2003/04/01 by Nick Bostrom · 19 citations
Social Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life
paper · doi:10.1111/1467-9213.00309
I argue that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to become extinct before reaching a ‘posthuman’ stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of its evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we shall one day become posthumans who run ancestor‐simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. I discuss some consequences of this result.