Glad to see Bostrom is able to make a living out of total nonsense. If we’re in a simulation how did I end up playing this shitty part? Isn’t there a way of doing a challenge and upgrading to a playboy type character? According to Bostrom, every simulation has its own rules, i.e., you need to find out what they are, and then you can level up. In this simulation, apparently the rules are to accumulate large amounts of money and impoverish everyone else.

Bostrom's paper does evade a lot of scrutiny. There are some blatant contradictions in there which are not addressed (cherry picking I’d say). When Bostrom investigates the limits of computing, he reaches the conclusion that a planetary size computer would be able to simulate the history of humanity in a second using only one millionth of its computing power. This is not possible without having signals which exceed the speed of light. Yes, it is possible to process the same amount of data as simulating the entire history of humanity in a second, however these processes cannot be causally connected without violating the speed of light. He is selective about which physical constraints he takes into consideration when exploring the limitations of computing. For example he ignores clock speed which is estimated to have theoretical limit at 10 THz. The limit of clock speed means that it would take minimum 570 years to simulate the history of human, instead of one second! He basically makes the error of assuming that if a woman can give birth to a child in 9 months, then 9 women must be able to give birth to a child in one month. In the paper he also writes that it looks like simulations would be impossible to sustain once they reach technological maturity, as it will be unfeasible for the simulators. A few paragraphs later he completely contradicts this by claiming that if we create simulations, then we are almost certainly in a simulation ourselves. On top of that, Bostrom also fails to realise that the probabilistic argument is different depending on whether we are talking about simulations which are identical to the base universe in terms of laws of physics, or whether the laws of physics are different. In the first case, the more likely we are to create simulations in the distant future, the more likely we are to live in a simulation ourselves (however, if we are in one we will not be able to or permitted to create simulations ourselves). In the latter case, however, it is the exact opposite! Bostrom cherry picks from the two scenarios to achieve the desired conclusion. And this from a guy teaching at Oxford…Jeez… ( )