Calculator

Simulation Odds Calculator

In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom argued that if civilizations like ours often survive and like running "ancestor simulations", most minds like yours would be simulated. Set your own guesses below.

Presets

Of all human-level technological civilizations, the percentage that survive long enough to get extremely advanced computing.

Of those, the percentage that would run detailed simulations of their own history.

Log scale, from 0 up to 1030. Each simulation is assumed to hold about as many people as one real history.

Fraction of minds like yours that are simulated –

The formula

fsim = (fP · fI · NI) / ((fP · fI · NI) + 1)

This is equation (*) from Nick Bostrom, "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?", Philosophical Quarterly 53, no. 211 (2003): 243–255. Here fP is the fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage, fI the fraction of posthuman civilizations interested in running ancestor simulations, and NI the average number of ancestor simulations such an interested civilization runs. Bostrom's point is that because NI could be astronomically large, at least one of three things is true: almost no civilizations reach that stage, almost none want to run these simulations, or almost all minds like ours are simulated.

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