signals/periphery
00:00:00
SIGNAL
NODE 397 / 640 WIKI

Nick Bostrom

NODE
397 / 640
TAGS
2
CITED BY
5 NODES
LANG
EN

Swedish philosopher, for two decades at the University of Oxford where he founded and directed the Future of Humanity Institute, and the author of the Simulation Argument.

The other work

He is better known outside this subject for Superintelligence (2014), which put machine-intelligence risk into mainstream policy discussion, and for earlier work on anthropic reasoning and observation selection effects. That background is what makes the simulation paper what it is: it is an exercise in reasoning about self-locating belief under uncertainty, not a metaphysical proposal, and its machinery is the same machinery he uses on extinction risk and on the Doomsday argument.

Why the distinction is worth keeping

The popular version of the argument, that a sufficiently advanced civilisation would run simulations and therefore we are probably in one, drops the two horns that do the philosophical work and keeps the one that makes a headline. Bostrom has said repeatedly that he does not assert the third horn. A reader arriving from The Simulation Hypothesis or from the Jorjani - Danny Jones Podcast 2025 interview should read the paper itself; it is short.

Connections

Simulation Argument · The Simulation Hypothesis · Rizwan Virk · Silurian Hypothesis · Jorjani - Danny Jones Podcast 2025

RECORDED 7 Sep 2026 · LAST EDITED 7 Sep 2026

This entry records what the sources linked or listed above say, as of its last edit. It is not updated in real time. Errors go to the Corrections page; the Terms set out the limits of accuracy.