Is It Possible There Is An Afterlife?

[PixyMisa]

If it has already occurred, then we may be virtually immortal beings who are living multiple mortal lives and our current mortal life is but one of many we have lived.

In which case, when we die, we're still dead.

Your three "certainties" are just stuff you made up, but even granted those points, you don't get life after death out of it.

 

[The Great Hairy One]

Anyone read Altered Carbon, or Vurt, or half a dozen other sci-fi books which touch on this? Or seen the dozens of movies, of which The Matrix is only one, which cover this topic?

Whilst interesting, it's currently not a possibly - why would we, as highly advanced "immortals" design a more primitive VR world? Especially when you consider that computer games are based around imagination and action. For the majority of people here, this is more of a "Matrix" like existence. You get up, go to work, go home, go to bed. Nothing exciting there. I wouldn't want to play a game like that, it would be dull.

Whilst this proposed scenario may happen in the future, it's certainly not happening right now.

Cheers,
TGHO

 

[Beleth]

assumptions;

1) human civilisiation will progess to the technological level sufficient to completely generating a virtual reality world

2) if capable of doing so then we will.

3) If we do, then we will generate countless virtual worlds for reasearch and for pleasure.

If you accept assumptions (1) (2) and (3) then the overwhelming statistical likelyhood is that our world as we experience it is virtual - for there is but one "real" world and innumerable virtual ones.

That's nice, but I was looking for proof.

 

[andyandy]

That's nice, but I was looking for proof.

if you set the bar at proof then you can watch as all of realism fails to clear - hence it's an unreasonable request.

Who says this has not already occurred?

Heck, I will.
I say that time has not yet been long enough for humans to have developed the science necessary to do this.

Prove me wrong.

I could just as easily say that "it is certain that it has occured - prove me wrong."

It would also be a silly thing to say.

Based on the computer simulation argument that we are in a computer generation is overwhelmingly likely unless you choose to accept either

(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;

(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);

so upon what is your certainty based?

 

[The Atheist]

if you set the bar at proof then you can watch as all of realism fails to clear

But you can't prove that's true, so realism must really be real!

There are an infinite number of propositions to be proven wrong. They cannot all be, ergo, reality exists.

There you go, I can't for the life of me figure out why it took those Greek geeks thousands of years not to figure that out. Sheesh.

 

[Big Les]

I'm just off to test this by going to a government building and shooting dozens of security guards before blowing up a lift shaft. Back shortly.

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

I'm just off to test this by going to a government building and shooting dozens of security guards before blowing up a lift shaft. Back shortly.

Be careful. There's a health pack in the third floor men's restroom, second stall from the door. Be sure not to shoot the innocent civilian washing his hands, though.

 

[PixyMisa]

Anyone read Altered Carbon, or Vurt, or half a dozen other sci-fi books which touch on this?

I just bought Altered Carbon, but haven't read it yet.

Whilst interesting, it's currently not a possibly - why would we, as highly advanced "immortals" design a more primitive VR world? Especially when you consider that computer games are based around imagination and action. For the majority of people here, this is more of a "Matrix" like existence. You get up, go to work, go home, go to bed. Nothing exciting there. I wouldn't want to play a game like that, it would be dull.

That just means that most people are NPCs.

 

[Dr Adequate]

[*]Virtual realities will be available where the connection to the user will be so complete that the user can become completely submersed in the identity of the character they are playing. The sensory input would be so detailed as to be undistinguishable from real life. The mind of the player while in the Virtual Reality would be so immersed as to fully believe and know only what the character being played is supposed to. Thus while living the mortal life, the Virtual Immortal will not know they are actually a Virtual Immortal. That would become a very important part of the Mortal lives lived.

I'm not certain that the things you say are certain really are certain. For example, amongst the things that you say are certain you write that "the mind of the player while in the Virtual Reality would be so immersed as to fully believe and know only what the character being played is supposed to." Now, it is not certain that virtual reality could be so compelling that I could forget about real life. You have to drag this in in order to save the appearances for your hypothesis, but it's not certain, is it?

In fact, I would think it much more certain that people would make sure that they could pull out of a Virtual Reality when it went sour, rather than agreeing to lock themselves in.

I wouldn't do it.

 

[Anacoluthon64]

Immortality ≠ Afterlife.

Models c Reality.

∂E/∂Complexity)_Simulation > 0.

'Luthon64

 

[andyandy]

∂E/∂Complexity)_Simulation > 0.

'Luthon64

What's the partial differentiation of E with respects to complexity?

is x) _Simulation equivilent to x|_Simulation ?

why would it be greater than zero?


In short, could you explain?

 

[Anacoluthon64]

What's the partial differentiation of E with respects to complexity?

There's a non-zero lower bound to the cost (energy) of running a simulation, which increases as the complexity (measured, e.g., by the dimensionality of the simulation's phase space) increases.

is x) _Simulation equivilent to x|_Simulation ?

Yes.

why would it be greater than zero?

See above.

In short, could you explain?

See above.

ETA: For the simulation conjecture to stand any chance of succeeding, a clear demonstration is required, showing that consciousness is in fact algorithmic. This won't be easy.

'Luthon64

 

[andyandy]

There's a non-zero lower bound to the cost (energy) of running a simulation, which increases as the complexity (measured, e.g., by the dimensionality of the simulation's phase space) increases.

Surely that is to be expected though in any considerations of computer simulations - and doesn't preclude the possibility that they can be run....or do you think that energy constraints would be a sufficient limiting factor?

Bostrom doesn't discuss energy as an issue - instead focusing on memory and computational power - but if one is to assume such technological advances, it does not seem unreasonable to also assume similar energy harnessing advances IMO...

At our current stage of technological development, we have neither sufficiently powerful hardware nor the requisite software to create conscious minds in computers. But persuasive arguments have been given to the effect that if technological progress continues unabated then these shortcomings will eventually be overcome.

snip

It is currently hard to be confident in any upper bound on the computing power that may be available to posthuman civilizations.
[snip] We can with much greater confidence establish lower bounds on posthuman computation, by assuming only mechanisms that are already understood. For example, Eric Drexler has outlined a design for a system the size of a sugar cube (excluding cooling and power supply) that would perform 10^21 instructions per second.[3] Another author gives a rough estimate of 10^42 operations per second for a computer with a mass on order of a large planet.[4] (If we could create quantum computers, or learn to build computers out of nuclear matter or plasma, we could push closer to the theoretical limits. Seth Lloyd calculates an upper bound for a 1 kg computer of 5*10^50 logical operations per second carried out on ~10^31 bits.[5] However, it suffices for our purposes to use the more conservative estimate that presupposes only currently known design-principles.)


The amount of computing power needed to emulate a human mind can likewise be roughly estimated. One estimate, based on how computationally expensive it is to replicate the functionality of a piece of nervous tissue that we have already understood and whose functionality has been replicated in silico, contrast enhancement in the retina, yields a figure of ~10^14 operations per second for the entire human brain.[6] An alternative estimate, based the number of synapses in the brain and their firing frequency, gives a figure of ~10^16-10^17 operations per second.[7]

[snip]

Memory seems to be a no more stringent constraint than processing power.[8] Moreover, since the maximum human sensory bandwidth is ~10^8 bits per second, simulating all sensory events incurs a negligible cost compared to simulating the cortical activity. We can therefore use the processing power required to simulate the central nervous system as an estimate of the total computational cost of simulating a human mind.

If the environment is included in the simulation, this will require additional computing power – how much depends on the scope and granularity of the simulation. Simulating the entire universe down to the quantum level is obviously infeasible, unless radically new physics is discovered. But in order to get a realistic simulation of human experience, much less is needed – only whatever is required to ensure that the simulated humans, interacting in normal human ways with their simulated environment, don’t notice any irregularities. The microscopic structure of the inside of the Earth can be safely omitted. Distant astronomical objects can have highly compressed representations: verisimilitude need extend to the narrow band of properties that we can observe from our planet or solar system spacecraft. On the surface of Earth, macroscopic objects in inhabited areas may need to be continuously simulated, but microscopic phenomena could likely be filled in ad hoc.


[snip] Moreover, a posthuman simulator would have enough computing power to keep track of the detailed belief-states in all human brains at all times. Therefore, when it saw that a human was about to make an observation of the microscopic world, it could fill in sufficient detail in the simulation in the appropriate domain on an as-needed basis. Should any error occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. Alternatively, the director could skip back a few seconds and rerun the simulation in a way that avoids the problem.

It thus seems plausible that the main computational cost in creating simulations that are indistinguishable from physical reality for human minds in the simulation resides in simulating organic brains down to the neuronal or sub-neuronal level.[9] While it is not possible to get a very exact estimate of the cost of a realistic simulation of human history, we can use ~10^33 - 10^36 operations as a rough estimate[10].

[snip]
We noted that a rough approximation of the computational power of a planetary-mass computer is 10^42 operations per second, and that assumes only already known nanotechnological designs, which are probably far from optimal. A single such a computer could simulate the entire mental history of humankind (call this an ancestor-simulation) by using less than one millionth of its processing power for one second. A posthuman civilization may eventually build an astronomical number of such computers. We can conclude that the computing power available to a posthuman civilization is sufficient to run a huge number of ancestor-simulations even it allocates only a minute fraction of its resources to that purpose. We can draw this conclusion even while leaving a substantial margin of error in all our estimates.

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

 

[andyandy]

ETA: For the simulation conjecture to stand any chance of succeeding, a clear demonstration is required, showing that consciousness is in fact algorithmic. This won't be easy.

'Luthon64

quite - that is assumed....

The argument we shall present does not, however, depend on any very strong version of functionalism or computationalism. For example, we need not assume that the thesis of substrate-independence is necessarily true (either analytically or metaphysically) – just that, in fact, a computer running a suitable program would be conscious.

but what would the alternative be to consciousness not being algorithmic? Would that not necessitate an acceptance of long sidelined notions of mind-body dualism?

 

[Anacoluthon64]

Surely that is to be expected though in any considerations of computer simulations - and doesn't preclude the possibility that they can be run....or do you think that energy constraints would be a sufficient limiting factor?

No, not in any sense of being impossible in principle to overcome, but there are certainly some severe practical considerations. Bruce Schneier (in his book Applied Cryptography) makes the case from purely theoretical considerations (i.e. without reference to any particular computing platform) of thermodynamics that even if we constructed a Dyson sphere around the Sun and captured every erg of energy it emitted in one year for powering an ideal computer, all with 100% efficiency, this would allow us to cycle through all the possible states of a 187-bit counter (i.e. 2¹⁸⁷ ≈ 1.96×10⁵⁶ states), without doing anything else useful. Moreover, for each additional bit, the energy requirement for a complete cycling would double. I think the implications for a sufficiently complex simulation should be fairly clear.

Further complications may arise from non-linearities, implicitness, restrictions on representational significance and/or accuracy constraints, assuming for the sake of argument that the required simulation is properly computable in the first place.

Bostrom doesn't discuss energy as an issue - instead focusing on memory and computational power - but if one is to assume such technological advances, it does not seem unreasonable to also assume similar energy harnessing advances IMO...

Perhaps so, but Schneier's argument puts in perspective the "energy harnessing advances" that could become necessary for a decent simulation, absent any fundamentally different computational technology.

'Luthon64

 

[Herzblut]

Based on the computer simulation argument that we are in a computer generation is overwhelmingly likely unless you choose to accept either

(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;

(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);

(1)By the same argument this "posthuman civilization" might also be a simulation run by some "post-post human civilization", which in turn might also be just another simulation of a "post-post-post" ... etc. ad infinitum. Thus, any reality, even one running a simulation, has no better or worse chances of being a simulation than any other. Therefore, the simulation argument is irrelevant.

(2) Assuming that Occam's Razor applies, it is safe to reject simulated reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_the_vat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality

Herzblut

 

[Anacoluthon64]

but what would the alternative be to consciousness not being algorithmic?

There is, I think, a trip to Stockholm waiting for the first person to give a cogent and fruitful account of consciousness.

Would that not necessitate an acceptance of long sidelined notions of mind-body dualism?

Not necessarily. We can't rule out the possibility of an as-yet unknown description, possibly waiting on a discovery in some other scientific discipline, much as Special Relativity finally did away with the luminiferous aether.

'Luthon64

 

[Ysidro]

Am I the only one who thinks of David Brin's Stones of Significance rather than The Matrix?

http://www.davidbrin.com/stonesofsignificance1.html

 

[Beerina]

There are many reasons we might exist in a simulation with no knowledge about the "real world", to say nothing of living functionally in the "distant past".

Some reasons of no knowledge of the outside world:

• It would spoil the simulation, hence a (partial, and presumably temporary) brain wipe is necessary prior to immersion.
  
• You were, in fact, born here, as it seemed. This is a way of "birthing" new people, and "billions of years" of tragedy has shown it is the best way to generate new entities -- with ingrained senses of how bad things can get, and the awfulness of pain and death.
  
• Possible, but unsavory to me -- A sentient individual like myself is only the third level of existence (after non-sentience like a rock, and semi like an animal). Perhaps there is something higher yet, and we are merely "devices" or automata to power most of the bodies floating around this world. The higher beings feel no remorse causing us pain or allowing us to expire, then we would for an animal.

 

[Jimbo07]

For those interested in an epic VERY CLOSELY related to the OP (much moreso than the Matrix), see Tad Williams's Otherland.

Loved it.

Every other VR/Immortality/Brain in a Box story is crap...