[Buddha-l] ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

[Michael LaTorra]

Is the world an illusion, or a simulation? 

Or are we in the improbable position of living in the vanishingly short time 
period before massive world-simulations begin?

See philosopher Nick Bostrom's argument below.

Regards,

Michael LaTorra

mlatorra at nmsu.edu

Department of English
New Mexico State University
PO Box 30001 MSC 3E
Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001

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

ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?
BY NICK BOSTROM

Department of Philosophy, Oxford University

Homepage: http://www.nickbostrom.com

[First version: May, 2001; Final version July 2002]

This is a preprint of the final version which appeared in Philosophical 
Quarterly (2003), Vol. 53, No. 211, pp. 243-255.

[This document is located at http://www.simulation-argument.com]


ABSTRACT

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (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); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It 
follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one 
day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are 
currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this 
result are also discussed. 

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