Are we living in a simulation?

What do you mean, "we"

Residents of earth

Some people take the hollow-earth theory seriously. Some people take Jordan Peterson seriously. Some people are not to be trusted with sharp objects. This is axiomatic.

Roll the booooones
Roll the boooones

voted yes, unironically

this whole topic REALLY pisses a lot of people off

Neanderthal otm

if treesh wants to become one of those people who posts on the "glitch in the matrix" reddit board and thinks they died in 2010 but it got rolled back or whatever well then i support it

Need an "it doesn't matter" option

it's there

I feel like "stfu" is for ppl mad about the question. I'm not mad, just feels inconsequential

inconsequential feels like the appropriate word. What would you do differently, if you decided that your perceptions of yourself and the universe were the result of "a simulation"? more to the point, what is this "simulation" simulating and how would that be any different than this "reality" being real?

I’ll argue about this a bit more tomorrow I guess. fwiw my position is not “we are living in a simulation”, but I think it’s as likely as any other expiation I’ve heard. People roll their eyes at it, but I guess I roll my eyes at anyone who thinks that anything else is more plausible

That last aimless post otm btw

Assuming the answer is “nothing”

I'm not sure that I would do anything differently, but I imagine that it would massively impact how I thought about myself and the things around me. If I'm in a simulation (something like a computer simulation, which I think is what we're talking about here) then it seems to follow that the simulation has been designed or programmed by someone, and so I can start to wonder about the nature of the designer, why they made this thing, why the features of it are the way they are, and why I'm part of it. And I can wonder about what the world outside of the simulation is like, which is another way to put the question "What is this 'simulation' simulating?" That doesn't seem inconsequential for me.

"which dreamed it?" remains a salient question but despite the apparent novelty of its present form i don't think there's been any actual advance in its tech for quite some time

I can start to wonder about the nature of the designer, why they made this thing, why the features of it are the way they are, and why I'm part of it.

brave new concerns for a brave new century

Lisa Randall otm. We hate oursleves so much for fucking everything up, and we want to belive we're one failed branch in a much larger optimization. But this is reality that we are fucking up. And the probabilities people invoke for these arguments are usually one part of a long string of condotional probabilities.

Conditional

needs a 'no and stfu' option

it feels like a lazy way out of answering a fundamental question we don't know the answer to. Like panspermia: how does life originate, we don't know, oh look a comet, there's the answer, done.

Sufjan otm, I suspect that's part of the appeal, consciously or not. It's no biggie, just a trial run, right?

i will get grimes to write a ballad of this dream

brave new concerns for a brave new century

I didn't say any of that was new. I'm not that interested in the Bostrom formulation myself. My point was just to resist the idea that this kind of question is inconsequential. I could also say that it's not inconsequential whether we're inside of a dream.

J.E.H. Smith has a good post on this topic: https://www.jehsmith.com/1/2016/06/we-are-not-living-in-a-video-game-simulation.html

The particular form the new version takes offers a vivid case study in the consequences of historical and anthropological ignorance. How self-congratulatory and parochial does a member of a given culture, at a given moment, have to be, to suppose that reality itself takes the form of a particular technology developed within that very culture in the course of one's own lifetime? Consider the familiar claim that 'the brain is like a computer', or, switching the comparative 'like' for the stoner one, that 'the brain is, like, a computer'. Is this not effectively to say that this thing that has been around in nature for hundreds of millions of years turns out to in fact have been, all along, this other thing that we ourselves came up with in the past few decades?

oh i wasn't aiming my snot at you (or being sarcastic w "salient"). we agree i think. there have been thousands of years of work done on this question and metaphors have come and gone.

(tho pointlessly imo, because what's ever gonna work better than a dream)

you are living in a simulation

Your grandmothers were right, kids: video games have ruined everything.

bold take: we havent rly fucked everything up things are pretty good

just cuz life is pretty good for you (and for me tbh) doesn't mean things aren't fucked up

relative to what

also my life is awful fu

This reminds me of the first time I heard "Sh-Boom", particularly the opening line "Life Could Be A Dream" - I was full of the pondering that we (or maybe it's YOU) could wake up and find that none of this exists. Particularly as the version of "Sh-Boom" was by Stan Freberg.

relative to what

relative to how unfucked they could be obv

yeah idk how valid that is a comparator

And there are other reasons to think we might be virtual. For instance, the more we learn about the universe, the more it appears to be based on mathematical laws. Perhaps that is not a given, but a function of the nature of the universe we are living in. “If I were a character in a computer game, I would also discover eventually that the rules seemed completely rigid and mathematical,” said Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “That just reflects the computer code in which it was written.”
Furthermore, ideas from information theory keep showing up in physics. “In my research I found this very strange thing,” said James Gates, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland. “I was driven to error-correcting codes—they’re what make browsers work. So why were they in the equations I was studying about quarks and electrons and supersymmetry? This brought me to the stark realization that I could no longer say people like Max are crazy.”

This sounds like deism

We might be living in a simulation
But I'm still living for that stimulation
WHEEEEDLYDEEEDLYDEEEEEEEEEE (guitar solo sound)

ah look this idea isn't a new idea, the notion that this reality isn't the ultimate reality, sooner or later some of these kids will discover gnosticism or prakrti or gorgias or what the fuck ever.

reality is broken, we don't know and will never know why, take it seriously or don't but for god's sake at least try to be kind.

It does neatly explain some things people have always intuited—like the existence of a realm of pure being that is more “real” than this one.

Or whar rushomancy just said. (Can’t see if someone has posted on safari mobile).

To me, God being a computer programming AI is the worst of all possible worlds, almost. It must be cruel to program all this suffering in but then someone could say the same of God.

suffering does predominate in all of the fictions we produce, there's no reason our own simulating overlords wouldn't also bring the pain

So this is just westworld

actually a very interesting and good q imo which occupies not-non-adjacent ethical space with "how would you live differently if you knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that a divine Being existed"

the world would certainly be a healthier and happier place. the trick is to see the divine in what we can already perceive. children need to be shown nature and volcanos and stuff

that's true joan. the idea of the simulation question is interesting to me basically for that reason--this is really about metaphysics not technology

fuck washing a virtual toilet then

actually a very interesting and good q imo which occupies not-non-adjacent ethical space with "how would you live differently if you knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that a divine Being existed"

― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Monday, 14 January 2019 12:20 (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

do i know what they want?

Microsoft Fight or Flight Simulator

Roll the booooones
Roll the boooones

The night has a thousand saxophones?

voted no

the real nature of the Universe is kooky enough as is without having to invent this stupid backstory

If we live in a simulation, it’s less “overlord pushing buttons and changing settings to see what happens in a controlled environment”, and more me repeatedly reloading a Civ game I saved way too late to untuck my bad decisions.

unfuck ffs

children need to be shown nature and volcanos and stuff

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F2.media.collegehumor.cvcdn.com%2F4%2Ff%2Fcollegehumor.0f3f88c4f70804eb819af14fe2c15cfe.jpg&f=1

I agree with Louis. There is too much in our culture that pushes against the experience of awe.

Ftr i do not agree with the simulation hypothesis, but I like that it is getting people to face the fact that we don’t really understand the nature of the universe.

is there even an r/awe?

I don’t use reddit

Nor twitter. I’m ilx all the way

of all the irrelevant hypotheticals to consider, this is one of the least interesting

There’s an option for you on the poll!

I appreciate your open-mindedness on this matter

one reason treesh is a good messageboard poster because even when people vehemently disagree with the entire concept of the thread, they still contribute something

(sorry for tangent, going to repost that in the appropriate space)

To the extent that the subjective impact of reality remains unchanged, I'm fairly blasé re: the possibility of actually being somebody's GTA avatar.

what if you are bill simmons' son's fortnite avatar though

no

i kinda think we do tbph. idk if it's a material simulation or a metaphysical simulation but in either case

but is it a collective simulation, or are we each in our own individual simulation and you are all just my sims

1 0 0 1 0 0 1
S.O.S.

I definitely do not believe in solipsism. There are other minds in the simulation, if it’s a simulation.

It's like the Truman Show except when you finally wise up and sail your boat to the edge of the world you find that there's no exit, sucks 2 b u.

We're living in something or other. It's going to be really weird no matter what. My guess is that our metaphors (dream, computer simulation) are too crude to be useful.

Or it's like the Matrix except that Morpheus is actually more like Werner Herzog grousing about the perversity of nature and you wind up wishing you could've just stayed jacked in and ignorant.

If we're living in a simulation, someone's using pirated software

dude in my sim was i was a carbon based life form on this spheroidal rock called a planet and we used these machines called computers linked in a vast network called the World Wide Web and on it I visited this message board called ILX on it was T✧✧@K✧✧.E✧✧ it was a trip!

I want to live in the simulation where there is an actual kfc.edu

there's only one mind but it's an infinite mind that experiences itself as refracted individuals interacting with one another

for more information google panentheism

I knew we’d get to Spinoza!

i was a panentheist for a little while back in the day

you only get spatial separation from refraction if we aren't all on the same wavelength, guys!

my point was that optics metaphors are almost always bad. not saying we aren't interpenetrated by god. that sounds right to me.

metaphors: a necessary evil

I am getting deja vu from this exchange, and everyone knows what that means

ctl-f Baudrillard

Furthermore, ideas from information theory keep showing up in physics. “In my research I found this very strange thing,” said James Gates, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland. “I was driven to error-correcting codes—they’re what make browsers work. So why were they in the equations I was studying about quarks and electrons and supersymmetry? This brought me to the stark realization that I could no longer say people like Max are crazy.”

as if there's some template for "actual reality, not a simulation" that he can compare our reality to???

"I know all about Reality-reality...and it shouldn't be ruled by mathematical laws" ???

Well, historically the fact that the universe was governed by discoverable natural laws was used as evidence that there was a Creator. This is the same argument.

All of this is old wine in a new bottle with a trashier label.

new ship in an old bottle

meh sage in a bottle

you could use the fact that the universe is NOT governed by "discoverable natural laws" as evidence that there was a Creator too! "we can't explain why things operate the ways in which they do...clearly there is someone or some thing behind the scenes pulling the strings"

^ tbf, that was the main reason why so many primitive religions projected their deities as being driven by human-like emotions like jealousy, anger or lust.

this doesn't really belong here but i wanted to share it somewhere and it kinda does belong here?

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-if-true-this-could-be-one-of-the-greatest-discoveries-in-human-history-1.6828318

Wow—have to say, i felt relieved when they said that thing was moving out of our solar system.

This thread reminded me of this:

https://entertainment.theonion.com/video-game-character-wondering-why-heartless-god-always-1819566102?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=theonion_copy&utm_campaign=top

have to say, i felt relieved when they said that thing was moving out of our solar system.

https://i.imgur.com/sjLTPre.png

i was listening to a podcast episode on the simulation argument and they briefly mentioned a ongoing experiment/research that could be relevant because it could potentially prove that we live in a simulation (maybe? in case anyone did not know, i am not a scientist and this is my first day here, hello everyone).

the argument goes something like this: if the universe were a simulation, then one could expect to find a certain limit of "granularity" in measurements. As an example, when you look at a computer screen, the smallest unit of measure is a pixel. so in that little computer screen universe, the smallest unit of granularity would be a pixel. in other words, if you want to draw a line from one side of the screen to the other, you have to travel along the pixels - you can't travel in between pixels or split them in half, so if you zoom in far enough, diagonal lines are actually on a grid.

similarly, one could build a really cpu-intensive particle physics simulation, designed to simulate the movements of objects a tiiiiiiiiny scale - but at some point, there would be a limit as to how small you could go, because every additional smaller level of scale would require even more computing resources to model.

so the idea is that maybe there's a limit in our universe, a limit on how small things could get. in order to test this, (if i remember correctly..it's been a few weeks since i heard this episode), research is being conducted (maybe one very small component of the large hadron collider stuff?) to measure the paths of particles after they collide. one would think that the paths of these particles wouldn't ever align with any sort of granular grid - it's kind of like if you measure the amount of time it takes you to sneeze, you should very very very rarely get the same exact amount of time, because even if two sneezes both take 1.05 seconds, if you "zoomed" in far enough you'd see that one takes 1.0500000000000001 seconds and the other takes 1.050000000000000000000001 seconds. in the same way, if you measure the paths of collided particles, you should see that an incredibly tiny scale, they all follow slightly different paths, their angles always just a little different from each other. UNLESS we live in a simulated universe. in that case, maybe we're only simulated down to the 40th power (or whatever). if that was the case, and we had the ability to measure distance down to the 45th power, then we be able to see the point that particles fall into a "grid" (kind of like the pixel example i mentioned several thousand words ago)

sorry if this makes no sense

the obvious counterpoint to all this is that if there was a being (organic or artificial) that had enough computing power to simulate our entire universe to the degree that we experience it, they would probably be able to simulate to a level of granularity that we're not yet able measure (e.g., meter to the negative 500th power), so we wouldn't be able to identify the level of granularity where of the simulated "grid".

It seems like it collapses pretty quickly, as a theory, into just vague 'something-ism'. We could make a simulation of a universe that is different from ours, and if that's the case of whatever is supposed to be simulating us, we can't say anything about them. It just becomes 'something is originating/maintaining the universe'. We have no reason to assume their physics would be like ours, so trying to extrapolate from restrictions in our reality to the over-reality seems unsound.

xp They should also not find it hard to trick our measurements, make us think we're seeing bottomless levels of granularity.

that's true, but why would they want to trick us? i agree with dowd (xp) that there's no way you could ever infer anything about the simulators. but i do think that one possibility is just that computing power continues to grow exponentially for several thousand years, to the point where some kid can open up Civilization MMMCDLXIV and say "simulate humans for 4 million years with X set of genetic base code and Y level of mutations, using the Resource Wars geology template" or whatever. and here we are, halfway through it, and the stupid kid is off doing whatever

Why do I feel so strongly that we are, in fact, not in a simulation? It's not things are too "real", future tech could hypothetically create and environment a million times richer than what I experience. I don't think it's because I'm emotionally invested in not being in a dream world. But while I can intellectually concede the possibility, in my gut I know it's not true.

The most insulting metaphysical scenario.

xp

btw in case anyone thinks i'm a total idiot, i think the possibility of any of this being true is very tiny. but it makes as likely (if not more) to me than any religion's version of how the universe came to be, and yet everyone politely nods at all of those stories because billions of people believe them.

my partner absolutely HATES all of this with a passion because she really hates deterministic worldviews

I think the over-universes interest will be as much in alternate kinds of universe as much as different hypotheticals of their own universe/society. But even then, I'm assuming something about their motivations that I have no right to, because such motivations would only be valid if they are 'human-like'.

but it makes as likely (if not more) to me than any religion's version of how the universe came to be

this is an indication that the actual content of the question lies somewhere totally aside from its technical details

It seems to able to end up as 'God' anyway, if we can't know anything about their universe, being, motivations, technology etc.

ontological inquiry began
in two thousand and three
(which was rather late for me)
between the second matrix film
and the third w.k. lp

a+

It was a dream. We live inside a dream.

Lynch believes in the unified field of consciousness that he apprehends through transcendental meditation.

Seems not unrelated.

(wins was quoting twin peaks)

but he works in a petrol station

fail to see how eventually coming up against a grid as opposed to a perfect smoothness proves a model even if we managed it. only proves we got good at measuring small enough. if you can theorise a fundamental indivisible then theres cooled things to wonder about it than "we're not real" imo.

but i did enjoy the post which yknow is fitting as a metaphor

nb metaphors are a nett evil

if the universe were a simulation, then one could expect to find a certain limit of "granularity" in measurements.

again, nobody knows that this isn't true for a real-deal universe

Physical 'imperfections' are enough on their own to argue against this being a simulation imo. Like why would you write zits into what's already a ridiculously complex simulation.

emergent content hurts the most while it's emerging

Because it would be programmed by a superpowerful AI that can process information a million times faster or something

I don't think logical inconsistencies are the best line of attack against this unnecessary flight of fancy tbh

you guys what if everything's a board game? no wait. nobody could play it without getting confused. but what if someone could??

World War 2 does bear a crazy similarity to Axis & Allies!

https://i.imgur.com/RePxSM6.jpg

"what if scrimulation?"

you guys sure do know everything about the origins of the universe, enough to rule out one possibility that's just as dumb as anything you believe

salt death of the universe approaching 100%

Karl otm. I’m not a simulation guy but there is no “common sense” alternative explanation. The existence of the universe and consciousness is weird.

ara only if you think about it but sure so's everything

*puff* Sure maaaaaan.

i'm not at all ruling it out karl i'm saying: what do people mean when they say, as they have for some time now, "what if life is a dream?" what they mean is, what if "instead" of "being" "real", what if life is "only" an imagining of life, taking place inside some kind of mind. that mind would have to be pretty big and powerful, to imagine all this! what kind of entity would have such a mind? what would it be like? why would it find itself imagining us? is it doing it on purpose? what does it think of us? does it "think" anything? are we its thoughts? are there others like it? other minds? other worlds? what does all this mean about how i ought to behave? these are the questions and continue to be. putting "you know, like the sims" after them doesn't take us anywhere we haven't already been with dreams, looms, plays, etc. new metaphors are great, because they're teaching tools. but not if-- as i fear is a danger in the Science! culture that reproduces this particular one-- they confuse themselves for new insights. takes bong rip

yeah essentially that

theres not a scale at which it matters to us as we exist

unless we want to make excuses about why we lost a ping pong match with our kid sister. "fuck off, becca, it's all a simulation anyway" *throws paddle* etc.

I agree with dll that the popularity of this theory among elon musk types is really suspicious

The arguments for the universe as a computer simulation are just recapitulations of the centuries-old argument from design, where the apparent interconnection of all parts of the universe into a functional whole is cited as evidence that a greater intelligence (i.e. God) must have designed it. This is yet another instance of the argument from analogy, but it fails miserably to establish its conclusion, because the things analogized from (computer simulations created by humans) have so little in common with the observable universe that they have almost nothing in common, while the argument requires them to be nearly identical.

You guys know about terrence mckenna

to wheel and defend the other flank:

(computer simulations created by humans) have so little in common with the observable universe that they have almost nothing in common

--well the big thing they have in common is that their complexity emerges over time from simpler underlying principles, and iirc millennia of physics have brought us no closer to figuring out what the actual deal is with the existence of those principles, instead of nothing, or something else. but nor does this theory. it's just a rephrasing of the question.

That’s true. There still must be a base reality that made the simulation and that must have had physical laws that came from somewhere.

Does creationism actually make more scientific sense?

Not versus evolution obviously—biological life comes from that—but the idea of the universes big banging out of a vaccuum seems wrong

https://66.media.tumblr.com/5128d3467b70fdadf84d4373ee5fb916/tumblr_inline_nsd9t2xunV1szid9y_540.jpg

(sarahpalmer.gif)

A very unsatisfying answer, i have to say

several xp to the post where DLH ripped the bong

*riiiiip*

i don't disagree with you on any of that. (except maybe on the premise that if we are the dream of someone else (or a simulation), that we're any less real.) as aimless said upthread, these are ancient questions. i do think, though, that the compelling thing about the simulation argument is that it provides an understandable idea of what links us to the "dreamer". many cosmologies require some sort of leap of faith at some point - a miracle, an unexplainable metaphysical transformation, some sort of deus ex machina just making it all work. but it's easy (for me, at least) to imagine computers getting more and more advanced and powerful, given how far they've come in our lifetimes alone. that's not to say i think that kurzweil et al are right and that moore's law is actually a law. but if an advanced civilization could keep cracking at it for say, 10,000 years, i imagine they could probably come up with a pretty fucking intensely fast computer. and i think anyone with a basic understanding of exponential growth could at least imagine how it was possible, too.

the fact that the argument relies on extensions of things that already exist and that it doesn't involve magic doesn't prove anything, of course. but it does make it stand out from previous attempts to come up with an explanation, so it's not surprising that a lot of people talk about it. if some people take it too far and turn it into a religion for computer nerds (which is definitely a thing), that's annoying, but i don't see a problem with entertaining it as a possibility

This is yet another instance of the argument from analogy, but it fails miserably to establish its conclusion, because the things analogized from (computer simulations created by humans) have so little in common with the observable universe that they have almost nothing in common,

see, i don't know what to say - i just disagree with this. it is very easy for me to imagine a simulated space that is virtually indistinguishable from "reality". like, i think i might even get to experience some version of that in VR in my lifetime, if i grow to be very old

and if/when i do, i'm going to claim the virtual space username "Z S" because i really miss that one

extensions of things that already exist

minds exist tho, and the dream question just means: what if mind, but big? it's never had to be magic. any sufficiently advanced etc

true tho that one thing that has changed over the years is our understanding of how minds and analogous machines work, which has improved. as you point out we have ourselves built less and less crude representations of the mind, closer and closer to our model if still (very) far off. this growing experience of creation maybe does provide us with increasingly graspable metaphors. but they shouldn't be taken as "realer" or counted upon not to be supplanted themselves. we've always been creators, and wondered if it's anything like what god does.

nice lil joke in the late tech tree of sid meier's alpha centauri (source of most of my thoughts) where amidst other on-research-completion quotes from kierkegaard, nietzsche, confucius etc., you're suddenly read this:

We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?

--Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7. Activity recorded Mission Year 2302.22467. (TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED)

to bring the palmer family back into it, here's a 13-year-old laura getting high for the first time:

Tim brought us a cup of coffee with chocolate mixed in, and all five of us sat and talked about all sorts of things, like if maybe our universe was just a tiny little speck of lint that a huge giant hadn't noticed on his sweater, and someday soon, who knows if this great giant would just brush us off, or toss us into a washer and drown us all to death. Donna said maybe our idea of hundreds of years is only a split second to this giant, and soon something would have to happen, because how long can someone keep a sweater on?

We all liked the idea that there might be other little universes or "balls of lint" on this sweater, and we thought we'd someday like to meet a few people from these other places, as long as they were nice to us.

Ladies and gentlemen, Rene Decartes' Evil Demon hypothesis

The evil demon, also known as malicious demon[1] and evil genius,[2] is a concept in Cartesian philosophy. In the first of his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes imagines that an evil demon, of "utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me." This evil demon is imagined to present a complete illusion of an external world, so that Descartes can say, "I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement. I shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things."

Some Cartesian scholars opine that the demon is also omnipotent, and thus capable of altering mathematics and the fundamentals of logic, though omnipotence of the evil demon would be contrary to Descartes' hypothesis, as he rebuked accusations of the evil demon having omnipotence.

I opine that the demon possesses a beautiful jump shot

upon my life, the tracks have vanished

As a counterpoint, Descartes was a cunt.

or was he

He did invent Cartesian coordinates, which seem to be integral to computer simulations, such as the one we are not living within.

i agree with karl that there's no reason to call it not-living

aimless: how did the evil demon get there?

why don't they make the whole cartesian plane out of the evil demon?

he stinks therefore he aint

Wait if we are a simulation does that mean we are AI?

many cosmologies require some sort of leap of faith at some point - a miracle, an unexplainable metaphysical transformation, some sort of deus ex machina just making it all work. but it's easy (for me, at least) to imagine computers getting more and more advanced and powerful, given how far they've come in our lifetimes alone. that's not to say i think that kurzweil et al are right and that moore's law is actually a law. but if an advanced civilization could keep cracking at it for say, 10,000 years, i imagine they could probably come up with a pretty fucking intensely fast computer. and i think anyone with a basic understanding of exponential growth could at least imagine how it was possible, too.

imo it is much easier to imagine that there's one or many fundamental limits that will prevent this from happening, and this reads like a leap of faith where this imaginary computer is the deus ex machina. it's been said already, but this computer is just another metaphor, and I guess that's fine, but it's a shame that it heaps more importance on a sector of our world's endeavors already full up of self-importance.

you guys sure do know everything about the origins of the universe, enough to rule out one possibility that's just as dumb as anything you believe

Maybe I missed it, but nobody said "this theory is clearly wrong, and I know one that's probably correct". Simulation theory doesn't really "explain" anything wrt how did a universe arise, as in it's another "turtles all the way down" victim. Does the entity who created the simulation also wonder if it is itself part of a simulation?
Personally, I don't "believe" anything about origins of the universe. I do have a hunch that it's part of a infinite multiverse which has no cause, no beginning, no ending.

but the idea of the universes big banging out of a vaccuum seems wrong

the universe has no obligation to make sense to you

Then it's doing a grand job.

but the idea of the universes big banging out of a vaccuum seems wrong

For a start, the vacuum only exists INSIDE the universe. The universe bangs out of an singularity from an unimaginable prior state we have no access to.

If it helps, think of it more like a Big Prolapse.

http://www.bieniosek.com/gallery/albums/goatse/nebula.jpg

in primary school one of my stock jokes was that I hoped that when I died I would get a loading screen for level 2. now of course, I see how naïve I was: my current best guess is that the universe is nothing but the dream speed-run of a dragon, and the dragon is about to rage-quit

what if rather than being the deliberate and finely tuned masterpiece of a deeply engaged creator, the universe is just god's fart? your move, atheists

So the consensus here is that metaphysical speculation of any kind is just a waste of time that should be mocked, eveb though human beings have engaged in it from the start? We’re just radical pragmatists on ilx

you think we need more protected subjects on this site?

i wld rather speculate abt whether we can waste time

I think the consensus is more that strawmen make great scapegoats in the wake of butthurt.

At any rate, I don't think many of those who've engaged in serious thinking about the nature of reality have historically worked themselves into a lather about permission or consensus. Hash it out and damn the haters.

I am a bot btw

Hm, i’m in a lather now

i want to hear caek's thoughts on the matter

Jokes are good when they’re part of the discussion. Skepticism is good as well. But you guys are just throwing peanut shells on people’s heads from the rafters.

i dunno but what karls rather untypical but def misplaced sense of persecution on behalf of his pixel theory hasnt somehow transmitted to you too treesh but it has been discussed and fairly discussed and nobody is stopping more discussion

cosmology appeals to a lot of foundationalists and they ruin everything imo

I didn’t say I was being censored. I was trying to engage Old Lunch and the rest of the traveling comedy troupe in discussion. What’s their position?

That’s a position ogmor, thank you.

ah here "it would be impossible to tell from within the simulation" is a position!

Yeah that one is fine but I think from there maybe there are more things to say.

I was talking more of the extraordinary proliferation of these kinds of posts:

he stinks therefore he aint

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal), Monday, January 14, 2019 9:59 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If it helps, think of it more like a Big Prolapse.

― A Nugatory Excrescence (Old Lunch), Tuesday, January 15, 2019 7:50 AM (fifty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag

I offered several perspectives upthread treesh fwiw. Shit perspectives perhaps but perspectives nonetheless.

We might be living in a simulation
But I'm still living for that stimulation
WHEEEEDLYDEEEDLYDEEEEEEEEEE (guitar solo sound)

― A Nugatory Excrescence (Old Lunch), Monday, January 14, 2019 6:28 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ah missed them then sorry

If though you would like me to reach all the way up my ass to my undergrad philosophy major days I will see what I can do for u.

only graduate level grasping at straws from here out plz

Metaphysics is great as a branch of aesthetics tbf

In Iain M Banks' The Algebraist there's a religion called The Truth which involves believing we're in a simulation, and believing that if enough people believe that we're in a simulation, the simulation will end. If it makes them happy... (it probably doesn't.)

I don't know if this is covered in any of the literature and nor can I be arsed to find out, but I think there is a bit of a paradox in the simulation argument. It says that if our experience of reality is accurate (a universe with consistent laws of physics which allow for conscious beings & computers) then our experience of reality is not accurate (i.e. simulated).

to experience a simulation as accurate wouldn't be inaccurate necessarily

It's like the Kremlin scene in Ghost Protes. The simulation self-corrects according to your perspective.

Well part of the appeal of the simulation argument for self-proclaimed rationalists all over the internet is that on the face of it it's (sort of) SCIENCE (based metaphysics) not poxy RELIGION. But once you allow that you may be simulated, that severs any necessary connection between your reality and that of the simulators. Why suppose their reality is anything like ours?

I think one of the things about metaphysics as a whole is a lack of necessary connection to epistemology. A necessary lack of necessary connection, even.

the "computer" running the simulation would have to be way more vast and complex than our own vast and complex Universe

and true randomness wouldn't exist in this Universe — only pseudo-randomness

Surely the simulators could pipe in some proper random numbers from their universe using a web service.

I think one of the things about metaphysics as a whole is a lack of necessary connection to epistemology. A necessary lack of necessary connection, even.

Aye, but the (preferred) conclusion of the simulation argument is "we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation" so they think they're on pretty firm ground.

inconsequential feels like the appropriate word. What would you do differently, if you decided that your perceptions of yourself and the universe were the result of "a simulation"? more to the point, what is this "simulation" simulating and how would that be any different than this "reality" being real?

― A is for (Aimless), Monday, January 14, 2019 5:39 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just found this, lol:

https://www.jetpress.org/volume7/simulation.htm

If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal you should care less about others, live more for today, make your world look more likely to become rich, expect to and try more to participate in pivotal events, be more entertaining and praiseworthy, and keep the famous people around you happier and more interested in you.

"We are living in a simulation" is just "Jesus, take the wheel" for techbros.

nah, it's a fun theory that as KM posited is about as conceivable as any any other explanation

Yeah I've come across the probability arguments in simulation theories, it's a pretty weak attempt to sound like science when you're doing metaphysics, a field absolutely disconnected from falsifiability or any other criteria for defining knowledge

I mean like I say, this stuff can be *fun*, it can be *beautiful*, but I'll give it a B for the former and a D minus for the latter.

and I say this as somebody not unduly hung up on falsifiability or epistemology in general.

those middling grades don't relegate it to religion for techbros

nah, it's a fun theory that as KM posited is about as conceivable as any any other explanation

― Rhine Jive Click Bait (Hadrian VIII), Tuesday, January 15, 2019 10:17 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How about the explanation that life is just as short, weird, fucked up and without rationale as it seems to be?

on reflection I marked fun a shade high

xp that's not an alternative explanation

metaphysics isn't really an explanation, it's a story

that sounds about as conceivable, but less fun

xp

just curious:

how do you all react when someone brings up...

~FERMI'S PARADOX~

i ask because it's also an idea that's difficult to prove or disprove (though some are trying) that would have profound metaphysical/spiritual/practical ramifications if true (or not true), that there's no real point in discussing, involving conjectures about how galactic civilizations act over the course of millions of years, etc etc - and yet no one shits their pants when it's brought up over and over in every essay, documentary, conversation etc over the past 10 years

Ultimately I just feel like entertaining the notion that the whole of reality is in fact an artifact of technology that has only really been conceivable within the span of living memory is an anthropocentric error that places an outsized value upon human consciousness as the center of a universe that in reality dgaf about human consciousness.

i guess it's because it involves more data points (in the form of a lack of data, ironically) so it seems more real or something? or maybe everyone is secretly like "hey, FUCK that paradox!" whenever it comes up

xp

I don't see any pants shitting itt tbf, and let's be honest, I would probably be the one to point it out if there were.

metaphysics isn't really an explanation, it's a story
― moaty, boaty, big and bloaty (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, January 15, 2019 10:29 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fair but the irony here is that simulation theory is predicated on our own storytelling impulse

lol old lunch

tbh i'm being veeeery liberal with my use of "pants shitting" itt, i don't really think anyone's doing that. i just like saying it. :-/ gotta stop that.

(total derail but i think i described my main goal at my new job to be 'trying not to shit my pants', just to illustrate my over-use of it)

I hope that was in response to an interview question.

"now that you've shown us your clean pants, do you have any questions for us?"

"do you think we are living in a simulation?"

profound metaphysical/spiritual/practical ramifications if true (or not true)

not sure what you mean by 'true' w/r/t fermi's paradox...

Aliens are a concept that's easy to grasp and they have made a good showing in popular media for over 100 years. "Why aren't they here" is a pretty simple and appealing non-metaphysical question.

to be clear I don't feel strongly against simulation theory. I don't buy it as having more explicatory power than, for example, religions because I don't believe any of those things have legit explicator power. So to me what remains is a set of stories, social practices, histories, ideologies etc and in those terms, aesthetically, simulation theories can't help but look like thin gruel compared to systems that have developed over millenia

Simulation theory is just as plausible as anything else, really. The sum of what we know is limited by our sensory apparatus and whatever instruments we've been able to construct to exceed the limits of our sensory apparatus and whatever chemicals we've been able to ingest to expand the limits of our sensory apparatus, and the sum of human history (the vast majority of which is lost to the ages) has probably managed to scrape roughly a thumbnail worth of Truth out of the vast existence in which we are imbedded. Pretty much everything is a guess which will at some point be proven wrong or, at best, a misapprehension of what we think we're perceiving.

(puuuuuffffff)

at the outer limits of what can be known everything is equally plausible but stanning for one is strange

which is also pretty reminiscent of evangelism.

I think though that the question can be modified somewhat and answered in the affirmative when restricted to the parameters of human civilization. Like we do arguably exist within something like a simulation constructed of language.

xps Billions of people—most people in the world—stan for a particular remote plausibility. I'm all for simulation theory joining the ranks of other religions, it punches things up a little!

I can't muster anything more than pure indifference towards this question, perhaps because I subscribe to the tit-for-tat school of thought in matters of metaphysical apathy: it (whatever neutral thing 'it' might be) doesn't care for me, so I've no reason to care for it. Granted, that's not entirely true in practice but even so I find the lexicon of simulation to be a stupendously boring way of looking at the problem, like a fourth-rate L. Ron Hubbard novel.

Ultimately I just feel like entertaining the notion that the whole of reality is in fact an artifact of technology that has only really been conceivable within the span of living memory is an anthropocentric error

yeah

at the outer limits of what can be known everything is equally plausible but stanning for one is strange

yeah

I'm always very skeptical of theories that "feel" good or true or right to human minds. And I'd rather spend time thinking about and researching something like quantum theory, which is truly bizarre and confounding and counterintuitive and "feels wrong" but is borne out by experiments.

I guess the thread question is ultimately less interesting to me than the questions which arise if we start from the assumption that it's true. What changes if we suddenly discover the source code driving our every action? Will we somehow become able to hack our 'reality'? And what's the ultimate nature of the simulation? Is it the glitchy product of some total noob developer or (dear god in heaven) is ours the perfected and elegant simulacrum of a universe that's somehow even more fucked up?

But what if God is one of us?

Maxis should do a The Simulation game where you have to continually stay a step ahead of your sims who are on the verge of stumbling upon some glitch in your shoddy world

Eric Voegelin's writings on gnosticism as an "immanentization of the world" seem apropos for this topic, particularly "In Search of the Ground."

Granny otm

Simulation arguments have something in common with free will arguments (and presumably if we're a simulation, that would in some ways limit "free will"). Interesting enough and I'm all in favor of acknowledging the artificiality or at least subjectivity of what we call reality. But, like ... you still have to get out of bed in the morning. Or decide not to and then live with the consequences, which will feel real enough however simulated or subjective they may be.

never been as baffled by ILX as when the "free will" poll results posted

a bunch of atheists unwilling to accept determinism is really weird imo

tbh i kind of cringed when people upthread referenced the stanning going on in this thread, because i felt like i had said a million times in this thread that i'm not a "believer" in the simulation argument. but all i've really said is:

...fwiw my position is not “we are living in a simulation”, but I think it’s as likely as any other expiation I’ve heard

...btw in case anyone thinks i'm a total idiot, i think the possibility of any of this being true is very tiny.

...if some people take it too far and turn it into a religion for computer nerds (which is definitely a thing), that's annoying, but i don't see a problem with entertaining it as a possibility

which isn't much given all the other words i typed. and also, the very first thing i said itt was "voted yes, unironically", so i could see how someone would get that idea (i voted yes just because i knew it's going to be 99 votes to 2 or whatever, which seems silly when the vote wouldn't be nearly as lopsided as an "is there a god?" poll, even though both are just as unknowable.)

also i guess i just didn't understand what "stanning" really means. i always thought of it as just like "i like indian food. yeah, i'll stan for indian food", but i guess it's more of a thing where come off as defending an idea, or worse, pushing it on other people (actually it was the "evangelical" references that really stung upthread because that hits home for me and i know how fucking annoying that is). so, i apologize that i'm being pushy with all this. i didn't mean to. i just think it's fun to talk about and think about, and like old lunch just said, consider the ramifications if it were true (which i don't think! agh!). to me it's like a really good sci-fi premise.

ok, gonna stop being starting....NOW

bacon FUCK

a bunch of atheists unwilling to accept determinism is really weird imo

yup

Sorry Karl it absolutely wasn't a dig at you, just rhetorical playing about. I understand your position in this thread and don't think it's remotely stannish or evangelical. Tbh I figure we're all doing a similar thing, chewing thoughts over for ourselves as much as to make an argument, and/or making ilxy jokes.

a bunch of atheists unwilling to accept determinism is really weird imo

You speak as if they had any choice in how they responded.

oh no worries! i think i just get esp "triggered" at evangelical because i still harbor _incredibly deep and lasting resentment_ at my religious upbringing for digging a hole that took forever to climb out of

Tbh I figure we're all doing a similar thing, chewing thoughts over for ourselves as much as to make an argument, and/or making ilxy jokes.

this seems right :)

lol OL

Determinism is terrifying.

Free will debates go nowhere if you don't stake out the compatabilist options.

Also yeah I've been noticing the free will vs determinism parallels throughout

Determinism is a more or less metaphysical notion tho I think.

I just figured we've flogged that horse corpse a lot already

Also me talking about metaphysics as "mere" stories isn't close to what I think/feel about religion but that would take a whole nother longwinded thread to gnaw at

Determinism is a more or less metaphysical notion tho I think.

not following here. determinism follows from materialism. metaphysics is required to get outside the closed system.

In the sense of its unfalsifiability I guess Mordy. I think mostly i believe that determinism is "true" but if it were true that would be inconsequential, practically speaking

jtbc metaphysics are unfalsifiable by nature but not all unfalsifiable things are metaphysical.

OK yeah perhaps have to mull that one over but seems reasonable

atheism and materialism aren't synonymous.

OMG my brain is starting to translate this thread into logical symbols

And now some weird black monolith just manifested out of nowhere, wtf

oh hey ex nihilo black monoliths are metaphysical

Determinism is terrifying.

But why? It makes no difference in my life if I believe in a deterministic world or not. People who believe it act and think pretty much the same as those that don't. Because we all have the illusion of free will for ourselves. What would be terrifying is if we could actually "butt up against" the deterministic barriers, if we could sense them and feel like we had no agency.

That could be weirdly fun tho

the novelty of it could be yeah! and I'm assuming it only seems terrifying because we (ie humanity) weren't born into it

if only you could realize determinism was true and go into complete auto pilot and just let your life play out the way it was without any of your involvement but apparently whatever consciousness and the illusion of choice are they are apparently required for determinism to go off & even if you believe in determinism u still have to act as if you were choosing

a being who was used to butting up against determinism would prob view our illusory free will as terrifying

There's a core of Taoism that is determinist-looking but I don't think Taoism is a monolithic belief system, and I don't think its texts do much to deal with "belief in free will is but into determinism" either

"built into", soz

it's determinism at the bingo hall yet I'm still on the edge of my seat because they put a lot of balls in that machine

the same thing that is choosing those balls to come up is the same thing making all yr choices see above

calvin, plummeting from another wagon crash: "which would be worse?"

well you could realize it's true and then, uh, *choose* not to breathe & determinism would play out more directly. so I don't understand what you mean by "apparently required for determinism to go off". a star doesn't need to realize that its fuel is depleting and so it's now about time to supernova.

But your apparent choice not to breathe would also be determined, ad infinitum

right, hence my *s around choose

a being who was used to butting up against determinism would prob view our illusory free will as terrifying

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, January 15, 2019 1:53 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How could this being have consciousness without agency? Observing something requires directing your attention in a certain way, which involved the “illusion of” free will.

People have free will. Sorry. We’re weak and limited in our ability to exercise it, but even when we make choices that are the path of least resistance we’re making choices.

well you could realize it's true and then, uh, *choose* not to breathe & determinism would play out more directly. so I don't understand what you mean by "apparently required for determinism to go off". a star doesn't need to realize that its fuel is depleting and so it's now about time to supernova.

my point is that even if determinism is true you're going to experience choosing things. not breathing maybe or other subconscious functions but anything that requires more participation than getting out of bed. you can't just shut off yr experience of choosing things and let your body do the things it is naturally given to do. the experience of choosing, even if false, is still required.

The burden of choice—or what kierkegaard called the terrifying abyss of freedom or something like that, not going to look it up—is the most obvious fact of our phenomenological experience.

so how do my fellow determinists reconcile quantum theory with determinism? probabilistic universe at infinitesimal levels leads to deterministic one at larger levels? why? emergent property? once matter/energy manifests itself, the dimensions are large enough to hide the underlying probabilistic underpinnings?

People have free will. Sorry.

That settles that.

I'm in Mordy's corner here, the logic is crystal clear imo

xp

GD raises some good points - I think the limits of our perceptive apparatus' may play some role, but yeah emergent property works as an explanation too

fwiw i'm not a determinist and tbh i think quantum theory is a potentially big challenge to it (i don't go quite as far as my friend who believes qm is actually the source of free will, but maybe!)

People have free will. Sorry. We’re weak and limited in our ability to exercise it, but even when we make choices that are the path of least resistance we’re making choices.

This is just a lack of imagination imo. Or a misunderstanding of what free will is. Sorry not trying to be condescending. The way my brain is structured, the way I was raised (which influenced my brain structure and chemistry), the way matter/energy interacted from the big bang until now all lead me to type this out, even tho if sure the fck feels like I'm just now choosing to type these wyrds ooh look I just chose to totally mistype the word "words"

you can't just shut off yr experience of choosing things and let your body do the things it is naturally given to do.

I agree. But can cats do that? I think they make choices, but their available choices are more limited than ours. How about a barnacle? What choices does it make? What about an amoeba?

it's an interesting question about whether a human could experience life totally deterministically - can you experience doing things and not have any phenomenon of choice involved? the experience of free will (tho not necessarily the reality of) seems pivotal and essential to me but i could imagine a totally different social +philosophical context where maybe it's not a requirement. is there any sense that there has even been a human society/culture in history that does have this?

i don't go quite as far as my friend who believes qm is actually the source of free will

the kind of beliefs that this implies (The Secret, What the Bleep Do We know? fan) is my least favorite

I don’t think it’s even conceivable. It sounds like the premise of a Borges story.

xp

sorta like this?
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depersonalization-derealization-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20352911

The structure of experience requires at least the illusion of choice.

Depersonalization symptoms

- Feeling like a robot or that you're not in control of your speech or movements

Free will is a Choose Your Own Adventure book, basically.

in that the results are limited but you still have some agency in which you one reach or in that you can flip through all the pages and read your life out of order bc time is an illusion

how do non-determinist theists reconcile free will & divine omniscience?

that's a fantastic question and if you have some time i'd be happy to delve into it. the short answer is that there's only God and He is making all the choices.

I believe the old saw about the watchmaker has some takers.

you think you have agency. it feels like you do. but the interaction of matter/energy over time leads you to pick one option above the rest. and if you then decide at last second to outwit the universe and pick a different option, your brain structure/chemistry caused you to do that.
(I'm putting this more unequivocally than I actually feel about it)

the watchmaker thing is problematic for me and imo theologically incoherent but it is a popular option

that's a fantastic question and if you have some time i'd be happy to delve into it.

i'm just an npc in a determinist simulation standing here idly tapping my feet.

tbc i did give u the short answer

It's not surprising that most people would take a compatibilist position, though? It's the most popular amongst philosophers.

(not that I'm a compatibilist)

how has no one mentioned quantum suicide yet? it's an amusingly ridiculous take and i'm 100% on board

it's basically schrodinger's box experiment, but you're inside the box

https://cnet4.cbsistatic.com/img/cLD5YVGT9pFqx61TuMtcSBtDPyY=/570x0/2017/01/14/6d8103f7-a52d-46de-98d0-56d0e9d79804/se7en.png

i'm in the box

***takes bong rip, coughs****

good posts everybody, i think i am w/ granny dainger here re: determinism, i have been thinking about it a lot lately, but i don't know what to do about it. treeship why do you find it terrifying?

imo the number one thing to remember is that even if it's true, there is absolutely no way you can perceive it

so my take is to believe whatever makes you feel better, but act in the world as if your choices mean something. if you're wrong, you're just being a dick to others

i have been thinking about it a lot lately, but i don't know what to do about it.

That's what I love about determinism, man. Ain't nothin' to do but sit back and enjoy the ride.</mcconnaghey>

Serious answer though: looking at determinism as some kind of prison is like despairing because the lifespan of a human being is but an imperceptible blip compared to the universe writ large, or fretting about life possibly being restricted to this planet alone. We might be locked into some grand pattern beyond our ability to perceive it, but a broad enough range of options are still open to us that we can sustain ourselves with a completely convincing illusion of free will.

Or okay it's like looking at an alphabet comprised of only 26 characters and wailing and gnashing one's teeth over the restrictive rigidity of it all.

So it was the destiny of people who have done horrible things to have done those things?

There is no accountability without free will. Moral choice id what being a person is about.

U not read my exegesis of determinism my dude

lol i have been enjoying the ride

yea treeship i've mostly been thinking about how determinism, if true, impacts our ability to make moral judgements. does it render morality as a concept incoherent, meaningless? we still have the illusion of choice but if it is ultimately just an illusion (and even within that illusion, there is a pretty narrow range of choices when you reflect on the many things out of our control) then i find it difficult to say whether a given action is "good" or "bad", what do those values even mean in this system? i reflect on points similar to this a lot:

The way my brain is structured, the way I was raised (which influenced my brain structure and chemistry), the way matter/energy interacted from the big bang until now all lead me to type this out, even tho if sure the fck feels like I'm just now choosing to type these wyrds ooh look I just chose to totally mistype the word "words"

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, January 15, 2019 2:10 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and it starts to feel silly for me to claim moral responsibility for certain actions, or to administer moral judgements concerning the action of others. most likely i i think there's just this causal interplay between different events, and ultimately i don't really think people are responsible for who they are, what they believe, how they act. initially this leads me to feel compassion and mostly i've been reveling in that compassion, but then i sometimes feel a little like a sociopath in that i start to see horrible things like violence, abuse, etc are just a part of the natural order of things

I mean that's a whole other set of socioanthropolitical issues involving like sedentism and the origins of property etc, not really what I consider when I'm pondering determinism.

People who use the concept of determinism to be all like 'welp, guess I can't help hacking this dude up with an axe' are doing it wrong imo.

how could they be doing it wrong tho

they're doing it the only way they can

Checkmate, I suppose

haha yes things can be part of the universal order of things and still be technically bad, in fact, their being demonstrably bad in an ethical sense is *part* of their role in the natural order of things.

I think the difference is that "free will" and "illusion of free will" are things that the human mind is incapable of differentiating between at the relevant scale and even if illusory, the actions individuals take are imperceptible from what true "free will" would be. So you can both say that at a universal/quantum level that free will isn't a real thing by how we traditionally understand it, but at an individual level it's completely real.

But for real though, determinism is not about some stark elimination of choice inasmuch as many of the choices we perceive as choices in our particular cultural context are in fact culturally derived and not hugely impacted by the immutable latticework of the omniverse.

^^^gets it

to an extent what we're talking about is the human mind viewing time linearly, meaning there is a future that is affected by choices in the past. we're incapable of perceiving time as anything other than linear, discounting cognitive states that just glitch up our systems (hello dementia and hallucinogenics)

from that point of view, we're all living in Flatland
(ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland)

Old Lunch otm, determinism is more relevant at societal than quantum scale

this is like more complicated than i want to sort out but the society we've developed can respond in predictable even deterministic ways to crimes against it all of which is to say that you can do something predetermined [and wrong] and be punished for it in a predetermined [and right] manner and it says nothing about your metaphysical culpability (which doesn't even exist) but doesn't let you escape punishment. as a metaphor (sorta) god hardened pharoah's heart so he wouldn't let the jews go and then punished him for it. and that's much more challenging bc god for sure has something like free will whereas we can just say that material conditions delivered this crime and delivered this comeuppance.

god hardened pharoah's heart so he wouldn't let the jews go and then punished him for it.

have always found this little detail fascinating. God is a jerk, obviously.

So it was the destiny of people who have done horrible things to have done those things?

I think we're 100% the product of our genes and our upbringing/environment (ie our nature and nurture). Those who have done horrible things are in a sense victims of their genes and environment, neither of which they had any control over (you can say someone can choose to, say, get out of a bad situation, but not when they are very young and by the time they can exert some control over their environment it's too late, the die is cast.) I can be very angry at "bad" people and hope they are punished or at least removed from society; however, I can also sympathize to some degree with them, because they were dealt a shitty hand by the universe.

it's a fascinating bit with lots of explanations. iirc off-hand one explanation is that He merely steeled pharaoh's heart against the fear + etc that would have him release the jews as a reaction to the plagues so that he could express his true free will aka enslaving them. iow God didn't want to bully Pharoah into releasing the Jews. but like i said there's tons of exegesis on this topic.

marcos said p much what I did but better

haha yes things can be part of the universal order of things and still be technically bad,

what is "technically bad" though?

People are just evading the consequences of their position so they can maintain a sense of coherence

technically bad = bad in the context of the social and cultural environment in which the actions were committed

like I got pissed at some guy who was being a total jerk while we were playing basketball. "wtf is this guy's problem?? what an asshole, I hate him, it's just so easy to NOT be an asshole! He should be banned from our games". then later (after the testosterone subsided) I think well he prob comes from a rough domestic upbringing and that combined with his genes (perhaps has innate lack of impulse control, or higher levels of stress hormones, etc) produces assholish behavior regularly.

"technically bad" according to the rules and norms we have in human society (took too long to post, Οὖτις 100% on point)

the real guarantee of religion, imo, isn't that there is a higher being but that the being has a set of rules they are beholden to, even if it's not one we can understand

can you expound on that T?

iow a variation on the hate the sin/not the sinner formulation

xp

But for real though, determinism is not about some stark elimination of choice inasmuch as many of the choices we perceive as choices in our particular cultural context are in fact culturally derived and not hugely impacted by the immutable latticework of the omniverse.

― A Nugatory Excrescence (Old Lunch), Tuesday, January 15, 2019 3:56 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^gets it

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, January 15, 2019 3:56 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok that makes sense and thank u outic about "technically bad" that also makes sense but stilll then ethics/morals are just kind of conventions that we have, subservient to cultural contexts - there is no actual right action or wrongdoing outside of those contexts, no actual good or bad other than whatever value we ascribe to something based on various factors in culture/society, right? basically i'm trying to figure out whether it is even coherent, besides expressing aspects of our emotions or cultural conventions, to make moral judgements at all, if determinism is true.

i think it is true, but i'm struggling with that aspect. my discomfort varies - like in GD's example about the dude playing basketball, i find it pretty easy to say "yea that guy seems like an asshole but ultimately what makes him an asshole and me not an asshole? i can't claim responsibility for my genes, my parents, my biochemistry that led me toward certain stimuli and not others, how can he" but then I think of someone truly violent or abusive, perhaps even on a massive scale that has contributed to countless deaths, and i don't know how to say to that person's victims, for example, "oh sorry that's just the natural order of things, he couldn't help himself." i guess i ultimately do feel that the awful violent person is not responsible, but it can feel sociopathic since so much of our daily experience as humans is tied up in our emotions about what is right and wrong

The notion of how background trauma influences people or that it’s good to be compassionate aren’t related to the free will question. I don’t think people are totally free and totally responsible; i don’t like condemning people; i just think there needs to be a space for agency if we are to move forward in our lives with a sense of hope.

btw i get extremely anxious hanging w/ the heavy hitters itt, on a daily basis there are things i want to post about and end up thinking instead that i just need to carve out my own little space on the "trenchant social commentary" thread so the sophomoric is already admitted & assumed

but then I think of someone truly violent or abusive, perhaps even on a massive scale that has contributed to countless deaths, and i don't know how to say to that person's victims, for example, "oh sorry that's just the natural order of things, he couldn't help himself.

hate to go down the Godwin's Law route but this is why reading histories about Nazis (or American slaveowners, or Mao or Stalin) can be so illuminating. what explains evil?

I mean really the simulation hypothesis is at a higher level, we're talking about different, overlapping levels of determinism

social determinism (the past experiences/genetics/upbringing affect individual outcomes)
metaphysical determinism (the things that happen in the world could be predictable/viewable by a God or magic computer that could tell you the exact state of everything given any point in time)
quantum determinism (different things could happen in different dimensions, multiple universe theory, etc)

like in some of those examples you have the genuine sociopaths (Beria, Mengele, etc.) that just took advantage of the social milieu they found themselves in and exploited it, but in the broader context it's easy to see how it was the entire malfunctioning social apparatus that was at fault that led to such massive atrocities. It's not because every German or every Southerner was murderously evil per se.

xp

I think those first two are pretty related tbh, mh. The first proceeds from the second.

xp I used to feel that way too marcos but in the end these people don’t hit that hard

I will readily concede that afaict NV and Mordy and a handful of others are def better read than I am when it comes to philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics etc.

but, y'know, I still have my dumb opinions

right, it is just the chug and churn of systems that lead to certain conditions that produce certain results! xps

a handful of others itt at the moment

I meant to say

xp

The intellectual foundation of materialistic determinism, as opposed to deistic determinism, is the idea that every interaction of every component of the universe has precisely one possible outcome. This looks logically impeccable, because every interaction has its observable outcome and it is never a different one than the one we observe, and further, such outcomes are often mathematically predictable within a certain tolerance, sometimes even at the atomic level.

But it is also mathematically correct that tiny variances in initial conditions can quickly ramify into chaotically unpredictable consequences. Over the course of billions of years, across the extent of the entire universe, there is nothing in physical laws, as we know them, that precludes those tiny variations happening. In fact, they seem to be built into the tiniest subatomic particles. This may not prove 'free will', but it shoots down mechanical determinism pretty definitively.

just think there needs to be a space for agency if we are to move forward in our lives with a sense of hope.

sense of hope for what? not following you here

I used to get mad at my cat for being bad. Then I realized I was being an idiot: he can't decide whether to be good or bad. His genes and imprinting period as a kitten set him along this path. Where is the cutoff for when an conscious being can make that decision to be good or bad (assuming those terms can even apply to non-humans)? Does it even exist? Does "agency" spring forth from the cerebral cortex? Are there varying degrees of agency, a continuum? (inert matter->virus->bacteria->ants->cats->chimps->humans [would a being more intelligent than a human appear to have even more agency??]). Can a chimp be an asshole?
I still get aggravated when my cat "misbehaves" but "punishing"/scolding him is pointless and misguided.

i guess i ultimately do feel that the awful violent person is not responsible, but it can feel sociopathic since so much of our daily experience as humans is tied up in our emotions about what is right and wrong

I think the conflicting thoughts here are good and nearly unavoidable, other than for true sociopaths. Yeah hate the sin not the sinner. Remove the sinner from society, temporarily or permanently, while also trying to quell our innate emotional revenge/punishment urges.

The intellectual foundation of materialistic determinism, as opposed to deistic determinism, is the idea that every interaction of every component of the universe has precisely one possible outcome. This looks logically impeccable, because every interaction has its observable outcome and it is never a different one than the one we observe, and further, such outcomes are often mathematically predictable within a certain tolerance, sometimes even at the atomic level.

But it is also mathematically correct that tiny variances in initial conditions can quickly ramify into chaotically unpredictable consequences. Over the course of billions of years, across the extent of the entire universe, there is nothing in physical laws, as we know them, that precludes those tiny variations happening. In fact, they seem to be built into the tiniest subatomic particles. This may not prove 'free will', but it shoots down mechanical determinism pretty definitively.

― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, January 15, 2019 4:45 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how does it shoot it down? those variances just make it more complex and less predictable but conditions are still determined causally by what precedes them

yeah idgi

i heard a [major orthodox*] rabbi argue that you had no free choice anywhere in your life except in very specific circumstances where you can chose good or evil. for example a professional thief may not have a choice about stealing or not but when he is committing a robbery maybe he has a choice whether to kill someone he comes upon in the act or not. maybe a habitual murderer doesn't have a choice about murdering or not but does have a choice about the pain he inflicts or who he chooses to murder etc. and vice-versa we do not chose not to kill or not to steal (most of us, i'm guessing) bc it's not even without our palette of choices but choosing a kinder instead of cruel thing to say, or choosing to say an easy lie or a hard truth, those might be choices for us. and you're only rewarded/punished for the actual choices so the thief is rewarded for not murdering but not punished for stealing. it's an interesting idea tho i don't fully buy into (and we see ppl who have led certain lives have a moment of full repentance where they change their wicked ways, etc, as a full break not just this kind of marginal improvement/retrogression). [*son of one of the foremost american orthodox rabbis and leader of a major institution - just trying to convey that his opinion isn't merely a marginal/minority one.] and i think OL maybe referenced this above but it could be believing choice + good/evil has better ramifications on people's behavior than believing determinism and some sort of fatalistic ethical system.

yeah I'm confused. basically described the "long con" of determinism and then said it disproves determinism. there's much we don't know about quantum mechanics (there may be hidden factors confounding us to conclude it's all just probabilities and uncertainty), so I don't think it's wise to say it's shot down pretty definitively.

GD i think about your point about a continuum often, we have this awareness of moral choice but what if our awareness of moral choice is just this crude response to stimuli that is as limited as we perceive the moral awareness of chimps or cats or bacteria to be? ***passes joint****

"chaotically unpredictable consequences" unpredictable to us but presumably a perfect observer w/ all the data could predict things (except for qm which throws a wrench in that)

btw guys it's ok we can talk about determinism, and choice, and morality, etc without smoking weed i mean preferable to do it while smoking weed but so is everything

lol sorry mordy i add the weed commentary more to qualify the lack of nuance in some of my posts. you are right though

btw even going beyond hating the sin but not the sinner - the value we ascribe to a particular "sin" or any given action, where is it rooted? is it coherent to ascribe value to it apart from whatever is determined in a cultural or even a biological context? even something lke "life is better than death". why is it better? why is it better that something exists rather than not exist? i'm struck by some of the nihilistic implications of determinism - if it's all determined then none of it is good or bad, right? what is good or bad? not the person doing whatever we are describing as good or bad, nor the action itself we are describing as good or bad, right?

^ exactly

I can’t say what’s true. But it would be terrible if mechanistic determinism was true.

if determinism is true then all the talk we do about morality is just ad hoc explanations for how things have turned out. nb that things have turned out this way partially bc of those ad hoc explanations and the forces they've exerted on our societies and senses of ourselves but the idea that anything we say or do is itself a mover as opposed to a consequence of a prime mover (or movers whatever this bit is overdetermined) would be a mistake. X happened and that led to a whole bunch of consequences including our society and concepts of morality which themselves lead to particular consequences. our participation in them is involuntary. good/evil really only need to matter if you have metaphysics (like someone to punish you after you die).

and to the extent that the world is nicer to live in for more people bc certain ethical systems (like don't murder) have arisen then morality has been a good thing if living a more pleasant life is better than living a more miserable one (but again who can say - but i am happier when i'm in less pain so that's enough for a baseline for me i guess)

but Treeship it CAN be true RIGHT NOW and you wouldn't know the difference. it's almost like morality is independent of "how the universe works" and is a product of human thought and emotion.

guess I come back to thinking you're using a different, much more narrow definition of free will than I do

like if the attainment of knowledge of whether something is true or not (in this case, mechanistic determinism) causes the whole concept good vs bad morality as a whole to fundamentally change, to me that shows that it only exists within human mind.

but then alternatively if it didn't cause it to fundamentally change that would imply it had a metaphysical existence?

let me put it differently
our knowledge of, say, the sun has no effect whatsoever on it. it carries on the same way regardless. however, our knowledge of morality DOES change morality itself; there's a connection between the two.
so there's no connection between whether the universe is deterministic or not and our morality.

BUT we can DECIDE that there's a connection (since universe doesn't give a fuck, I don't either). It just seems silly to tie the 2 directly, y'know? Like hurry up science and philosophers and tell me which it is so I know whether or not to abandon morality.

GD your cat will still respond to feedback from you. it's an input to determining its behavior. you can and should try to correct it. multiple shows on TLC about this, i think

the value we ascribe to a particular "sin" or any given action, where is it rooted? is it coherent to ascribe value to it apart from whatever is determined in a cultural or even a biological context? even something lke "life is better than death". why is it better? why is it better that something exists rather than not exist?

I had a response to this typed out but then work happened and I lost it so uh let me see if I can remember it, something along the lines of:

systems of morality are derived from cultures/communities and thus tend to reflect the priorities of the cultures/communities, first and foremost of which is always the continued existence of the culture/community, i.e. self-preservation. Murder, with its attendant negative impacts on the self-preservation of the community, is thus verboten, etc. Why is self-preservation the highest good? You could argue that this is where social determinism derives from mechanical determinism, because the first priority of any living organism is to live, if not the organism itself then its genes, and genetic propagation is definitely more of a mechanically determined process (ie, a chemical one) and one that exists outside the larger context of a society or community. so if you start from the idea that life's overriding goal is to, y'know, live, then all these other things follow. now, why are masses of chemical processes like genes so intent on surviving and propagating? I have no idea, but I'm sure there's a scientific, mechanically deterministic explanation for it.

xp

xp was gonna say

all of the masses of chemical processes that didn't propagate are no longer here, so eventually you end up with the ones that reproduce. you could see it as a moral imperative for humans, but for single-celled organisms they just kind of... do what they do. longevity and reproduction could be seen as novel features

ha I deleted that part out I guess. had something in there about still trying to "correct" my cat while not getting upset with him for being bad. similar to "rehabilitating" criminals. And like with criminals (I don't even like to use that label for a person), I think love and rewards work a lot better than hate and punishment.

sternly glaring into his eyes seems to correct my cat at this point

why are masses of chemical processes like genes so intent on surviving and propagating?

Obv I have no answer either. But gotta think that an amount of matter/energy being "trapped" within & on Earth creates a "survival of the fittest" scenario for matter/energy itself. Life was result of matter/energy formations trying to outcompete other formations.

haha I hiss at mine, cause that's what he does when the other cat pisses him off

"intent" begs a bunch of questions

Here's the way I break it down to an extent:

*The uni-/multi-/omniverse is a massive and complex web in which we are embedded, and we are tiny specks which exist entirely at the mercy of its laws/'whims' (deterministic argument)
*Zooming waaaay in to constrain the realm of inquiry to just this planet during the eensy stretch of time that it's supported life, many of the particulars of our existence are pretty much hardwired by the facts of our physical environment and the quirks of our specific biology. We cannot transcend (or at least have not yet transcended) the most essential of those details (deterministic argument)
*Viewing time as a dimension which is omnipresent but which we only have the capacity to perceive linearly, the argument is that everything that has or will ever happen is in fact occurring right 'now' (what is 'now' even bro) and is therefore immutable because it's just...there (deterministic argument)
*So okay then, this is the point where you start dipping your toe into existentialism because what is even the point of doing anything with the chips of fate so stacked against you BUT this is where you might also consider that the finite parameters of a single sheet of paper can still contain worlds and this is kind of the magic of the human experiment, wherein we reckon with these outsized cosmic issues but we still find our own little subjective reasons for putting our pants on in the morning (a little window of free will for u)
*And yes, even at the reduced scale of our existence within a particular society, you still face degrees of biological and environmental determinism (genetic predispositions, the vagaries of our upbringing during our vulnerable formative years), not to mention the rigidity of the social constructs we find ourselves plopped into and the effects of geography and history,etc. (quasi-deterministic argument)
*BUT I still firmly believe that when those factors are honestly taken into account we still have such a massive amount of wiggle room within the cultural context which encompasses the bulk of our perceptions and interactions that we effectively have hella free will on most of the levels that matter to us on a day-to-day basis, and wielding that cornucopia of choice responsibly is imo basically what defines humanity (free will, baby)

You're a sack of genetic material which is programmed to function in particular ways and you don't have complete control over that, but what you do with what you can control matters enormously (and arguably the only thing that really matters when you get right down to it).

NB I flunked epistemology because I got in way over my head with my final paper topic and grudgingly took an incomplete so I could take a stab at it over the summer but still found myself unable to tackle it effectively and I ultimately wound up hiding from my professor when I almost ran into her at a JoAnn's fabrics, so it's important that you take my postulations with a grain of salt.

makes sense to me. (so therefore it's prob wrong haha)

xp how'd those hot dog print pajama culottes turn out, though

clearly we don't have 100% free will (we can't bend spacetime matter/energy to it. except in dreams. which are awesome) and clearly we're not 100% robotic automatons. so free will/"agency" continuum, yeah.

I think determinism is only an argument if you're talking pure determinism and I still find that convincing.

the longer you look at the phrase "free will" the more you imbue it with complexity and perceived meaning

clearly we don't have 100% free will (we can't bend spacetime matter/energy to it. except in dreams. which are awesome) and clearly we're not 100% robotic automatons. so free will/"agency" continuum, yeah.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, January 15, 2019 6:00 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That’s all i said!

I think determinism is only an argument if you're talking pure determinism and I still find that convincing.

yeah me too. it's clear that free will is an illusion required for human consciousness to function as it does, what process determined that necessity idk

xp

If you find yourself in an idle moment considering whether or not to chuck morality in the toilet because determinism might be a thing, I would urge you to consider the billions and billions of people who have somehow avoided killing other people without having ever engaged in a variation of this dorm room discussion as an argument for a determinism which doesn't necessarily favor interspecies savagery.

but T you seem to be saying that the degree of agency humans do possess rules out mechanistic determinism, no?

(And also I would argue that most interspecies savagery is a manifestation of biologically deterministic misapprehensions re: scarcity or improperly allocated resources applied to this incoherent 'civilization' thing we've cobbled together over millennia which has routinely failed to sufficiently address the latent instinctual responses which still roil inside us and respond to a variety of stimuli as if we were still wandering the plains in search of berries and venison.)

Here is where I am coming from.

I don’t think people will end up killing others if they think free will isn’t real. However, they may be more likely to take as “natural” or “inevitable” certain features of our society that actually can and should be changed. This is one conservative defense of capitalism—it suits “human nature.”

There may be a “human nature” of some kind, but ultimately people negotiate what kind of society they want to live in given their values, which are changing all the time. An expansive understanding of human freedom—that people are free to imagine alternatives for both themselves and society, and responsible for exercising their freedom in a way that accords with their values—seems really fundamenta to any kind of progressive change.

There are beautiful ways to live in the world while accepting determinism—maybe some kind of monkish life—but citzens of an at least nominally democratic society should believe that they have some kind of say in what they do. If society is somethinf that “is” rather than a thing we “make” than there is no point in critiquing it.

I do think that accepting metaphysical determinism woukd subtley influence most people to be more accepting of the world as it is. I don’t think that’s good.

Maybe people can keep separate metaphysics from ethics. But i think belief systems matter. That’s one of my premises.

no one's saying they don't matter, or that they aren't created by humans fwiw

but your stated goal of making a more progressive society is one that was instilled in you by socially determined processes, by everything that has happened to you up to this point (and an even larger number of things that happened before you were born)

just as oh idk Orrin Hatch's idiotic positions and decisions are determined by where he came from, what he was taught, what he had to do to survive etc.

Good explanation, thanks. Enjoy reading your perspective here.
I would say that that would only be the result (ie be more accepting of the world as it is) for people who misconstrue what determinism means wrt humankind. And that there's much more of a risk of that happening with a society that overwhelmingly believes in theism, or even deism (as can be seen now with some folks saying "eh what can we do about climate change, it's all in God's hands"). We are blessed to have awareness and cerebral cortexes and opposable thumbs, so we can put a (teeny tiny) monkey wrench in the deterministic course of the Universe.

or rather put a wrench in course of a hypothetical Universe that is identical but minus intelligent life

Treesh, a large part of what I and others have been arguing is both that determinism on a grand scale is a thing (imo) and that society is a totally mutable construct. They aren't mutually exclusive concepts at all.

It's sort of like: my body is my body and that's just the way it is but I can wear whatever goddamn ridiculous outfit I want on top of that body.

what do you think i was arguing?

One could view it as pre-determined/pre-destined that we ARE "supposed to" cure cancer/eliminate poverty/etc. Deterministic doesn't mean status quo.

materialist determinism does. if humankind has a destiny that implies teleology.

Determinism means arguments about any kind of "should" are purely products of an unafffectable reality

what do you think i was arguing?

you seem to consistently be arguing that if people accept determinism as describing reality that they will a) accept things as they are and just stop, idk, being human beings and living and doing shit or b) give free reign to their worst impulses cuz hey it's not their fault, right? the universe made them do it!

xp

i don't know what they will do, exactly, but it seems like it's not an inspiring worldview and it's not compatible with what i would consider a meaningful life. if it doesnt' affect them at all it is due to some kind of dissonance--which is fine, we all have dissonance about something or another.

i'm not making an argument that like, if god doesn't exist everything is permitted or something. i'm thinking about how people find meaning in their experience. and on an individual level, what makes people feel good and do well. usually feeling "out of control" is not a good sign.

But if it's true your feelings are irrelevant! And also if it's true your feelings are inevitable.

I don't think I'm explaining myself well. We all can see that human thoughts and actions have real-world consequences. We (for now) cannot stop the quasars from spinning or extend the lifespan of our Sun...but we KNOW we can build roads, cure diseases, make spaceships etc etc. Why would anyone then, after being told "psst it's all pre-determined you know" resign themselves to being an unthinking, unacting entity?

Actual determinism is theist totalizing force conceivable but for the same reason ultimately orrelevant

yeah i never said that the solar system doesn't follow a deterministic course. i was talking about human agency, and my model of agency takes into account that there are always multiple things impacting people's choices and they can never be said to be totally free.

Which might abolutely be the case

But if determinism, nothing outside determinism

well there needs to be something special about humans. solar system=deterministic. inorganic matter=deterministic. bacteria=?? deterministic or not? does a system require a neural net to escape the grasp of determinism? how many neurons does it need?

42

right. i think people are confused by the idea of "free will" and "moral responsibility" because the right has co-opted these terms to mean "don't take structural factors into account; people are 100% free and 100% responsible." i feel basically the opposite of that. but i also think that the thing that makes human beings different from animals or automata is our capacity for choice and that if this were a metaphysical illusion it would just like, make a mockery of everything people have taken themselves to be, historically.

which could be good! there is antihumanism. i am like, some kind of slovenly marxist humanist though.

xp noodle

but i also think that the thing that makes human beings different from animals or automata is our capacity for choice and that if this were a metaphysical illusion it would just like, make a mockery of everything people have taken themselves to be, historically

feel like xtianity is the elephant in the room here, given its formulation of free will explicitly in the context of salvation, correct moral action, everlasting punishment etc. (many concepts of which are actually deserving of mockery and an absolute disaster, historically, imo)

and that formulation was invented just to get God off the hook for shitty things happening

exactly

I don’t think it implies any of that. There were so mant atheistic existentialists.

it was like determinism except for the shitty stuff - that's YOUR fault, humanity!

xp

Treesh what I was getting at was that your interpretation of the concept of free will seems to be informed by xtian formulations/theology

existentialism mostly just warmed-over Kant imo

(not knocking Kant, Kant is great)

I'm thinking about how people find meaning in their experience. and on an individual level, what makes people feel good and do well. usually feeling "out of control" is not a good sign.

― Trϵϵship, Tuesday, January 15, 2019 6:44 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

by contrast though I think (at least for me) being aware that control is an illusion, in light of determinism, can actually be a wonderful thing, it creates room for meaning in other ways, making space for things like observation, awareness, non-judgment, wonder, and awe. thinking you can exert control when you really can’t is a tremendous burden!

fully agree with that

I agree with the arguments for disregarding the possibility of determinism Treesh and I think it's probably impossible to *behave* as if you believe it - but see my earlier point. I think you're right that a lot of arguments in favour are badly formed

I couldn't help posting that tho :D

marcos knows what's up.

<3 marcos

But you’re the one choosing to change your paradigm to recognize the limits of your control! It’s not about the power to exert control on the outside world. Even in Buddhism, you don’t control your thoughts but you can (after years od traininf) choose not to engage them and to observe them non-judgmentally, which is a kind of agency.

Being in the world as a person means being a discerning subject. Maybe it’s an “illusion” but it’s a constitutive one.

Free Will is a muscle you can choose to use if something ever becomes that important to you.

Just my opinion. I'm a skeptic by nature.

thinking you can exert control when you really can’t is a tremendous burden!

― marcos, Wednesday, January 16, 2019 12:20 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one of my meditation teachers used to gently ask, mid-talk, "what if, and i ask this question with compassion. . .what if the universe is not *for you, specifically*?"

i tested that hypothesis once and lemme tell u it took six months to get things put right

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

darragh’s last comment aging like fine wine

one of my meditation teachers used to gently ask, mid-talk, "what if, and i ask this question with compassion. . .what if the universe is not *for you, specifically*?"

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, January 18, 2019 4:11 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think about this everyday now

tbh I’ve spent my entire life assuming I was playing bit parts in other stories so I probably should not take it to heart

I once took a quiz asking who would play me in a biopic and I said Steve Buscemi

There should have been an option for: you call this living?

I don’t know about a “simulation,” but I think this is likely some kind of purgatory or half-life or something, not the real world.

Seemingly every culture has a myth about this, from Plato’s Cave to the tibetan book of the dead

It's like sitting alone in the corner booth of a suburban Chili's and eating an assortment of rapidly-cooling apps at a half hour 'til close on a Wednesday evening. And then you walk out to the parking lot and just sit in your Jetta, glaring emptily through the showroom window of the Mattress Firm at the array of half-lit beds, so neatly made. You turn on the radio, and Cher's 'Believe' is playing. It's just like this, every day, for the rest of forever.

Whether it’s chilis or buffalo wild wings, a sense of dissatisfaction permeates experience, seemingly for everyone. GK Chesterton claimed this is why he becmae a Christian—it seemed apparent to him that human beings didn’t “fit” in the world so he imagined there must be another one.

tres Edward Hopperesque, OL

this is the best of all possible worlds

Whether it’s chilis or buffalo wild wings, a sense of dissatisfaction permeates experience, seemingly for everyone.

― Trϵϵship, Wednesday, 13 February 2019 02:14 (eleven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no it doesnt

everyone sitting around asking themselves about it well hey sure but a) best not to presume they speak for everyone and b) self-fulfilling activity/mood cycle, not v instructive imo

buffalo wild wings was ok until the local franchise decided to come in and completely destroy the wings at 6am so they could reheat them in a hurry for the lunch rush

argument against the simulation hypothesis, there

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

jeez, lots of tense sphincters in these parts!

exactly how our programmer would have it

sphincter tension = 100....* 1000

15 bots voted in this poll

GK Chesterton claimed this is why he becmae a Christian—it seemed apparent to him that human beings didn’t “fit” in the world so he imagined there must be another one.

― Trϵϵship

treesh some general advice for you, never trust an english catholic

If we're in a simulation, are we really living? If the answer to that question is 'no' then the most fitting answer to the question posed by this thread is a hushed yet adamant 'stfu'.

if you can call it living!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKeulqJQIzg

I hoped that when I died I would get a loading screen for level 2.

What kind of fucked up video game lets you play the next level because you died ?!

Planescape: Torment

What kind of fucked up video game lets you play the next level because you died ?!

― In space, pizza sends out for YOU (Ste)

lots of old rpgs have that one boss battle near the beginning where you have to get your ass beat in order to continue

also mega man x

having said that i think plot-required deaths to "win" are bad design for what is basically a walking simulator

I hear you, but the Tomb of the Nameless One in Planescape: Torment is the opposite of bad design imho.

????? - https://t.co/Qtp3PuUDXE ADMIN pic.twitter.com/DNmEWKt8MX

— da share z0ne (@dasharez0ne) September 28, 2019

dasharezone is like the only comedy account I've never wearied of

I’m really into those dumb videos of planes stuck mid air

canada not real

I just wrote this incontrovertible proof that I am. Dunno about you.

https://haonowshaokao.com/2020/04/11/what-are-the-seven-wolves/

Fascinating. I did some deep googling and was able to find reference to Seven Wolves in a Cherokee legend called "The Groundhog Dance."

https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/OriginOfTheGroundhogDance-Cherokee.html

I also found this:

We represented the wolf geographical range as seven demes, defined by major geographical barriers through time.

The European deme is bordered by open water from the north and the west (the Arctic and the Atlantic oceans, respectively); the Ural Mountains from the east; and the Mediterranean, the Black and the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus mountains from the south.

The Middle‐Eastern deme consists of the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia and Mesopotamia and is bordered by the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea in the north; the Indian Ocean in the south; the Tien Shen mountain range, the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas from the east; and the Mediterranean Sea in the west.

The Central North Eurasian deme consist of the Siberian Plateau and is bordered by the Arctic Ocean from the north; the Ural Mountains from the west; the Lena River and mountain ranges of northeastern Siberia (Chersky and Verkhoyansk ranges) from the east; and the Tien Shen mountain range, the Tibetan Plateau and the Gobi Desert from southeast.

The East Eurasian deme is bordered by the Tien Shen mountain range, the Tibetan Plateau and Gobi desert from the west; the Pacific Ocean from the east; and the Lena river and the mountain ranges of northeastern Siberia (Chersky and Verkhoyansk ranges) from the north.

The Beringia deme spans the Bering Strait, which was a land bridge during large parts of the Late Pleistocene and the Early Holocene. It is bordered to the west by the Lena River and mountain ranges of northeastern Siberia (Chersky and Verkhoyansk ranges), and to the south and east by the extent of the Cordillerian and Laurentide ice sheets during the LGM.

The Arctic North America deme consists of an area of the North American continent east of the Rocky Mountains and west of Greenland, that was covered by ice during the last glaciation and is at present known as the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

The North America deme consists of an area in the Northern American subcontinent up to and including the area that was covered by the Cordillerian and Laurentide ice sheets during the last glaciation (Raghavan et al., 2015).

Good digging. However I am if anything more convinced now.

https://media.gq-magazine.co.uk/photos/5d1390d59fa601d9a58380ff/master/w_640%2cc_limit/David-Bowie-02-GQ_11Jan16_Markus-Klinko_b.jpg

if you google arbitrary numbers of wolves, you get differing numbers of results for brands, stories, etc.

"six wolves" seems to be even more popular than seven

although seven is generally considered to be a lucky number in multiple cultures

How many wolves are in the average pack? Probably more than seven.

Also seven being lucky could just be the simulation creating some retcon justification

Have you looked up the legend of "Seven and the Ragged Tiger?"

7 days in a week 7 years in the jubilee

Average pack size is six wolves. A pack usually consists of an alpha male, alpha female, current offspring, and a few yearlings. There also may be a few adult subordinate wolves in the pack. Wolves will usually stay with the pack until 2-3 years of age.

New hypothesis argues the universe simulates itself into existence

A physics paper proposes neither you nor the world around you are real.

A new hypothesis says the universe self-simulates itself in a "strange loop". A paper from the Quantum Gravity Research institute proposes there is an underlying panconsciousness. The work looks to unify insight from quantum mechanics with a non-materialistic perspective.

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/new-hypothesis-argues-the-universe-simulates-itself-into-existence

spelled "stimulate" wrong

glad we worked this out

The scientists link their hypothesis to panpsychism, which sees everything as thought or consciousness. The authors think that their "panpsychic self-simulation model" can even explain the origin of an overarching panconsciousness at the foundational level of the simulations, which "self-actualizes itself in a strange loop via self-simulation." This panconsciousness also has free will and its various nested levels essentially have the ability to select what code to actualize, while making syntax choices. The goal of this consciousness? To generate meaning or information.

Let's see how much trendy bullshit we can cram into one paragraph.

A new "hypothesis"! Nobel prizes all round! This is almost certainly next-level woo but I'm tempted to go down the rabbit hole if only for the lols.

We have not used the term “God” in place of panconsciousness in this document because that is an ambiguous and confusing term. It has many meanings. Two of the most general meanings associated with that word are ideas anathema to this thesis. The first is that God is infinite. This is not the case in the SSH model. Our panpsychic substrate evolves. The second is the popular idea in many religions that God creates everything. Our panpsychic self-simulation is everything and is collectively created by everything within it. It is unitary and interdependent, where the panconsciousness cannot exist without evolving through us and everything else that can make decisions.

Is the universe a simulation or is human consciousness a simulation? Discuss.

Looked up Klee Irwin and apparently quantum physicist is his second career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OppvPEM0wEQ

Let's see how much trendy bullshit we can cram into one paragraph.

― jmm, Tuesday, December 15, 2020 4:10 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^ this sounds like someone who's simulated would say tbf

i wish i was able to grow a pencil moustache, they say so much

It's easy to simulate

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BH6JKA/teenage-girl-with-a-pencil-between-her-upper-lip-and-nose-BH6JKA.jpg

'Strange Loops' are Hofstadter's thing, iirc.

The goal of this consciousness? To generate meaning or information.

Least plausible element.

alamy stock is the new snorg girl

The concept of a simulation requires that some reality exists apart from the simulation for it to be similar to, otherwise there is nothing to simulate.

this is not really propopsing a "simulation" per se, they're just using that idea as a jumping off point

If I can't even tell that I'm in a simulation, the fuck do I care if robots use me as AAs in their Walkman?

why do physicists always think they’re uniquely equipped to solve reality once and for all

haven’t read the paper so the article may be selling it short but it makes it sound like a mashup of ideas (some I like more than others) that have been buzzing around for a while in whatever you call that weird interdisciplinary zone where they talk about emergence a lot. the simulation angle seems tacked on like a hashtag to get it trending

worth revisiting:

Looked up Klee Irwin and apparently quantum physicist is his second career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OppvPEM0wEQ

that weird interdisciplinary zone where they talk about emergence a lot.

Ding ding ding

https://quantumgravityresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/logo-ret-4-13-17.gif

Dr. Franklin Pangborn, Physicist

The concept of a simulation requires that some reality exists apart from the simulation for it to be similar to, otherwise there is nothing to simulate.

Was just about to say. 'Everything is a simulation' is virtually indistinguishable from 'everything is real'.

this is *not* a simulation theory

it's the new generation of Oldsmobile

The concept of a simulation requires that some reality exists apart from the simulation for it to be similar to, otherwise there is nothing to simulate.

― Respectfully Yours, (Aimless), Tuesday, December 15, 2020 12:22 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i agree with this part “ The concept of a simulation requires that some reality exists apart from the simulation“ but not what follows. simulation does not mean “make something similar to” and a simulation doesn’t require a similar counterpart in reality

i cut my finger while peeling carrots yesterday. if this is a simulation, it's quite a painful and gross one and i want a word with the mods.

Wikipedia has settled on this definition: "A simulation is an approximate imitation of the operation of a process or system that represents its operation over time."

As I'd define a simulation, it is an extension in time of the concept of a simulacrum. While it is possible to create a simulacrum of something that does not exist directly in reality, such as a pink elephant, or a Death Star, I'd be surprised to discover any simulation whose components are not wholly modeled upon or derived from some aspect of reality, if you include mathematics as an aspect of reality. I won't rule out being surprised, though. It has happened often enough before.

there are multiple definitions of simulation, but that one is not the one that people have in mind when they say ‘we are living in a simulation’. all it means is “fake data generated in a computer.” no similarity to any existing part of reality is necessary. an artist or mathematician could simulate completely abstract systems with no representation in mind. for example it’s obvious that we could simulate the game The Sims with a crazy species of aliens from our imagination instead of humans. in analogy, our experiences might be simulated by some other super smart species who have better computers than us. they don’t even have to have imagined us too vividly, they just need a good model and then they feed it some initial conditions and let it rip. it happens that most existing simulations do have a real counterpart, but thats just historical circumstance. engineers simulate air planes flying because it’s cheaper and safer than testing real planes and crashing a bunch of them in the process

I have no idea