The Omega Agency

The Omega Agency consists of a network set up much like the CIA. There are thousands world-wide who take their orders directly from the ruling council of the Omega Agency. This council consists of 10 to 12 people. George Bush and Alexander C. Haig are two names known to sit on the council of the Omega Agency. The OA is the driving force behind what is commonly called the "New World Order." The OA's office is located at Langley AFB.

They plan to establish their NWO, for lack of a better term, in a time span of no less than 5 days. And they intend to do it without open war.

Recall when President Reagan was shot. Haig made the statements to the press that "I'm in charge now." If you'll remember, he caught a lot of flack for that, and shortly thereafter, he was accused of various things that ruined his name politically. This was done by members of Congress who were aware of his seat on the Omega Agency council, and they feared losing their claim to power. Haig jumped the gun in his statements, and ended up giving up his political position because of it. Had Reagan died, we would have had Bush as President, and Haig as Secretary of State. Two men in power who sit on the OA council. But because of the commotion raised by a few members of Congress, Haig faded into the background rather than risk exposure of his connection to the OA, or of the OA itself.

Recall when the Gulf War started. Bush used the exact words "New World Order" in his speech to the country. He said it several times, that the Gulf War marked the beginning of a NWO. The Gulf War was not a war about oil or the freedom of the people of Kuwait. It was a test of how well multi-national troops under the guidance of the UN would react in a war situation. The same holds true for Somalia and Bosnia. Multi-national troops under the direction of the UN. The Omega Agency controls the UN.

Bush didn't lose the election to Clinton. Bush needed to be out of the limelight of the presidency in order to concentrate on and escalate the plans of the Omega Agency. And in Clinton, they had a stooge who would not rock the boat and who would do what he was told. Notice how quick Clinton has been to commit US troops to UN peace-keeping forces here and there. Notice who Clinton appointed as Secretary of State - Madeline Albright, the UN lady. Notice who Clinton gave federal land to - the UN.

Why the need for a one-world government? The reasoning of the Omega Agency is this: Crime is out of control on a world-wide basis, especially in the US. People are out of control, not taking responsibility for themselves or their actions. Population growth is out of control on a world-wide level. The judicial system of the US is a joke. The political system of the US and most countries world-wide is a joke, corrupted and polluted by greed and power-hungry people who don't care about the population they were elected or appointed to serve. Under the governing body the Omega Agency plans to put in power, this would end. End of trial by jury. End of living off of society and not contributing your fair share. End of taking advantage of others for one's own personal gain. All who are able would contribute to the growth and well-being of the world's society, or they would pay the price for not pulling their fair share.

What is this price? Basically, it will be like this: Those who are able physically and mentally to work will do so. If you have a job/profession at the time that the OA takes over, you will continue in that job/profession. If you are drawing welfare, but are physically able to work, you will work. Personal freedoms to come and go as one pleases world-wide will not change. Basically, the OA doesn't care what people do to amuse themselves, entertain themselves, etc., as long as they are working and contributing to the society as a whole. But there will be zero tolerance of any act that hurts/harms another. Crimes against another or against society will be met with the death penalty, if such crime is of a severe nature such as murder, rape or robbery. What is now considered a felony crime will be punishable by death. What is now considered a misdemeanor crime will be punishable by imprisonment on a work farm for a number of years equal to what the OA considers suitable payback for the said crime against society. These work farms will be in the business of growing food, manufacture of clothing, textiles, etc. People sent to these farms will work for the specified time, or will be eliminated.

There will be zero tolerance for any crime that hurts, harms or infringes on the life of others. Example - a person making threatening phone calls to another will be picked up and sent to one of the work farms. A person committing a drive-by shooting will be punished with immediate death. The policing of the populous will be carried out by men/women who are already chosen and merely waiting for the time when they will go to work for the OA openly. Most are current and/or former military people who worked special ops while on active duty. These people will be responsible for seeking out those guilty of a crime. Once the person is located, they will inform that person that they are guilty of said crime and immediately put a bullet in their head. End of crime problem from that person. Should the person's crime not warrant the death penalty, these Public Security Officers will pick up the person and deliver them to the work farm. If the person resists, they will be shot on the spot. No trial, no jury, no lawyer, no Miranda rights. The Public Security Officer will have the authority to act as sole judge, jury, and executioner of the punishment that the OA declares fits the crime.

Population control will be accomplished by mandatory birth control by all people, men as well as women. Abortion will be freely available. There will be zero tolerance for child-bearing out of wedlock. The institute of marriage is looked upon with favor by the OA. There will be a limit of 2 children per couple allowed. Should one become pregnant after the 2-child limit has been reached, and dispite the use of birth control, then the options will be either to have an abortion or to increase one's work load to compensate society for the burden of the extra child. Birth control and abortion will be completely acceptable in the eyes of the various religions world-wide. It will, in fact, be encouraged and mandatory under some religious doctrines. Recall VP Gore's meeting behind closed doors with religious leaders and NASA officials at the beginning of 1997.

The OA has not taken control yet because there are forces within the existing governments of the world that are aware of their plans and oppose them. In the US, these forces are largely centered in the CIA and NSA. The CIA wants world control, but on its terms. The CIA wants to see a more communistic-type government set up on a world-wide basis. While the OA professes to believe in the maintaining of personal freedoms so long as one is a contributing member of society and not infringing on the lives of others, the CIA would rather see a world where all people are controlled in all ways, from what type of job one does to how one worships. The Omega Agency, once it comes into power, plans to reveal everything to the people of the world. From the running of drugs to finance the Vietnam War. George Bush himself is said to have made the statement that he will personally tell of his involvement in the running of drugs to finance the Vietnam war while he was CIA director. To the OA way of thinking, the ends really do justify the means, and in the case of the Vietnam war, the running of drugs was necessary to finance the operation in that country. Therefore, it was a justified endeavor. Not one to be proud of, but justified nonetheless.

The CIA/NSA/OA all monitor the internet closely. Especially IRC. The Net is described as the most dangerous tool in the world at this point in time because it is uncontrolled. Those who talk about these types of things or carry information about these things on their web sites are closely monitored. In "government talk", orders to "watch" someone translates into instructions to keep track of them by whatever means necessary, and if they cross the line, if they stumble upon the truth of the matter and don't keep their mouth shut, "take them out". This can be done in any way that works without drawing too much suspicion. Such as brakes on the car failing, a random victim in a drive-by shooting, a random target in a store robbery where that person just happens to be shopping at the time, etc. The determination as to whether a person needs to be "taken out" is left up to the discretion of the one doing the watching. It is, in effect, an open license to kill to protect the Omega Agency from public exposure before it has deemed the time is right for it to take control of the planet. In some cases, it is determined that the person in question would pose more of a threat if they died. In such a case, the machinery of the OA goes into action to discredit that person. Character assassination, manipulation of others so as to turn people against the person, campaigns to brand them a disinformation agent, a liar, a mentally unstable person, etc., are put into motion. This has been found to be an effective method of dealing with someone who gets to the truth and doesn't keep silent. In fact, it has been found to not only discredit the target victim but to cast a shadow of doubt and suspicion on others who may have listened to the targeted person.

This plan for the establishment of a one-world governing body, namely what is now known as the Omega Agency, has been in the works for a long time. And it is said that it cannot be stopped. Those who oppose the establishment of the Omega Agency's New World Order, and who cannot be brought into line through persuasion or manipulation will be eliminated as threats to society.

The person from which this information was obtained passionately believes that this plan is the solution to the world's problems. This person is also awaiting the start of a new job - as a Public Security Officer. This is a position this person was trained for and accepted before leaving active military service.

Get Rid of Sociological Stupidity In Schools

Recently I researched an article which led to learning about a 19th Century writer named Edward Bellamy. Bellamy's 1888 novel, 'Looking Backward', was a futurist projection to the year 2000.

The wealthy young hero of the novel, Julian West, had trouble sleeping, so when exhausted would retire to a specially constructed soundproof vault under his Boston home. A hypnotist would then put him into a deep sleep. When the hero had enough rest his valet would enter the vault and awaken him.

On a particular night in 1887 the hypnotist left town immediately after inducing the trance. During the night the house burned down taking the life of the valet and also--everyone understandably presumed--that of Julian West.

The scene changes to the year 2000. Workers, while excavating for the foundation of a private laboratory in the garden of Dr. Leete of Boston, come upon the 19th Century underground bedchamber and the body of a young man looking as if he had just lain down to sleep. Dr. Leete attempts resuscitation, and to his own astonishment his efforts prove successful.

After recovering from the shock of discovering that he has been asleep for more than 100 years, Julian West learns about the changes that have taken place during his sleep. He also has a rather stiff and mechanical romance with Edith Leete, the doctor's daughter, who is the great granddaughter of Edith Bartlett, the young woman to whom West had been engaged in the year 1887.

In the year 2000 no one has personal independence. Private capitalism has evolved into public capitalism; and everybody is represented as blissfully happy with universal equality and with being kept by the system. No one is separate. No one is special. No one is richer or poorer than anyone else. There is a universal distribution system and everybody is content with what he receives. Occupations are assigned by the system. The only religion is the Religion of Solidarity or Universal Brotherhood.

Millions of copies of 'Looking Backward' were sold in countries all over the world. It was an inspirational document for communists, socialists, Zionists, Nazis, corporate collectivists, Theosophists, revolutionaries, and people-pushers of all types. It was read by Americans, Russians, Chinese, English, Belgians, Germans, French, Africans, South Americans, etc., etc., etc..

Some critics pointed out, however, that Bellamy had used literary trickery. He had put his hero to sleep in 1887, and then awakened him after all the changes toward the world communistic society had taken place. How were the changes accomplished? How did the transition from the society of 1887 to the controlled society of the year 2000 come about? In 1897 Bellamy's sequel, 'Equality' was published. It took up where 'Looking Backward' left off. Conversations between the main characters and visits to classrooms revealed how sociologists, economists, and social planners of all types had used education to bring about the intellectual, religious, moral, political, material, and social changes of 2000.

It is an unsettling experience to read 'Equality' today because it reads almost like history rather than fiction. The devices and techniques described have, in fact, been used. It is even possible to predict planned future manipulations from the sociological scenario Bellamy outlined in 1897.

I decided I had to discover more about Bellamy and the influences which helped to shape his thoughts. I learned that he had been profoundly affected by the writings of Auguste Comte. I had never heard of Comte, so I went to my Werner Encyclopedia (American edition of Encyclopedia Britannica).

Comte (1798-1857) was a brilliant French mathematician/philosopher. He had one main ambition which was to remake the world according to his plan. He devoted his entire intellectual life to constructing a philosophical system and plan which could be used to take total control over all the people of the world for all time. Existing religions, governments and systems would be eliminated, and people would be changed so they could be made to adapt to Comte's world communist system,

First Comte arranged all the sciences according to what he believed to be their relative importance and stage of development. Above all the sciences, and directing all human activities was to be Comte's new science, sociology, or social science. Replacing and uniting all religions was to be Comte's new religion, the Religion of Humanity, or as his early teacher Saint Simon had termed it, Humanitarianism. Comte appointed himself the first High Priest of Humanity. The High Priest would dictate the moral precepts, medical policies and education, but have no other part in governing. Nation states would be replaced by a permanent communist world government.

The Werner Encyclopedia quoted Comte:

In the name of the Past and of the Future, the servants of Humanity--both its philosophical and its practical servants--come forward to claim as their due the general direction of this world. Their object is to constitute at length a real Providence in all departments, -- moral, intellectual, and material. Consequently they exclude once for all from political supremacy all the different servants of God--Catholic, Protestant, or Deist--as being at once behindhand and a cause of disturbance.

In spite of the fact that Comte, more than anyone else, deserved to be called the father of sociology; in spite of the fact that innumerable Communistic-type changes in education, religion, government, and business had already been brought about through Comte's social science and Religion of Humanity, I had never heard of the man. His work and his followers had a greater effect on our lives than any person in recent history that I could think of. Yet, I had never heard so much as his name. How could I have lived so long and gone through schooling, and still be so ignorant? One would think that if sociology were a science, as Comte claimed, the teachers and professors would want to inform students about its founders and their goals. My ignorance about Comte was mind boggling to say the least. Where had I been all my life? Where had anybody been? None of my friends, acquaintances, or relatives were any better informed.

Later I sought books written by late 19th and early 20th Century sociologists to see if they were carrying on in the same collectivist spirit as Comte. They were! Their lust for power over people and events was as great or greater than that of Comte himself. They said such things as:

It is indeed an ambitious conception, this idea of blueprinting the outlines of a truly worthful society for the future and then politicing societal evolution deliberately and intelligently toward that goal. There are those who regard such an ambition as ludicrously impossible. Yet this is the supreme aspiration of social science. ROSS L. FINNEY (1923)

If it were possible to control the learning of all individuals, in the way both of ideas and of emotional attitudes, as they come on the stage of life, it would be possible to modify the whole complex of our social life, or our civilization, within the comparatively short space of one or two generations. CHARLES A. ELLWOOD (1923)

The school is the germ plasm of the higher civilization. Teachers are, therefore, in charge of social selection at the source of origins for each new generation; they can even introduce at will mutations of their own invention. ROSS L. FINNEY (1929)

These men were serious. They were college professors teaching sociological goals and philosophy to their students. But that was only the beginning of what Comte put in motion. The Russian mystic. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, read Comte and incorporated his philosophical thoughts into her Theosophical Society formed in 1875. Annie Besant lectured and wrote about Comte and Bellamy John Dewey worked to adapt education to what Comte and Bellamy recommended. Multimillionaires paid to have sociology included in the curriculum of major colleges. Sociology did not have to be a true science. Money power bought its way into the curriculum.

In grade schools, high schools, and universities students in sociology or social science were taught to expect and work for change toward more cooperation--not knowing that the word, "cooperation" was the collectivist's code word for the less popular word, "socialism." Annie Besant explained this in 'The Theosophist' in February, 1930. She said:

I was giving a number of lectures here a year or two ago. I avoided the word socialism altogether. I always said, "cooperation," and my audiences were delighted with my ideas on cooperation. But it was only socialism under another name! Language is meant to express a thought and I knew if I said socialism you would think communism, and I wanted you to think cooperation. So I preached socialism under the name cooperation, and my audiences liked it.

Many pople, it appears also accept the idea that sociology is a science rather than a philosophy that denies individuality and personality. children(all over the world) are taught a curriculum designed by foundation-financed sociological organizations. Government bureaucracies make huge grants to support sociological education. Yet, there is no way a country can stay free when generation after generation of its children are sociologically schooled for socialism and communism. It is plain stupid to continue the process. History, geography and civics should be returned to the curriculum. Social studies can go the way of alchemy.

Sociology limits learning--That's STUPID! It experiments on people as if they were laboratory animals--That's STUPID! Sociology demands acceptance of destructive and degenerate types of behavior--That's STUPID! Sociology dictates group thinking. That's STUPID! Sociology restricts honest speech. That's STUPID! Sociology attempts to destroy character and personality. That's STUPID! Sociology endorses sexual perversion. That's STUPID! Sociology lies about its goals. That's STUPID! Sociology suggests student protests and violence. That's STUPID! Sociology promotes unmarried pregnancy. That's STUPID! Sociology sanctions lying by elected officials to support sociological goals. That's STUPID! Sociology works to end private ownership of land. That's STUPID! Sociology promotes communist world government. That's STUPID! We have done little to limit the power and influence of sociologists in the classrooms. That's STUPID!

Let's not continue supporting stupidity. Get Rid Of Sociological Stupidity. Think GROSS! It is important to our country's future to Get Rid Of Sociological Stupidity. Get Rid Of School Sociology. Sociology is not, and never has been a science. Get rid of it. Think GROSS!

The Intelligent Student's Guide to the New World Order

What is the New World Order?

The essence of the New World Order (NWO) or world management system is that it is management by social engineers, rather than government based on a written constitution. How you are affected by this management system depends on what the social engineers decide the system should do for you and require of you. The social engineers and system managers think of themselves as scientists applying the scientific method to the control of group behavior. Your behavior and your relationships are regarded as the subject of investigation and control by those who call themselves social scientists. You are among their test animals, and you have no say in, and often no knowledge of, experiments that involve you. If the NWO is totally implemented, your independence, individuality, and freedom will be gone.

There is nothing new about the idea of managing others, or even of controlling the whole world. That has been the goal of social philosophers for thousands of years. However, we need not go back over ancient history. We are concerned primarily with what has been going on in our own generations. This we can understand quite well if we confine ourselves to the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
Goals of the New World Order

To begin to understand the New World Order (NWO) you need to forget what you have been told about philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats; left and right; Socialists and Libertarians; business and labor; liberal and conservative; black and white, etc.. The planners of the New World Order know they must use, influence, and cater to all of these groups to accomplish the goals they are seeking, which are:

1. Consolidate everything.
2. Commercialize everything.
3. Classify everything.
4. Claim everything.
5. Control everything.

We might call these goals the five Cs of the New World Order. If it is fully empowered, free speech, personality, personal goals and decisions, individual responsibility, private property, private business, morality, Constitutional government, national sovereignty; and religious freedom can no longer be tolerated. Everyone in every country will be subject to the NWO management system. To quote the French mathematician/philosopher, Auguste Comte (1798-1857), one of the most significant early planners of the world management system:

“The most important object of this regenerated polity will be the substitution of Duties for Rights; thus subordinating personal to social considerations. The word Right should be excluded from political language, as the word Cause from the language of philosophy. ”

“The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.”

He also wrote:

“When the system is fully regulated, the effect of this will be to secure greater unity, by diminishing the influence of personal character.”

This means that to the NWO world management system planners you, as an individual, are considered to be without character or personality. Your personal life and personal goals are unimportant to them, unless those goals are consistent with the sociological, economic and religious goals of the New World Order.
Public Schools and The New World Order

To demonstrate how NWO sociological, economic and religious goals are being brought about we can look first at the public schools. Most students and parents think the purpose of public schools is to teach essential and interesting information, vocational and recreational skills, considerate and responsible behavior and an appreciation of our country’s history and Constitution. After your formal education is over, your parents expect that you should be able to take responsibility for your own moral, material, and social well-being, and also the moral, material, and social well-being of any children you might have until they, too, are ready to claim such freedom for themselves.

At one time the goal of those who planned the school curriculum in the local communities seemed to follow the wishes of parents and the needs of students. Now, however, those sociologists who have the power to affect policy in the public schools do not concern themselves with what you need, what your parents want for you, or with respect and support for the United States Constitution. Their primary goals are to CONSOLIDATE policies, COMMERCIALIZE instruction, CLASSIFY individuals, CLAIM jurisdiction, establish CONTROL, and train you to fit obediently into their world management system without hesitation or protest. In 1928, sociologist Ross L. Finney wrote:

“A new world is emerging in which the social structures will be of a different shape, the social resources of a different scope and caliber, than anything that history records. It is a new deal - in fact a different game with different cards; and we who are now alive are privileged to witness its beginning, however blind most of us may be to its implications for ourselves and our posterity. And for a new age, a new school!”

National Council for the Social Studies

An organization called the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), which is an offshoot of the National Education Association and a promoter of the New World Order, has CLAIMED power to determine what you should learn and what you should not learn in geography, history, government, economics, psychology, religion, world politics, etc.. These subjects were CONSOLIDATED decades ago by sociologists so they could present them together under one agenda called Social Studies. The leaders of NCSS now decide what you should be taught, how you should be taught, and how your achievement will be evaluated.

In addition to the National Council for the Social Studies, the various states have state councils for the social studies. Through the efforts of state councils - oftentimes with the aid of the Education Commission of the States - bills are presented to state legislatures to make NCSS’s curriculum standards legal requirements. After these standards are passed in your state, your local school board, your own teachers and your parents have little to say about what you should be expected to learn in these subjects. If you, your school, or community have different standards; if you do not try to live up to NCSS’s standards for the New World Order, your schools can be closed or your community punished by depriving it of federal, foundation and state money.
Grouping People to Control Them

It is interesting to investigate how this takeover was accomplished. Like everything connected to the New World Order and the five Cs, CONTROL is accomplished by influencing groups, and most particularly group leaders. This is because people who are emotionally involved with groups respond to leadership. They also tend to feel CLASS loyalty. For example, when your elected officials CONSOLIDATE into groups and meet with elected officials from other areas, they frequently get carried away by the oratory and comradeship. Although they may not understand the full implications of the ideas the carefully-selected speakers and facilitators promote, the officials are maneuvered into feeling obligated to support what the group supports. By giving their loyalty to these secondary groups, the officials frequently betray the primary loyalty they owe to you and the citizens of the states, cities and counties they are supposed to serve. CONTROL of government officials, educators, congressmen, legislators, businessmen, city councils, school boards, etc. through organizations is part of the NWO plan for substitution of its system for the U.S. Constitution.

Through CONSOLIDATION into national or international ‘blanket’ organizations, one person or a small group of people can make decisions and set goals for hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people. They can set goals for you if you do not object. Always remember, whoever sets your goals or presents you with what they call a vision or a mission, CONTROLS your behavior. You had better understand fully any such commitment you are asked to make.
Goal-Setting, Political Management

Setting goals, and designing visions and missions for groups of people is one of the favorite preoccupations of the New World Order philosophers and managers. In education, goal setting and visioning serve to CONSOLIDATE policies so the NWO/NCSS curriculum can be established in schools throughout the country. When you hear someone who uses the phrase, “We must. . .” or variations of it such as, “We need to. . .”, “It is essential that we. . .”, etc, without adding, “if we wish to . . ,” there is a pretty fair chance that person is trying to convince you to give up the idea of independent research and thinking so you will support whatever program or goals he or she might be promoting.

It is unfortunate that few of our congressmen, state, county, and city legislators have been alert enough to detect the behavior management and CONTROL that have been directed toward them. Many of them have been deceived, flattered, coerced, bribed or blackmailed into surrendering their legitimate authority to New World Order decision makers. This, too, was planned. In 1906, sociologist Lester Ward explained how NWO legislation could be achieved:

“It must not be supposed that such legislation can be conducted to any considerable extent in the open sessions of legislative bodies. These will doubtless need to be maintained, and every new law should be finally adopted by a vote of such bodies, but more and more this will become a merely formal way of putting the final sanction of society on decisions that have been carefully worked out in what may be called the sociological laboratory.”

Goals 2000 - Control is the Object

Most of the governors of the United States are members of the National Governors' Association. They have national meetings to CONSOLIDATE their policy decisions. In 1990, a policy was declared to promote the adoption of national educational goals. The Republican Bush Administration had endorsed the idea in 1989. Multinational corporations and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce supported it. Then, in 1994, Congress (Democrats and Republicans) passed and funded the Goals 2000: Educate America Act.

Originally, social studies was not included, but the NCSS saw to it that social studies was annexed to the national agenda. Its leaders appointed a task force to develop CONSOLIDATED curriculum standards. These were later adopted in most states as part of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. Eight goals were chosen and publicized. The eight educational goals of Goals 2000 were not the important part of this operation. Any goals that sounded good, along with the money promised, could have enticed governors and state legislators to pass enabling legislation in their states. The real goals of Goals 2000 are to CONSOLIDATE leadership over all the states; CLAIM jurisdiction over curriculum to CONTROL what you and other students learn; and eventually to COMMERCIALIZE and CONTROL all educational resources through the use of charter schools and culture vouchers.

It is no surprise to find now that the eight publicized goals have not been reached - and will not be reached by the Year 2000. Does this mean that CONSOLIDATED goal-setting and visioning will be discontinued? On the contrary! To the goal-setters it means merely that the Goals 2000: Educate America should be renamed, America’s Education Goals, and should be extended beyond 2000 without a specific deadline. Even when failure is obvious and promises are not fulfilled, CONTROL, once gained, is never willingly relinquished by the NWO and United Nations regional government promoters.
Failures of Public Schools

In recent decades, public education has been subjected to a great deal of criticism. Because schools and curriculum have been interfered with by those who promote the NWO world management system, students were not learning what their parents, potential employers, and the students themselves, knew they ought to learn. Skill in reading, natural science, English, mathematics, foreign languages were dismally lacking in many high schools, and even college graduates. All kinds of excuses have been brought forward such as:

* The problem is with your parents because they do not take an interest in your schooling
* The problem is with you and other students because you do not work hard enough or take an interest in learning
* The schools are not using the right system of teaching. We need to experiment with new systems
* The problem is not enough money for education. If schools had more money they would produce better results
* The problem is segregation. We need to bus for integration
* Classrooms are overcrowded. We need more teachers
* Public schools should have tax-supported competition. We need charter schools and school vouchers

And so it has gone for decades.
Enemies of Learning

Few of the explainers have revealed the possibility that you are not being properly taught because the NWO world management system does not want you to know too much. In his book, A Sociological Philosophy of Education, published in 1928 by the MacMillan Company, Ross L. Finney, Assistant Professor of Educational Sociology at the University of Minnesota, wrote the following about what should and should not be offered to students:

“...a larger place in the curriculum ought to be given to the new humanities and the fine arts, especially the former; and that correspondingly less time and energy ought to be allotted to mathematics, formal English, and the foreign languages...”

“What we obviously need is a science of society. Since the time of [Auguste] Comte this has been the aspiration of modern scholarship. Instead of blundering and bungling along from one crisis to the next, science might render society really telic, and reduce social phenomena to CONTROL as it has done in the natural world....” (Emphasis mine)

“If leadership by the intelligent is ever to be achieved, followership by the dull and ignorant must somehow be assured. Followership, quite as much as leadership, is, therefore, the crucial problem of the present crisis...”

“The safety of democracy is not to be sought, therefore, in the intellectual independence of the duller masses, but in their Intellectual dependence. Not in what they think, but in what they think they think...”

“The problem of democracy is which specialized sub-group is to function as cerebral cortex. That will depend upon who succeeds in drilling epigrams into the memories of the duller masses. If scientists and educators fail to do it, then selfish deceivers and exploiters will. But think for themselves the duller masses never can.”

Those of us who do not agree with sociologists like Ross L. Finney are CLASSIFIED as selfish deceivers, exploiters, or members of the duller masses. NWO usurpers have nothing but contempt for us and our need to learn. Many parents, teachers, administrators, legislators and state governors, etc. have been taken in by the NWO agenda. There is little chance that your state and school are independent of NWO management system. Therefore, it is important that you begin to recognize enemies of learning even when they have college educations, advanced degrees, university, government and foundation support, and all the preplanned publicity they need to try to impress those of us whom they consider to be selfish deceivers, exploiters or the duller masses.
Goals Statement for Schools

You should understand that those who seek to CONTROL your education in order to limit your access to knowledge are not doing it because they love or respect you, but because they want to CLAIM and CONTROL you. The more you know about their goals and techniques, the easier it becomes to recognize efforts to CONTROL your thoughts. The more you know about history, geography, mathematics, English, science, etc. the more power you have to defend yourself against falsehood, deceit and domination.

By establishing goals, missions, and visions, the NCSS has found a way to limit knowledge in all subjects. I remind you, he who chooses your goals controls your behavior. The social studies goal statement that has been chosen by the National Council for the Social Studies and adopted in similar, and sometimes identical form by the states is:

“...to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”

Problem-Solving and Decision-Making

To most people this sounds good, but please notice that it is all about politics and world CONSOLIDATION. Nothing is mentioned about what is good for you, about giving you the knowledge to make intelligent fact-base personal decisions, about helping you to prepare for a career of your own choice. Nothing is mentioned about what is good for your city, your county, your state, or the United States of America. No - you are treated as a dependent member of the New World Order’s interdependent world. Interdependence means CONTROL by sociology’s New World Order and loss of control over your own destiny.

Curriculum goals, guidelines, and standards for states and local communities are patterned after those of the NCSS and United Nations NWO. In all cases, the curriculum is based on the idea of rational problem-solving and decision-making, and on what the NWO crowd calls interdependence. You are asked to make decisions related to pre-selected social problems based on the limited information available through classroom assignments.

In this regard, it is important to know another behavior control fact. He who states the problem for you controls your thinking. Your thoughts and efforts are directed toward problems which have been selected for you. When you express an opinion about suggested social or personal problems, you accept the NWO agenda and acknowledge an obligation to share your thoughts on the problems with classmates. You can then be CLASSIFIED or grouped according to your public statements.
Limiting Knowledge - Demanding Opinions

Time spent learning facts and skills can be limited when it is taken up listening to and arguing about one another’s uninformed opinions. Also, a special danger is involved in this problem-solving, decision-making type of education. You and your fellow students are encouraged to join groups and act immediately based on the opinions you express in the cIassroom - never taking into consideration that your opinions and decisions may change as you mature and have access to information from other sources.

If you express the opinion that you would like to try drugs or engage in sexual activities; if you say you might steal or become violent; teachers are instructed not to warn you against such behavior or tell you that your decision is wrong or dangerous. That, say the curriculum planners, would be judgmental.
No Right - No Wrong - Rational Conscience

It is assumed that none of the problems or personal dilemmas presented can be prevented or solved by self control and moral behavior. How do curriculum planners justify this omission? Your teachers are told that any statement regarding morality is considered to be an unexamined belief based on authority. The National Council for the Social Studies says decision-making should be what they call rational, rather than being based on authority or conscience. For example, in Wisconsin teachers were advised:

“A child generally comes to school with what R. J. Havighurst calls an authoritarian conscience acquired from his parents through a progression of punishments and rewards. He soon learns that he is not equipped to deal with all the new situations which confront him. Peers and teachers join and sometimes supplant parents in helping him to find solutions which are often in conflict with those offered by his parents. His task, then, is to change from this early authoritarian conscience to a rational one. This requires that he learn a process for resolving to his own satisfaction the conflicts that will inevitably arise whenever change or confrontation with an opposing view makes him question his existing values.” [11]

Decisions Based on Conscience Not Allowed

When you are taught to doubt your own conscience in favor of rational decision-making, many types of destructive, obnoxious, and immoral behavior will no longer be objectionable to you. You learn to find reasons to justify whatever behavior might have emotional appeal. Unbelievable as it may seem, teachers in Wisconsin actually were warned against holding students to traditional high standards:

“Traditionally there was little question that the schools should promote such values as the following:

1. Respect Property.
2. Be respectful of adults.
3. Say please and thank you at appropriate times.
4. Do not use profane language or bad grammar.
5. Be neat and clean.
6. Do not lie or cheat.

Now, however, in some situations these are quite controversial. Many lawsuits and community controversies have focused on the meaning of “ and clean,” for example. Several recent surveys indicate that cheating in school, rather than being unacceptable, has become the norm, and most students feel no guilt about cheating. Standards of profanity are constantly changing and words that one rarely heard used in public a few years ago are now heard a great deal. While many may not like these developments, it is very necessary for teachers to recognize that they are taking place.”

Teachers Are Intimidated By The NWO

Knowing what you now know about the goals of the New World Order, you can understand that the above instruction to teachers could be taken as a veiled threat, better not telling them they had better not criticize the behaviors mentioned. Doing so might make them vulnerable to law suits, or perhaps, discipline by their superiors. Thus, the Wisconsin Department of Public instruction, following the guidelines of the NCSS, actually promoted the idea that it is acceptable for you and your fellow students to be thieving, disrespectful, ungrateful, profanity-using, sloppy, and dirty lying cheaters who have no conscience, and therefore no feelings of guilt for such behavior. The United Nations New World Order does not need people of character. It needs only those who are pliable and manageable.
Creating Problems

Problem creation is another unbelievable aspect of NWO education. According to the NCSS, one of the main duties of teachers is to create emotional problems for you:

“Any attempt by a teacher to create a problem without arousing students emotionally can only result in a pseudo-problem. When students are disturbed, upset, perhaps even angry, they are closer to having a problem than is ever the case when teachers make the preservation of objectivity their only concern. A teacher can sometimes create in students a feeling that their beliefs, concepts or values are inadequate in some respect. When students are puzzled over what to believe, they are more likely to have an authentic problem in their possession...

If the student is to become engaged in problem-solving he must be doubtful, uncertain or puzzled concerning something within his experience and have the desire through inquiry to remove the doubt. As long as he is certain of the truth or goodness of a particular idea or action, or as long as he is unconcerned, indifferent about the matter, he is not involved in problem-solving. Hence, the initial task confronting the teacher is that of creating the state of uncertainty or doubt in the mind of the student. . .the teacher must implant the element of doubt.

Strategies Used to Create Problems

Since the presence of the element of doubt or puzzlement is a necessary condition for the initiation of problem-solving activity, let us consider teaching strategies which are likely to evoke such reactions...

* ...The teacher can present the students with a problem within the context of the content.
* ...The teacher can encourage the students to discover a problem within the context of the content.
* ...The teacher can convert the unexamined beliefs of students into problems.
* ...The teacher can point up conflicts within the students’ pattern of beliefs, thus creating problems.
* ...The teacher can point up conflicts within the course content, thus creating problems.

Teaching problem-solving, decision-making, and interdependence may have sounded good to many teachers, school board members, local curriculum coordinators, legislators, parents, and students. However, if they had the opportunity to read the above, and what the NCSS curriculum planners mean when they promote this type of education, all of those affected might be more hesitant before giving their sanction.
Changing Beliefs

Remember, the NWO planners and managers want CONTROL, but they know for certain that they cannot make you go along with their plans if you are aware of their intentions and if you are firmly convinced that to do so would be wrong. That is why so many methods have been devised to help you question or change your mind about what you believe.

If the New World Order is to succeed in reaching its goals, Judaism and Christianity are among the religions which have to be eliminated. People who are guided by the Bible, the Ten Commandments and what the Bible teaches about God, cannot be depended upon to be totally dedicated to the sociological goals of a world management system. They cannot be intimidated into exchanging morals and conscience for sociological goals. This is why the system does not tolerate competition. Its own Positive religion or religion of Humanity must prevail. Sociology’s founder, Auguste Comte, wrote:

“By speaking of Positivism as organic, we imply that it has a social purpose; that purpose being to supersede Theology in the spiritual direction of the human race.”

and,

“Sociology is once for all substituted for Theology as the basis for the religious government of mankind.”

and,

“The last step in this long course of training is now establishing the true form of subjectivity by substitution of Sociology for Theology.”

In 1929, Ross L. Finney was among those working on a new morality for the managed society. He wrote:

“Nor can the new regime be operated with the beliefs of the old regime. . .As for the ideals by which we live, they too must be thought out de novo, and built into an adequate and effective new system of moral education.”

The End of Freedom

The NWO management system’s moral education has nothing to do with freedom or the principles and ideals on which our nation was founded. The late B. F. Skinner, a Harvard University psychologist, put it this way:

“The hypothesis that man is NOT FREE is essential to the application of scientific method to the study of human behavior.”

If you do not want to be a sociologically-controlled and semi-ignorant member of the United Nations New World Order, you need to recognize the importance of knowledge and reject attempts at emotional manipulation and knowledge limitation. The problem-solving and decision-making system of education uses you, plays on your emotions, and tries to alienate you from those who should be closest to you. It creates animosity between you and your classmates; wastes valuable learning time by forcing you to form opinions and listen to the uninformed opinions of your classmates; and discourages intelligent and moral behavior. It turns you against your own country and its Constitution in favor of the United Nations' New World Order management system.
What Can You Do?

Learn to recognize when you are being used, rather than informed. Learn to recognize when you are being led astray. Be like a conscientious researcher and reporter. Do not be afraid to ask probing questions whenever you have doubts about the philosophy behind educational projects, exercises and games, especially if they seem to you to be totally useless or destructive.

If you are to have any hope of keeping the gift of freedom with which you've been blessed, you must know and share the truth. If you have concerns about your education, share them with your parents. Few parents have any idea what goes on in school. It is their responsibility to find out, and your responsibility to help them.

You are not a test animal created to serve the ambition of social scientists and world managers. Do not allow your education to be limited and corrupted as if all you needed was to be trained in obedience to the system of the unConstitutional New World Order.

And remember, if you truly desire it, all knowledge is yours:

“Ask, and it shalt be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shalt be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”
- Matthew 7:7,8~

ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

BY NICK BOSTROM

Department of Philosophy, Oxford University

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (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.


I. INTRODUCTION

Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears. That is the basic idea. The rest of this paper will spell it out more carefully.

Apart from the interest this thesis may hold for those who are engaged in futuristic speculation, there are also more purely theoretical rewards. The argument provides a stimulus for formulating some methodological and metaphysical questions, and it suggests naturalistic analogies to certain traditional religious conceptions, which some may find amusing or thought-provoking.

The structure of the paper is as follows. First, we formulate an assumption that we need to import from the philosophy of mind in order to get the argument started. Second, we consider some empirical reasons for thinking that running vastly many simulations of human minds would be within the capability of a future civilization that has developed many of those technologies that can already be shown to be compatible with known physical laws and engineering constraints. This part is not philosophically necessary but it provides an incentive for paying attention to the rest. Then follows the core of the argument, which makes use of some simple probability theory, and a section providing support for a weak indifference principle that the argument employs. Lastly, we discuss some interpretations of the disjunction, mentioned in the abstract, that forms the conclusion of the simulation argument.


II. THE ASSUMPTION OF SUBSTRATE-INDEPENDENCE

A common assumption in the philosophy of mind is that of substrate-independence. The idea is that mental states can supervene on any of a broad class of physical substrates. Provided a system implements the right sort of computational structures and processes, it can be associated with conscious experiences. It is nor an essential property of consciousness that it is implemented on carbon-based biological neural networks inside a cranium: silicon-based processors inside a computer could in principle do the trick as well.

Arguments for this thesis have been given in the literature, and although it is not entirely uncontroversial, we shall here take it as a given.

The argument we shall present does not, however, depend on any very strong version of functionalism or computationalism. For example, we need not assume that the thesis of substrate-independence is necessarily true (either analytically or metaphysically) ? just that, in fact, a computer running a suitable program would be conscious. Moreover, we need not assume that in order to create a mind on a computer it would be sufficient to program it in such a way that it behaves like a human in all situations, including passing the Turing test etc. We need only the weaker assumption that it would suffice for the generation of subjective experiences that the computational processes of a human brain are structurally replicated in suitably fine-grained detail, such as on the level of individual synapses. This attenuated version of substrate-independence is quite widely accepted.
Neurotransmitters, nerve growth factors, and other chemicals that are smaller than a synapse clearly play a role in human cognition and learning. The substrate-independence thesis is not that the effects of these chemicals are small or irrelevant, but rather that they affect subjective experience only via their direct or indirect influence on computational activities. For example, if there can be no difference in subjective experience without there also being a difference in synaptic discharges, then the requisite detail of simulation is at the synaptic level (or higher).



III. THE TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITS OF COMPUTATION

At our current stage of technological development, we have neither sufficiently powerful hardware nor the requisite software to create conscious minds in computers. But persuasive arguments have been given to the effect that if technological progress continues unabated then these shortcomings will eventually be overcome. Some authors argue that this stage may be only a few decades away.[1] Yet present purposes require no assumptions about the time-scale. The simulation argument works equally well for those who think that it will take hundreds of thousands of years to reach a “posthuman” stage of civilization, where humankind has acquired most of the technological capabilities that one can currently show to be consistent with physical laws and with material and energy constraints.
Such a mature stage of technological development will make it possible to convert planets and other astronomical resources into enormously powerful computers. It is currently hard to be confident in any upper bound on the computing power that may be available to posthuman civilizations. As we are still lacking a “theory of everything”, we cannot rule out the possibility that novel physical phenomena, not allowed for in current physical theories, may be utilized to transcend those constraints[2] that in our current understanding impose theoretical limits on the information processing attainable in a given lump of matter. We can with much greater confidence establish lower bounds on posthuman computation, by assuming only mechanisms that are already understood. For example, Eric Drexler has outlined a design for a system the size of a sugar cube (excluding cooling and power supply) that would perform 10^21 instructions per second.[3] Another author gives a rough estimate of 10^42 operations per second for a computer with a mass on order of a large planet.[4] (If we could create quantum computers, or learn to build computers out of nuclear matter or plasma, we could push closer to the theoretical limits. Seth Lloyd calculates an upper bound for a 1 kg computer of 5*10^50 logical operations per second carried out on ~10^31 bits.[5] However, it suffices for our purposes to use the more conservative estimate that presupposes only currently known design-principles.)The amount of computing power needed to emulate a human mind can likewise be roughly estimated. One estimate, based on how computationally expensive it is to replicate the functionality of a piece of nervous tissue that we have already understood and whose functionality has been replicated in silico, contrast enhancement in the retina, yields a figure of ~10^14 operations per second for the entire human brain.[6] An alternative estimate, based the number of synapses in the brain and their firing frequency, gives a figure of ~10^16-10^17 operations per second.[7] Conceivably, even more could be required if we want to simulate in detail the internal workings of synapses and dentritic trees. However, it is likely that the human central nervous system has a high degree of redundancy on the mircoscale to compensate for the unreliability and noisiness of its neuronal components. One would therefore expect a substantial efficiency gain when using more reliable and versatile non-biological processors.

Memory seems to be a no more stringent constraint than processing power.[8] Moreover, since the maximum human sensory bandwidth is ~10^8 bits per second, simulating all sensory events incurs a negligible cost compared to simulating the cortical activity. We can therefore use the processing power required to simulate the central nervous system as an estimate of the total computational cost of simulating a human mind.
If the environment is included in the simulation, this will require additional computing power ? how much depends on the scope and granularity of the simulation. Simulating the entire universe down to the quantum level is obviously infeasible, unless radically new physics is discovered. But in order to get a realistic simulation of human experience, much less is needed ? only whatever is required to ensure that the simulated humans, interacting in normal human ways with their simulated environment, don’t notice any irregularities. The microscopic structure of the inside of the Earth can be safely omitted. Distant astronomical objects can have highly compressed representations: verisimilitude need extend to the narrow band of properties that we can observe from our planet or solar system spacecraft. On the surface of Earth, macroscopic objects in inhabited areas may need to be continuously simulated, but microscopic phenomena could likely be filled in ad hoc. What you see through an electron microscope needs to look unsuspicious, but you usually have no way of confirming its coherence with unobserved parts of the microscopic world. Exceptions arise when we deliberately design systems to harness unobserved microscopic phenomena that operate in accordance with known principles to get results that we are able to independently verify. The paradigmatic case of this is a computer. The simulation may therefore need to include a continuous representation of computers down to the level of individual logic elements. This presents no problem, since our current computing power is negligible by posthuman standards.

Moreover, a posthuman simulator would have enough computing power to keep track of the detailed belief-states in all human brains at all times. Therefore, when it saw that a human was about to make an observation of the microscopic world, it could fill in sufficient detail in the simulation in the appropriate domain on an as-needed basis. Should any error occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. Alternatively, the director could skip back a few seconds and rerun the simulation in a way that avoids the problem.

It thus seems plausible that the main computational cost in creating simulations that are indistinguishable from physical reality for human minds in the simulation resides in simulating organic brains down to the neuronal or sub-neuronal level.[9] While it is not possible to get a very exact estimate of the cost of a realistic simulation of human history, we can use ~10^33 - 10^36 operations as a rough estimate[10]. As we gain more experience with virtual reality, we will get a better grasp of the computational requirements for making such worlds appear realistic to their visitors. But in any case, even if our estimate is off by several orders of magnitude, this does not matter much for our argument. We noted that a rough approximation of the computational power of a planetary-mass computer is 10^42 operations per second, and that assumes only already known nanotechnological designs, which are probably far from optimal. A single such a computer could simulate the entire mental history of humankind (call this an ancestor-simulation) by using less than one millionth of its processing power for one second. A posthuman civilization may eventually build an astronomical number of such computers. We can conclude that the computing power available to a posthuman civilization is sufficient to run a huge number of ancestor-simulations even it allocates only a minute fraction of its resources to that purpose. We can draw this conclusion even while leaving a substantial margin of error in all our estimates.

· Posthuman civilizations would have enough computing power to run hugely many ancestor-simulations even while using only a tiny fraction of their resources for that purpose.



IV. THE CORE OF THE SIMULATION ARGUMENT

The basic idea of this paper can be expressed roughly as follows: If there were a substantial chance that our civilization will ever get to the posthuman stage and run many ancestor-simulations, then how come you are not living in such a simulation?

We shall develop this idea into a rigorous argument. Let us introduce the following notation:

: Fraction of all human-level technological civilizations that survive to reach a posthuman stage
: Average number of ancestor-simulations run by a posthuman civilization
*: Average number of individuals that have lived in a civilization before it reaches a posthuman stage

The actual fraction of all observers with human-type experiences that live in simulations is then

Writing for the fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations (or that contain at least some individuals who are interested in that and have sufficient resources to run a significant number of such simulations), and for the average number of ancestor-simulations run by such interested civilizations, we have

and thus:

(*)

Because of the immense computing power of posthuman civilizations, is extremely large, as we saw in the previous section. By inspecting (*) we can then see that at least one of the following three propositions must be true:

(1)
(2)
(3)


V. A BLAND INDIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE

We can take a further step and conclude that conditional on the truth of (3), one’s credence in the hypothesis that one is in a simulation should be close to unity. More generally, if we knew that a fraction x of all observers with human-type experiences live in simulations, and we don’t have any information that indicate that our own particular experiences are any more or less likely than other human-type experiences to have been implemented in vivo rather than in machina, then our credence that we are in a simulation should equal x:

(#)

This step is sanctioned by a very weak indifference principle. Let us distinguish two cases. The first case, which is the easiest, is where all the minds in question are like your own in the sense that they are exactly qualitatively identical to yours: they have exactly the same information and the same experiences that you have. The second case is where the minds are “like” each other only in the loose sense of being the sort of minds that are typical of human creatures, but they are qualitatively distinct from one another and each has a distinct set of experiences. I maintain that even in the latter case, where the minds are qualitatively different, the simulation argument still works, provided that you have no information that bears on the question of which of the various minds are simulated and which are implemented biologically.

A detailed defense of a stronger principle, which implies the above stance for both cases as trivial special instances, has been given in the literature.[11] Space does not permit a recapitulation of that defense here, but we can bring out one of the underlying intuitions by bringing to our attention to an analogous situation of a more familiar kind. Suppose that x% of the population has a certain genetic sequence S within the part of their DNA commonly designated as “junk DNA”. Suppose, further, that there are no manifestations of S (short of what would turn up in a gene assay) and that there are no known correlations between having S and any observable characteristic. Then, quite clearly, unless you have had your DNA sequenced, it is rational to assign a credence of x% to the hypothesis that you have S. And this is so quite irrespective of the fact that the people who have S have qualitatively different minds and experiences from the people who don’t have S. (They are different simply because all humans have different experiences from one another, not because of any known link between S and what kind of experiences one has.)

The same reasoning holds if S is not the property of having a certain genetic sequence but instead the property of being in a simulation, assuming only that we have no information that enables us to predict any differences between the experiences of simulated minds and those of the original biological minds.

It should be stressed that the bland indifference principle expressed by (#) prescribes indifference only between hypotheses about which observer you are, when you have no information about which of these observers you are. It does not in general prescribe indifference between hypotheses when you lack specific information about which of the hypotheses is true. In contrast to Laplacean and other more ambitious principles of indifference, it is therefore immune to Bertrand’s paradox and similar predicaments that tend to plague indifference principles of unrestricted scope.

Readers familiar with the Doomsday argument[12] may worry that the bland principle of indifference invoked here is the same assumption that is responsible for getting the Doomsday argument off the ground, and that the counterintuitiveness of some of the implications of the latter incriminates or casts doubt on the validity of the former. This is not so. The Doomsday argument rests on a much stronger and more controversial premiss, namely that one should reason as if one were a random sample from the set of all people who will ever have lived (past, present, and future) even though we know that we are living in the early twenty-first century rather than at some point in the distant past or the future. The bland indifference principle, by contrast, applies only to cases where we have no information about which group of people we belong to.

If betting odds provide some guidance to rational belief, it may also be worth to ponder that if everybody were to place a bet on whether they are in a simulation or not, then if people use the bland principle of indifference, and consequently place their money on being in a simulation if they know that that’s where almost all people are, then almost everyone will win their bets. If they bet on not being in a simulation, then almost everyone will lose. It seems better that the bland indifference principle be heeded.

Further, one can consider a sequence of possible situations in which an increasing fraction of all people live in simulations: 98%, 99%, 99.9%, 99.9999%, and so on. As one approaches the limiting case in which everybody is in a simulation (from which one can deductively infer that one is in a simulation oneself), it is plausible to require that the credence one assigns to being in a simulation gradually approach the limiting case of complete certainty in a matching manner.



VI. INTERPRETATION

The possibility represented by proposition (1) is fairly straightforward. If (1) is true, then humankind will almost certainly fail to reach a posthuman level; for virtually no species at our level of development become posthuman, and it is hard to see any justification for thinking that our own species will be especially privileged or protected from future disasters. Conditional on (1), therefore, we must give a high credence to DOOM, the hypothesis that humankind will go extinct before reaching a posthuman level:

One can imagine hypothetical situations were we have such evidence as would trump knowledge of . For example, if we discovered that we were about to be hit by a giant meteor, this might suggest that we had been exceptionally unlucky. We could then assign a credence to DOOM larger than our expectation of the fraction of human-level civilizations that fail to reach posthumanity. In the actual case, however, we seem to lack evidence for thinking that we are special in this regard, for better or worse.

Proposition (1) doesn’t by itself imply that we are likely to go extinct soon, only that we are unlikely to reach a posthuman stage. This possibility is compatible with us remaining at, or somewhat above, our current level of technological development for a long time before going extinct. Another way for (1) to be true is if it is likely that technological civilization will collapse. Primitive human societies might then remain on Earth indefinitely.

There are many ways in which humanity could become extinct before reaching posthumanity. Perhaps the most natural interpretation of (1) is that we are likely to go extinct as a result of the development of some powerful but dangerous technology.[13] One candidate is molecular nanotechnology, which in its mature stage would enable the construction of self-replicating nanobots capable of feeding on dirt and organic matter ? a kind of mechanical bacteria. Such nanobots, designed for malicious ends, could cause the extinction of all life on our planet.[14]

The second alternative in the simulation argument’s conclusion is that the fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulation is negligibly small. In order for (2) to be true, there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations. If the number of ancestor-simulations created by the interested civilizations is extremely large, the rarity of such civilizations must be correspondingly extreme. Virtually no posthuman civilizations decide to use their resources to run large numbers of ancestor-simulations. Furthermore, virtually all posthuman civilizations lack individuals who have sufficient resources and interest to run ancestor-simulations; or else they have reliably enforced laws that prevent such individuals from acting on their desires.
What force could bring about such convergence? One can speculate that advanced civilizations all develop along a trajectory that leads to the recognition of an ethical prohibition against running ancestor-simulations because of the suffering that is inflicted on the inhabitants of the simulation. However, from our present point of view, it is not clear that creating a human race is immoral. On the contrary, we tend to view the existence of our race as constituting a great ethical value. Moreover, convergence on an ethical view of the immorality of running ancestor-simulations is not enough: it must be combined with convergence on a civilization-wide social structure that enables activities considered immoral to be effectively banned.Another possible convergence point is that almost all individual posthumans in virtually all posthuman civilizations develop in a direction where they lose their desires to run ancestor-simulations. This would require significant changes to the motivations driving their human predecessors, for there are certainly many humans who would like to run ancestor-simulations if they could afford to do so. But perhaps many of our human desires will be regarded as silly by anyone who becomes a posthuman. Maybe the scientific value of ancestor-simulations to a posthuman civilization is negligible (which is not too implausible given its unfathomable intellectual superiority), and maybe posthumans regard recreational activities as merely a very inefficient way of getting pleasure ? which can be obtained much more cheaply by direct stimulation of the brain’s reward centers. One conclusion that follows from (2) is that posthuman societies will be very different from human societies: they will not contain relatively wealthy independent agents who have the full gamut of human-like desires and are free to act on them.

The possibility expressed by alternative (3) is the conceptually most intriguing one. If we are living in a simulation, then the cosmos that we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence. The physics in the universe where the computer is situated that is running the simulation may or may not resemble the physics of the world that we observe. While the world we see is in some sense “real”, it is not located at the fundamental level of reality.
It may be possible for simulated civilizations to become posthuman. They may then run their own ancestor-simulations on powerful computers they build in their simulated universe. Such computers would be “virtual machines”, a familiar concept in computer science. (Java script web-applets, for instance, run on a virtual machine ? a simulated computer ? inside your desktop.) Virtual machines can be stacked: it’s possible to simulate a machine simulating another machine, and so on, in arbitrarily many steps of iteration. If we do go on to create our own ancestor-simulations, this would be strong evidence against (1) and (2), and we would therefore have to conclude that we live in a simulation. Moreover, we would have to suspect that the posthumans running our simulation are themselves simulated beings; and their creators, in turn, may also be simulated beings.

Reality may thus contain many levels. Even if it is necessary for the hierarchy to bottom out at some stage ? the metaphysical status of this claim is somewhat obscure ? there may be room for a large number of levels of reality, and the number could be increasing over time. (One consideration that counts against the multi-level hypothesis is that the computational cost for the basement-level simulators would be very great. Simulating even a single posthuman civilization might be prohibitively expensive. If so, then we should expect our simulation to be terminated when we are about to become posthuman.)

Although all the elements of such a system can be naturalistic, even physical, it is possible to draw some loose analogies with religious conceptions of the world. In some ways, the posthumans running a simulation are like gods in relation to the people inhabiting the simulation: the posthumans created the world we see; they are of superior intelligence; they are “omnipotent” in the sense that they can interfere in the workings of our world even in ways that violate its physical laws; and they are “omniscient” in the sense that they can monitor everything that happens. However, all the demigods except those at the fundamental level of reality are subject to sanctions by the more powerful gods living at lower levels.
Further rumination on these themes could climax in a naturalistic theogony that would study the structure of this hierarchy, and the constraints imposed on its inhabitants by the possibility that their actions on their own level may affect the treatment they receive from dwellers of deeper levels. For example, if nobody can be sure that they are at the basement-level, then everybody would have to consider the possibility that their actions will be rewarded or punished, based perhaps on moral criteria, by their simulators. An afterlife would be a real possibility. Because of this fundamental uncertainty, even the basement civilization may have a reason to behave ethically. The fact that it has such a reason for moral behavior would of course add to everybody else’s reason for behaving morally, and so on, in truly virtuous circle. One might get a kind of universal ethical imperative, which it would be in everybody’s self-interest to obey, as it were “from nowhere”.

In addition to ancestor-simulations, one may also consider the possibility of more selective simulations that include only a small group of humans or a single individual. The rest of humanity would then be zombies or “shadow-people” ? humans simulated only at a level sufficient for the fully simulated people not to notice anything suspicious. It is not clear how much cheaper shadow-people would be to simulate than real people. It is not even obvious that it is possible for an entity to behave indistinguishably from a real human and yet lack conscious experience. Even if there are such selective simulations, you should not think that you are in one of them unless you think they are much more numerous than complete simulations. There would have to be about 100 billion times as many “me-simulations” (simulations of the life of only a single mind) as there are ancestor-simulations in order for most simulated persons to be in me-simulations.

There is also the possibility of simulators abridging certain parts of the mental lives of simulated beings and giving them false memories of the sort of experiences that they would typically have had during the omitted interval. If so, one can consider the following (farfetched) solution to the problem of evil: that there is no suffering in the world and all memories of suffering are illusions. Of course, this hypothesis can be seriously entertained only at those times when you are not currently suffering.

Supposing we live in a simulation, what are the implications for us humans? The foregoing remarks notwithstanding, the implications are not all that radical. Our best guide to how our posthuman creators have chosen to set up our world is the standard empirical study of the universe we see. The revisions to most parts of our belief networks would be rather slight and subtle ? in proportion to our lack of confidence in our ability to understand the ways of posthumans. Properly understood, therefore, the truth of (3) should have no tendency to make us “go crazy” or to prevent us from going about our business and making plans and predictions for tomorrow. The chief empirical importance of (3) at the current time seems to lie in its role in the tripartite conclusion established above.[15] We may hope that (3) is true since that would decrease the probability of (1), although if computational constraints make it likely that simulators would terminate a simulation before it reaches a posthuman level, then out best hope would be that (2) is true.
If we learn more about posthuman motivations and resource constraints, maybe as a result of developing towards becoming posthumans ourselves, then the hypothesis that we are simulated will come to have a much richer set of empirical implications.



VII. CONCLUSION

A technologically mature “posthuman” civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; (2) The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero; (3) The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.

If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).
Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation.

REFLECTIONS OF A WORRYFUL MASTER

REFLECTIONS OF A WORRYFUL MASTER

by kayes, a Past Master twice over of an Emulation Lodge

(this article was first published in The Chisel, Jan/Feb issue 1986)

Taking the Chair may be an achievement but it also brings with it an unbroken chain of worries for the ensuing year, beginning at least a month from Installation Day. Suddenly it dawns on Master Elect that it is no easy task being Master and one starts to wonder how some Masters seemed to have done everything with such ease and confidence. Did they have photographic memories or perhaps they have little tape recorders behind their ears?

They say if you start well, all will end well. The Installation Meeting should be relatively simple. Nothing much to do except to invest officers and to close the Lodge but will I be hit with an unexpected bout of stage fright? How many risings? Three or four? And when do I ask District Grand Master whether he wishes to retire? How do I invest the Deacons? Right or left side of pedestal? Remember to speak loud enough with clear diction. Don't smoke too much as it will turn you hoarse and definitely not too much scotch as it causes surprise lapses in memory.

First Regular Meeting and why has it got to be a Third Degree? Impossible to peep at any cue cards. Being not of athletic build I hope I will not fall over in attempting to raise a candidate who is a mere 250 lbs! Have to rely greatly on Director of Ceremonies. Just can't get the Exhortation and Charge right. Which one comes first? Exhortation or Charge? Traditional History even worse. Hope I don't throw in a paragraph of the Tracing Board into the Traditional History. Do not hit candidate with Heavy Mall - only simulate it!

Second Regular Meeting and it is a First Degree. Why can't they have it in a sequence? It will sure make things more logical. Must do well, as it is important for candidate to follow the entire ceremony and understand at least half of what is being said. Why can't all three degrees be done without the lights on? No one can see a red face in the dark! Charge after Initiation must be flawless and what? Did you say District Grand Master is coming? Will the lights and airconditioning fail? They say DGM is on Emulation and no slip up gets by unnoticed and Assistant District Grand Master may come also? He too is on Emulation? Perhaps I will have to fall sick or arrange a business trip to Siberia.

Third Regular Meeting and it is another Initiation. Should be easier this time. A month is not long enough to forget but it seems it will be a Raising again next month. At the rate things are going, I may be the only Master who has not done a Passing! Junior Deacon suddenly called away on urgent business and Inner Guard is ill. Who are the possible replacements? Can D of C and Assistant D of C take over? Did his proposer ask the candidate to come at all?

Committee Meeting and Treasurer reports that funds are critically low and threatens to resign because brethren are not responding to his pleas. Director of Ceremonies says attendance at Lodge of Instruction poor. Caterer says he will not serve any more food as the constantly varying dinner times are driving his microwave ovens crazy. Someone says he has not been receiving Summonses for three months and Secretary asks for his postcode. Discussion on Charity and that word reveals a myriad of interpretations.

Visitation Night. Hope all brethren particularly officers are punctual. Are there sufficient people to help at the bar? Do not wish to see visitors outnumbering us. Wonder whether seating arrangements at Festive Board are properly done. New caterer - hope he serves at least warm food and hot coffee. Tell the Scots we do not have haggis. Irish coffee yes.

Installation Meeting and glad to know one is vacating the Chair but no sooner starts to miss it. District Grand Master is definitely attending. Make sure generators are in working order and candles ready. Must remember Inner Working. Do not close Board of Installed Masters prematurely. Propose the toast to the new Worshipful Master and everything's over. Now to start worrying about the job of being the Immediate Past Master.