Religion/Spirituality The Intelligent Design/God/Theism Thread

[gho3st]

you went from strongly ing to disprove evolution to this ...

 

[blackzeus]

where did i say it proved my opinion?

If it evolve this much in such a "short" time. Can you control time and replicate geological eras to see whether it would not mutate into something "different"?? You cant and thats the whole point


31,000 generations is around 13 years... are you saying 12 years is equivalent to a billion?

You were arguing about the impossibility for mutation to occur in 150 years when it occurred with 12, don't switch up now homey Also note that E.coli has a half-life 20 times longer than the prokaryote mycoplasma, which was my original example You keep mentioning geological eras and missed the whole f*ckin' point. The E.coli adapted to the food source over 31,000 generations. Whatever the situation is, organisms adapt, ANY environmental situation should produce ADAPTATION (not evolution) over time. Because it's the environment that causes certain mutations to thrive and others to fail. So using a basis of 30 years for a human generation, 500,000 years is roughly 17,000 generations. So again, if apes can evolve into humans in 17,000 generations (please note humans are made up of trillions of cells, including E.coli in your intestines), why can't E.coli evolve into something else into 31,000 generations? You're saying your intestines with all the heat and chemicals and acids it contains doesn't provide an ideal situation for the evolution of bacteria?

 

[blackzeus]

you went from strongly ing to disprove evolution to this ...

My point remains the same, show me the evolutionary process in bacteria where one bacteria evolves into another. The articles proved adaptation, not evolution, You went from arguing about how illegitimate my example was to telling me I am welcome with the same example, and I'm the pseudo-intellectual

 

[gho3st]

You were arguing about the impossibility for mutation to occur in 150 years when it occurred with 12, don't switch up now homey Also note that E.coli has a half-life 20 times longer than the prokaryote mycoplasma, which was my original example You keep mentioning geological eras and missed the whole f*ckin' point. The E.coli adapted to the food source over 31,000 generations. Whatever the situation is, organisms adapt, ANY environmental situation should produce ADAPTATION (not evolution) over time. Because it's the environment that causes certain mutations to thrive and others to fail. So using a basis of 30 years for a human generation, 500,000 years is roughly 17,000 generations. So again, if apes can evolve into humans in 17,000 generations (please note humans are made up of trillions of cells, including E.coli in your intestines), why can't E.coli evolve into something else into 31,000 generations? You're saying your intestines with all the heat and chemicals and acids it contain doesn't provide an ideal situation for the evolution of bacteria?

your argument has changed again so quick...kinda like a bacteria

 

[blackzeus]

your argument has changed again so quick...kinda like a bacteria

I see you're on your game tonight. Since you have so much free time to make posts void of content and logic, it takes 12 years for 31,000 generations of E.coli, since you're so smart and are obviously bored toying with a peon such as myself, why don't you stimulate your mind, do the math and let me know how many generations are created in 12 years for an organism that reproduces in 1/20th of the time, then again explain to me how it's possible a a single celled organism (why by the way truly was my original example) can go through so many generations without evolving into a new species, but an organism with a trillion cells can evolve into a completely different species in only 17,000 generations?

 

[Mission249]

do the math and let me know how many generations are created in 12 years for an organism that reproduces in 1/20th of the time, then again explain to me how it's possible a a single celled organism (why by the way truly was my original example) can go through so many generations without evolving into a new species, but an organism with a trillion cells can evolve into a completely different species in only 17,000 generations?

The fatal flaw in your argument is that it assumes that evolution is mainly driven by the sheer number of successive generations/descendants. That is not true. It's mainly driven by the external factors of natural selection. Those external factors (e.g. environment, predators, etc.) that allow only the fittest of each generation to survive are a function of time: at any given time they either exist or they don't. That's why you can't wave your hands and compress the time frame into 150 years. It's illogical.

I said this before, but it needs repeating: What you're essentially asking for is to see a snapshot of an entire marathon in one picture. When people say they can't possibly show that to you, you say that must mean marathons don't exist. Evolution is a marathon spanning millions of years. You need to understand it before you can question it.

 

[blackzeus]

The fatal flaw in your argument is that it assumes that evolution is mainly driven by the sheer number of successive generations/descendants. That is not true. It's mainly driven by the external factors of natural selection. Those external factors (e.g. environment, predators, etc.) that allow only the fittest of each generation to survive are a function of time: at any given time they either exist or they don't. That's why you can't wave your hands and compress the time frame into 150 years. It's illogical.

I said this before, but it needs repeating: What you're essentially asking for is to see a snapshot of an entire marathon in one picture. When people say they can't possibly show that to you, you say that must mean marathons don't exist. Evolution is a marathon spanning millions of years. You need to understand it before you can question it.

1) So what are we saying here, evolution isn't a continual process. Meaning each time speciation occurs, there's a specific event that causes that speciation. The obvious inference here is that "Caused by specific event" is equivalent to....

2) The fatal flaw in your opinion is that evolution (according to evolutionary theory) is purely driven by natural selection, when even according to the leading researchers in your field, it's a combination of external factors + genetic mutation at best, and pure genetic mutation at worst. Are you going to argue with your own colleagues? :

http://discovermagazine.com/2014/march/12-mutation-not-natural-selection-drives-evolution

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FROM THE MARCH 2014 ISSUE
Mutation, Not Natural Selection, Drives Evolution
Molecular evolutionary biologist Masatoshi Nei says Darwin never proved natural selection is the driving force of evolution — because it isn't.

By Gemma Tarlach|Sunday, March 16, 2014
RELATED TAGS: EVOLUTION, GENETICS
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Masatoshi Nei expands on his evolution-busting theory in his 2013 book Mutation-Driven Evolution.

Michael Ray
In a cavernous concert hall, before an eager audience of thousands, Masatoshi Nei is experiencing a technical glitch.

The biologist has just received Japan’s prestigious Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, honoring his groundbreaking exploration of evolution on a molecular level. The eyes and ears of international media, diplomats and dignitaries, including Japan’s Princess Takamado, are trained on the soft-spoken 82-year-old as he delivers his acceptance speech.Or tries to. On a massive screen above him, a slide show advances and retreats randomly as Nei attempts to present techniques he pioneered that have revolutionized his field — and theories that challenge some of its most deeply rooted ideas.

“So sorry,” Nei tells his audience with an endearing chuckle. “I’m always pursuing the theory, not the practical.”

Practicality has been, however, a guiding force throughout Nei’s career, from his early agricultural research to his decades-long quest to move evolutionary biology away from subjective field observations and into objective, math-based analysis on a molecular level. In 1972, he devised a now widely used formula, Nei’s standard genetic distance, which compares key genes of different populations to estimate how long ago the groups diverged. In the early ’90s, Nei was a co-developer of free software that creates evolutionary trees based on genetic data. Two decades later, Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis, or MEGA, remains one of the most widely used and cited computer programs in biology.

But it’s his natural selection-busting theory, which Nei developed in the ’80s and expanded on in the 2013 book Mutation-Driven Evolution, that the researcher wants to see embraced, cited and taught in schools.

A few days after his presentation slides finally cooperated, Nei, director of the Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics at Pennsylvania State University, spoke with Discover about where he believes Darwin went wrong.

Discover: You began your academic career in Japan in the ’50s as an assistant professor of agricultural science. How did you, no pun intended, evolve into a molecular biologist taking on Darwin?



Masatoshi Nei: I wanted to make population genetics useful and practical, so I went into plant breeding. But I started to ask, why does phenotopic [observable trait-based] evolution take place? I was interested in it on a genetic level. Charles Darwin said evolution occurs by natural selection in the presence of continuous variation, but he never proved the occurrence of natural selection in nature. He argued that, but he didn’t present strong evidence.



But among the people working on evolution, most of them still believe natural selection is the driving force.



If you say evolution occurs by natural selection, it looks scientific compared with saying God created everything. Now they say natural selection created everything, but they don’t explain how. If it’s science, you have to explain every step. That’s why I was unhappy. Just a replacement of God with natural selection doesn’t change very much. You have to explain how.



OK, so, explain how.






Nei makes a case for mutation-driven evolution at the 2013 Kyoto Prize awards ceremony.

The Inamori Foundation
MN: Every part of our body is controlled by molecules, so you have to explain on a molecular level. That is the real mechanism of evolution, how molecules change. They change through mutation. Mutation means a change in DNA through, for example, substitution or insertion [of nucleotides]. First you have to have change, and then natural selection may operate or may not operate. I say mutation is the most important, driving force of evolution. Natural selection occurs sometimes, of course, because some types of variations are better than others, but mutation created the different types. Natural selection is secondary.

Someone on the outside looking in at the debate might say you and other researchers are splitting hairs, that both mutation and natural selection drive evolution. How do you respond?

MN: I don’t study the character or the function; I study the gene that controls it. My position is mutation creates variation, then natural selection may or may not operate, it may or may not choose the good variation and eliminate the bad one, but natural selection is not the driving force.

In neo-Darwinism, evolution is a process of increasing fitness [in the sense of an organism’s ability both to survive and to reproduce]. In mutation-driven evolutionary theory, evolution is a process of increasing or decreasing an organism’s complexity. We tend to believe natural selection selects one type. But there are many types, and still they’re OK. They can survive, no problem.

For example, if blue eyes are better for some reason in Scandinavia, that mutation has a selected advantage, and then of course that advantage will occur more in that population. But first you have to have the mutation. And natural selection itself is not so clear. In certain cases it is, but not always. The gene frequency of blue eyes may have increased by chance, too, rather than natural selection. The blue eye color may be just as good as green. Both can see.

In 1968, your friend and mentor Motoo Kimura proposed the neutral theory of molecular evolution, arguing that most mutations that occur have neither advantageous nor deleterious consequences for an organism. How did you take neutral theory a step further with mutation-driven evolutionary theory?

MN: Kimura believed morphology [appearance] evolves through natural selection. He applied neutral theory only on a molecular level. I say it can determine morphological characteristics as well because DNA determines everything, but to prove this has not been so easy. [Laughs.] Forty or 50 years later, I am still trying to prove it.

One of your most significant contributions to the field is Nei’s standard genetic distance, a formula that determines when different populations diverged based on mathematical analysis of their genomes. But this formula assumes the rate of genetic change is constant. Do you think human activity — from overfishing to burning fossil fuels to illuminating our cities and highways with artificial light — could be speeding up the rate of mutation?

MN: I think there is a mutagenic element to human activity, but it’s difficult to gather proof. It’s occurred only in, say, the past 10,000 years, and I don’t know if it’s changing the rate of mutation. You can identify how many different mutations occurred, but not always how.

You’ve been talking about mutation-driven evolution for more than three decades. Why do you think the majority of evolutionary biologists remain in the natural selection camp?

MN: I expressed this simple view first in 1975 in my book Molecular Population Genetics and Evolution, and in 1987 in a chapter in another book, but no one changed their views or the textbooks. Of course, at that time, molecular biology had not developed too far yet, and traditional evolutionary biology only considered morphology, not how the variation occurred.

Some birds, for example, have a variant of hemoglobin that allows them to fly over the Himalayas, at very high altitudes. Some alligators have a different variant of hemoglobin that allows them to stay submerged for a very long time. This has been known for a while and everyone felt, well, variation exists in the populations, but the condition necessary must be just natural selection.

In 1987, you co-authored a paper with Naruya Saitou describing the neighbor-joining method, a novel algorithm for creating evolutionary trees by working backward based on key genetic differences between related species, the idea being the more recently one species diverged from another, the more similar their DNA will be. It’s been cited more than 34,000 times over the years and has become a cornerstone of molecular evolutionary biology research. Why do you feel it was so influential?


The neighbor-joining method allows scientists to calculate when different species, or variations within a species, diverged by analyzing differences on a molecular level. Based on a 2002 study, this illustration maps the relationships between 18 human populations, using the neighbor-joining method to create an evolutionary tree built on genetic data.


MN: It’s simple. [Laughs.] I had developed the genetic distance theory [in the ’70s] because I wanted to make a phylogenetic tree, and distance can be used for making trees. But I was also interested in statistics. So I combined the two methods. To test it, first we did computer simulations: We generated a DNA sequence for an evolutionary tree where we already knew where the tree branched. Then we used statistics, the neighbor-joining method, to reconstruct the tree and test whether it resembled the actual phylogenetic tree. It did, and that’s how we knew this method gave a pretty good idea of how species evolved and diverged.

At first, other biologists were fanaticists about sticking to earlier methods of calculating relationships between species. There were a lot of stupid fights in the ’80s, but I insisted it would work. In the case of, say, using 100 genetic sequences, we can make a neighbor-joining tree within a few seconds. With the regular method, it would take months. And after working for months, the result was almost always the same as the neighbor-joining method.

You’ve stated on a number of occasions that you’re ready for a lot of criticism over your most recent book, 2013’s Mutation-Driven Evolution. Why?

MN: I presented such views in my 1987 book Molecular Evolutionary Genetics, but people didn’t pay attention. Textbooks on evolution haven’t changed: They still say natural selection causes evolution. My views were totally ignored. In that book, I discussed many statistical techniques, and only in the last chapter did I discuss the problem of natural selection not being proven. The chapter did not convince a lot of people, I think, because they already had a preconceived notion that natural selection must be the driving force because Darwin said so. Darwin is a god in evolution, so you can’t criticize Darwin. If you do, you’re branded as arrogant.

But any time a scientific theory is treated like dogma, you have to question it. The dogma of natural selection has existed a long time. Most people have not questioned it. Most textbooks still state this is so. Most students are educated with these books.

You have to question dogma. Use common sense. You have to think for yourself, without preconceptions. That is what’s important in science.

 

[blackzeus]

The fatal flaw in your argument is that it assumes that evolution is mainly driven by the sheer number of successive generations/descendants. That is not true. It's mainly driven by the external factors of natural selection. Those external factors (e.g. environment, predators, etc.) that allow only the fittest of each generation to survive are a function of time: at any given time they either exist or they don't. That's why you can't wave your hands and compress the time frame into 150 years. It's illogical.

I said this before, but it needs repeating: What you're essentially asking for is to see a snapshot of an entire marathon in one picture. When people say they can't possibly show that to you, you say that must mean marathons don't exist. Evolution is a marathon spanning millions of years. You need to understand it before you can question it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection#Evolution_by_means_of_natural_selection

A prerequisite for natural selection to result in adaptive evolution, novel traits and speciation, is the presence of heritable genetic variation that results in fitness differences. Genetic variation is the result of mutations, recombinations and alterations in the karyotype (the number, shape, size and internal arrangement of the chromosomes). Any of these changes might have an effect that is highly advantageous or highly disadvantageous, but large effects are very rare.

Without mutations, there is nothing for natural selection to act upon. There has to be an ape who mutates into a human being before natural selection can act. Like your award winning evolutionary biologist Japanese homey said in the previous post "use common sense". If there's nothing mutating there's nothing for nature to select. I revert your statement back to you, YOU need to understand what you are arguing before you argue it, when your own colleagues are pointing out there is little difference between the dogma of natural selection and the dogma of creationism, I would suggest you fall back and find a better understanding of what you are arguing for

 

[gho3st]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection#Evolution_by_means_of_natural_selection



Without mutations, there is nothing for natural selection to act upon. There has to be an ape who mutates into a human being before natural selection can act. Like your award winning evolutionary biologist Japanese homey said in the previous post "use common sense". If there's nothing mutating there's nothing for nature to select. I revert your statement back to you, YOU need to understand what you are arguing before you argue it, when your own colleagues are pointing out there is little difference between the dogma of natural selection and the dogma of creationism, I would suggest you fall back and find a better understanding of what you are arguing for

its how you keep going back to natural selection when you get stuck. You still haven't answered my question

 

[blackzeus]

its how you keep going back to natural selection when you get stuck. You still haven't answered my question

please ask your question again, I must have missed it.

 

[HacksawJimThuggin]

Not sure if it's been mentioned or not, but I'm curious to know what you guys think about the numerous scientific/prophesies mentioned in the Quran that no illiterate in a cave could have possibly known about at the time.

 

[Mission249]

The fatal flaw in your opinion is that evolution (according to evolutionary theory) is purely driven by natural selection

I didn't say that. And evolutionary synthesis doesn't say that.

Are you going to argue with your own colleagues?
http://discovermagazine.com/2014/march/12-mutation-not-natural-selection-drives-evolution

Nothing I said contradicts with what the majority of what "my own colleagues" are saying...

From the article: You’ve been talking about mutation-driven evolution for more than three decades. Why do you think the majority of evolutionary biologists remain in the natural selection camp?

Regardless, did you read the article you linked? That's the problem when you try to cherry-pick quotes that you think back you up, from scientists who fundamentally disagree with you about the issue at hand. You end up looking silly. You believe his evidence, but disagree with its conclusion? Come on, stop this cherry-picking sloppiness.

Read his response to the aforementioned question and the following question to understand that his research is more nuanced than what you're saying:

From the article: Someone on the outside looking in at the debate might say you and other researchers are splitting hairs, that both mutation and natural selection drive evolution.

But let's break it down: So you're argument is "everyone says it's a combination of factors. Some people disagree about which factor is more important. So in my experiment, I can completely remove a factor that doesn't help my argument"? Because if that's your argument. It's a non-starter. If it's not, then please clarify.

 

[NkrumahWasRight Is Wrong]

Not sure if it's been mentioned or not, but I'm curious to know what you guys think about the numerous scientific/prophesies mentioned in the Quran that no illiterate in a cave could have possibly known about at the time.

The most impressive thing about the Qu'ran to me is all the mathematical intricacies linked to the number 19.

In terms of prophecies etc idk, not too much of a scholar on it tbh and am also generally a skeptic of "prophecies", specifically ones written so long ago. People or a person could write a 1000 page book centuries ago and postulated based on trends noticed about people/societal developments and whatever scientific knowledge they had at the time about nature and be considered correct on a lot of it. With that said, again, I mean no disrespect to Islam or the Qu'ran and do not claim to be very well read on it.

 

[badvillain]

ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

BY NICK BOSTROM

Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University

Published in Philosophical Quarterly (2003) Vol. 53, No. 211, pp. 243-255.

[www.simulation-argument.com]

pdf-version: [PDF]




ABSTRACT


This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their 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 will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.



I. INTRODUCTION

Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears. That is the basic idea. The rest of this paper will spell it out more carefully.

Apart form the interest this thesis may hold for those who are engaged in futuristic speculation, there are also more purely theoretical rewards. The argument provides a stimulus for formulating some methodological and metaphysical questions, and it suggests naturalistic analogies to certain traditional religious conceptions, which some may find amusing or thought-provoking.

The structure of the paper is as follows. First, we formulate an assumption that we need to import from the philosophy of mind in order to get the argument started. Second, we consider some empirical reasons for thinking that running vastly many simulations of human minds would be within the capability of a future civilization that has developed many of those technologies that can already be shown to be compatible with known physical laws and engineering constraints. This part is not philosophically necessary but it provides an incentive for paying attention to the rest. Then follows the core of the argument, which makes use of some simple probability theory, and a section providing support for a weak indifference principle that the argument employs. Lastly, we discuss some interpretations of the disjunction, mentioned in the abstract, that forms the conclusion of the simulation argument.


II. THE ASSUMPTION OF SUBSTRATE-INDEPENDENCE

A common assumption in the philosophy of mind is that of substrate-independence. The idea is that mental states can supervene on any of a broad class of physical substrates. Provided a system implements the right sort of computational structures and processes, it can be associated with conscious experiences. It is not an essential property of consciousness that it is implemented on carbon-based biological neural networks inside a cranium: silicon-based processors inside a computer could in principle do the trick as well.

Arguments for this thesis have been given in the literature, and although it is not entirely uncontroversial, we shall here take it as a given.

The argument we shall present does not, however, depend on any very strong version of functionalism or computationalism. For example, we need not assume that the thesis of substrate-independence is necessarily true (either analytically or metaphysically) – just that, in fact, a computer running a suitable program would be conscious. Moreover, we need not assume that in order to create a mind on a computer it would be sufficient to program it in such a way that it behaves like a human in all situations, including passing the Turing test etc. We need only the weaker assumption that it would suffice for the generation of subjective experiences that the computational processes of a human brain are structurally replicated in suitably fine-grained detail, such as on the level of individual synapses. This attenuated version of substrate-independence is quite widely accepted.

Neurotransmitters, nerve growth factors, and other chemicals that are smaller than a synapse clearly play a role in human cognition and learning. The substrate-independence thesis is not that the effects of these chemicals are small or irrelevant, but rather that they affect subjective experience only via their direct or indirect influence on computational activities. For example, if there can be no difference in subjective experience without there also being a difference in synaptic discharges, then the requisite detail of simulation is at the synaptic level (or higher).

[Source and citations: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html]

 

[badvillain]

III. THE TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITS OF COMPUTATION

At our current stage of technological development, we have neither sufficiently powerful hardware nor the requisite software to create conscious minds in computers. But persuasive arguments have been given to the effect that if technological progress continues unabatedthen these shortcomings will eventually be overcome. Some authors argue that this stage may be only a few decades away.[1] Yet present purposes require no assumptions about the time-scale. The simulation argument works equally well for those who think that it will take hundreds of thousands of years to reach a “posthuman” stage of civilization, where humankind has acquired most of the technological capabilities that one can currently show to be consistent with physical laws and with material and energy constraints.

Such a mature stage of technological development will make it possible to convert planets and other astronomical resources into enormously powerful computers. It is currently hard to be confident in any upper bound on the computing power that may be available to posthuman civilizations. As we are still lacking a “theory of everything”, we cannot rule out the possibility that novel physical phenomena, not allowed for in current physical theories, may be utilized to transcend those constraints[2] that in our current understanding impose theoretical limits on the information processing attainable in a given lump of matter. We can with much greater confidence establish lowerbounds on posthuman computation, by assuming only mechanisms that are already understood. For example, Eric Drexler has outlined a design for a system the size of a sugar cube (excluding cooling and power supply) that would perform 1021 instructions per second.[3]Another author gives a rough estimate of 1042 operations per second for a computer with a mass on order of a large planet.[4] (If we could create quantum computers, or learn to build computers out of nuclear matter or plasma, we could push closer to the theoretical limits. Seth Lloyd calculates an upper bound for a 1 kg computer of 5*1050 logical operations per second carried out on ~1031 bits.[5] However, it suffices for our purposes to use the more conservative estimate that presupposes only currently known design-principles.)

The amount of computing power needed to emulate a human mind can likewise be roughly estimated. One estimate, based on how computationally expensive it is to replicate the functionality of a piece of nervous tissue that we have already understood and whose functionality has been replicated in silico, contrast enhancement in the retina, yields a figure of ~1014 operations per second for the entire human brain.[6] An alternative estimate, based the number of synapses in the brain and their firing frequency, gives a figure of ~1016-1017operations per second.[7] Conceivably, even more could be required if we want to simulate in detail the internal workings of synapses and dendritic trees. However, it is likely that the human central nervous system has a high degree of redundancy on the mircoscale to compensate for the unreliability and noisiness of its neuronal components. One would therefore expect a substantial efficiency gain when using more reliable and versatile non-biological processors.

Memory seems to be a no more stringent constraint than processing power.[8] Moreover, since the maximum human sensory bandwidth is ~108 bits per second, simulating all sensory events incurs a negligible cost compared to simulating the cortical activity. We can therefore use the processing power required to simulate the central nervous system as an estimate of the total computational cost of simulating a human mind.

If the environment is included in the simulation, this will require additional computing power – how much depends on the scope and granularity of the simulation. Simulating the entire universe down to the quantum level is obviously infeasible, unless radically new physics is discovered. But in order to get a realistic simulation of human experience, much less is needed – only whatever is required to ensure that the simulated humans, interacting in normal human ways with their simulated environment, don’t notice any irregularities. The microscopic structure of the inside of the Earth can be safely omitted. Distant astronomical objects can have highly compressed representations: verisimilitude need extend to the narrow band of properties that we can observe from our planet or solar system spacecraft. On the surface of Earth, macroscopic objects in inhabited areas may need to be continuously simulated, but microscopic phenomena could likely be filled inad hoc. What you see through an electron microscope needs to look unsuspicious, but you usually have no way of confirming its coherence with unobserved parts of the microscopic world. Exceptions arise when we deliberately design systems to harness unobserved microscopic phenomena that operate in accordance with known principles to get results that we are able to independently verify. The paradigmatic case of this is a computer. The simulation may therefore need to include a continuous representation of computers down to the level of individual logic elements. This presents no problem, since our current computing power is negligible by posthuman standards.

Moreover, a posthuman simulator would have enough computing power to keep track of the detailed belief-states in all human brains at all times. Therefore, when it saw that a human was about to make an observation of the microscopic world, it could fill in sufficient detail in the simulation in the appropriate domain on an as-needed basis. Should any error occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. Alternatively, the director could skip back a few seconds and rerun the simulation in a way that avoids the problem.

It thus seems plausible that the main computational cost in creating simulations that are indistinguishable from physical reality for human minds in the simulation resides in simulating organic brains down to the neuronal or sub-neuronal level.[9] While it is not possible to get a very exact estimate of the cost of a realistic simulation of human history, we can use ~1033 - 1036 operations as a rough estimate[10]. As we gain more experience with virtual reality, we will get a better grasp of the computational requirements for making such worlds appear realistic to their visitors. But in any case, even if our estimate is off by several orders of magnitude, this does not matter much for our argument. We noted that a rough approximation of the computational power of a planetary-mass computer is 1042 operations per second, and that assumes only already known nanotechnological designs, which are probably far from optimal. A single such a computer could simulate the entire mental history of humankind (call this an ancestor-simulation) by using less than one millionth of its processing power for one second. A posthuman civilization may eventually build an astronomical number of such computers. We can conclude that the computing power available to a posthuman civilization is sufficient to run a huge number of ancestor-simulations even it allocates only a minute fraction of its resources to that purpose. We can draw this conclusion even while leaving a substantial margin of error in all our estimates.


·Posthuman civilizations would have enough computing power to run hugely many ancestor-simulations even while using only a tiny fraction of their resources for that purpose.

[Source and citations: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html]