Sometimes I think scientists are there for the sole purpose of dreaming up new ways to freak me out and keep me up at night.You could say that's a little narcissistic of me; you could also argue, however, the equally valid possibility that scientists are little more than mini-bosses in the Shigeru Miyamoto-esque eight-bit side scroller that is my life.

I got some interesting feedback from last week's story about Second Life getting all up in real life's grill, one message of which being a link to this story in the New York Times, highlighting some of the life work of Dr. Nick Bostrom. Dr. Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute as well as a philosophy professor at Oxford University, has some very interesting ideas about the future of humanity; more interesting still are his ideas on how the future may be effecting us now, looping back like an infinite technological paradox. You see, Bostrom has a theory that, in the future, advanced "posthumans" will be big fans of games like Civilization played out with sentient characters on computers with the capacity for untold amounts of AI, and baby, somewhere out there the future is now and we're already living it.

In Bostrom's eleven-page theory (published in Philosophical Quarterly) he proposes an equation that looks something like this:

and what it basically breaks down to is that at least one of the following must theoretically be true:

a.) Mankind will never reach a state of advanced technological wizardry required for artificial-intelligence civilization simulations en masse.
b.) Mankind will reach such a state, but will have evolved to a point where they have better things to do than run civilization sims.
c.) Mankind will and has already reached such a state, and the reality we exist in now is that of a computer-generated simulation.

Just so we're clear, we aren't talking about something like The Matrix, where one could feasibly wake up and unplug himself from the simulation system; Bostrom's hypothesis is somewhere more between the lines of Tron and a futuristic World of Warcraft, millions of cognizant little worlds at the fingertips of millions of would-be gods.

Bostrom's thesis is, if anything, very well thought-out, exploring every facet of this world of possibilities from the cognizant disparity of "characters" to the truly chilling notion that this game is a first-person platform and all of your friends and lovers are, for all intents and purposes, Hylian villagers:

I have half a mind to say, "Yes well, anything's possible," but the other half wants to squint at everyone in search of Koopa Troopa tendencies.

The application of math equations to try and inject logic into the visceral nature of the human experience will probably strike me as somewhat incompatible and insufficient no matter what, but what is truly interesting about the whole argument is its modern theological nature: a flesh-and-blood god to manage our imaginary belief-states, fill in the details of our world, create miracles through save games, and roll stats for a nation of millions. Still more interesting is the approach with which this theory is given: it's not so much about injecting doubt into the unquestionable truth of our existence, but more of an alternate explanation, not something to slow us down but just to take in as information and possible use as the base of a new religion. (A simple task, I'm sure, when being told that we are all pawns in someone's game of World of Warcraft Expansion Pack 100.)

So, I suppose that's that: you keep on keepin' on, whether substantive or someone else's Sim. I guess that's all one really can do, isn't it? What do you think?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be going. All this mithril I found in my neighbors' dresser drawers and flower pots isn't just going to spend itself.


If you found this interesting, I recommend picking up Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World. Similar themes, on a somewhat more luddite level. Hat tip to Tony_T for the link!