From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun May 19 2002 - 18:05:11 MDT
Evan Reese wrote:
>
> I heard an argument from someone - Brian Hay? - that if you accept the
> Copernican principle, then the chance we are living in a simulation is low.
> It is more likely that we would be in a hierarchy of simulations. This
> principle would be violated if we were at the bottom of such a hierarchy;
> but it would seem that we have to be, since there aren't simulated worlds
> below us. Being at the bottom of such a hierarchy would be a special
> position. By this logic, we are not in a simulation.
The hole is that the bottom layer of the hierarchy may easily be the most
numerous, for example if each citizen of an (unFriendly) society creates
their own simulated civilization.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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