Here it is, our regular Friday diet of suggested readings for the weekend:
Is the inflationary universe a scientific theory? Not anymore…
Revised definition of clinical trials rattles autism researchers.
The neuroscience of reading great literature. (Hint: it’s good for you.)
A lot of what you’ve heard about Plato is wrong, and that’s too bad.
The triage of truth: do not take expert opinion lying down. Or reject it out right, either.
Physicists really don’t think we live in a simulation.
Who is Rachel? The metaphysics of Blade Runner.
A (very weak) philosophical defense of opulence and hedonism.
No, the Second Amendment was not passed in order to enforce slavery.
Stop calling me “independent scholar.”
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Please notice that the duration of the comments window is three days (including publication day), and that comments are moderated for relevance (to the post one is allegedly commenting on), redundancy (not good), and tone (constructive is what we aim for). This applies to both the suggested readings and the regular posts. Thanks!
Footnotes to Plato 
As Scott Aronson points out Ringel and Kovrizhin say nothing at all about whether or not we are living in a simulation.
If there is something that can’t be computed then the simulator can be using a kludge and we couldn’t tell that it was a kludge because we can’t compute what the real values ought to be.
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I’ll have to stand corrected by that second amendment article Socratic posted on here before. Damn you Thom Hartmann.
I never paid much attention to the simulation talk, but it was a bit confusing to me why some people with PHDs were talking about it seriously. But that goes with panpsychism as well.
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Robin,
That sort of move makes an already crazy idea into an entirely untestable one. As I suspected, the simulation crowd is a religion for the technologically inclined.
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Hi Massimo,
Perhaps some physicists, but this is far from a consensus. As far as I can see, this is a case of poor popular science reporting, and the consensus regarding this paper is that it does not show that we are not in a simulation.
What the paper shows is that a perfect simulation of physics as we currently understand it would be completely unfeasible using the kinds of computational technology that we currently have available to us. I don’t think this is a surprise to anyone, including those who think the universe may be a simulation.
There are enough loopholes there for the simulation hypothesis to remain a possibility. For one, we may have an incomplete understanding of the physics of our universe, and the actual physics could be simpler to compute than we realise (this would be the case if the simulation includes approximations and shortcuts we are unaware of). Other loopholes include the possibility that the simulators have access to completely different physics or computing technologies which allow them to perform computations at levels of complexity we could never dream of.
That said, I don’t think we are in a simulation, but for entirely different reasons related to other views I hold.
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Hi Massimo,
That sort of move is there from the beginning. The idea was always untestable — very few people claim otherwise. It is also profoundly unintuitive and radical.
However it is not crazy or religious, or at least I don’t see how you would defend the thesis that it is crazy or religious. There are serious philosophical arguments in favour of it. You can reject those arguments (as I do myself), but you need reasons to do so and I don’t think it is reasonable to take it for granted that they are wrong just because they seem crazy to you at an intuitive level.
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Saph: The Electoral College was also not created explicitly to ensconce slaveholding. http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2016/12/no-electoral-college-was-not-all-about.html
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Per the independent scholar piece, maybe someone needs to sue a university or 4 for the glut of PhDs being produced, under false advertising or something.
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It isn’t a ‘move’, I am only pointing out the flaw in the reasoning provided in the article.
I didn’t turn it into an untestable idea, it was already an untestable idea, I just drew attention to the fact.
You presented an article by someone who thought the idea was testable, I pointed out that they were wrong is all.
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DM, Robin,
The idea is, in theory, testable, at least indirectly. There is no in principle reason why we shouldn’t be able to discover clues to the simulation. Nor is it out of the question to at least try to show that the very idea is untenable, as these authors do.
Of course there is no consensus, but it would be a bit disingenuous to deny that this particular paper is a blow to the simulation hypothesis. Not a fatal blow, but a blow nonetheless.
As for compelling philosophical arguments in favor, I haven’t seen any.
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The numerical sign problem and it’s computability has been known issue for some time and occurs in several places in physics. People might be interested in the Wikipedia page dedicated to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_sign_problem
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Hi Massimo,
So it depends what you mean by testable. It is in principle verifiable. The simulators could make themselves known. But it isn’t falsifiable, and it never was. There is no test we could perform which could falsify the simulation hypothesis.
They don’t, really. That’s an interpretation from popular science journalists more than the authors.
If it’s a blow at all it’s a pathetically minor one. It’s no secret that simulating non-trivial quantum systems faithfully (i.e. without approximations and shortcuts) is infeasibly complex. This paper is good science — it is performing a deep and worthwhile analysis of a particular problem, but the conclusions of the paper have no real bearing on the simulation hypothesis because we already knew that simulating the universe faithfully would be infeasible.
You’ve seen Bostrom’s. You may not personally find it compelling, but enough people do (philosophers and physicists among them) that it deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as crazy.
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It is not as though it is I who brings up this crazy idea. People keep thinking they have a way to demonstrate that we are not in a simulation. I merely point out where they are going wrong.
And it is not evrn remotely a blow to the simulation speculation (going too far to call it a hypothesis).
I have seen a lot of simulations of various things and written a few mysrlf and not once did I encounter anyone who felt it necessary to model the entire universe down to the lowest level in order to simulate something and every one had various kludges.
Why is it unreasonable then to suppose that if we were a simulation then it would be like every simulation we know of rather than a pointlessly impractical simulation?
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As Wolfram said, it would take a computer the size of the universe to calculate the universe.
I guess I should stay away from the Inflation article, but feel compelled to reiterate that the entire Big Bang theory is a series of patches. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get to the stage that string theory is currently, where only those who have devoted their lives to it still take it seriously.
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If I were to come up with an analogous example, it would be like saying consciousness depends on the brain and not on an immaterial soul, obviously because brain damage has observable consequences on consciousness. People who are really committed to substance dualism can always devise hypothetical scenarios why this doesn’t actually disprove their case, but that has little to do with incentives to pursue it as a plausible avenue for understanding the world, and the more you push them to make up excuses, the less plausible it becomes.
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DM,
Are you positive that the original authors don’t intend this to be a significant issue for the SI? As for being “pathetic,” that’s a matter of opinion.
Bostrom: the more I do philosophy the more I find stuff like that, or Chalmers’ zombies, and so forth akin to clever mental masturbation. But nothing more.
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I read the essay on opulence and luxury and did not find it a “very weak” defense or, indeed, a defense at all. Rather, it was a history and a very interesting one at that.
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Robin,
I would think that simulating an entire universe is the definition of a pointless and impractical simulation.
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The article on expert opinion certainly suggests an additional question, especially in reference to economics, as the previous topic made clear: Does the expert, or even the field, have any obvious biases that need consideration.
Which raises issues of why certain ideas might not pass a smell test. Are there political or financial implications? Might it have fallen into a rabbit hole, where the field only talks among itself and the answers arrived at seemed to have lost touch with broader considerations. Does the field have sources of feedback and information that can’t be ignored or patched? Nothing can be disproven when anomolies can be routinely dismissed or patched.
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I could also be a brain in a vat. Or disembodied mind dreaming my entire life, existence, and everything else.
These might have been interesting speculations in Descartes’ day, but they aren’t anymore. Especially not in the wake of modern epistemology, and particularly Wittgenstein. Now, they’re just silly time-wasters.
And this:
“enough people do (philosophers and physicists among them) that it deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as crazy”
strikes me as bogus. Plenty of very smart people believe all sorts of ridiculous, crazy things.
Seems to me physicists would better spend their time doing something useful.
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Found this interesting piece on Retraction Watch, about the use of pseudonyms in self-promotion and puffery. In this particular case, though, it’s philosophy not science, and it’s Richard Rorty’s wife: http://retractionwatch.com/2017/10/13/accomplished-philosopher-invented-pseudonym/
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How would the effect of space be simulated?
I realize cosmology is saying it emerges from what amounts to a smaller space (which I see as making no sense, as an otherwise stable speed of light is implicitly included), but how would the optical effect be generated? Otherwise to assume space is “real,” means the effects filling it are as real as they appear.
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Massimo
My point exactly. The idea that we are in a simulation of the entire universe down to the finest detail was always a non starter. So if this is a blow, then it is a blow to and idea that was always a non starter long before this paper came out.
Take Bostrom’s idea of an ancestor simulation. If someone were to want to do an ancestor simulation then why would they try to simulate the entire universe when all they are interested in is a small part of it?
If someone were simulating William landing at Hastings in 1066, why would they try to simulate every one of the 50 million million million atoms in each grain of sand on the beach? There would be no point.
So if anyone is going to address this question at all then it should be addressed using the concept of a simulation as we know it – simulating the area of interest and only to a granularity required for the simulation.
Just as in Minecraft there is no underground until you start to dig, in a simulation there would be no individual atoms until someone started to examine them.
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A few observations on the “weak defense” piece.
First, I know, as he has reiterated it himself, that Massimo doesn’t agree with everything he posts, but to see this, and have it be labeled as “weak defense,” right after part 2 of Frankfurt seems an interesting juxtaposition.
Second, per my own philosophical bent, why the heck is Diogenes not on the list of philosophers of simplicity? OOPS!
Third, I would also add modern quasi-philosopher (he actually has a master’s degree in philosophy) Ed Abbey, with one of his best quotes: “Growth for growth’s sake is the theology of the cancer cell.”
Fourth, the Bible itself, both in the Tanakh/Old Testament, and Christian New Testament, is kind of split. I can dig up plenty of individual lines in Proverbs supporting riches. And, Paul, unlike Jesus, didn’t condemn them, and did positively support the riches of human bondage for slaveowners. I note the author leaves out the Quran, which, as far as I know, doesn’t extol poverty for poverty’s sake.
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Hi Massimo,
I haven’t read the paper itself. I’ve read the analysis of the paper by Scott Aaronson. So I can’t be positive, but Aaronson seems pretty clear and convincing on that point.
If you’re saying that it’s not your bag, that’s fine, but to call it mental masturbation is I would say needlessly contemptuous. As it happens, I often find all this kind of stuff interesting and insightful and important even when I disagree with it (as I do with both Bostrom and Chalmers). More interesting, say, than Stoicism or ancient Greek philosophy generally.
But that’s just me. I wouldn’t want to imply that there is anything wrong or masturbatory with being interested in ancient Greek philosophy. This is perhaps going to come across as harsher than I intend it, but I’m not seeing a huge difference between the attitude you’re displaying here and that of the likes of Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse-Tyson and Lawrence Krauss and so on with regard to philosophy generally. I don’t think it’s warranted to dismiss whole fields of enquiry just because you don’t personally find them interesting.
Or maybe it’s not just that you don’t find it interesting? What is it then? You concede that these arguments are clever — from which I infer that you think they have some merit at least in that it’s not so easy to find exactly what’s wrong with them, but you find yourselve entirely unmoved by them. So I suspect what’s happening is that you find the conclusions so implausible and outlandish as to make analysing the arguments a waste of time. In that case I guess I should dismiss The Chinese Room as mental masturbation, because of course Searle’s conclusion has to be wrong (from my point of view and the points of view of many others).
But — and again, I don’t know how to say this without it coming across more harshly than I wish — isn’t such dismissal a kind of intellectual laziness? Even if the arguments are flawed, it may be instructive to figure out why. And I would say we should be open to outlandish and unintuitive ideas when it comes to the deepest questions that have troubled us for centuries — there is every reason to think the world is stranger than our intuitions would have us suppose.
Exactly! So if we are in a simulation (and again, I must stress, I don’t actually think we are), then the entire universe is probably not being simulated to any significant degree of precision. Most of the universe we think we can see would just be a crude backdrop — only just good enough to fool us. Which is why it is silly to dismiss the simulation hypothesis on the basis that it is impractical to perfectly simulate the whole observable universe.
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With the Blade Runner article, you don’t need to be a replicant with implanted memories to have difficulties using memory as a criterion for identity.
Memories aren’t recordings, they are reconstructions.
My Dad pointed this out to me when I was a kid. We had just come back from a holiday in France and he said that when he remembered the holiday, he remembered driving on the left or the road and the steering wheel being on the right, even though it was a French car on a French road and it would obviously have been the other way round.
This is exactly the same for me, when I remember driving in America or Italy I always remember driving on the left and the steering wheel being on the right. When I try to imagine it as it really would have been it feels false.
So our memory of our first kiss, or of how the water felt on some holiday in our childhood is not really how that first kiss felt, or how that water felt, it is a reconstruction using concepts and sensations our brain has now.
So if memories are our identities we are building our identities anew all the time.
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And, interestingly, Massimo, I just found, via my Twitter feed, ANOTHER Blade Runner piece. This takes a Six Million Dollar Man rhetorical question approach, as in a “Do we actually have the technology?” angle. Short answer? Author says it may happen, but it’s not guaranteed, and it’s certainly not happening any time soon. http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/09/10/2017/could-we-build-blade-runner-style-%E2%80%98replicant%E2%80%99
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DM,
I could respond by reminding you that this is my living room, and that I’m entitled to be “needlessly contemptuous.” Or by pointing out that that very phrase is, in a way, needlessly contemptuous.
But my statement that these things are akin to (smart, you may recall me saying) mental masturbations is a professional opinion. Akin to Dennett’s distinction between chess and chmess. I’m just being slightly less polite. Because I have tenure.
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Robin, To riff in a way on Spock’s old “A difference that makes no difference” comment, “A simulation of a high level of imprecision is no simulation.”
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Hi Dan,
I suspect you still think it important to teach Descartes, though, right?
In any case, the point has rather shifted now though. Bostrom is not merely retreading Descartes. The point is no longer to explore the limits of skepticism and certainty. The point is that there are actual plausible reasons (to some at least) to suspect the world is not the physical thing we think it is. Unlike Descartes, Bostrom is not simply entertaining an unintuitive idea to make a point about epistemology. This is about the metaphysics of our reality and has nothing to do with epistemology.
The view that this is not an interesting idea, or an important one if true, is pretty alien to me. Nothing silly about it from where I’m standing.
I would say that if enough sane, smart people believe something, then it’s probably not ridiculous or crazy though it may well be wrong. “Ridiculous” and “crazy” are dismissive terms, implying that an idea is not worthy of serious consideration. I’d be comfortable with using it to describe a claim that the earth is flat, or that the Queen of England is a reptilian alien, but not really anything that is genuinely controversial among experts.
I think we should aim not to dismiss ideas out of hand. Reject them certainly, but be able to provide reasons for this rejection. I’m not saying that you or Massimo can’t do just that, but I am saying that simply calling the ideas crazy is not an argument or any kind of reasonable response. All it does is alienate those who find the ideas interesting. I think this has the effect of driving people apart and creating intellectual bubbles or silos where like-minded people reinforce each other’s beliefs rather than engaging with those of other views. That’s not what I want. That’s why I comment here (where it seems almost nobody agrees with me about anything I write) rather than somewhere like LessWrong (where I would find a lot more people to agree).
Hi Massimo,
Exactly. Great! So how do you explain/justify that professional opinion? That’s what I want to know. That’s why I’m here — precisely because your take on this stuff is so different to mine. I want to learn and “that’s crazy” doesn’t teach.
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The Blade Runner question of identity has an interesting bias, in proposing personal identity as memory, which is the sequence of events that we experience. The issue overlooked is of place.
If someone split into two people, the further events that would separate them would be a consequence of different place and thus space.
Making the two characteristics of identity time and space. It would seem that for us as conscious beings, time and the sequence of events are the more salient feature, but does that make space more ephemeral, or more foundational?
Remember we still experience the earth as the center of the universe. Could it be that time is the more ephemeral quality?
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