Hey Jim

Just listened to you on Live From Roswell from earlier this year, and your theories and hypotheses were very interesting to me, so I thought I would stop by. I have been writing a layman's guide to Bostrom's ancestor simulations on my blog (which I won't plug, as that's not polite on someone else's site!) but I was intrigued by the slightly different spin you put on the idea in your interview. Your theories gave a whole different angle to the idea which I had not considered before :)

I haven't had chance to propoerly read through your body of work yet, although I intend to, but if I may I would like to ask a question based solely on the radio interview?

One thing that struck me was the fact that throughout your discussion, you covered off many points that could be considered "absolute standards"for the "artificial reality" theory, but with one omission. You maintained a viewpoint that within the simulation, whatever its origin, we are active participants. By that, I mean that we are "jacked in" to the simulation, either willingly or unwillingly. Essentially, if I understand your ideas correctly, you suggest that perhaps either we are as we perceive ourselves to be, but our surroundings and perceived realities are programmed or artificial in nature (perhaps through direct brain stimulation or by use of external technology such as nano tech), or on the other hand, our "selves" are also artificial but that we have a corporeal self somewhere else, and that the universe we experience as well as our physical form is artificial (I have to say by the way that I hadn't considered the "quantisation" of reality and found that fascinating).

However, I feel there is another scenario that can't readily be dismissed, which is by chance more the focal point of Bostrom's work. That being, what if we are to consider the possibility that, as both of you have suggested, our universe is a simulation of one sort or another, but that we are not participants, but constituents of it? By that I mean that in your theory you lean towards the idea that we are "avatars" for real beings, whereas in Bostrom's theories we are what video game developers would call "NPC's" (non-player characters). Bots, if you will.

While I am not considering either his or your idea better than the other, I think it is fascinating that you have both approached the subject from two differing points, both of which may be combined together to create an even more compelling theory in of itself.

Now, apologies if you have actually covered this elsewhere - as I say, I have only heard the interview and have not yet had chance to read through your works, but I got all excited and wanted to ask :)

Simply, as you know, but for the benefit of any readers who perhaps do not, Bostrom posits that it is not impossible that a highly-advanced civilisation (assuming options one and two on his shopping list of possibilities have not come to pass) may create an ancestor simulation for one reason or another - the most likely being for historical or philanthropical study of their own past - and that within the abilities of their technology they create the active intelligence of the entire population of a civilisation at one point in time (he ackowledges that this is dependent on certain assumptions including non-dependence of the creation of consciousness on substrate, but that's a discussion for another time!). It seems that he is suggesting that as the probability of us living in such a simulation right now are pretty high, the chances are that we are not active participants in such a simulation, but rather parts of the simulation itself. Essentially, there is no "real outside reality me" experiencing my life, but just a species (post-human or otherwise) watching what the simulated me does (along with what everyone else in our perceived reality does). Effectively meaning that "I" do not actually exist anywhere, apart from perhaps as a memory of a past civilisation (or in the imagination of the programmer that made our civilisation up, if they are not human). That I am just a sentient (or pseudo-sentient) program within a program, although I know no better. The virtual version of Descartes' "Brain in a vat", if you will.

I think that his simulation is equally as possible as yours, and equally as compelling - albeit a whole mess more pessimistic - and I just wondered if you have considered this side of the theory alongside your more comforting image (that we are actually real folks, just "within" a program of our own creation) or have you steered away from this possibility deliberately? If so, what is your methodology behind that action?

I would just be interested to hear your thoughts on that particular side of the coin? And again, apologies if you have already explained this in the past :)

Many thanks!

---

When the dinosaur woke up, it was still there.

But what if reality is not something uniformly shared? Reality might be a personal and unique occurrence for each observer. When we interact our realities can be intertwined. These realities overlap much like the harmony of a major or minor chord played on a musical instrument. But also like two quantum particles, as soon as we are no longer entangled, our realities can once again diverge. Where I have typed these words and you are reading this webpage, the universe is a symphony of its elements so far as each molecule is in some form of harmony with all the others. The answer to Schrödinger's cat experiment is that the cat is the observer and not the other way around.

So, as to the Avatar or NPC theories?

I think I am neither, but as for you, you could be either.
If your reality is really different than mine, whose reality is this and how many more can we find?

The more we learn about miraculous things, the less supernatural they become.
It is a non-local projection; to whence it is from.

As observers in this world, our own reality is scripture.
Yet as soon as we observe something, our fringes are one picture.

...Through guidance Divine to make two worlds combine
And gather the seasons, which last for all time

hi guys---i am not so sure that being created [ourselves in whatever state] would b programmed--why take such an indirect route --for instance--having a meteor strike wipe out the dinosaurs so then mammals could develop into intellectual humans etc.-something else is going on here like out of control random chance--my feelings r that what we call the macro cosmos is actually a way the hell smaller micro cosmos within an organism so large and impossible to conceive or measure and in the big picture all "life events" within any "universe" that exists like ours is insignificant and meaningless except for our own egoconsumptive satisfaction---

first of all, welcome Bev, to the forum. glad to have you with us. please feel free to share your OBE experiences if you wish. i, for one, am always fascinated with those, especially having failed to figure out how to induce them myself.

sambuca, i certainly appreciate your perspective and agree that we are often blinded by our limited experience. it is why we can't imagine much beyond 50 years into the future, why we can't conceive of lifeforms that don't resemble ones we are familiar with on earth, why we create video games that look so similar to our reality, why we thought we were the center of the universe until just a few hundred years ago, and so on.

i do, however, offer one simplifying consideration. what if the universe were really much smaller than we think it is, and much shorter in duration. maybe the program started a few years ago, or even a few minutes ago. no meteors, no dinosaurs, just artifacts of a program. what do you think?