ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?


	ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

wwjimd

8-19-2007 5:54 AM

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ai, computer, technology, nick bostrom, transhumanism, futurist

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/b7940311-16dc-4d53-82ce-ac26b10700fc/9767B10E-C705-476C-BB81-18D43D801430/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html" href="http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html" style="font-size: 11px;">www.simulation-argument.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html"><DIV class="Section1"><P align="center" class="MsoNormal"><B>BY 
NICK BOSTROM</B></P><P align="center" class="MsoNormal">Department 
of Philosophy, Oxford University</P><P align="center" class="MsoNormal"> </P><P align="center" class="MsoNormal"><FONT size="1">Homepage: 
<A href="http://www.nickbostrom.com" linkindex="0" set="yes">http://www.nickbostrom.com</A></FONT></P><P align="center" class="MsoNormal"><FONT size="1">[First 
version: May, 2001; Final version July 2002]</FONT></P><P align="center" class="MsoNormal"><FONT size="1">This 
is a preprint of the final version which appeared in <I>Philosophical Quarterly 
(2003), Vol. 53, No. 211, pp. 243-255.</I></FONT></P><P align="center" class="MsoNormal"><FONT size="1">[This 
document is located at <A href="http://www.simulation-argument.com" linkindex="1" set="yes">http://www.simulation-argument.com</A>]</FONT></P><P align="center" class="MsoNormal"> </P></DIV><BLOCKQUOTE><DIV class="Section1"><DIV align="center"><P><FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><B>ABSTRACT</B></FONT></P></DIV></DIV><BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE><DIV class="Section1"><FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">This 
paper argues that <I>at least one</I> 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.</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/9767B10E-C705-476C-BB81-18D43D801430/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>