111 | Nick Bostrom on Anthropic Selection and Living in a Simulation

111 | Nick Bostrom on Anthropic Selection and Living in a Simulation

Human civilization is only a few thousand years old (depending on how we count). So if civilization will ultimately last for millions of years, it could be considered surprising that we've found ourselves so early in history. Should we therefore predict that human civilization will probably disappear within a few thousand years? This "Doomsday Argument" shares a family resemblance to ideas used by many professional cosmologists to judge whether a model of the universe is natural or not. Philosopher Nick Bostrom is the world's expert on these kinds of anthropic arguments. We talk through them, leading to the biggest doozy of them all: the idea that our perceived reality might be a computer simulation being run by enormously more powerful beings.

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Nick Bostrom received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the London School of Economics. He also has bachelor's degrees in philosophy, mathematics, logic, and artificial intelligence from the University of Gothenburg, an M.A. in philosophy and physics from the University of Stockholm, and an M.Sc. in computational neuroscience from King's College London. He is currently a Professor of Applied Ethics at the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology. He is the author of Anthropic Bias: Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.


Episoder(417)

213 | Timiebi Aganaba on Law and Governance in Space

213 | Timiebi Aganaba on Law and Governance in Space

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212 | Chiara Mingarelli on Searching for Black Holes with Pulsars

212 | Chiara Mingarelli on Searching for Black Holes with Pulsars

The detection of gravitational waves from inspiraling black holes by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations was rightly celebrated as a landmark achievement in physics and astronomy. But ultra-precise grou...

26 Sep 20221h 26min

211 | Solo: Secrets of Einstein's Equation

211 | Solo: Secrets of Einstein's Equation

My little pandemic-lockdown contribution to the world was a series of videos called The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. The idea was to explain physics in a pedagogical way, concentrating on establishe...

19 Sep 20221h 51min

210 | Randall Munroe on Imagining What If...?

210 | Randall Munroe on Imagining What If...?

What's the fastest way to get a human being around a racetrack, if we ignore all the rules of racing? How many pages would you have to read to absorb all of the government laws that apply to you? It's...

12 Sep 20221h 8min

209 | Brad DeLong on Why the 20th Century Fell Short of Utopia

209 | Brad DeLong on Why the 20th Century Fell Short of Utopia

People throughout history have imagined ideal societies of various sorts. As the twentieth century dawned, advances in manufacturing and communication arguably brought the idea of utopia within our pr...

5 Sep 20221h 24min

AMA | September 2022

AMA | September 2022

Welcome to the September 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by P...

29 Aug 20223h 30min

208 | Rick Beato on the Theory of Popular Music

208 | Rick Beato on the Theory of Popular Music

There is no human endeavor that does not have a theory of it — a set of ideas about what makes it work and how to do it well. Music is no exception, popular music included — there are reasons why cert...

22 Aug 20221h 11min

207 | William MacAskill on Maximizing Good in the Present and Future

207 | William MacAskill on Maximizing Good in the Present and Future

It's always a little humbling to think about what affects your words and actions might have on other people, not only right now but potentially well into the future. Now take that humble feeling and p...

15 Aug 20221h 42min

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