[From PopTech] Vinge, the science fiction writer, talked about nutty stuff, presenting seriously insane ideas with the right mix of conviction and humor to suspend our disbelief.

Vinge began by giving us a Google URL, i.e., telling us to find a site by looking up “vinge technological singularity” in Google. That leads to a page about “the singularity,” the extropian notion that “…we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.” What will life be like for those before and after the change? This lead him to talk, with only a glimmer of a smile, about life for the “early post-humans.”

“The surface of the earth may not turn out to be the best place to think.” Maybe we’ll have to seek out better places. (Better in what way? Better reading light?) Vinge points us to Hans Moravec’s “Pigs in Cyberspace” that suggests that we convert the universe into a place that computes. [What a lead in to Wolfram, who speaks in the next session.]

Now for the next step. Vinge suggests that the “principle of mediocrity,” along with Occam’s Razor and entropic rules, are ways of getting answers when you don’t have facts. The Principle of Mediocrity says that if you don’t know what’s going on, assume you’re an average case. E.g., the earth isn’t special, so the planets probably don’t revolve around us. Moravec’s conclusion is that the principle of mediocrity says that it is almost certain that we are ourselves living in a simulation. Says Vinge: “This is a moderately logical argment, especially if you are into this sort of thing” (i.e., if you’re a nutcase).

But is this an “operationally significant issue”? Vinge says we might actually be able to tell if we’re living in a simulation by “looking for the jaggies.” (The “jaggies” is the stairstep effect you get with straight lines painted in inadequate resolution.) Perhaps, he suggests, the jaggies are the quantum mechanical anomalies. Apparently there are physicists who take this seriously.

Great fun.

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