Are We Living In A Computer Simulation?

GaryJohnson said:
Even if we are in a simulation, it doesn't mean that human life or even just life in general is the goal or subject of the simulation. I haven't seen any of the people who speculate about this make any sort of claim to the contrary. I mean we could just be a minor side effect. After all why would you simulate... or create... a universe as big, old, and complex as the one we live in if all you were concerned about was a single short-lived species on a tiny world.
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You are assuming the simulation is as big, old and complex as we believe it is. Games use procedural generation to create universes and planets, the universes that we perceive to be "big" could just be that.

History and any science to prove history could all just be input or rigged data in the simulation. We would never know, the simulation could have started yesterday. You are right we could be a factor in a simulation and not the actual subject... again almost impossible to tell.
 
Mut1ny said:
Eh, in a way perhaps, but I don't think they're the same thing. A religious person KNOWS God did it. That's their final answer. A physicist will say "I don't know" at a certain point going back far enough.

So there is a fundamental difference between the two.
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Yes and no. In order for science to have an explanation for the here and now, it has to be able to work it's way back to the very beginning. Because that is what proves that what you're saying now, is valid.

So that being said, the Big Bang is not so much the result of us knowing that it's factual, but having to say that SOMETHING happened as best we can tell, the Big Bang is that thing. It is still faith based.

Now, how does this go back to religion? For the vast majority of us, we state science as fact because we take it on faith that the person or source of that fact is true. Do you really know what DNA looks like? Do you really know the temperature of a star? Do you REALLY know the speed that gravity pulls things down....have you personally measured it? Probably not, but you believe what you have been told about it, because alot of other people have said it's true. To me, what I see is a shift from religion to science, when the two were never really meant to compete with each other. We are starting to see society believe that which is told to us about science by the approved propagators of that knowledge.

I think that the global warming phenomenon is showing the first chinks in the armor. Whether it's right or wrong is not relevant to this topic, but what is relevant is that people take the science as gospel and defend it as truth, without personal knowledge of the topic. If someone of authority tells me it's true, then I take it as such and I attack those who question the knowledge. This is what worries me. People have forgotten the spirit of science which is to encourage dissidence.

Science damn you!
 
GaryJohnson said:
Even if we are in a simulation, it doesn't mean that human life or even just life in general is the goal or subject of the simulation. I haven't seen any of the people who speculate about this make any sort of claim to the contrary. I mean we could just be a minor side effect. After all why would you simulate... or create... a universe as big, old, and complex as the one we live in if all you were concerned about was a single short-lived species on a tiny world.
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This assumes that the rest of the universe is being simulated at the same detail level as earth, as opposed to a lower-res simulation that's just realistic enough to keep us fooled, a bit like the stadium fans in a sports game, or the ocean in the Truman Show.
 
sir-gold said:
This assumes that the rest of the universe is being simulated at the same detail level as earth, as opposed to a lower-res simulation that's just realistic enough to keep us fooled, a bit like the stadium fans in a sports game, or the ocean in the Truman Show.
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This is really Ego-Centric. The idea of "Well, if we are living in a simulation then we MUST be the focus of that simulation!"


In reality, the human race are about as significant to the galaxy as the mould on a piece of kibble is to a planet.
 
More along the lines that less resolution is required if not being observed. Similar to how under quantum mechanics events are probabilities until an interaction or observation has occurred.
 
grim4593 said:
That is only true if the simulation was actively trying to prevent detection. There is no reason not to try to prove or disprove the hypothesis of simulation.
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If we are in a simulation it is a given that the creators are trying to prevent detection. Any programmer will tell you that it is easier to detect and correct errors after they happen then to write absolutely perfect code that never ever fails, and then there are hardware induced issues as well to consider. So given that a perfect simulation is going to be thousands of times harder to program than a good one that fixes issues after the fact, it is basically a certainty that the program will actively try to prevent detection since any glitch would be detection and there simply must be glitches.

I suppose it is conceivable that the point of the simulation is to see how long it takes the simulated people to scientifically figure out that they are simulated, in which case this method would work, but that seems like a bit of a stretch.
 
westrock2000 said:
So that being said, the Big Bang is not so much the result of us knowing that it's factual, but having to say that SOMETHING happened as best we can tell, the Big Bang is that thing. It is still faith based.

Now, how does this go back to religion? For the vast majority of us, we state science as fact because we take it on faith that the person or source of that fact is true. Do you really know what DNA looks like? Do you really know the temperature of a star? Do you REALLY know the speed that gravity pulls things down....have you personally measured it? Probably not, but you believe what you have been told about it, because alot of other people have said it's true.
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Yes I've measured G (and others) and got damn close to the official numbers for that area. The others are accessible to those with sufficient interest.

The big difference is much of science is repeated and confirmed continuously not taken as fact from a 2000 year old science book. Try not to muddy the water.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
"We" don't live in a simulation.

I do.

You're all created to test me. You're all here to make me feel.

You have failed.
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I've got one that can see
Pdvd_056_40p.jpg
 
arentol said:
If we are in a simulation it is a given that the creators are trying to prevent detection. Any programmer will tell you that it is easier to detect and correct errors after they happen then to write absolutely perfect code that never ever fails, and then there are hardware induced issues as well to consider. So given that a perfect simulation is going to be thousands of times harder to program than a good one that fixes issues after the fact, it is basically a certainty that the program will actively try to prevent detection since any glitch would be detection and there simply must be glitches.

I suppose it is conceivable that the point of the simulation is to see how long it takes the simulated people to scientifically figure out that they are simulated, in which case this method would work, but that seems like a bit of a stretch.
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Once again, this is implying that Human beings are the point of simulation, quite narcissistic to imagine. The bacteria on my dog's tennis ball would think they are the centre of the universe: were they to posses the capacity to think.

Humans run large-scale galactic simulations all the time to test astronomical theories and develop hypothesis. We use small-scale atomic simulation to develop new technologies and more safely test these technologies. Highly complex simulations are done all the time for a myriad of reasons, most of them are not simply 'to see what comes up' or to observe long-term eventualities. Simulations are used testing highly specific circumstances that are impractical or too dangerous to be done physically. Were we to posses supercomputers capable of running highly advanced simulations that could scale from the galactic to the atomic and the applications to do so, the transcendental awareness of one of the millions of species on one of the billions of planets would most likely be our least concern. In fact, without direct, focussed observation, even an interstellar species would most likely go unnoticed even at the galactic scale.

If anything, we are a cute by-product.
 
in some ways the idea of a computer simulation creating consciousness is meaningless. say you have a computer, running code, essentially routing electrons, perhaps creating the simulation of consciousness. Despite that we are experiencing something so we "know" that something has experiences. The simulation may create "experiential" content but nothing indicates it is that which "experiences" the content.
 
jiminator said:
in some ways the idea of a computer simulation creating consciousness is meaningless. say you have a computer, running code, essentially routing electrons, perhaps creating the simulation of consciousness. Despite that we are experiencing something so we "know" that something has experiences. The simulation may create "experiential" content but nothing indicates it is that which "experiences" the content.
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Our experiences are really just chemical reactions inside our physical nervous system. Those reactions are verry much if-than causal events, they are just so damn complex and multi-layered that they form sapient awareness. Some of the most complex AI algorythms developed for reasearch are still opperated with the inescapable linearity of our binary processor logic. Program goes in: data comes out: data changes the varables of the program: rinse, repeat.
 
Epic| said:
Yes I've measured G (and others) and got damn close to the official numbers for that area. The others are accessible to those with sufficient interest.

The big difference is much of science is repeated and confirmed continuously not taken as fact from a 2000 year old science book. Try not to muddy the water.
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I'm not muddying the waters. I am saying that people should not believe that we have entered the age of infallible science. As an example, we were told that nothing with mass could go faster then the speed of light. And many people still believe this. Then in the 80's we were told that there were these things called neutrinos that could go faster then light, but the solution was that they don't have mass. Well then some people came along later and said turns out they probably do have mass. But from the very beginning there were people that did not agree with Einsteins theory that nothing with mass could go faster then the speed of light, but they were shunned for not believing the science.

That's all I'm saying.
 
KazeoHin said:
Our experiences are really just chemical reactions inside our physical nervous system. Those reactions are verry much if-than causal events, they are just so damn complex and multi-layered that they form sapient awareness. Some of the most complex AI algorythms developed for reasearch are still opperated with the inescapable linearity of our binary processor logic. Program goes in: data comes out: data changes the varables of the program: rinse, repeat.
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you are describing "content". everything the brain does can be described as "creating content". It does nothing to explain what "consumes" the content (ie: has experiences)

Why is green green? Another description of how the brain turns light into signals through various processing, lots of molecular interactions in different parts of the brain, but it does nothing to explain why green is green
 
Just as reasonable as we were created in an instant or that the earth was created from the body of a hermaphrodite giant. We don't know.

I think it's fun to talk about, but I stop short of arguing about it as it doesn't really matter where we came from or if we are living in a simulation to me. Our lives are an awesome gift or extreme luck... perhaps a blending of the two. I am so happy to have existed and enjoy living so much that I don't want to waste time or emotional energy arguing about its origins.

EDIT: Grammar
 
westrock2000 said:
I'm not muddying the waters. I am saying that people should not believe that we have entered the age of infallible science. As an example, we were told that nothing with mass could go faster then the speed of light. And many people still believe this. Then in the 80's we were told that there were these things called neutrinos that could go faster then light, but the solution was that they don't have mass. Well then some people came along later and said turns out they probably do have mass. But from the very beginning there were people that did not agree with Einsteins theory that nothing with mass could go faster then the speed of light, but they were shunned for not believing the science.

That's all I'm saying.
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When you talk about neutrinos with mass going faster than light, you aren't talking about the OPERA findings in 2011, are you? Because that was busted, turned out to be faulty timing elements.
 
jiminator said:
you are describing "content". everything the brain does can be described as "creating content". It does nothing to explain what "consumes" the content (ie: has experiences)

Why is green green? Another description of how the brain turns light into signals through various processing, lots of molecular interactions in different parts of the brain, but it does nothing to explain why green is green
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It's definitly a thought provoking question. What does it mean to see green? What is sour? Do other people hear beethoven the same way that I do? But these are all questions that are ultimately not really testable.

All that we can go off of is what is what we can observe. Does this other being identify the same color as green as I do? Well then, he sees green. Does he generate the same questions about his own existence as I do? Well then he is sentient.

If you keep asking "Is he actually sentient like I am" you'll never know. You don't even know if I see the same green as you do.

And so I would argue that if you think a simulation can't experience the same way that you do, you'd probably be forced to apply to that everyone around you as well.
 
KazeoHin said:
This is really Ego-Centric. The idea of "Well, if we are living in a simulation then we MUST be the focus of that simulation!"


In reality, the human race are about as significant to the galaxy as the mould on a piece of kibble is to a planet.
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Zero proof we are or aren't the only mold in the universe.

In fact, early free roam games would often put you in an island with a skyline in the distance but no way to cross the water. Some if you try to cross, you died for whatever reason. Kind of just like we can see stars and their planets, but have absolutely no practical way to reach them across an expansive void and make it back alive. The analogy is almost perfect.
 
leeleatherwood said:
Not to start a religous argument but the "Living in a simulation" theory is far more believable than a god type being. (Although you could argue the creators of the simulation would be gods).
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How?

I mean seriously. This is the same kind of answer that people give when they suggest Aliens created life here, possible? Sure, just about anything is, but it side steps the actual question, because it does not answer anything, it only pushes off the question to who created the aliens or have they always existed (god like), and that would be the case here. Many people have also suggested looking at "God" as an alien, etc, but even the big bang or any other answer comes back to, it has always existed (God or the universe) or it was created from nothing, both seem mindbogglingly impossible, but are really the only two answers we are left with. Which is the actual answer? I am not sure we will ever know for sure, because short of traveling back in time to the point of creation from nothing, it would be hard if not out right impossible to prove either case.
 
leeleatherwood said:
Not to start a religous argument but the "Living in a simulation" theory is far more believable than a god type being. (Although you could argue the creators of the simulation would be gods).
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If God doesn't exist then the only real possibility is that Nothing exists. Because matter can not be created or destroyed the only logical possibility is that nothing ever existed. In fact "NOTHING" is the only "thing" that could withstand eternity.

Therefore, I substitute your reality for my own.
 
BlueFireIce said:
How?

I mean seriously. This is the same kind of answer that people give when they suggest Aliens created life here, possible? Sure, just about anything is, but it side steps the actual question, because it does not answer anything, it only pushes off the question to who created the aliens or have they always existed (god like), and that would be the case here. Many people have also suggested looking at "God" as an alien, etc, but even the big bang or any other answer comes back to, it has always existed (God or the universe) or it was created from nothing, both seem mindbogglingly impossible, but are really the only two answers we are left with. Which is the actual answer? I am not sure we will ever know for sure, because short of traveling back in time to the point of creation from nothing, it would be hard if not out right impossible to prove either case.
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HardUp4HardWare said:
If God doesn't exist then the only real possibility is that Nothing exists. Because matter can not be created or destroyed the only logical possibility is that nothing ever existed. In fact "NOTHING" is the only "thing" that could withstand eternity.

Therefore, I substitute your reality for my own.
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Both of your arguments just further support the computer simulation theory.

It could be said that nothing in our universe exists, its all just part of the simulation we are in. This is why some things just don't make sense (like the big bang). All simulations have to start somewhere, and that's how the one we are in starts.


I dont believe in the computer simulation theory, but I certainly dont believe in a "god" in the classical biblical sense, that's just way too far fetched.

Its pretty much a fact, that if a civilization gets advanced enough they will start to perform their own creationism. Look at at humanity as proof, all the games we have made which are really close to this topic. The Sims series, Black & White, Prison Architect, Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, etc, etc. Now imagine what kind of simulations we could pull off in 100 years time, hell I would bet that in 1000 years time we could do exactly what we are discussing.
 
leeleatherwood said:
Both of your arguments just further support the computer simulation theory.

It could be said that nothing in our universe exists, its all just part of the simulation we are in. This is why some things just don't make sense (like the big bang). All simulations have to start somewhere, and that's how the one we are in starts.


I dont believe in the computer simulation theory, but I certainly dont believe in a "god" in the classical biblical sense, that's just way too far fetched.

Its pretty much a fact, that if a civilization gets advanced enough they will start to perform their own creationism. Look at at humanity as proof, all the games we have made which are really close to this topic. The Sims series, Black & White, Prison Architect, Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, etc, etc. Now imagine what kind of simulations we could pull off in 100 years time, hell I would bet that in 1000 years time we could do exactly what we are discussing.
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It is just as far fetched to say that the universe spontaneously popped into existence as it is to say a God exists. Both rely on virtual unknowns and/or scientific explanations that exceed our ability to comprehend.
and yes, God could be a scientific reality as well.
 
leeleatherwood said:
Both of your arguments just further support the computer simulation theory.

It could be said that nothing in our universe exists, its all just part of the simulation we are in. This is why some things just don't make sense (like the big bang). All simulations have to start somewhere, and that's how the one we are in starts.


I dont believe in the computer simulation theory, but I certainly dont believe in a "god" in the classical biblical sense, that's just way too far fetched.

Its pretty much a fact, that if a civilization gets advanced enough they will start to perform their own creationism. Look at at humanity as proof, all the games we have made which are really close to this topic. The Sims series, Black & White, Prison Architect, Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, etc, etc. Now imagine what kind of simulations we could pull off in 100 years time, hell I would bet that in 1000 years time we could do exactly what we are discussing.
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How?

Again, simulation does not explain anything, because you still have to explain where those beings that built the "computer" that the simulation is running on came from, again, it only diverts the question, it does not answer anything. You are still stuck with did these Aliens always exist, or did they just come from nothing?

HardUp4HardWare said:
It is just as far fetched to say that the universe spontaneously popped into existence as it is to say a God exists. Both rely on virtual unknowns and/or scientific explanations that exceed our ability to comprehend.
and yes, God could be a scientific reality as well.
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Pretty sure that's what I said....Or were you just agreeing?
 
BlueFireIce said:
How?

I mean seriously. This is the same kind of answer that people give when they suggest Aliens created life here, possible? Sure, just about anything is, but it side steps the actual question, because it does not answer anything, it only pushes off the question to who created the aliens or have they always existed (god like), and that would be the case here. Many people have also suggested looking at "God" as an alien, etc, but even the big bang or any other answer comes back to, it has always existed (God or the universe) or it was created from nothing, both seem mindbogglingly impossible, but are really the only two answers we are left with. Which is the actual answer? I am not sure we will ever know for sure, because short of traveling back in time to the point of creation from nothing, it would be hard if not out right impossible to prove either case.
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I don't completely disagree with you, however, the computer simulation theory introduces some very interesting questions that I don't think the idea of God does.

If our entire existence and consciousness is a simple byproduct of a simulation running on some computer, how important is the computer?

Say I'm playing a game with some AI. Instead of using a computer to simulate the code, couldn't I simply ask my friend to act as a very very slow computer and verbally tell him program code and have him verbally describe what is happening assuming he had lots of paper to write down the game memory contents. It would be irritatingly slow, but would the AI in my game be able to tell the difference? Why should they? The speed of the computer should have no bearing on how the AI perceive game-time is flowing in their game-universe.

If this game is running on a computer that computes the next series of events based on some previous events and based on its current state, couldn't I save all of that in some form onto a flash drive?
I could represent the entire game-universe on a single flash drive. How can the AI tell whether they are actively being simulated on the computer or their entire lives have been saved onto a flash that is simply sitting on a desk? It's not like they would
perceive game-time has frozen or anything, I have simply described their entire lives as a single snap shot instead of letting the computer run the simulation that would arrive at the same point.

Obviously to me there is a difference, but to them there is no measureable way for them to determine exactly HOW I'm simulating them. What difference does it make whether the simulation is actively being run in my world on a pentium or has already been precalculated and stored on a flash drive.

This is where I think the computer simulation model gets really interesting. If the entire state of the game-universe can be saved, and if the AI inside can't tell how I'm simulating them, what would happen if I throw the flash drive describing the AI's entire game-universe into the fire. Do they die? Why would they? All of the contents of the flash drive can be represented conceptually as ideas. I could burn the flash drive, forget about the game, and then billions of years from now some alien can, coincidently, recreate the exact same flash drive. Have the AI noticed that anything has even happened?

If the game-universe is represented by information, then it always has existed, always will exist, and cannot be destroyed, because information does not behave like matter. Every single possible universe that can be represented in some way with some sort of information already exists.

Entire universes, then, are represented by information. Can information exist in the absence of everything?
 
BlueFireIce said:
How?

Again, simulation does not explain anything, because you still have to explain where those beings that built the "computer" that the simulation is running on came from, again, it only diverts the question, it does not answer anything. You are still stuck with did these Aliens always exist, or did they just come from nothing?
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Religion does not explain anything, because you still have to explain where those gods that built the "everything" in our universe came from, again, it only diverts the question, it does not answer anything. You are still stuck with did these Gods always exist, or did they just come from nothing?
 
serpretetsky said:
I don't completely disagree with you, however, the computer simulation theory introduces some very interesting questions that I don't think the idea of God does.

If our entire existence and consciousness is a simple byproduct of a simulation running on some computer, how important is the computer?

Say I'm playing a game with some AI. Instead of using a computer to simulate the code, couldn't I simply ask my friend to act as a very very slow computer and verbally tell him program code and have him verbally describe what is happening assuming he had lots of paper to write down the game memory contents. It would be irritatingly slow, but would the AI in my game be able to tell the difference? Why should they? The speed of the computer should have no bearing on how the AI perceive game-time is flowing in their game-universe.

If this game is running on a computer that computes the next series of events based on some previous events and based on its current state, couldn't I save all of that in some form onto a flash drive?
I could represent the entire game-universe on a single flash drive. How can the AI tell whether they are actively being simulated on the computer or their entire lives have been saved onto a flash that is simply sitting on a desk? It's not like they would
perceive game-time has frozen or anything, I have simply described their entire lives as a single snap shot instead of letting the computer run the simulation that would arrive at the same point.

Obviously to me there is a difference, but to them there is no measureable way for them to determine exactly HOW I'm simulating them. What difference does it make whether the simulation is actively being run in my world on a pentium or has already been precalculated and stored on a flash drive.

This is where I think the computer simulation model gets really interesting. If the entire state of the game-universe can be saved, and if the AI inside can't tell how I'm simulating them, what would happen if I throw the flash drive describing the AI's entire game-universe into the fire. Do they die? Why would they? All of the contents of the flash drive can be represented conceptually as ideas. I could burn the flash drive, forget about the game, and then billions of years from now some alien can, coincidently, recreate the exact same flash drive. Have the AI noticed that anything has even happened?

If the game-universe is represented by information, then it always has existed, always will exist, and cannot be destroyed, because information does not behave like matter. Every single possible universe that can be represented in some way with some sort of information already exists.

Entire universes, then, are represented by information. Can information exist in the absence of everything?
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The simulation changes nothing however, and only adds interesting questions because of a limited view of God, which ever you grew up with or are most familiar with. Say for a moment there is a God, how do you know what he based this universe off of? After all, to be eternal would mean he would exist outside of our space/time and reality, if he did not he would be limited in action based on the laws of this universe. And by definition even if this was a simulation, would that not make the creator of the simulation God? The only thing that changes is that you now understand how he created everything, and you are still left with the question, are they/it eternal or did they come into existence from nothing, the only other option is they are also created by someone/thing else, but that again only kicks the question down the road. Does this even apply to them or is time a concept that only applies to this universe? Also trying to understand the basis and fabric of that sort of world would probably be impossible for us as we do not even exist in it, or could we even detect it? As the very means to do so could be outside the limits of our universe or physical detection. It is a theory that does not answer any of the real big questions and has really no basis, even if it can be a fun mind game.

But people talked about this way back when TRON came out, not sure why it is news now...

leeleatherwood said:
Religion does not explain anything, because you still have to explain where those gods that built the "everything" in our universe came from, again, it only diverts the question, it does not answer anything. You are still stuck with did these Gods always exist, or did they just come from nothing?
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Depending on religion it does, as with the common God of the Bible, he claims to be eternal and always to have existed. Which gives you the starting point, or lack there of. It also comes back to just about any God having to exist outside of this universe and as such space/time or at least our understanding of it, so that could very well mean he existed at the start of time (when they/it created it) rather than always existing and time always existing. How you wish to view or explain that is rather moot however. But it does answer the starting point, the simulation does not answer this, or anything else about where everything came from, you still have to figure out if they are also eternal or were created and so on.

The same can be said for the big bang or any other genesis theory, did time/space/matter just burst from nothing, or did it always exist? Being that it is totally atheistic, you have no one or thing to claim or tell you other wise, and will probably never be explained/known for sure how it came to be.
 
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We already know the human brain is an incredibly complex organ capable of massive multitasking and computation feats.

What if the simulation isn't the world around us, but the artificial environment created by our own minds. When I feel pain, how do I know someone else's pain feels just like mine would? How do we know others perceive sights and sounds the exact way we do? What if someone's normal day is like an acid trip to another person?
 
BlueFireIce said:
The simulation changes nothing however, and only adds interesting questions because of a limited view of God, which ever you grew up with or are most familiar with. Say for a moment there is a God, how do you know what he based this universe off of? After all, to be eternal would mean he would exist outside of our space/time and reality, if he did not he would be limited in action based on the laws of this universe. And by definition even if this was a simulation, would that not make the creator of the simulation God? The only thing that changes is that you now understand how he created everything, and you are still left with the question, are they/it eternal or did they come into existence from nothing, the only other option is they are also created by someone/thing else, but that again only kicks the question down the road. Does this even apply to them or is time a concept that only applies to this universe? Also trying to understand the basis and fabric of that sort of world would probably be impossible for us as we do not even exist in it, or could we even detect it? As the very means to do so could be outside the limits of our universe or physical detection. It is a theory that does not answer any of the real big questions and has really no basis, even if it can be a fun mind game.

But people talked about this way back when TRON came out, not sure why it is news now...
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It's not news, it just always an interesting thought.

What I'm arguing is that entire universes exist simply because the concept of them can exist. Therefore, there is no creator.

However, this sort of hinges on whether or not concepts or information can exist in the absence of everything. And I realize this is debatable. After all, we can only fit so much information into our own universe, clearly information is limited in some way. But I like to think that somehow information is also limitless and not confined to any particular universe.
 
If everything we know if is in a simulation we have no idea at all about the world outside our simulation. The laws of physics could be anything if there even is such a thing as physics.
Look at the computer games and climate models we have developed ourselves in the limited time we have had access to computing.
We have computer games that are 2D like Tetris where the "laws" of the game are nothing like the real world, games like Space Engineers and Empyrion that simulate the "fun" parts of space travel and exploration ignoring the rest.
Our climate models only capture the subset of macro-effects that we have been able to classify - those simulations contain nothing about say, the complete theorems of electromagnetism and gravity, but they work fine for their intended purpose.
If we were in a simulation, the world "above" us could be incredibly more complex than the "simple" rules we have here.
 
westrock2000 said:
I'm not muddying the waters. I am saying that people should not believe that we have entered the age of infallible science. As an example, we were told that nothing with mass could go faster then the speed of light. And many people still believe this. Then in the 80's we were told that there were these things called neutrinos that could go faster then light, but the solution was that they don't have mass. Well then some people came along later and said turns out they probably do have mass. But from the very beginning there were people that did not agree with Einsteins theory that nothing with mass could go faster then the speed of light, but they were shunned for not believing the science.

That's all I'm saying.
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The shunning can be embarrassing in hindsight and there are some humdingers in then history books... it's good to keep in mind if skeptics and alternatives weren't dealt a healthy dose of skepticism the process would be slowed considerably. Our juvenile race doesn't put much effort/resources towards science despite it being the single greatest/most important thing we have going for us. Sorry for the confusion.
 
serpretetsky said:
It's not news, it just always an interesting thought.

What I'm arguing is that entire universes exist simply because the concept of them can exist. Therefore, there is no creator.

However, this sort of hinges on whether or not concepts or information can exist in the absence of everything. And I realize this is debatable. After all, we can only fit so much information into our own universe, clearly information is limited in some way. But I like to think that somehow information is also limitless and not confined to any particular universe.
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What? Sorry, but this is just metaphysics, with no basis in science.

What you are saying is we exist in someone or some things thought? Am I reading that right? Also, no, it can't exist in an absence of everything, because you just defined the absence of.....everything, which would include information.
 
in other words information IS existence. Our experience is the interaction of information. We are intelligent information. It is information that sets rules and creates the simulation of existence. There is no someone or something. No self as buddhists like to say. Nothing is real. It is information that creates the appearance of reality.
 
Jagger100 said:
The are interchangeable, your bias is the only reason you see a difference.
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They are not interchangeable. I came looking for forums on simulation theory since my girlfriend and I was watching a show talking about it last night and I said I kind of believe it, to which she replied "then you can't call yourself an atheist".

Which got me thinking. So the big difference here is that gods exist in the same reality as the mortals who deify them. In a simulated world we do not occupy the same reality. There is no afterlife where you die and go to the world of the all powerful Simulator. There is no meditating and living a life of enlightenment following the teachings of the Simulator. All there is is the soul-crushing (and I use the term "soul" rather lightly here) depression that comes with realising that nothing is real. And then the realisation that nothing really matters either way. Whether you are an infinitesimal speck in an actual universe or a sequence of bits in a simulation, you are unimportant in the greater scheme of things.

A rather freeing thought, no?
 
If I am living in a computer simulation, dear programing gods.

Could you PLEASE SNED PARIS HILTON or GILLIAN ANDERSON MY WAY, just for 20 minutes!

Thanks.
 
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