Hey guys, what are your thoughts on the existence of extraterrestrial life and the potential involvement of governments in concealing or studying such entities.
Hey guys, what are your thoughts on the existence of extraterrestrial life and the potential involvement of governments in concealing or studying such entities.
I think that’s a bit too much of a leap in logic.
The simulation hypothesis requires that an advanced civilisation could simulate what is essentially a Boltzmann brain. It certainly might be something they could do, but we don’t have any proof that’s possible.
Whereas we already know life can pop up on a planet with the right conditions, because we are living proof of it…
While you can argue we don’t know the specific odds of life occuring elsewhere, we know it could occur elsewhere. Thus given to sheer size of the universe, the odds could be just 1 planet in a billion or even a trillion and there’d still be plenty of planets to spare (not necessarily in our galaxy like)
To be fair to Bostrom, his simulation argument outlines three possibilities but doesn’t tell us that the simulation hypothesis (#3) is actual.
Bostrom technically only argues that you can’t coherently reject all three. But, going farther, our computing power has increased dramatically in a miniscule amount of time. If you believe that aliens exist, then it isn’t too hard to suppose that some have vastly greater technological abilities than we have now. In that case, the idea that we’re living in a simulation isn’t something we can easily rule out.
Those possibilities only apply if it is possible to perform that kind of simulation in a finite period of time - I’m not suggesting it isn’t possible, simply that we don’t know if it is.
Using our historical rate of computational progression as the benchmark to suppose this isn’t the best idea either considering Moore’s law has been on the decline for years now as our primary method of improvement (making smaller transistors) has run head first into physical and quantum mechanical issues.
Either way, I find the idea of the existence of extraterrestrials a much more concrete hypothesis given we know for a fact that life can exist on a planet with sufficient conditions because we are life existing on a planet with sufficient conditions.
Even if the odds are tiny, miniscule we know there are at least odds to be had, because otherwise we wouldn’t exist - something we don’t know for sure is true in the case of the simulation hypothesis. As such I believe it to be a leap in logic to compare the two.
I can see where you’re coming from; we know that there is something here (simulation or not) but we don’t know that complex simulations are possible. Bostrom likely considers this objection, but I’ve only heard him describe his view orally. I haven’t read the articles where he defends his view in detail. This isn’t my area, but your point tempts me to go take a look!