Jun 7, 2016 07:29 PM
http://www.vox.com/2016/6/3/11837888/simulation-problem
EXCERPT: I have a love/hate relationship with the sort of thought experiments that Ezra Klein describes Elon Musk indulging in at the recent Recode Code Conference. [...] Musk thinks we're probably living in some advanced civilization's virtual reality video game, a variation on philosopher Nick Bostrom's popular brain bender "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" The idea is that sufficiently complex virtual reality simulations of conscious beings would produce consciousness; the simulations would become self-aware and believe themselves to be in the "real world." Ha ha, joke's on them.
[...]
The most iconic pop culture representation of the we-live-in-a-simulation idea is The Matrix, the 1999 movie by the Wachowski siblings, in which humans are indeed brains in vats, or at least bodies in pods, living in a computer simulation created by the computers themselves. But The Matrix also shows why the thought experiment relies on a bit of a cheat.
One of the most thrilling parts of the movie is the moment when Neo takes the red pill, opens his eyes, and sees the real reality for the first time. That's the intuition these thought experiments draw on: the notion that there's some reality behind the veil, that it might just be possible to see the truth once it's lifted. But that intuition, tempting as it is, ignores the core premise of the thought experiment: Our senses could be deceived.
Why should Neo think the "real world" he's seeing after taking the red pill is real? It could just as easily be another simulation. After all, what better way to keep strong-willed pod humans occupied than to give them a gritty simulation of rebellion? No matter how many pills he takes, or how earnestly Morpheus assures him that this new reality is the real one, Neo is still relying on his senses, and his senses can still theoretically be deceived. So he's right back where he started.
[...]
So, yes, it very much matters, determining what is real and what isn't, in relation to our experience. Gravity is real; phlogiston isn't. This is a defeasible, rough-and-ready sense of what's "real," i.e., what holds up to repeated testing, what helps us navigate the world successfully. But what's real in absolute, independent, ahistorical terms? Whether everything is real? These are basically confusions of language, questions constructed so as to preclude answers. They have no implications for our lives and behavior.
[...] Elon Musk believes that the entire world he and everyone he loves inhabits is an illusion, a simulation. He is not real; his family is not real; climate change is not real; Mars is not real. Yet what does Musk spend his days doing? Working as hard as he can to improve humanity's lot, reducing carbon emissions on Earth and enabling access to other planets. Why would he work so hard on behalf of simulations? Because on some level, he knows that this world is real in the only way that matters....
EXCERPT: I have a love/hate relationship with the sort of thought experiments that Ezra Klein describes Elon Musk indulging in at the recent Recode Code Conference. [...] Musk thinks we're probably living in some advanced civilization's virtual reality video game, a variation on philosopher Nick Bostrom's popular brain bender "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" The idea is that sufficiently complex virtual reality simulations of conscious beings would produce consciousness; the simulations would become self-aware and believe themselves to be in the "real world." Ha ha, joke's on them.
[...]
The most iconic pop culture representation of the we-live-in-a-simulation idea is The Matrix, the 1999 movie by the Wachowski siblings, in which humans are indeed brains in vats, or at least bodies in pods, living in a computer simulation created by the computers themselves. But The Matrix also shows why the thought experiment relies on a bit of a cheat.
One of the most thrilling parts of the movie is the moment when Neo takes the red pill, opens his eyes, and sees the real reality for the first time. That's the intuition these thought experiments draw on: the notion that there's some reality behind the veil, that it might just be possible to see the truth once it's lifted. But that intuition, tempting as it is, ignores the core premise of the thought experiment: Our senses could be deceived.
Why should Neo think the "real world" he's seeing after taking the red pill is real? It could just as easily be another simulation. After all, what better way to keep strong-willed pod humans occupied than to give them a gritty simulation of rebellion? No matter how many pills he takes, or how earnestly Morpheus assures him that this new reality is the real one, Neo is still relying on his senses, and his senses can still theoretically be deceived. So he's right back where he started.
[...]
So, yes, it very much matters, determining what is real and what isn't, in relation to our experience. Gravity is real; phlogiston isn't. This is a defeasible, rough-and-ready sense of what's "real," i.e., what holds up to repeated testing, what helps us navigate the world successfully. But what's real in absolute, independent, ahistorical terms? Whether everything is real? These are basically confusions of language, questions constructed so as to preclude answers. They have no implications for our lives and behavior.
[...] Elon Musk believes that the entire world he and everyone he loves inhabits is an illusion, a simulation. He is not real; his family is not real; climate change is not real; Mars is not real. Yet what does Musk spend his days doing? Working as hard as he can to improve humanity's lot, reducing carbon emissions on Earth and enabling access to other planets. Why would he work so hard on behalf of simulations? Because on some level, he knows that this world is real in the only way that matters....
