Hey guys, what are your thoughts on the existence of extraterrestrial life and the potential involvement of governments in concealing or studying such entities.
I’m agnostic. If you find the statistical probability argument for the existence of aliens salient, then by the same token you should believe that our reality is a simulation. In which case, the existence of aliens once again becomes questionable; the statistical probabilities of an infinite simulated universe are outside the realm of our current knowledge.
edit: See comment below on Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Hypothesis.
I don’t follow how possible aliens = simulation. And what’s the basis for what we experience being defined as simulation or not? Are we in a computer, or everything is a hallucination?
Sorry, I suppose people haven’t heard of the “Simulation hypothesis” in philosophy.
Nick Bostrom argued that, statistically, it is more likely that we live in a simulation than not. Assume that an advanced civilization could build a machine with enormous computing power, sufficient to simulate a human mind and a universe “around” it. It follows that the number of such simulated minds/universes could be near infinite. So the probability of our actually being in a simulated universe dwarfs the probability that our reality is not a simulation.
OK I think I follow now. If one believes the possibility of aliens based on probability, then they should also consider the possibility that the universe is a simulation?
