Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Book review: Superintelligence, by Nick Bostrom
Trinity: Neo, no one has ever done anything like this.
Neo: I know, that's why it's going to work.
- The Matrix
How do we know whether we are living a physically real life? Or whether we are living in a simulation. Are we in an artificial environment, generated by intelligent computerised agents of the future? And who cares?
Nick Bostrom cares. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. His book Superintelligenceinvestig
This question - whether we are living in a computer simulation - is no longer for science fiction nerds. This is mainstream computer science, philosophy and information technology. And it’s the topic on the popular podcasts of Joe Rogan and Sam Harris. Professor Bostrom has appeared on both. He advises governments on using the power of A.I.
Geek is chic
Simulation theory has been around for 20 years. Bostrom outlines three possible situations: -
1) that future humans become extinct before Superintelligence is developed
2) that they develop Superintelligence, but decide not to pursue it
3) that Superintelligence has been reached, and it has generated millions of simulations, and that we are today experiencing one of them. Right here, right now.
59% of Artificial Intelligence researchers believe that computers will be able "to simulate learning and human intelligence" by the year 2050.
A.I. is here today. Soon every customer support call and every satellite navigation instruction will have machine intelligence built in.
The New Physics
For those who have religious faith, “creation out of nothing”- ex nihilo - is easier to understand with an intelligent designer.
Physicists like Steven Weinberg and Stephen Hawking have written about “The First Three Minutes” of creation, after the Big Bang. We know a lot about those first three minutes. How energy formed matter. But we know nothing about the first three seconds. And even less about the three seconds before the Big Bang.
Religious people have no problem grasping the “simulation hypothesis” of Bostrom. The belief in Superintelligence is compatible with an intelligent designer.
Religion in the West, since the Enlightenment of the 18th century, is regarded as a private affair. But it’s also a shared, community connection. It can create solid foundations for purpose and meaning in life.
Personal identity
It’s interesting to see that after the advances of science, the hollow “void” at the centre of the secular worldview, is so empty, that these new ideas about “virtual simulations” are trying to fill that hole with meaning.
Even those who have lost their religious faith talk of a “God-shaped hole” at their centre. Salmon Rushdie, Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens have used this phrase. But losing the need for religion because we have science has proven to be a false idea. As the academic and literary critic Terry Eagleton puts it, “Just because we have the toaster, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need Shakespeare anymore”.
And then personal identity is everything. The New York philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser was famous for his comic style. He was once interrupted by a young woman, as he was lecturing.
Student: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Professor Morgenbesser: Madam, even if there was nothing, you’d still be complaining.
Another time, the Professor was teased by a cheeky voice in his class with the challenge, “Prove that I exist”.
His answer was swift, and devastating.
“Who’s asking?”
James Neophytou
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