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Simulated minds in ancestor simulations

unobserved Proposed in the literature. Nobody has observed one.

Bostrom's trilemma: either almost no civilisations reach a posthuman stage, or almost none run ancestor simulations, or we almost certainly live in one.

Bostrom's trilemma: either almost no civilisations reach a posthuman stage, or almost none run ancestor simulations, or we almost certainly live in one. It assumes the mind doesn't depend on what it runs on (substrate independence). It's a philosophical argument, not an observation.

Sources

• Bostrom N (2003). Are we living in a computer simulation? Philosophical Quarterly 53(211):243-255. doi:10.1111/1467-9213.00309.