stochastic nature. However, even if the destruction takes place in the simulation, the computer will restart it and the world will be created again in an endless fashion. ..."

Still, there is always the first time...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

Yet, each time, people (or creatures that act like people) must find anew some balance of competition and cooperation, of meshwork and hierarchy, of a middle ground between fire and ice (to ignore the n-dimensional aspects as another layer of complexity).

Natural selection is a very limited idea which doesn't address the idea of souls, (which can essentially, last forever, or at least incarnate over the course of hundreds of lifetimes).

This idea, of course, is unavailable to those who have not researched the concept far enough to recognize its validity, or who have not been able to conquer their internal programming far enough to even allow the processing of such taboo subjects.

Taking it into account requires the modification of such rational theories as Natural Selection, which is still a force to be certain, but one complicated by dozens of other factors which essentially render much conventional wisdom on the subject, as it applies to humans and their continued species evolution, meaningless.

Added to that is the idea that humans are farmed creatures at this point; our evolution directed by others, not ourselves or any brute natural forces, all for entirely different goals than basic survivability. If we look at how we manage cow, chicken and pig livestocks, we can see that natural selection is no longer an arbitrary natural process, and the same is true of us. Survivability is now just another factor in the food production equation, taking a back seat to other concerns. It is safe to say that few of the managed life forms we consume could survive on their own outside the industrial farming system.

Those with older souls have a somewhat higher chance of putting up resistance to the desired results of this process. As you observe, will-power (combined with knowledge) allow a person to avoid the traps of addiction. Included in this, I would add, the eating of real foods and the behaving in ways which provide real power. That process, however, comes at the tail end of having lived many lives as slaves and managed animals, of falling into those traps in order to know them inside and out. This means being a slave animal can be seen as a required experience in order to achieve the insight and instincts necessary to accrue real power in the end. There is value in being a mindless addict, as so many are today, and such lives will be lived by a given soul until it no longer needs to extract wisdom from the experience and can move on to whatever further lessons needed that ground work. You burn yourself until you respect fire.

There will be life forms of one kind or another which dominate their position on the food chain, and then after a time, they will go extinct, as will their farmers, and those above them. Humans are just a passing phase, and their survivability and the great public concern for it is a null point in the big picture. The souls they contain are the important thing, and the only thing which determines whether they 'survive' is whether or not they choose to either continue to absorb knowledge or reject the creation.

Some undeniable truths and meta-truths mixed with some (probably) speculation and mysticism on reincarnation. Love it! :-)

And I loved "What Dreams May Come".too, which I quote here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html

And I wonder what spin the "simulation argument" idea would put on your suggestions?
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Ultimately, what you are pointing towards is the mystery of consciousness...

Yes, this is plausible now that you raise it. Now that this social network surveillance is acknowledged, and the public is not protesting much, it become acceptable and part of US society. This prepares the ground to move to the next level of surveillance which probably may be already happening. This could be the automated analysis of all phone calls using speech recognition, when calls are then only listened to by a human analyst after being flagged by a machine due to using some key word or phrase. A system could be put in place to rubber stamp warrants for these flagged calls. Thus, the government can plausibly say it does not listen in on hone calls without valid suspicion. Then in five years, this can be leaked. Then the public begins prepared for the next phase, etc.. Recall that immediately after 9/11/01 it was discussed that all cell phone calls were recorded and the recordings kept for some length of time. Haven't heard much about that lately.

However, it is also possible this leak was the plan and Snowden is not aware of it, but just he was the first systems admin to take the bait (probably expected based on his psych profile and internal monitoring). We will probably never know, because it is hard to see what is real and what is illusion when living in a maze of mirrors.

But, if we are living in a computer simulation, the last laugh is that everything the NSA or any other government agency anywhere does is recorded down to the level of thoughts and farts. :-)
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

See also my:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ...
    There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."

Another Mirror Maze, btw:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/book.php?titleID=18
"When a new political party espousing traditional, constitutional values sweeps into power, institutions of the current Establishment close ranks in an attempt to destroy it."

"A conspiracy theorist would say that most likely the actual truth is more damming."

On conspiracy theories, maybe there is already a computer record of our every thought and fart? :-) http://www.simulation-argument.com/

It's argue, not believe, but anyway.

http://www.simulation-argument.com/matrix2.html

There have been Star Trek episodes like that too, where people are on a Holodeck with their memories suppressed. That's also why, even having been in a PhD program in ecology and evolution, I have to accept it is possible that our universe is a simulation started 6000 years ago from some old backup.
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Or that everything in it may have been designed with tools that involve interactive design of selections from variations, like software I co-wrote about designing plants and tunes:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/PlantStudio/
http://www.evojazz.com/

The problem of course is that, even if true and interesting to contemplate, those sorts of beliefs are not very practical, like in understanding how the flu virus mutates every year, or in figuring out where mineral resources are likely located based on geological processes, and so on. Or even in understanding how religion may have come about and persisted in the first place (a point I first saw in someone's comment on slashdot a year or two ago):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religions
http://evolution-of-religion.com/
https://www.google.com/search?q=evolution+of+religion

I also think many scientists overreach -- moving from scientific statements about material things to an unackowledged theology of "scientistic materialsm" like Charles Tart points out.
http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/about-dr-tart/the-end-of-materialism/
"Of course there are nonsensical elements mixed in with religion and spirituality: that's true for all areas of human life. But to totally deny our spiritual nature, as science apparently does, harms and inhibits people. Indeed, a deeper look shows that it's not science that denies our spirituality, it's scientism, a rigid philosophy of materialism, masquerading as science."

Some suggest we are not Earthly beings on a spiritual journey, but rather are instead Spiritual beings on an earthly journey. If so, it is hard to say for sure what difference is makes how long that journey is -- whether 15 hours or 15 decades?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Dreams_May_Come

People also find it worthwhile to play plenty of video games that may only last a short time. So a reasonable skeptic has to accept a lot of things are possible and that our knowledge of all the levels of reality is apparently limited as human beings. Still, then there is the issue of what is useful to believe in this current reality as far as dealing with the pains and pleasures and relationships and values and challenges and so on that it presents.

Read about the 'simulation argument' when you get a chance. Based on your response, I'd say that if you've already read it you probably ought to read it again and AFTERWARDS ask yourself the same question that I asked. Let me know whether or not your answer changes!

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

And I'm not the only one who has considered this possibility.

"duh, of course the universe is tuned such that life can exist, if it *wasn't*, we wouldn't be here". - You forgot the part where it conflicts with anything I said. Yes, the universe is tuned for life. Now what fine-tuned it if not God?

Well, people have come up with a bunch of ideas over time. Or maybe it's whoever who set up the simulation in which we live, and maybe he/she/it/they live in another simulation, etc....

"The anthropic principle" is not a valid answer: it is an observation, not a cause.

...or maybe it just is. There is no inherent reason why there has to be an Answer(TM). Some people may want to hear an Answer, but that's another matter.

"Because there's only one configuration of the simplest possible genome that works?" - There's more than one, but there's certainly a lot less than 4^4800. Say there are 10^60 possible combinations (much more than the number of atoms in the earth and a huge overestimate), in that case you still have 4^4700 to deal with. Have fun!

Actually, the search space is much smaller, and there's a lot of stuff in the primeval oceans, so with massively parallel search of the search space....

"I want a citation for the 'because Evolutionists are scared of it' part of 'that is rejected out of hand because Evolutionists are scared of it.'" They are scared of the idea that anything supernatural has an impact on their lives, and they deal with this fear by denying the possibility of God's existence.

That's not a citation, that's an assertion. No good reason has been presented for me to believe that assertion.

It almost never comes to the surface due to the deeply ingrained denial, but how else do you account for the repeated attempts of evolutionists to push ID out of science when it is obviously valid?

How about "it's not obviously valid"?

"No. What is this obsession you have with fear? Are you projecting here?" I'm just hoping you'll see reason.

Try exhibiting some reason; that'll make it easier to see it.

It is right to fear God, for he has power over everything - "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). If you accept God's rule you have no need to fear for you are living in harmony with him, but if you deny him you have reason to fear.

Assuming that he exists and is pissy about people not believing in him. I've seen no evidence for or against the former; I suppose it's not inconceivable that, if he exists, he's the latter, but it seems rather, well, petty for somebody who creates universes.

But of course, I don't expect this argument probably isn't going to change your mind about what you believe. Your tenacity to keep responding suggests that your resolution is quite firm, and you are fairly certain of what you believe you know.

I suspect we have a pot and a kettle here.

For what it's worth, I've never argued that ignorance is evidence of God.... I've argued that things existing at all can be taken as quite reasonable evidence that there is a God... since this universe appears to obey principles of causality, and everything in it has a beginning. God isn't a special case or exception to this necessity of origin because God isn't really part of the universe in the first place.

Of course, the creator of the universe could just be a normal entity in another universe who's running us in a simulator (Nick Bostrom, please pick up the white courtesy phone), and that universe could itself be a simulation.

Or, alternatively, a committee (or something else not-Yahweh).

In the end, I see suggesting the notion that there is no God to be much like a character in a story suggesting that the book he is in didn't have an author at all. It's absurd, in fact.

But what if we're not characters in a book?

Nick Bostrom has a paper on this, the intro:

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed

Infinite loops are fine. RP Control is carefully designed so that you won't screw up your world even if you crash the virtual computer. It's actually not especially hard to crash the virtual computer, since the whole OS is loaded into its RAM and you can easily write to that RAM. Still, since the computer is fully virtualized, it won't hurt your world or even cause a slowdown.

I refer you to Nick Bostrom's http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html. The rest of the site is also somewhat interesting.

Anyway, in summary...

So, God could be a teenage AI (which, culturally corrected, could be aeons old and unfathomably wise - or not), running a universe simulation on his gaming rig.

If the rig has enough memory and "CPU", and the simulation allows for it, we may not be alone.

The motivation may be entertainment, or indeed eventual companionship - reproduction.

The prevailing cultural ethos may allow for baby AIs with promising ethical or intellectual makeups to "score" highly enough, possibly through multiple incarnations in different life conditions, to be uplifted to what at least seems to be the Ring-0 "Real" Universe.

The religion you encounter when you get there could be interesting.

Science is not a panacea; see: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

"When we have a nontrivial portion of the population who does not believe that humanity resulted from evolution by natural selection, and that the universe is less than ten thousand years old, did we really expect people to accept science that something bad is going to happen if they do not change their behavior?"

Despite having been in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution, I can entertain the possibility that this world may have been a simulation only running for about 6000 virtual years for some purpose by a creator (or creators) of it and that there may have been extensive design involved with creating that (including either falsifying the fossil record or having run the universe from scratch only once and then running the last 6000 years multiple times from a checkpoint save file like with VirtualBox). See also: http://www.simulation-argument.com/

On a practical basis, the theory of evolution probably gets us further in understanding and succeeding in the world (like understanding how insects become resistant to pesticides, or how antibiotic-resistent bacteria emerge). Although maybe not always? :-)
http://evolution-of-religion.com/
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/04/13/211201/magical-thinking-is-good-for-you

Anyway, science is so often not so cut and dried. A big issue is that, as Einstein said, science can tell you what is, but it can't tell you what you should value or prioritize or assume or study.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

Similarly, there are huge areas of real human experience like consciousness that science has little practical to say about and which can lead to "materialistic scientism" which denies that which it cannot prove (rather that just not having a firm opinion), like Charles Tart talks about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G67CqHPXJDE

Still, I would readily agree that when a lot of money is riding on denying externalities, it may be beneficial for certain financial interests to discourage or confuse any kind of rational thinking based on seemingly sound premises.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

I just read someone's sig elsewhere ("Shannow") that said "Figuring things out for yourself is the only real freedom that you have.". Sounds like a lot of truth to me, even if other scientists say (and I also agree) arguing may have evolved as a collective process to get closer to useful truths:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/researcher-responds-to-arguments-over-his-theory-of-arguing/

I think many people in the USA look around and realize materialism has not actually brought that much more happiness in many ways (compared to community, not that they have to be exclusive), so maybe that rational observation leads to other blowback towards the scientific and technical professions? Even if a lot of that is really about politics of science and technology?

In the case of global warming, there are other problems involved. Global warming is a "tragedy of the commons" type problem, and our US society has trouble dealing with problems like that (including systematic risk). Also, the approaches towards dealing with global warming are often very negative. Why not deal with global warming by investing in research in hot or cold fusion energy, solar panels, or space habitats, in an optimistic way, rather that link that to some kind of green doomsterism as many do? Maybe people cor

Like this guy: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html ?

The rest of your comment was fine, but just because you hold a skeptical view of hypervisors doesn't mean you need to impute I don't know how a computer works. And yes, I've paid my dues, including memorizing 8088 machine language (not assembly).

Given that some people actually think we are living in a computer simulation, I believe the universe analogy was particularly apt.

Also, someone else mentioned there's never been a Xen hack.

Since we're really all just living in a simulation anyway, my first thought was of our glorious Master Control Program.

All hail the MCP, under pain of deresolution.

Thanks for the speculations, and I'd encourage you to try some back on an envelope order-of-magnitude calculations to see which might make sense. For example, get a figure for the energy of an atomic bomb in some unit, and then find out the energy the sun puts out in one second in the same unit, and compare them.

Also, what may seem to make sense with today's physics might seem ludicrous with tomorrow's physics.

Maybe the sun is indeed a ball of iron.
    http://www.thesunisiron.com/

Or maybe cold fusion takes place at the Earth's core at the edge of a nickel-iron core?
    http://aleklett.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/the-sun-rossi%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Denergy-catalyzer%E2%80%9D-and-the-%E2%80%9Cneutron-barometer%E2%80%9D/#comment-5891

Or maybe we will tap zero-point energy reliably one day?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy

Or the universe is mostly shaped by electrostatics?
    http://www.electricuniverse.info/Electric_Sun_theory

Or the universe is a simulation:
    http://www.simulation-argument.com/

And so on.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. (Albert Einstein)"

Hope you keep imagining things. And think about ballpark calculations. And still hold on to your "roots" in humanity and day-to-day things like sunshine, vegetables, and laughter even when having imaginative "wings".

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html One only needs to suppose that technological innovation will continue. See also, "The Inner Light Theory of Consciousness" - looks like my old link to that got taken over.

Theoretical physics work? For the sake of physics, I hope not.

You rather seem to be referring to Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument, a valid probabilistic argument with highly doubtful premises. Bostrom is a self-promoting, populist philosopher who doesn't seem to have any particular clue about theoretical physics. He knows some basic probability theory, though. His work is fun reading but involves the usual philosophy sauce...valid yet unsound and usually question-begging arguments involving numerous undefined and unclear notions. :-)

first of all, note that not all people refer to the christian/muslim/whatever God when they use the word "God". It is most likely that the grandparent poster was referring to some generic supernatural being.
you should relax when it comes to this topic. in the sense of mathematical truth, you cannot prove there is no God (in the sense of a counscious being "outside" reality). also, you cannot prove that there is a God (because you cannot distinguish, in practice, sufficiently advanced technology from magic).
You have to understand that for many scientists inclined to use mathematical logic, it comes natural to use "prove" in the sense of mathematical logic. Whereas there are a lot of other scientists who use "prove" in the sense of "provide theoretical model that explains empirical evidence, or empirical evidence that confirms theoretical model".
I personally don't care if there is or there is not a "God". I accept that I can interact with my surroundings, and I base my actions on the belief that my experiences tell me the truth about the world. I accept that I cannot prove or disprove the existence of a God, and I insist that there can be no such proof, in the mathematical logic sense of the word. but when I say all this, I am really just being pedantic, insisting that we use the proper meaning for the word "proof".
I do agree you can prove the events in the bible (and other "holy books") did not happen (and I think that's already done, mostly).
Anyway, here is a modern, reasonable discussion on the existence of God, if you're interested: http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Thanks for the reply. While some of that was old, most of it was organized or written new as a reply. I haven't read about Shrike and ergs, so thanks for the pointer.

I spent a year around Hans Moravec's lab when he was writing "Mind Children" in the mid-1980s. I think he has a lot of great ideas, especially in terms of understanding evolution (in a way I think, say, Ray Kurzweil seemingly does not), but it is indeed easy to get lost in speculation or miss some key issue (I'm guilty of that too often enough myself). Personally, I like him and he was kind to me to let me hang out in his lab for quite a while; he really is in some sense at least to me a real model of what a basic researcher should be like. I'm not saying every researcher should be like him, just that he really represents something special in his own way. As far as his vision of the future, mind children seems a lot better than the robots we have emerging from corporate competition or military competition. Do we want to create our "mind children" to be military slaves? Do we even want human children to be made that way, say through compulsory schooling? From:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/Compulsory-Schooling-AnarchistMar03.htm
"Fichte's point was that schools could and should be used to create a compliant citizenry, one that would be used to following orders, comfortable submitting their will to a larger authority, familiar with hierarchical chains of command and instructed in the virtues of the State.
To that end Prussian educational theorists devised a model for schooling, built around centrally controlled curriculums, constant fragmentation of days into changing classes at the sound of a bell, obedience and teacher-directed classroom groupings. At the heart of the system though was the primacy of the State, and that children both belonged to and were the responsibility of the State. As Hegel put it, the State is "the higher authority in respect to which the laws and interests of the family and the civic community are subject and dependent".7
By 1819 the ideal of a national system of compulsory schooling was in place, and the Prussian economy and military was booming. ..."

An alternative (that inspired Ted Nelson's Xanadu project and Hypertext):
"The Skills of Xanadu"
http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51&lpg=PP1

The Pleasure Trap concept (in the book or video) talks mostly how to break out of one (a food related one, but probably genealizeable) by understanding what they are given neuroadaptation (that getting adjusted to something extra pleasurable that is bad for you in the long run really doesn't feel that more pleasureable after an initial rush, but you may have to accept feeling worse for a short time until your sensation level readjust if you go back to experiencing things that are plainer but healthier).

As life goes by, we may change from experiences (good and bad), and so our plans may change. Not saying they should, just that they might.

I think you have an interesting point about nanotech risk and simulation. You've probably seen this:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

In Hogan's book, he does not talk about if the other universes are inhabited in VFY, but I've thought about that issue you raised, that they might be polluting another universe. :-) Would have made a nice sequel... Too bad he is no longer around to write it, or I'd suggest it to him.

I agree with you on the problems of unimaginative uncurious politicians in a high-tech rapidly changing time.

Red Dwarf gets better as the season progresses. But, in any case, for background (contains minor spoilers):

Except that humans ARE animals, so certain animals ARE human, but not all animals eh.

In other words, like it or not, humans are a species of animal.

Anyway it's only a matter of time before there are "alien" intelligences such as dolphins or certain squid species (or of course certain members of the ape families) - and mankind will perhaps either go crazy (all those fanatics who believe in very strange and childish things, wanting to slaughter what they don't understand), or mankind might sigh in relief with the awareness that we finally aren't so alone..

Hmm?

Imagine if you will that one day mankind makes contact with some alien species (or even your supernatural being of choice), how would we be judged based on how we interact with a fellow intelligence? If dolphins were considered pre-intelligent, as in on the way to developing intelligence, and we treated them like crap.. Why.. mankind would come off as a barbaric species who keep slaves and slaughter their neighbors at will, leading to us being very undesirable as far as inter-stellar neighbors go!

Great points. We can probably generalize them eventually to robots and simulated entities, too:
http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/LegalRightsOfRobots.htm
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
Se my other replies to this article, too.

http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/LegalRightsOfRobots.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6200005.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6200005.stm

Something else to think about related to simulated entities' rights: http://www.simulation-argument.com/