Nick Bostrom, the Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University published a paper in the Philosophical Quarterly, 2003, Vol. 53, No. 211 that asked the question Are You Living In a Computer Simulation? that agues 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.
It has caused such a stir among both Philosophers and regular folk that he now has an entire website dedicated to the debate that followed the paper presenting the Simulation argument. The original paper is here, as are popular synopses, and scholarly papers commenting on the first paper, and a reply to these comments.
Tags: Nick Bostrom, philosophy, Simulation Argument
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