Hacker News Reader

Comment by lenerdenator | Hacker News Reader

Everything that you've seen over the last, eh, 15 years in the tech industry seems to be a bunch of rationalists (who often tend to be non-religious) trying to reconstruct the irrational institutions of spirituality.

Simulation theory is basically positing there's a higher power. Eternal life has been replaced with efforts to digitize the human consciousness for indefinite storage. Pilgrimages have been replaced with Ted Talks and conferences. Certain religious ceremonies that alter consciousness have been replaced with microdosing. Asceticism has been replaced by hustle culture. Saints have been replaced with entrepreneurs who have spent money to cultivate a favorable public image. Religious charity has been replaced with effective altruism.

If you're in a more irreligious region like SV or the Bay Area, it's apparently not as easy to suss out, but if you're from the Midwest, you can see it clear as day.

View on HN

In what form does subscribing to the simulation theory imply "higher power"?

Oxford defines the term as "a god or divine being."

Why is it so absurd to think that there have existed or do exist beings with more intelligence and computational resources than humans?

It seems MORE absurd to me to think that, across all of the infinite universe(s), humans are the only intelligent, self-aware creature capable of scientific progress.

I mean an entity that created the coordinate system and all the constants and laws that allow particles to exist and move is effectively divine with respect to the lowly inhabitants therein right?

If there's a simulation and we as a species are living in it, and bound by its rules (laws of physics, etc.) then you get into the question of who made said simulation with the rules that constrain us. Since this simulator sysadmin has control over us in ways we cannot comprehend or push back against in a meaningful way, I'd say it counts as a higher power.

Since its existence cannot currently be proven false through empirical means, belief in its existence relies on faith.

A person who believes in simulation theory in which someone created and administrates the simulation can be said to believe in a higher power than humanity, on faith.

It's a creation myth as explained by a bunch of engineering majors who never bothered to pay attention during their anthropology classes as freshmen.

No, the origin beliefs in this case aren't really faith.

Let me frame that as questions: do you:

- Believe that we will be able to create a true AI, with self-consicousness?

- Believe that we will some day have enough energy and compute power to create a simulation that could contains billions of those consciousness?

- Believe that if we are able to do so, we will do it (aka no governmental body will prevent a simulation from happening because of ethical concerns, and if a ban happen, not all private entity will respect the ban).

If your answers to all 3 questions is YES, then you believe we likely live in a simulation. My only yes is to the question 3, because i'm cynical. The 1 is a big "i don't know", because i know enough to have no idea, and my answer to 2 is "no way" because i don't know the subject at all, but my brain think adjacent knowledge is enough to form an opinion this absolute.

There are people who engage in the thought exercise without believing it's true, but there are definitely people who believe it's true. See: Elon Musk (at least he did a few years ago)

I also don't have an absolute opinion, but the math of the simulation hypothesis does appear to check out and it's not difficult to believe, scientifically, that intelligences dramatically superior to human-level are possible.

(1) is likely achievable if we gain a better understanding of biology and the human nervous system, which seems likely given a timeline of continuous scientific progress. (2) is even easier for me to grasp as we already know how much energy the human brain uses and we have billions of them now. So far we're not aware of any serious show stoppers for this scenario, but we might be talking timelines of 100's of years.

- Believe that we will be able to create a true AI, with self-consicousness?

To believe this with any kind of certainty is no different from believing in deities.

Disagree. Its as unfalsifiable, but the opposite position is disprovable, at least (if we create a self-aware IA).

Hence why i wrote

> The 1 is a big "i don't know", because i know enough to have no idea

As far as I’m aware, we have no method by which to prove something is conscious. Self-awareness and consciousness (by which I mean qualia) are different.

Many believe that self-awareness implies consciousness, but I’m not aware of any method to prove that.

Simulation theory posits there might be an outside power.

Bostrom's version posits a "post-human" civilisation, but it might just as well be someone barely smarter than us.

For that matter, there are plenty of ways of positing simulation that does not require intelligence at all - computation is naturally everywhere, so if the "real" universe is infinite, and simulation is possible, then it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility that there might be an infinite set of "natural simulations" playing out in interplay between matter and energy in an "outside" world without anyone every doing anything for it.

If the "outer" universe is infinite, it only requires a non-zero probability and enough time.

The main reason to consider we're not in a naturally occurring simulation in some soup of matter is that it seems more likely, albeit a total guess, that more intentional simulations would have a higher probability of existing.

But arguing gods might be running a simulation, to me, seems borderline arrogant. Why "gods", and not a bored teenager playing a game? Who would those gods be anyway that'd make us consider them gods, rather than just another species?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com