Brain in a WoW Server
From an article by John Tierney in the NYT today:
"...if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.
This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits."
Read the article, it encourages movement in the brain-o-sphere, though I imagine that many WoW fans have already had this realization.
Basically, it's a variation on the brain in a vat argument that's been rehashed and reinterpreted for successive generations (follow the link just for the picture, if nothing more). What's new about this one is that it attaches the same sort of questionable "certainty" to the claim that has been problematic for other arguments and hypotheses. (See here and here for two examples.)
I find this sort of speculation immensely fascinating but ultimately inconsequential. Certainty with this sort of question is impossible to attain, just as it is in regard to theological, metaphysical, and meta-ethical questions. So instead of spending my days beating myself about the head in the hopes of having an answer fall out, I take what I think to be, the most reasonable answers, that is, the simplest explanation with the most readily observable evidence. Wondering is fun, but only for so long.
Ultimately, it's questions like these that caused me to lose interest in any form of philosophy except for political and applied moral. Sorry Adam, but I really hate analytic philosophy. (For an amusing criticism of the field, read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's remarks in this Freakonomics post.)
On a final note, what I do find particularly interesting about this comes from Tierney's follow-up on his blog where he asks whether it would be ethical for us to create such a simulation. Despite all of the suffering in the world, we think it is better that it exists rather than the contrary. Then would creating a simulation with all of the horrors of our world and "people" who are as real to themselves as we are to ourselves who would suffer as we have, would that be justifiable? If we wanted to experiment on these virtual people, could we? Lawyer Peter S. Jenkins says yes, and I'm inclined to agree.
I hope that I live long enough to see these questions resolved and the technology realized.
Posts
Two points:
ReplyDelete(1) "So instead of spending my days beating myself about the head in the hopes of having an answer fall out, I take what I think to be, the most reasonable answers, that is, the simplest explanation with the most readily observable evidence."
I assume that your explanation is the common-sense explanation that we all accept (we're not computer circuits, but hunks of atoms flying around in accordance with the laws discussed in physics books, etc.). Well, in the above passage, you assume that (A) your explanation is the simplest and (b) your explanation has "the most readily observable evidence." With respect to Bostrom's hypothesis, you're right about (A). The common sense explanation is simpler, I think; it doesn't posit super advanced computer programmers in addition to all the stuff we already believe in (although that stuff does exist, in Bostrom's view, in a somewhat different state--as networks of computer circuit). But I don't think your explanation has "the most readily observable evidence." One of Bostrom's main points is that our observations don't favor one of these hypotheses over the other. And that's *the problem* with brain-in-a-vat arguments in general, and that's why there's so damn annoying. So, I think you're wrong about (B).
Now, presumably belief aims at truth , and you believe the common sense explanation because you think *it's true*. Ok, well, if the reason why you think it's true is that it's simpler, here's an interesting question: why should simplicity be truth-conducive? That's an extremely hard question IMHO, and there are lots of analytic philosophers who write about it (e.g. Tim McGrew at Western Michigan, Luc Bovens at LSE, Stephan Hartmann at Tilburg, Elliott Sober at Wisconsin, etc. etc. etc.). If you don't find that question interesting, then I guess there's no hope for you. :-) If you do, then, well, that's a question that belongs to analytic philosophy of science.
(2) "Ultimately, it's questions like these that caused me to lose interest in any form of philosophy except for political and applied moral."
Plenty of analytic philosophers write about political and applied moral philosophy. Peter Singer, Elizabeth Anderson, John Rawls, Nozick, etc. etc. etc. are all considered "analytic" figures. So, I'm not sure what you're intending the term "analytic philosophy" to pick out.
(3) I know I said I was going to make just two points, but...
Taleb's piece on the Freakonomics blog is really terrible. First, why in God's name would you think analytic philosophers need to defend the setup of the beggar/hot-dog-maker question? I play analytic philosopher from time to time, and I don't even think that there's a single right answer in this question. In fact, I think that it's perfectly OK if Taleb avoids the begger just because he reminds Taleb of Robert C. Merton.
Also, Taleb mentions that the order in which he encounters the begger/vendor will play a role in determining his decision--a so-called "order effect." Guess what? Analytic philosophers aren't ignorant of this kind of thing, and many actually discuss them quite a bit in work on experimental philosophy. See here for an example: http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/experimental_philosophy/2007/04/order_effect_an.html
So, to summarize (3), Taleb doesn't seem to know much about what analytic philosophers do.
My URL got cut off.
ReplyDeleteClick here< to see the blog post I was talking about.
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ReplyDeleteI should correct one thing I said. I wrote, "That's an extremely hard question IMHO, and there are lots of analytic philosophers who write about it: [list]" Instead, I should have said "That's an extremely hard questiom IMHO, and there are lots of analytic philosopher who write about it or similar problems concerning truth-conduciveness of various theoretical virtues: [list]," since some of the works I had in mind aren't about simplicity.
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