Are we living in a simulation?

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.