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Are we living in a simulation? (Going down the rabbit hole..)

Razorback

Member
It's being compared to what it is, you just don't like that and are in denial and want to shut it down.

C'mon, I thought you were invested in taking down bullshit. Being such a rational guy I'd expect you to already know that the most effective way of changing minds is through respectful argumentation. Beating down strawmen is evidently counterproductive. Like Catphish Catphish said, no one here is adopting any new doctrinal beliefs around the simulation argument. If you're so confident that it isn't even reasonable to speculate about it why not share those reasons?

Or perhaps you aren't interested in changing minds at all? Maybe you just found an easy shortcut for making yourself feel smarter by mocking others without actually having to reason through the logical steps of an argument.
Is that perhaps why you are fishing for someone to bring up Elon Musk? For another easy dunk on someone for cultish behavior or something? Something no one here has done yet? Go ahead and deny it.
 

Crayon

Member
More details on that please?

As something of a psychonaut myself, I can speak to that a bit. After enough experience, McKenna's advice, "don't give in to astonishment" ("OMG IT WAS SO CRAZY WE'RE ALL ONE WITH THE UNIVERSE IT WAS LIKE FINGERING GOD I HAVE TO GO BACK") was actually achievable ("Yeah it was a solid trip, I'm good for awhile") . I can do a pretty heavy dose and I don't come back with any mind blowing revelations that I'm struggling to decsribe. Tripping without being so suprised all the time does feel like I'm just taking in my senses and experience raw and unfiltered. Of course I'm rendered more or less useless because we filter and categorize for good reason.

But yes, in a way, experiencing my senses and my existance in that raw form actually does feel more real. My normal experience is full of fake shit like anxiety and fears. Or pride I build up to couterbalance that. Thinking about past and future stuff that doesn't exist anymore/yet. And there are schloads of barnacles on top of that raw existance feeling that I know is underneath. You can take a drug and rip all that away.

It is claimed that someone can get the same effect through deep meditation and I'm inclined to beleive that but i've never managed. Sounds nice because I imagine you wouldn't need to wear down the astonishment over a bunch of good and bad trips.
 
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Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Not just the double slit experiment, but quantum tunneling, entanglement - it cannot be explained by the basic rules of classical physics. But what does that mean? How does it work, then?
It means that classical physics, which was first conceived hundreds of years ago, is not the be all end all framework for how reality operates, and that our knowledge of the universe and its underlying mechanics is incomplete. Therefore we don't know exactly how it works.

It means further scientific inquiry, investigation, and research is necessary to further our understanding.
 

Ladioss

Member
Any society where too many people do intellectual jobs in scriptoriums/monasteries/corporate cubicles for a living instead of touching grass outside like normal people tend to see a resurgence of the old Gnostic worldview.
 
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EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
There’s communities combined with other communities if you’ve played a Star Wars or mass effect game there’s planets and planets buying into the simulation theory is easy.
 

Amiga

Member
That is what Islam basically says about the world. The rules of physics and nature are set up with cause and effect to seem autonomous, to create an impression of independence that lures out our inner selves to manifest.
 
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Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
It’s definitely not. If we were they would have some kind fail safe in place that wouldn’t allow us to investigate it as it would ruin any kind of experiment they were doing.

There also isn’t enough computing power possible to do it.

It’s nonsense
Your arguments above make me think you don't understand the theory being posited. Because, like religion, it can't be "disproven". That's why it's still being debated.
1) What if the point of the simulation was to see how long it took us to uncover it's a simulation? There'd be no "fail safe"
2) If we exist in the simulation, then outside of the simulation is where the power source would be. The world outside the simulation wouldn't necessarily follow the rules within it.
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member
My problem with this theory is that they would have to account for everything: elements, scientific discoveries, outer space etc. how far can a simulation go?
That's the thing, everything we discover is just what was designed for us. It's like if I gave you only one book in a little cell and all the language you knew was from that one tome. You would say "I know all the stuff in this book, there is nothing else, no way that book isn't reality". But I could look over at all the other books on the shelf and laugh.
 

Nico_D

Member
Even if this were a simulation, why would it matter? It still feels life and makes no difference. In fact, I think life is a simulation in huge scale anyway: life trying things out, destroying it and starting again.
 

Trogdor1123

Gold Member
Your arguments above make me think you don't understand the theory being posited. Because, like religion, it can't be "disproven". That's why it's still being debated.
1) What if the point of the simulation was to see how long it took us to uncover it's a simulation? There'd be no "fail safe"
2) If we exist in the simulation, then outside of the simulation is where the power source would be. The world outside the simulation wouldn't necessarily follow the rules within it.
I understand it very well actually but I agree you raise fair points, I just don’t agree with them.

First of all, I guess you could say that the intention is to see what happens when “simulation” is discovered but that wouldn’t be a good use of resources as they would be able to better see if first hand from their own society. It would reduce variables and would make for better science. On those grounds I disregard that point. I concede it is possible though but I’d like to think that any society that is capable of doing all of this would at least do it efficiently.

The second one I don’t disagree with entirely. To perfectly simulate a full universe would take more computing power than is available in our universe (according to some calculations) but I suppose it would be possible that in a universe running a simulation that they would have entirely different computing powers and abilities. I 100% agree I am using an Anthropic viewpoint on this (as I would have to). But again, I would go back to the why study us in that way then. The fundamentals of the test would be wrong and easier studied first person.

I guess my biggest issue with using simulations is that it probably isn’t that efficient of a way to study stuff if you are capable of actually creating the simulation. You would be better served calculating the outcomes than simulating then in a full on experience (unless they drop in too like a video game!).

Fun discussion
 

UnNamed

Banned
We can't exclude the chance that we live in simulation, since even bugs in the simulation would be perceived by us as "established rules".

For example, gravitational acceleration is 9.8 m/s, but an eventual mistake by the Creator who intended a different formula that could lead in 30 or 2.2 change nothing since we, all the Creations in the Universe, take the current formula as a fact.
 
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RAÏSanÏa

Member
Pretty sure Elon Musk subscribes to it, and that you already knew that.
There was a tweet that provided a ridiculous unsupported claim about the chances of being in a simulation.
While no surprise there are people that would trend their thinking to suit it, it seemed that he might have picked it up from elsewhere.

Brain in a jar is a thought experiment, it's not a theory of reality.
 
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Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
First of all, I guess you could say that the intention is to see what happens when “simulation” is discovered but that wouldn’t be a good use of resources as they would be able to better see if first hand from their own society.
Not sure what you mean by this.
 

Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
There was a tweet that provided a ridiculous unsupported claim about the chances of being in a simulation.
While no surprise there are people that would trend their thinking to suit it, it seemed that he might have picked it up from elsewhere.

Brain in a jar is a thought experiment, it's not a theory of reality.
I think I see where you're coming from: Both brain-in-a-jar and simulation theory are thought experiments because they can't be disproven. That they ought not to be worldviews because while they're not impossible, they don't have any "proof" outside of being possible or even probable.

In no way did Elon Musk originate the idea but, yeah, he's probably the reason why we're talking about it now.

I gotta ask though, because I've seen you write some wild spiritual stuff on this site. If I can assume your position, how are your beliefs more accurate than Christianity, Simulation theory, etc.?
 

RAÏSanÏa

Member
I think I see where you're coming from: Both brain-in-a-jar and simulation theory are thought experiments because they can't be disproven. That they ought not to be worldviews because while they're not impossible, they don't have any "proof" outside of being possible or even probable.

In no way did Elon Musk originate the idea but, yeah, he's probably the reason why we're talking about it now.

I gotta ask though, because I've seen you write some wild spiritual stuff on this site. If I can assume your position, how are your beliefs more accurate than Christianity, Simulation theory, etc.?
To answer that would require knowing which ideas you're referring to in relation to Christianity and Simulation Theory. There are many truths to Christianity, however Simulation Theory is just a new label on an old low level thought experiment whose new age followers are trying to pull in discovered knowledge from other systems to give credence to it.

Crowley had his thought that the Universe would cease to exist if all life was destroyed in it. Tend to agree, but that's what's called a universal truth and isn't Simulation Theory(tm).
 

Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
To answer that would require knowing which ideas you're referring to in relation to Christianity and Simulation Theory. There are many truths to Christianity, however Simulation Theory is just a new label on an old low level thought experiment whose new age followers are trying to pull in discovered knowledge from other systems to give credence to it.

Crowley had his thought that the Universe would cease to exist if all life was destroyed in it. Tend to agree, but that's what's called a universal truth and isn't Simulation Theory(tm).
I'm mostly referring to the idea that you seem to express an understanding of the "truth". How did you arrive at this understanding? E.g., when you say there is truth in Christianity, what do you mean by that and how did you arrive at that position?
 

RAÏSanÏa

Member
I'm mostly referring to the idea that you seem to express an understanding of the "truth". How did you arrive at this understanding? E.g., when you say there is truth in Christianity, what do you mean by that and how did you arrive at that position?
Method of science.
 

FunkMiller

Member
Yeah quantum physics by itself is not proof of a simulation or anything. It's just how it works reminds me so much of how you would build a video game/simulated world.

I mean all these concepts of something that can be in a totally random or unpredictable state, until you "observe" it...well isn't that exactly how you build a video game? A frame buffer? You can think of atoms as the pixels or graphic primitives of a video game. How would an NPC in a game perceive/interact with a pixel? It would be beyond comprehension. It only becomes something perceptible when the pixel is used to render something that can be understood.

Not sure comparing the structure of the universe (mind numbingly complex) with the design of video games (extremely simple by comparison) is necessarily the right thing to do... especially give that if you're introducing the notion of quantum physics into the equation, you can't then compare that to anything designed to operate within the framework of general relativity.

For instance, your comparison of pixels to atoms rather breaks down once you realise there are more atoms contained within the head of a pin than there are stars in the entire galaxy. I doubt NVidia will ever produce a graphics card capable of rendering that many pixels. Also, pixels are effectively joined together to create a video game asset. Due to the electromagnetic force, most atoms never actually touch one another. It's their repulsion that allows separate matter to exist.

Experiments like the double slit don't support any claims to us being in a simulation, but they can theoretically support the notion of multiple realities, if you can see past the Copenhagen interpretation (the forcing of choice upon a quantum particle from the act of observation).

The main thing to bear in mind is that an atom is 99.9999999999% empty, which means that on a quantum level, we can't exist in a simulation, because there's virtually nothing there to simulate.

Batman Thumbs Up GIF
 

Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
Oh, simply that if a society was able to create a simulation, by definition they would have to admit they themselves were probably in one as well.
Got it. I'm coming from the perspective that the simulation they create wouldn't have to be a 1-to-1 simulation of their world, so that's why I was confused
 

Trogdor1123

Gold Member
Got it. I'm coming from the perspective that the simulation they create wouldn't have to be a 1-to-1 simulation of their world, so that's why I was confused
I’m kind of thinking that too. They probably wouldn’t simulate everything, just what is needed which is a bunch less too. I guess it is one of those “it depends”. Essentially all the aliens are lawyers!
 
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