Saturday, September 10, 2005

Evolution as simulation

Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom, and head of the new Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford has written some insightful articles on whether we are living in a computer simulation. The abstract for his central argument is based on the following propositions:

(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;

(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);

(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

This simulation-argument concerns whether the future of our species evolution is to become 'like gods' in order to run our own simulations and hence join the cyclic-cosmic-circuit. This, for me, has serious implications upon the function of our DNA, since biology has already found that DNA emits biophotons to act as a form of holographic resonance (see the work of biophysicist Mae Wan-Ho at the Open University); and would also point to some interesting comparisons to the visions experienced under shamanistic conditions (see 'The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge' by Jeremy Narby).

What would this mean for humanity and 'what it means to be human' if this was the case. Could we handle the implications?

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