Friday, August 17, 2007

The New Solipsism

The Simulation Argument is the most recent form of old solipsistic arguments.

George Dvorsky puts forward "the dark side" of the Simulation Argument, basically that the Creator/Maintainer beings are at best ambivalent towards the plight of humanity - they don't care if we blow ourselves up or torture each other or die in hideous agony.

If we're not in a simulation then it means that it is much harder than we presume to create simulated intelligence - an assumption that runs counter to My First Millennialist Cult: Singularitarianism.

I've always seen it from a glass half full perspective anyway. We're not in Hell, and things are getting better. This suggests that the Game has rules and that ambivalence on the part of the Creator/Maintainer beings is something to be thankful for (paradise precludes free will [which probably doesn't exist anyway] as in Genesis, so I'd rather live with my quasi-free will than without even the illusion of independence). It also raises the possibility of an afterlife. This would be good.

And like all solipsistic arguments, there's not much we can do about it anyway.

If we aren't in a simulation then Everything is As It Seems. In this case rational arguments for a singularity event remain as strong as ever they were.

I suspect an argument against both the Fermi Paradox and the Simulation Argument would begin with the fallacy of taking one example, assuming that the example is representative with no additional information, and then asserting generalities based on only one piece of data (our existence).

Things are almost always more complex and weirder than at first they seem - I suspect that if we do find out the basics of our universe then we will be surprised.

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