statistical thinking, religion, and the matrix

[PLOlover]

http://www.simulation-argument.com/matrix.html

Interesting article. By means of Bayes Theorum we are all most likely computer simulations.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
The Simulation Argument: Why the Probability that You Are Living in a Matrix is Quite High

By means of Bayes Theorem we are all most likely computer simulations.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not at all.

Here's a crucial and quite typical mistake in the article:

[ QUOTE ]
We should accept as true at least one of the following three propositions:

(1) The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small.
...


[/ QUOTE ]

I already claimed that we cannot work on probabilistic scenarios when speculating on what's driving the cosmos, if anything does. The reason is that, when we take initial state A (going back a significant amount of time, e.g. two hundred million years) and compare it to state B (which would be about now), the ways that A could "lose its way" so that B would never "happen" are so numerous as to approach infinity, if the word has any meaning. Fooling around with probabilistic notions is useless in such a scope.

I put it to you that the probabilities of
1. You being an ant that was crushed by the foot of a soldier of Hannibal crossing the Alps,
2. You being who you are,
3. The human race never existing at all,
4. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards meeting on the train the morning that Mick was carrying some old blues records,

have all the same value, and they all approach 1/infinity.

[PLOlover]

I've petitioned the great cpu to cut back your resources.