Are we living in a simulation?

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