<story><title>NASA Study Proposes Airships, Cloud Cities for Venus Exploration</title><url>http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/nasa-study-proposes-airships-cloud-cities-for-venus-exploration</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>philwelch</author><text>As far as I can tell, you don&amp;#x27;t even disagree with the simulation argument. The simulation argument is that one of three propositions is true:&lt;p&gt;1. It is impossible to create a simulated world that people can live in.&lt;p&gt;2. People consistently do not choose to create such simulations.&lt;p&gt;3. We are almost certainly living in such a simulation right now.&lt;p&gt;You haven&amp;#x27;t said anything to undermine the basic logic of the argument at all; instead, you&amp;#x27;re arguing that statement 1 is true. But the simulation argument is that one out of statements 1-3 is true. Hence you agree with the simulation argument. You just don&amp;#x27;t think you do because you identify the whole argument with statement 3.</text></item><item><author>nitrogen</author><text>There is a limit to the amount of computation that can be done by a given amount of matter that only new physics could change.  Given that limit, at best you would need every particle in our universe just to simulate an identical one.  It&amp;#x27;s more likely that the best possible simulation would have significantly reduced fidelity and&amp;#x2F;or size with respect to its host universe, thus the inevitability component of the simulation argument falls apart.&lt;p&gt;What would convince me we are a simulation is evidence (e.g. proof that quantum randomness is caused by floating point rounding errors, or that entanglement is caused by lazy expression evaluation), hard empirical measurements.  Not arguments from pure logic and extrapolation.&lt;p&gt;That said, I agree that we have done some amazing things with computers; I just doubt (in the extreme) the simulation argument is valid.</text></item><item><author>kamaal</author><text>The rate at which computers have gotten powerful is simply mind boggling. Even as early as 20 years ago, something like an iPhone would sound like wishful thinking to someone who would think rationally. Heck WWW, internet, mobile phones and this whole thing looks right out of a science fiction book for some one in early part of 1900&amp;#x27;s&lt;p&gt;Its hard to imagine how much more computers can go. But I believe people in the future will look at our way of thinking about computing limits(Moore&amp;#x27;s law) in the same we look at vaccum tubes. Or the way we look at people who thought heavier than air flying objects are impossible by laws of physics.&lt;p&gt;We just don&amp;#x27;t know how many &amp;#x27;transistor events&amp;#x27; or &amp;#x27;wright brother&amp;#x27; events there are going to be in the future which will work around the laws of science orthogonally.</text></item><item><author>nitrogen</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a fallacious extrapolation of Moore&amp;#x27;s law into the idea that our universe must be a computer simulation (of course there&amp;#x27;s more to it than my flippant summary suggests, but I still find the arguments unconvincing even if the idea itself is interesting).</text></item><item><author>javert</author><text>What is the &amp;quot;simulation argument&amp;quot;? I read the article but don&amp;#x27;t remember that.</text></item><item><author>3pt14159</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been advocating a Venus over Mars strategy for quite some time now. It is weird seeing your opinions hit the mainstream. On the one hand you are happy that other people have finally come around to your line of thinking, but on the other hand you worry that others will repeat the conclusion with little idea of the reasoning that went behind it.&lt;p&gt;I was also ahead of the curve on the simulation argument. When Elon Musk started talking about it I realized it was finally becoming mainstream. I&amp;#x27;m hoping he gets on board with a Venus first space exploration too!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xioxox</author><text>What if the simulation of the fidelity required surpasses the energy and time available in any sensible host universe? If the slowdown in a simulation universe is say 10, then it doesn&amp;#x27;t need many nested universes before life would never get the time to form in the client universe before the host dies (though of course you could set up the universe from 10 seconds ago, which seems like a cheat).</text></comment>
<story><title>NASA Study Proposes Airships, Cloud Cities for Venus Exploration</title><url>http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/nasa-study-proposes-airships-cloud-cities-for-venus-exploration</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>philwelch</author><text>As far as I can tell, you don&amp;#x27;t even disagree with the simulation argument. The simulation argument is that one of three propositions is true:&lt;p&gt;1. It is impossible to create a simulated world that people can live in.&lt;p&gt;2. People consistently do not choose to create such simulations.&lt;p&gt;3. We are almost certainly living in such a simulation right now.&lt;p&gt;You haven&amp;#x27;t said anything to undermine the basic logic of the argument at all; instead, you&amp;#x27;re arguing that statement 1 is true. But the simulation argument is that one out of statements 1-3 is true. Hence you agree with the simulation argument. You just don&amp;#x27;t think you do because you identify the whole argument with statement 3.</text></item><item><author>nitrogen</author><text>There is a limit to the amount of computation that can be done by a given amount of matter that only new physics could change.  Given that limit, at best you would need every particle in our universe just to simulate an identical one.  It&amp;#x27;s more likely that the best possible simulation would have significantly reduced fidelity and&amp;#x2F;or size with respect to its host universe, thus the inevitability component of the simulation argument falls apart.&lt;p&gt;What would convince me we are a simulation is evidence (e.g. proof that quantum randomness is caused by floating point rounding errors, or that entanglement is caused by lazy expression evaluation), hard empirical measurements.  Not arguments from pure logic and extrapolation.&lt;p&gt;That said, I agree that we have done some amazing things with computers; I just doubt (in the extreme) the simulation argument is valid.</text></item><item><author>kamaal</author><text>The rate at which computers have gotten powerful is simply mind boggling. Even as early as 20 years ago, something like an iPhone would sound like wishful thinking to someone who would think rationally. Heck WWW, internet, mobile phones and this whole thing looks right out of a science fiction book for some one in early part of 1900&amp;#x27;s&lt;p&gt;Its hard to imagine how much more computers can go. But I believe people in the future will look at our way of thinking about computing limits(Moore&amp;#x27;s law) in the same we look at vaccum tubes. Or the way we look at people who thought heavier than air flying objects are impossible by laws of physics.&lt;p&gt;We just don&amp;#x27;t know how many &amp;#x27;transistor events&amp;#x27; or &amp;#x27;wright brother&amp;#x27; events there are going to be in the future which will work around the laws of science orthogonally.</text></item><item><author>nitrogen</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a fallacious extrapolation of Moore&amp;#x27;s law into the idea that our universe must be a computer simulation (of course there&amp;#x27;s more to it than my flippant summary suggests, but I still find the arguments unconvincing even if the idea itself is interesting).</text></item><item><author>javert</author><text>What is the &amp;quot;simulation argument&amp;quot;? I read the article but don&amp;#x27;t remember that.</text></item><item><author>3pt14159</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been advocating a Venus over Mars strategy for quite some time now. It is weird seeing your opinions hit the mainstream. On the one hand you are happy that other people have finally come around to your line of thinking, but on the other hand you worry that others will repeat the conclusion with little idea of the reasoning that went behind it.&lt;p&gt;I was also ahead of the curve on the simulation argument. When Elon Musk started talking about it I realized it was finally becoming mainstream. I&amp;#x27;m hoping he gets on board with a Venus first space exploration too!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mc808</author><text>The argument seems to be missing a proposition:&lt;p&gt;4. It is possible to create and live in a simulated world, but not with the level of fidelity&amp;#x2F;flexibility necessary for the infinite regress that would make #3 convincing.</text></comment>