Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
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Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
#2[deleted]
Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
#3The assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons?
I suppose it's possible that in some simulations "they" do leave the sky blank, in others they include randomly distributed stars, and in ours they've been grouped into galaxies. Perhaps if you were bored you'd try running it a few thousand times on each setting to see if it makes a difference?
Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
#4> If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation — to destroy our world.
There's nothing to stop our creators from doing that anyway. Simulations are often stopped, tweaked, restarted, and eventually abandoned.
Personally, I think there's value to determining if we live in a simulation. If we do live in one, we could potentially learn how to "hack" the simulation from the inside in order to improve our lives in it.
Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
#5The assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons? I suppose it's possible that in some simulations "they" do leave the sky blank, in others they include randomly distribute…
Then how to simulate the aspects of human that can only be aroused by having the concept and the ability to explore that universe?
Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
#6The assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons? I suppose it's possible that in some simulations "they" do leave the sky blank, in others they include randomly distribute…
They only have to simulate the signals we get about the Universe, not the Universe itself.
Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
#7The assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons? I suppose it's possible that in some simulations "they" do leave the sky blank, in others they include randomly distribute…
Maybe the real civilisation has spread over the universe, so it made sense for them to simulate it just for us to study and travel it.
Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
#8A simulation can’t have living objects
Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
#9The assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons? I suppose it's possible that in some simulations "they" do leave the sky blank, in others they include randomly distribute…
They only have to simulate the signals we get about the Universe, not the Universe itself.
Right, and sometimes they can mess up. One example could be the star found recently to be older than the universe!
Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
#10I've never been entirely sure why this debate matters.
A simulation, at least as we'd understand it, would mean some kind of set variables and set rules. It would be entirely deterministic, but you have to run it to see what happens.
That kind of sounds like…physics?
You have some basic elements like atoms and energy plus some set rules like conservation of mass, laws of thermodynamics, and the rest. Sure, we don't know what's going to happen next, but it does seem entirely determined.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding physics or the simulation hypothesis here. It's always seemed to me that we talk about a simulation as if it would be different than what we have now.