It's an ongoing outrage that Nick Bostrom gets any credit for precisely the argument that I published years before him.

I was the first to publish a scientific article on the likeliehood that we are indeed simulated by positron-electron entities at least a googol years from what humans think is the present, in the magazine Quantum Science Fiction (which published both fact and fiction).

Years later, Nick Bostrom got great publicity by rediscovering my argument, and claiming that he was the first to publish.

It is widely believed by Physicists, yet neither proven nor unanimous, that the universe is a quantum computer.

Richard Feynman had this in mind (and discussed it with me) when he became the great-grandfather of Quantum Computing. There were some revisions in his original proposal, but still wide agreement with his assertion that the universe computes it own next state by real-time integration.

I've thought about that since he and I were at Caltech togther 1968-73. Before I graduated, I gave Post's corollary to Feynman: "The universe is the smallest (least action) computer that can compute or simulate the future of the entire universe."

I stated then and still believe that we could be nested as a simulation inside a larger universe, which could in turn be nested as a simulation inside a larger universe.

I specifically suggested that we (me and the readers of the essay) were likely to be embedded in a simulation by a far far future electron-positron civilization (citing Freeman Dyson's physics theories of the deep future).

I was the first to put this in print, at: "Human Destiny and the End of Time" [Quantum, No.39, Winter 1991/1992, Thrust Publications, 8217 Langport Terrace, Gaithersburg, MD 20877; ISSN 0198-6686.

Professor Gregory Benford acknowledged to me that he drew on this theory in his novels of the galactic core (whole sentences in his novels, even paragraphs, in italics, were from his notes while he read my essay, many sentences and phrases of mine were used with permission for poetic and cosmological value), and then years later philosopher Nick Bostrom (director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University) redicovered what I'd published first, and did a better job than I at getting mainstream PR on it.

The germ of the idea was in science fiction even before me and Feynman. "The Matrix" and "The 13th Floor" popularized the idea
further.

You might also ask Dr. G. David Brin why Brin dropped out of a publishing project with Dr. Bostrom, or why the founders of the Transhumanist movement disavow Dr. Bostrom.

Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | August 14, 2007 4:46 PM

If the universe is indeed an ongoing simulation, then originality and priority have no meaning, and outrage seems futile.

But the struggle for recognition, acknowledgement and the accompanying prestige does indeed seem real, as does the feeling of loss when being cheated.

How does the latter square with the notion of simulation?

Posted by: Howard Schamest | August 14, 2007 6:18 PM

i just want to let you all know that hubbard -- the reviled scientology founder -- came up with this concept (control of us "virtuals" by more creative sentients) maybe 50 -60 years ago. i am not affiliated with the scios but i think there's interesting stuff there. do you all read the wall street journal? check out the amazing article (8/10/07) "is this cheating?"

Posted by: roe begua | August 14, 2007 8:08 PM

This is kind of a digital anthropic principle argument. If true, I am surprised how boring the simulation is. Why is there no real magic? Why is everything painfully banal? If they are experimenting with history and can model every electron I hope they pull the plug soon.

S

Posted by: Scott Guerin | August 14, 2007 8:41 PM

I attest to the fact that "It is widely believed by Physicists, yet neither proven nor unanimous, that the universe is a quantum computer."

Norman Strax, physicist, my late husband, told me about the universe as computer when we were courting in 1979. From everything I know about him, Norman was cognizant of and working on this model of the universe from his time at Harvard, where he presented his dissertation on Neutron-proton Scattering in 1966. His interest in the topic may have been stimulated by ideas of Richard Feynman, one of his heroes, during or even before the period Jonathan Vos Post mentions ("Caltech . . . 1968-73").

Norman, half-jokingly, cited "the computer" for various daily-life events, e.g. coincidences. In virtual worlds like those generated by flight simulators, the program economizes by extending virtual reality only where the pilot moves his eyes. In our "reality," the computer economizes similarly, reusing events and/or splicing one event onto another, where we direct our attention. We're all familiar with encountering some long forgotten, rare or even seemingly unprecedented event or reference then, soon after, coming across it again, even multiple times. Norman regarded that as one small sign of the computer's/universe's letting slip a bit of how it works to save data storage space. And maybe just for fun, in play. I took this to mean that in this respect the universe/ computer is like a child learning to talk, who, acquiring a new word, especially a curious word, uses it again and again in rapid succession till she lets it go and it drops into the normal pattern of frequency in her speech. (If so the universe/computer is very like a person.)

I'm not a physicist and I'm not sure how this related to my husband's other interests in physics (magnetic monopoles and "time-backflow in time"), which were unpublished. I do know that about 30 mins before he died (May 7, 2002), he sent me on an errand to the corner drug store and I picked up the latest issue of the New Yorker, which featured 2 stories on the cover, one about a hobby-horse of mine (which as it happens is represented in key part now by the NYT computer as I write by the image of Vesalius's meditating skeleton on the sidebar of amazon ads) and the other about Einstein. This was one of our last communications before he died (of prostate cancer to liver and lungs, age 66). I said, Oh, Norman, look what they have on the cover. He said, OK. Help me to sit up.

John Tierney writes:
Then again, maybe the Prime Designer wouldn't allow any of his or her creations to start simulating their own worlds. Once they got smart enough to do so, they'd presumably realize, by Dr. Bostrom's logic, that they themselves were probably simulations. Would that ruin the fun for the Prime Designer?

If simulations stop once the simulated inhabitants understand what's going on, then I really shouldn't be spreading Dr. Bostrom's ideas. But if you're still around to read this, I guess the Prime Designer is reasonably tolerant, or maybe curious to see how we react once we start figuring out the situation.

Sure. Might be comforting to the unanalyzed to believe that the computer/universe lops years off certain lifespans because those individuals "realize what's going on." And/or that the Grand Simulator cuts off certain others here and there to take make them its own companions. However, isn't this a recycling of theology (especially of Christianity)? Even down to explaining the deaths of infants from disease or neglect by saying G-d wants them in Heaven? Why should we replace the model of a personal G-d with the model of a Prime Computer Geek? In some ways my husband was a religious man and from what I've read in some ways so was Feynman (and so too Einstein). Tell me if I'm wrong, but this idea of the Prime Designer seems like a vulgarization compared to the theory which Feynman, Vos Post, my husband and others have pursued in speaking and writing of the world as a simulation and universe as a computer.

Posted by: Jacqueline Strax | August 14, 2007 9:26 PM

Banned? I'm banned from trackbacking? Fine, see if I...who am I kidding? I love this stuff.

It's probably an automated message, but I thought I'd drop you a line, since I think the "www.typepad.com" domain's been blacklisted by Scienceblogs.

Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | August 14, 2007 10:40 PM

Another thought from a non-physicist: it seems like physicists are always trying to reconcile relativity and quantum physics. But if the universe is just a simulation, could it be that a resolution of certain quandaries (of physics)is impossible?

Posted by: ngong | August 14, 2007 10:47 PM

To my opinion, the hypothesis that posthumans created a super-computer generating our lives in a simulation is simply false. One needs to keep in mind that, all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one. There are too many improbable assumptions in the simulation hypothesis.

Posted by: Ali Develi | August 15, 2007 12:05 PM

First, I thank the blog-host for this fine thread.

Second, I am delighted with the comments.

Third, I agree that L. Ron Hubbard wrote about the concept, most entertainingly in "Typewriter in the Sky" which was better thought through than a recent film about a man confronting the author of the book in which he realizes he is a character. Hubbard wrote, to use the NESFA summary: an excellent example of a character being projected into a story and forced to live out the plot line. Horace Hackett, writer of melodrama, crime, love stories, etc. unknowingly sends his friend Mike de Wolf into a world of pirates on the Spanish Main. Not strictly SF but certainly close enough in feeling to be included, if only for the great last line.
[Unknown 4:3 November 1940 (pp.9-) and 4:4 December 1940]; Fear & Typewriter in the Sky, Gnome Press, 1951; Typewriter in the Sky & Fear, Kemsley CT409, 1952]

See also: Moore, Raylyn, "Out of Control"
George Mapstead is taking adult education classes in order to learn to be a writer; it doesn't seem to help. However, after his nervous breakdown he creates a fantasy world and finds himself in it. He is able to modify this world by writing on his typewriter (the opposite of the situation in Typewriter in the Sky). This control enables him to improve his mundane life and he decides to dismantle the fantasy universe. However, he does so complete a job that he finds he has forgotten to provide himself with the means of returning home. [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 39:2 August 1970 (pp.118-128); Laughing Space, (edited by Isaac Asimov & Janet O. Jeppson), Houghton Mifflin 30519-5, March 1982 (pp.374-382)]

As a child, I found the ending of "Harold and the Purple Crayon" a terrifying ontological epistemological nightmare. Amazon reviews: "One night, after thinking it over for some time, Harold decided to go for a walk in the moonlight." So begins this gentle story that shows just how far your imagination can take you. Armed only with an oversized purple crayon, young Harold draws himself a landscape full of beauty and excitement. But this is no hare-brained, impulsive flight of fantasy. Cherubic, round-headed Harold conducts his adventure with the utmost prudence, letting his imagination run free, but keeping his wits about him all the while. He takes the necessary purple-crayon precautions: drawing landmarks to ensure he won't get lost; sketching a boat when he finds himself in deep water; and creating a purple pie picnic when he feels the first pangs of hunger."

"Crockett Johnson's understated tribute to the imagination was first published in 1955, and has been inspiring readers of all ages ever since. Harold's quiet but magical journey reminds us of the marvels the mind can create, and also gives us the wondrous sense that anything is possible."

Fourth, I'm particularly happy to hear about Dr. Norman Strax. I'm unclear on Feynman's religious beliefs, for all the time we spent together, but he did agree with my that Einstein was religious in a way quite parallel to Spinoza. Einstein was Oppenheimer's mentor, Oppenheimer was one of Feynman's mentors, so I heard a lot from Feynman about Einstein.

Fifth, ngong, I'm not particularly bitter about this. Given that I've produced over 2,500 publications, presentations, and broadcasts, it is statistically inevitable that I've been plagiarized plenty of times. Including by the coauthor of a popular textbook which now bears only the department chairman's name, Arbib, and likewise the Chair later removed my name from the Teacher's Guide of which I was sole author. I, a mere grad student, got a flat $2,000 but he earned at least $250,000 from multiple editions, translations, and reprints. Feynman never got a penny for the paperback rights to his Lecture Notes in Physics because, he says, he never expected that such a thing could be published.

Once I wasted $250,000 in legal fees pursuing the matter, which had led to my being fired from a lucrative job by the plagiarist's defamations. That was a waste of time, to be sure.

Someday, as an old man, I'll be a tenured professor, and my tales of times spent face-to-face with Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Feynman, Jerry Garcia, Allan Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and others, will be listened to with amazement by students not yet born.

Until then, I'll keep creating and spreading ideas and, as my friend Dave Brin suggests, being the genial promulgator of wisdom instead of the a bitter martyr to parasitism.

And, whether or not I'm a simulation, I prefer to act AS IF there is Free Will, and thus take full responsibility for my actions. My wife told me to say so.

Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | August 15, 2007 4:05 PM

He was even earlier than the above dates which were from Wikipedia:

Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer (1967)

Simulations of God: The Science of Belief (1956)

from: http://www.johnclilly.com/

Posted by: Scott Bryson | August 15, 2007 5:17 PM

Dear Mo,
A very fitting sequel to your previous 'matrix' article. Somehow, I could not resist commenting on this article,since I too wrote a quasi-scientific article regarding 'Reincarnation' in my blog, where I pondered about 'virtual identities' floating in space. Thus, I am not the only one who harbors this apparently 'crazy' idea.
Great going!!

Posted by: Amiya Sarkar | August 16, 2007 1:48 AM

"Transferring the human soul" from the physical particles organized in a biological systems-neural cell(networks) to another physical systems like semiconductors or maybe in the future something more sophisticated. Could be maybe one of the steps of Evolution, with the purpose for increasing the chance for survivor of the human soul.
Our behavior has one purpose to survive, and the "execution of the human soul" - human behavior is strongly determinated, well Spinoza put it this way: "Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and desires, but are ignorant of the causes by which they are led to wish and desire." And Schopenhauer said pretty much the same thing when he said: "A man can surely do what he [wants] to do, but cannot determine what he [wants]." Even Einstein agreed with Schopenhauer.
So the conclusion is that " we have not made the rules, we just execute them " and it's just a meter on which physical environment this happens - biological or other kind of.

Posted by: Labinot Marku | August 16, 2007 6:48 PM

In the long breeding-strain of that kind of thought experiments (aka. the philosophical alternative to lab work made by scientists that it is used to know the consecuences of our ideas), the first author credited with imagine "what if" -we are livng in a world of false seemings- etc. was Plato (cave alegory) then the second most famous was Descartes (malignant genius), and in modern times was followed by Putnam (a brain in a vat), Chalmers with his cultural dablings with the "Matrix saga" and perhaps the last one, because he launchs a new and exciting "what if" we are running in a simulation made by future humans (post-humans or trans-humans) simulating their own past, is certainly... Bostrom.

Posted by: Anibal | August 17, 2007 5:02 AM

The background of my article "Human Destiny and the End of Time",
published years before Bostrom's rediscovery, was my own prior
publications on extrapolating the advance in computing power.

Jonathan V. Post, "Quintillabit: Parameters of a Hyperlarge Database",
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Very Large
Databases,
Montreal, Canada, 1-3 October 1980

The above coined the term "1 Shannon = 1 mole, avogadro's number, of bits."

Simulating a person, or the entire universe, is estimated in Shannons.

My PhD work included analyses of how many bytes per second are
processed in a singel cell (bacterium or yeast) and extrapolating to
how many computations per second are needed to simulate an entire
organism in ultra-high resolution. The chapters of that dissertation, arguably the first ever on what became Nanotechnology, were read worldwide, and expecially intrigued scientists at U. Moscow and U. Leningrad, which the State Department preferred I not correspond (this being the Cold War, and my doing highly classified work for Boeing, Rockwell, Lockheed, Army, Navy, and Air Force).

So I am not asserting that I published PART of what made Bostrom
famous. I'm asserting, with complete support from edited literature, that I discovered ALL of what he later claimed, and that I left out the more foolish parts of his hand-waving.

Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | August 18, 2007 12:40 PM

Actually, Zachary has just turned up what I think is the fatal flaw of the idea -- a basic presumption that matter can in fact be simulated. The problem is that quantum mechanics plus chaos theory pretty well scotch the possibility of "strong determinism", which tends to undercut the idea of "multiple runs of the universe". If you think about it, those would come out as completely separate universes, perhaps similar in overall structure, but completely different in detail.

It remains possible that physical law in general could be "emulated" by a cellular automata, but the whole point of that computational structure, is that every point of the "simulation space" carries its own state. There's little or no non-local interaction, much less I/O as such. Basically, that's not a "simulation" of reality you're talking about, it's an implementation. The only way to distinguish it from a genuine reality would be to find an I/O port, or something else which is clearly not fully constrained by local physics. (Speaking of which, I think James Hogan hit on this idea too... one of the Giants novels.)

Posted by: David Harmon | August 20, 2007 12:10 PM

Note that Bostrom, over at Robin Hanson's blog, reacting to Peter Woit's deleting comments about Science Fiction predecessors to Bostrom, utterly fails to address the issue of his blatant failure to cite those who published his idea before him. You'd think that a real human being would feel the need to apologize. The Bostrom on Hanson's blog must be just a simulation.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/08/pseudo-criticis.html#comment-80102141

Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | August 20, 2007 10:25 PM