My "red flag detector" went off numerous times reading that. I don't agree with the underlying premise, much less any additional ones built on top. IOW, a House of Cards built upon a House of Software.
Further, whomever wrote that article isn't too versed in the Iron Laws either. Just read the quote above. "Supersmart hackers existing somewhere else"? Really? Where? I wonder if he knows the data flight time from New Horizons? Just for a single bit? Obviously not...
The thing about science fiction "sci-fi", is it's just that: Fiction.
Quote:
David Brin, sci-fi writer and space scientist, relates the Chinese parable of an emperor dreaming that he was a butterfly dreaming that he was an emperor. In contemporary versions, Brin said, it may be the year 2050 and people are living in a computer simulation of what life was like in the early 21st century — or it may be billions of years from now, and people are in a simulation of what primitive planets and people were once like.
What was this chinese emperor smoking? Was he seeking enlightenment or drunk on his own ego? Madmen dream as well. Often with disasterous consequences. You don't need to go too far back in history for proof.
"Billions of years from now?" Our own Sun will have gone nova and wiped out the solar system. Though it is a main sequence star, even they have limited lifetimes when talking in "billions of years".
Quote:
Philosopher Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, describes a fake universe as a "richly detailed software simulation of people, including their historical predecessors, by a very technologically advanced civilization." It's like the movie "The Matrix," Bostrom said, except that "instead of having brains in vats that are fed by sensory inputs from a simulator, the brains themselves would also be part of the simulation. It would be one big computer program simulating everything, including human brains down to neurons and synapses."
Obviously to philospher Bostrum, hard science was too hard. Weren't these the same idiots predicting "global freezing" and "mass starvation" 40 years ago? How'd that turn out? Starvation obviously isn't the problem. Obesity is. Just look around!
Quote:
His point is that all cosmic civilizations either disappear (e.g., destroy themselves) before becoming technologically capable, or all decide not to generate whole-world simulations (e.g., decide such creations are not ethical, or get bored with them). The operative word is "all" — because if even one civilization anywhere in the cosmos could generate such simulations, then simulated worlds would multiply rapidly and almost certainly humanity would be in one.
How would he know? What "cosmic civilization(s)" has Bostrum met? What was HE smoking? Dellusions of grandeur or just simply dellusions?
Further, the "operative word isn't "all". It's Bravo Sierra. He's full of it.
Quote:
As technology visionary Ray Kurzweil put it, "maybe our whole universe is a science experiment of some junior high school student in another universe." (Given how things are going, he jokes, she may not get a good grade.)
Kurzweil's worldview is based on the profound implications of what happens over time when computing power grows exponentially. To Kurzweil, a precise simulation is not meaningfully different from real reality. Corroborating the evidence that this universe runs on a computer, he says, is that "physical laws are sets of computational processes" and "information is constantly changing, being manipulated, running on some computational substrate." And that would mean, he concluded, "the universe is a computer." Kurzweil said he considers himself to be a "pattern of information."
"I'm a patternist," he said. "I think patterns, which means that information is the fundamental reality."
Well, their jr. high students must be far smarter than our own as ours have had critical thinking, wood/metal shop, chem. labs and dirt removed from their curriculum by the nanny state and PCP (pc police). "Reality? Can't have any of that here...it's too dangerous. Safety is our upmost priority."
Owl Bore has been hawking the same Bravo Sierra re: "precise simulations" vs. Reality for a few decades now. Guess who won? Mother Nature. She got a good laugh at the hubris of (some) men. The only natural law he's broken and gotten away with is Nature Abhors a Vacuum.
All humans are "pattern(s) of information." Most call them habits. There are good habits and bad habits. We're all organized by them. If quoted correctly, Kurzweil has things backwards. Information isn't the fundamental reality just because he's a patternist and thinks patterns. That's nuts.
Besides, the article is (or was) talking about the Universe. Information isn't the fundamental reality in the Universe. Mass is. Ask Einstein.
"The Difference between Genius and Stupidity is the former has limits." - Sir Albert.
Occasionally I get a dose of such "thinking" when conducting public star parties and asked by an astrologer to show them Mercury. They don't understand that it is difficult to see and never far from the Sun and definitely NOT visible when it's dark. "But the chart says..." When I ask them what chart, they reply their own. I tell them it's not on an astronomy chart and that causes them great angst, knashing of teeth and tearing of clothes.
Just because you believe it, does not make it so.
