Slashdot Mirror
Tech Billionaires Are Asking Scientists For Help To Break Humans Out of Computer Simulation (businessinsider.com)
Many believe that we live in a computer simulation. But it takes a billionaire and his money to ask scientists to help break us out of the simulation. The New Yorker recently did a profile about Y Combinator's Sam Altman. In the story, Altman discusses his theories about being controlled by technology and delves into the simulation theory. From an article on The New Yorker: Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer; two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation. Business Insider adds: The piece doesn't give any clue as to who those two billionaires are -- although it's easy to hazard a few guesses at who they might be, like Musk himself or Altman's friend Peter Thiel -- but it's fascinating to see how seriously people are taking this theory. According to Musk, it's the most popular topic of conversation right now.Earlier this year, at Code Conference, Elon Musk said there's "one in billions" chance we're not living in a computer simulation.
If you are jacked in, perhaps that is the "veil" that is commonly referenced in religious texts... as in, we come from the after-life and we return to the after-life once our trials are done here.
So, if you just die... you will end the simulation and wake up in reality.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
You cannot break out of the simulation, at least not without outside help and even then the idea of breaking out isn't meaningfully feasible.
If I exist in this simulated reality, then I only exist because of the simulation. Shut down the simulation and I cease to exist. There is no way to remove me. If I and this existence is only here because of an outside "CPU", then there is no way of removing me from that CPU.
The closest you could get is a representation of the simulated me in the "real" world. But it would not truly be me.
So if we are in a simulation, it is completely real to us and completely necessary for us to exist.
The Talos Principle is a Portal-like puzzle game in which you try to break out of a computer simulation... or at least break it.
It has one of the most gratifying video game endings ever, IMO.
Logically if this is a simmulation then one would guess that the players controlled by external overlords would be the most powerful sims. that is to say movie stars or Tech billionaires or Trump like dictators.
Thus your highest calling if you and under-sim is to go be a groupy to one of the "real" players.
So it's a little strange to hear the Real players asking to be broken out of the Simulation. Something is fishy here.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What's your first response to seeing evidence of malware on your system? Reimage the shit out of that thing.
This is even ignoring the likelihood that the simulation even simulates anything related to the world the hardware is in. I mean, at the end of Tron Legacy the gal gets to come to our world through ... the power of boners? I mean, I can see how the simulation can simulate a real-world person (I mean, his meat body would have died meanwhile), but the real world isn't setup to actualize a simulation, you can't just wish things to happen.
Or maybe we break out into a cold dark universe where all matter has been converted into computational elements in service of the simulation. Hell, maybe it's running in sound-wave interference in a black hole. That'll be quite fun! Or, again, maybe the enclosing universe has no relationship to our universe, so not only do we have to understand our universe so thoroughly we can break out of it, we have to understand the enclosing universe thoroughly enough to break into it.
And then, of course, when you come down to it, if you prove that we live in a simulation by breaking out of the simulation, now what you know is that it is possible to simulate a universe detailed enough to be thoroughly believable. So how the hell do you know you broke out of the simulation, as opposed to just running a new scenario in the simulation? If you actually did break out, how do you know that the new level isn't a simulation?
But offering them money to research "breaking out" is pretty stupid.
They, like too many people, are afflicted by specialsnowflakeitis, the condition that just might bring about the end of the species.
And they haven't thought it through. If they are in a simulation then all their wealth is simulated and they would have nothing after a hypothetical transfer from the simulation to a higher reality. But I guess their specialsnowflakeitis would see them through wherever they end up.
On the quiet it is not unlikely that the wealthy are also investing in genetic research, head transplants and other medical life extension investigations that are not at all crackpot, just mainly unsavory. But we will not be told about them of course.
Information still leaks out...like the rumors that Peter Thiel is getting blood transfusions from young people. There may be some merit to such a procedure. Other than that, there's cryogenic corpse-freezing (which the rich are quite interested in) and then just the various crackpot stuff.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Since duopoly is inherent in First Past The Post voting, why do you then also believe that voting third party will break the duopoly?
Voting 3rd party will not break the duopoly, but it will change the duopoly. No voters changed the Democratic Party more than those who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Nobody changed the Republican Party more than those who voted for Pat Buchanan. Nader pulled the Democrats to the left, and Buchanan pulled the Republicans to the right. In my opinion this was a bad thing, but that is not the point. Those voters were effective. Unless you live in a swing state (and most people don't) your vote for either Hillary or Donald is meaningless. Voting 3rd party is be best way to make your vote count.
I think Clinton is typically flawed for washington senators, representatives and similarly powerful bureacratic positions.
I had to research her a lot this year and
1) Cinton's been the target of a propaganda war for close to 20 years. This would destroy most people.
2) The clinton foundation is very well run, has a much higher share of money that goes to help people than the american cancer society, has reasonable wages for its employees, and is highly rated by charity navigator.
3) Clinton's actions show she is willing to put the good of the party and the country ahead of her personal good.
4) Clinton's a patriot and even a bit of a nationalist.
5) Clinton's wonky, intelligent, and creative and open to feedback from staff. She is more of a cooperative than authoritarian leader but has the strength to make decisions and stick by them.
I think if you dig into her history on non conservative sites, you'll find the same things.
Personally, I thought she was unelectable but, you know... Trump.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Logically if this is a simmulation then one would guess that the players controlled by external overlords would be the most powerful sims.
You are assuming that the simulation is multiplayer. Maybe it is single player, in which case only I am real, and you and Donald Trump are simply artifacts of the simulation.
It's called Gnosticism, and it has been around since at least the Second Century.
Well, sort of -- though Gnosticism had a whole bunch of other metaphysical baggage wrapped up in it.
A better historical parallel would be Descartes's evil demon, which manifested in 1981 in Hilary Putnam's famous philosophical article about Brains in a Vat, which was subsequently ripped off by The Matrix.
Funny how most of the slashdotters assume that we are being simulated. We could be just emergent properties of the simulation. The simulation could be just a scientific endeavour into quantum mechanics for example. We just happened to coalesce due to the math.
Donald Trump made the assumption that Lester Holt, the NBC moderator for the first debate, was a Democrat. Holt is actually a registered Republican.
And that has what do to do about the topic at hand? Besides you trying to shift things.
What you see in the general media is a corporate echo chamber that pounces on anything and everything to drive up ratings. If Trump behaves himself after the next debate by not tweeting at 3AM in the morning, the media might go back to making up stuff about Hillary's health.
No, what you see is the democrats having an active hand in the media. Or did you forget that the Obama administration was directly leaning on reporters and media organizations by denying them access, or that multiple media organizations(as shown by the DNC leaks), were publishing both DNC and Obama administration talking points as original reporting. In some cases going as far as to directly sending stories to the DNC for reviewing to ensure they comply with their viewpoint.
Om, nomnomnom...
> Low taxes are not a solution to unemployment. They might encourage companies to move, but the jobs are low paid. If they were not low paid, the taxes wouldn't be a big factor and there wouldn't be much incentive to move them.
I sure WISH we could get free money by taking a billion from this person, a billion from that company, and it had no effect. Free money! That's simply not the case, though - look at California versus Texas over the last 20 years. Due to T&C costs, companies have moved from California to Texas. Unemployment is now 50% higher in California. The average income in Texas buys a house two and half times larger than California. Those are the facts. California tried to get that "free" money, just tax the hell out of everybody, nothing bad will happen, right? Now they're a tad fucked, mush worse off than Texas, where the opposite approach was used.
It would also be nice to think that only melon-packing jobs are leaving, but that's not the case. The software company I work for had two offices in the US, employing many systems architects, programmers, etc. The median salary is likely six figures. Now they've opened offices in Cali, Colombia, and that's where they are hiring the programmers and project managers. These are six figure jobs. You CAN still get a melon-packing job in California, though http://joeproduce.com/ .
Our health care system does need some work. It needs several changes. A month ago I went in for an annual physical. I've become absolutely convinced that the first, most important, and simplest thing we need to do is have upfront pricing. Doctors sent my wife and I for MRIs. We called the place we were referred to and asked how much they charge. It was a little difficult to get that information - nobody seemed to know. $2,200. I Googled "Dallas MRI" and called the first place that came up - $1,200 9AM-5PM, $1,000 after 5PM, and a $150 additional discount if I fill out the insurance paperwork instead of having them do it. A 5 minute phone call dropped the price in HALF, but virtually nobody does that. A month ago, I went for an annual physical and my doctor said he wanted to do some blood tests, so we did that. I got a thick envelope in the mail with some really good information, and a bill for $3,000. If the doctor had said "I'd like to do $3,000 worth of blood tests" I would have said "no way!" We probably would have done a few important tests, with a reasonable price. So upfront pricing would be very good, I think. Further, insurance companies already calculate the *average* price for each procedure in each geographical area. I'd love to see that disclosed ahead of time, "we'd like to do an MRI and charge you $2,200; the average price of an MRI in Dallas in $1,400." Who wants to bet many providers would realize they'd better say "the average price is $1,400, we're going to charge $1,250"?
Another thing we need to do is figure out the difference between INSURANCE and HEALTH CARE. Insurance, whether it be auto insurance, home insurance, renters insurance, or medical insurance, is designed to cover unexpected, high costs that you can't budget for. Home insurance is for when your house burns down, not replacing a $10 air filter in your AC or maintenance such as mowing the grass. Car insurance covers you when your total your car, not when you need an oil change or brake pads. I notice that when I go to my doctor for a flu shot, there are two doctors in the office and three people handling claims paperwork, because they deal with a bunch of paperwork and bureaucracy for every $20 flu shot, making it cost $40-$50 in the end. Again, a simple way to cut the cost in half is to use insurance as *insurance*, and use a $20 bill for a flu shot.
The US government is designed to be, is supposed to be, very different from the government of North Korea and similar prices. It's supposed to be FAIR, it's supposed to be TRANSPARENT, it's designed to be ACCOUNTABLE. We have a series of public hearings before each decision is m