by Daniel Yim
As I’ve mentioned, the views he’s offered are paradoxical when it comes to objective truth. At a very minimum, the repeated success of the scientific method and the rules of logic give us good reason to believe those approaches are superior. If the Avatar were right, there is no reason to believe our science-based current technology (constructed by a belief system that, by his lights, is in no way special) would be any better at, say, agriculture or medicine, than astrology was in the 1600s. That’s simply not true. These issues matter. It’s not merely theoretical. When people have nonsensical beliefs about epistemic best practices, people die.
I enjoyed God’s Debris. That said, if you delivered a package to a guy who sold you this bill of goods and you believed he was omniscient, I’d tell you I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
18
Scott Adams and the Pinocchio Fallacy
DAVID RAMSAY STEELE
Ever since 1999, many popular writers have been telling us that we’re very probably all “living in a simulation.” Scott Adams is one of these many. On his Periscopes and on his blog, Scott often returns to this theme. And in Win Bigly, he asserts it strongly (p. 35) and actually has an appendix where he tells us how he thinks we can prove it (pp. 267–270).
The idea that we might all be living in a simulation was given its biggest boost by the 1999 movie The Matrix. In The Matrix, the world we think is real is in fact a gigantic simulation: all the seemingly real facts about the world are not what they appear to be. The human beings who inhabit this world are real, but their bodies are actually being maintained in tanks, and their brains are being fed with information about a physical world which does not truly exist, or if you want to quibble, exists in a form very different from the way it appears. This world can be seen as an involuntary collective delusion, a delusion from which a few have managed to free themselves by “taking the red pill.”
The Matrix has some puzzling features which have exercised the minds of fans ever since it appeared. It raises some questions which are not very well answered in the story. For instance, the movie definitely conveys the idea that the electronic “machines” or “Agents” who police the Matrix desperately need the humans, but why they need them is unclear and still controversial among Matrix fans. Why keep billions of humans in tanks, at enormous expense?
We’re told that the humans are being exploited for the “energy” they provide and they are called “coppertops” (a reference to Duracell batteries). But in terms of literal energy output, measured in watts, this makes no sense. It would not be feasible to recover from the humans more than a minute fraction of the energy required to keep them alive and functioning in their tanks.
This, like many other questions, can be brushed aside with the defense that it’s fiction and not everything has to be explained. There are things going on which we’re not told about, and which the characters in the story don’t know about. Morpheus doesn’t explain everything, and the things he does tell Neo and the others, with a great show of certainty, could be his mistaken conclusions (as we eventually learn, at least in a few particulars, they are).
Since the readers of this chapter will all have an IQ above the fortieth percentile, you don’t need me to tell you that the point of The Matrix is an allegory of the Marxist theory of exploitation and the Marxist theory of ideology. The theory that workers are exploited by capitalists for their “surplus-value” is just as wrongheaded and untenable as the theory that we’re all in a computer simulation being exploited for our “energy,” but here I’m going to take the Matrix story seriously and look at the notion that we’re literally “in a simulation.”
In The Matrix, the humans like Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus really are flesh-and-blood humans. It’s just that, before they take the red pill, their bodies are actually inert in tanks, and the world they think they experience is only virtual, a computer simulation. So the human inhabitants of the Matrix do have bodies, and the story requires they must have bodies for the whole shebang to work.
But the “Agents” do seem to be purely electronic entities, able to manifest themselves as fake flesh and blood in the Matrix, but actually without any flesh and blood counterpart. There are also entities like “the Woman in the Red Dress,” who are probably not conscious beings but merely programs inserted into the Matrix, or in this case into a training duplicate of the Matrix. We don’t know how many of these entities there are in the actual Matrix.
The version of the “simulation” theory which has now become popular, and which is advocated by Scott Adams, dispenses with the bodies in tanks. It asks us to accept that we are all nothing but pieces of software, chunks of code. So, according to this theory, we’re more like the Agents or like the Woman in the Red Dress than like Neo or Trinity. As Scott Adams recognizes, this means that in the simulation theory, we are not merely in a simulation (as in The Matrix), but we are simulations (p. 35).
But is it possible for software code to be conscious? Consider another question. Pinocchio is a boy made entirely of wood. Pinocchio gets the idea he would like to be “a real boy,” not just a wooden boy. Could this story possibly be true? Of course not! And why not? Because to develop even a vague hankering to be a real boy entails being conscious. And a block of wood is not the sort of thing that could ever be conscious. A living body containing a nervous system is the sort of thing that could be conscious, and a block of wood is not very much like a living body containing a nervous system.
Why You Cannot Be (in) a Simulation
The theory that “we’re all (very probably) living in a simulation” was given a big boost by the philosopher Nick Bostrom. Numerous people outside philosophy have taken Bostrom’s argument seriously, and it has spread like a prairie meme among people who write and talk about society, politics, and popular culture.
Bostrom is a serious philosopher and his argument, if you look at it closely, is much more tentative and qualified than the arguments of those, like Scott Adams, who have popularized this approach. I think that Bostrom is mistaken, but I’m not here directly refuting Bostrom, only some of his popularizers like Scott Adams.
The reason you can’t be a simulation is because you have conscious experiences. For example, you have sometimes been sick to your stomach and you have sometimes felt euphoric. You have sometimes been sad and sometimes elated. You have sometimes felt itches and sometimes tickles. You have sometimes dreaded something and sometimes eagerly anticipated something. Of course, if you never have experienced anything like those things, you probably are a simulation. You don’t know what you’re missing, but then, you don’t know anything.
Can these conscious experiences be simulated? Of course they can, but a simulation is never the real thing. A simulation of a weather system does not create real thunderstorms or real hurricanes. No one gets wet when a rainstorm is simulated. No trainee pilot has been burned to death in a flight simulator which simulated a crash. In exactly the same way, no one has a conscious experience when a conscious personality is simulated. A simulation is not a replication. A simulation of consciousness is not consciousness and does not create any consciousness. A simulation of a mind is totally mindless, just like sticks and stones and blocks of wood.
So, can conscious experience be replicated? Of course it can. We do this every time we produce a baby. Our babies have conscious experiences, just as we do, and as they grow up, their conscious experiences become even more like ours. We could, perhaps, one day grow brains outside animal bodies, human or non-human, and these brains could have conscious experiences.
It is possible to imagine humans one day designing and creating new kinds of conscious animals “from scratch,” so to speak. But these would be real, bodily creatures (literal “creatures” in this case, since we would have created them). Nothing can be conscious without a body; nothing can be conscious except a body.
This isn’t at all what the “simulation” proponents like Scott Adams have in mind. What they do have in mind is a situation somewhat like that i
n The Matrix, except that there would be no bodies in tanks. There would be no bodies at all. Instead, conscious thoughts would be generated within electronic computers.
This, I maintain, is quite clearly out of the question. It can never happen and therefore we can never “make progress” towards it. We can be as certain as we can be of anything at all that we are not simulations living in such a simulation world. The world we perceive is real, not fake, and our flesh and blood bodies are parts of this world.
The Simulated World
When popular writers like Scott Adams claim that we’re probably living in a simulation, they make a number of assumptions. They take it for granted that the inhabitants of this fake world are just the same kinds of minds, and just the same particular individual personalities, as would inhabit the real world (supposing that the fake world were actually to be not fake but real).
Scott Adams betrays no doubt that the personality of Scott Adams is real, the personality of Donald Trump is real, the personality of Hillary Clinton is real, and the personality of all the minor member of the cast, such as David Ramsay Steele, are real. In this respect, the “simulated” world is just like the world of The Matrix: all of the personalities, or at least many of them, do exist, but each is experiencing a fake reality, artificially constructed.
These writers, including Scott, also assume that it’s the same, identical fake reality for all the billions of us. Scott doesn’t suppose that he’s the only “simulated” mind, and that the rest of us are just props in his fake reality (like the Woman in the Red Dress). If he did allow this possibility, it might reduce his incentive to convince us that we’re probably living in the fake reality—since he would be trying to convince what amount to little more than figments of his imagination that they are little more than figments of his imagination, and why bother? Especially as Scott keeps reminding us that he has “fuck-you money,” is happier and healthier than he has ever been before, and is generally thoroughly chuffed about life.
Scott also doesn’t generally doubt that the laws of nature, and the laws of mathematics, are pretty much the same in the fake reality as they would be in the fake reality if it were in fact not fake but real. All proponents of the fake reality theory, and most definitely Scott Adams, argue for the likelihood of the fake reality by appealing to laws of nature and logic (including mathematics) as we discover them in what we take to be reality, which is actually, according to their argument, likely to be fake reality. So they assume that the laws of nature and of logic are the same in the fake reality as they would be in the fake reality if it were not actually fake but real, and presumably also the same as they are in the real reality that underpins the fake reality (for we mustn’t forget that for the theory of a fake reality to be true, there has to be a real reality which generates the fake reality).
Scott makes the interesting suggestion that some of the laws of the universe may have been concocted to put limits on what we can find out (because the architects of the simulation face cost constraints). So, we can’t travel at above the speed of light, and therefore can’t get beyond a certain distance in the universe (Win Bigly, p. 268). Scott apparently doesn’t notice that if the fake universe we think we’re living in includes ad hoc adjustments to physical laws, then the whole argument for thinking we’re probably in a simulation is undermined.
What Is Consciousness?
Consciousnesss involves inner, subjective experience. Here are some examples of conscious states:
•feeling happy
•feeling miserable
•feeling pain
•feeling an itch
•feeling a tickle
•feeling apprehensive because there is an earthquake
•feeling apprehensive for no apparent reason
•believing something (feeling convinced that something is true)
•believing that the world we live in might be some kind of fake construction
•hoping that things will get better
•fearing that things will get worse
•feeling hungry or thirsty
•feeling that something is meaningful
•feeling that something is not just meaningful but very important
No one, at the present time, has the slightest idea how to design a computer or any other machine that experiences any of these states, except by reproducing or somehow reconstructing a living animal with a brain. And, related to that, no one has the slightest idea how to design a computer that can understand what it’s doing or can attribute meaning to anything.
Now, you might raise the objection that these inner, subjective states are of no importance. If we can construct a simulation of interacting conscious minds, what does it matter that it’s just a simulation, that there is actually no consciousness?
Well, suppose I were to tell you that I’m about to give you an injection. After that injection, your body will continue to behave, so far as anyone can observe, just like it does now. It will talk in coherent sentences and give the appearance of expressing emotions, but really it will be bereft of emotions or of any conscious feelings. Your inner subjective state will be that of someone in a deep coma—that is, you will not have any inner subjective state. You will never again have any experiences, even though your body will continue to behave normally.
Assuming you understand me and believe what I’m telling you, you will view the injection as lethal. I will be threatening you with murder. From the moment of that injection, you’ll be dead meat, even though your body will continue to operate normally. You will be legally alive but there will be no “you” any more.
So, nothing is more important than consciousness. Nothing could ever be more vital than consciousness, because without consciousness nothing can have any meaning. Paraphrasing the King James version of 1 Corinthians 13, we may say:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not consciousness, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
That would indeed be precisely the death of being turned into a mindless robot.
However, the question of the vital importance of consciousness is, strictly speaking, a side-issue. More fundamental to the argument is the fact that you are conscious, and you know you are conscious, whether or not you or I judge this to be of any importance. So it doesn’t matter for the argument whether it’s important that you’re conscious. All that matters is that your being conscious proves that you cannot be a simulation.
But now you might say, granted that no one has the slightest idea how to make a machine, other than an animal body, have conscious experiences, who’s to say that some way of doing this might not be discovered, perhaps thousands of years from now? The quick answer is that we can’t rule out this possibility, but that the making of an artificial consciousness will require the arrangement of matter and energy in a particular way, in effect the creation of a new kind of conscious body—even thought it might, conceivably, be a conscious body based on a different kind of chemistry—and that this arrangement of matter and energy can’t possibly be simply lines of code, because simulation can never amount to replication.
Scott refers to “the simple fact that we will someday be able to create software simulations that believe they are real creatures” (p. 35). But this “simple fact” is a simple falsehood; the simple fact is that we will never be able to make software that believes anything at all. Believing, like understanding, is just one of those things that computers can’t do (see Hubert Dreyfus, What Computers Still Can’t Do).
How Some People Typically “Argue” for the Simulated World
When popular writers explain to us why they think we’re probably living in a simulation, they all say more or less the same thing. First, they soften us up by suggesting that computers are “intelligent,” and as they get better and better, they will become more and more “intelligent.”
However, the word “intelligent” is ambiguous. Deep Blue, the program that won a chess game against Garry Kasparov,
was intelligent in one sense but not in another. Deep Blue had no inkling of what it was doing. Deep Blue, just like a ten-dollar pocket calculator, had not the faintest notion of what was going on. It understood nothing. It was unable to see meaning in anything. It had no idea it was playing a game, and no notion of what playing a game means.
The use of the term “processing power” is then brought in to add to the ambiguity. The inattentive reader may pick up the idea that there is some general thing called “processing power” which can produce consciousness if there is enough of it. Computers do processing and so does the brain, right? But then, so does a sewage treatment plant and so does a soap factory, and we don’t expect either of them to create consciousness, no matter how much processing they do.
We may be tempted to think like this: computation is somewhat analogous to thought, and thought is a conscious process, therefore computation is close enough to a kind of consciousness. But no amount of computation can produce consciousness. We do not know of any “processing power” that could ever produce thought.
We will then be told that we can assume “substrate-independence” meaning that consciousness doesn’t depend on any particular type of physical system. Here two confusions are combined. First, the fact that we don’t know enough to rule out the possibility that some other substrate might work is rephrased to suggest that we know that some other substrate might work.
Second, the issue of whether there might possibly be a different kind of substrate is confused with the issue of whether a particular system picked at random might be that different kind of substrate.
Sometimes confusion is piled upon confusion when it is suggested that the issue is between carbon-based systems (like us) and silicon-based systems (like computers). A computer could be built using carbon instead of silicon, and it would be equally incapable of consciousness or thought. Carbon has amazing properties unlike any other element, which is why chemistry is divided into two great kingdoms: organic (involving carbon) and inorganic (without carbon). To surmise that life above a certain level of complexity might just have to be carbon-based is not at all crazy.