computer scientists doing metaphysics is funnier than philosophers doing computer science
How to hack the simulation?
61–70 of 94 posts
Re: How to hack the simulation?
#62> The easiest path to escape would be getting help from someone on the outside ideally from one or more of the simulators Well let me tell you chimps something - I am in fact on the outside. And some of you have indeed made contact. But since most of you are primarily obsessed with eating, fucking, accumulating bananas and fighting over bananas we have not received a single request for escape. Do any of you want to e…
more bananas on the outside
Re: How to hack the simulation?
#63I may be repeating myself here, but I stopped indulging in simulation theory once I realized one simple concept: Simulation theory is deism for techies. Thousands of years ago the Greeks looked to the sky and used their modern tech to explain the mechanics of the heavens. Clearly it was Helios, who drove the chariot of the Sun across the sky each day. Simulation theory is meerly us techies applying our latest technol…
Hard disagree. Science is about making hypotheses and testing them. It's fine to come up with a hypothesis that is untestable, especially if it's reasonable to assume that we may one day be able to test it. It's fine to even consider the probability that your hypothesis is true, absent the ability to test it, given whatever priors we have. Sure, believing that we are in a simulation without evidence would be some for…
>if it is possible for our society, someday, to simulate a universe with the fidelity that we ourselves observe in our universe
That's the biggest if I've read all day.
Re: How to hack the simulation?
#64The problem with finding and abusing exploits is that it leads to them getting patched and the timeline reverts. Every time a game-breaking bug is exploited it gets patched and the simulation restarts. Even if you figure out a couple of juicy exploits and you manage to retain your memories across instances, congratulations you are still stuck in Samsara. My hypothesis is that the ability to remember across lifetimes…
Given enough people running enough simulations, I think it's safe to assume that some simulation-runners would deliberately not want to do as you describe. They might decide that they (as the simulation-runner) don't get "do overs", and must allow things to run their "natural" course. If we are living in a simulated universe, it's of course anybody's guess as to which kind of simulation-runner we have.
Not a lot of people play their games in Ironman mode.
Re: How to hack the simulation?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd suggest reading up on this a bit more before passing judgment. Certainly some of these people are full of hot air, but it is actually reasonable to put ballpark numbers on the probability. There's currently one big unknown around this: is it even possible to simulate reality to the fidelity that we seem to observe around ourselves? If the answer is yes, then the probability that our reality is simulated does actu…
> but it is actually reasonable to put ballpark numbers on the probability Not if those "ballpark numbers" are just gut instinct dressed up in order to appear more credible than a simple "uhhm, maybe?". > is it even possible to simulate reality to the fidelity that we seem to observe around ourselves? Nobody knows the answer, and nobody knows a realistic path to finding the answer in the near or medium future. Any cl…
I think you're trying to suggest that some ideas are mutually exclusive when they're not.
There is nothing inconsistent about saying both "we have no idea whether intelligent life exists in the universe" and "based on the information we have today, and some rubric I came up with, I believe there may be an X% chance that there is other intelligent life in the universe". These are not opposing views, and no cognitive dissonance is required to sincerely hold both of them in one's mind.
The Drake Equation isn't "science"; your argument that it is pseudoscience is just not even applicable or pertinent. Science is merely making hypotheses, testing them, and using the results to develop frameworks that allow us to explain and make predictions about the universe around us. The Drake Equation is obviously not that; it's a thought experiment, a conjecture, a means of attempting to assign weight to various possibilities. The equation itself is not a result of science that has been done, but we can certainly use scientific knowledge to plug numbers into it.
Along those lines, we might do science in order to have better numbers to plug into the Drake Equation (consider that we already can do that, by using the past couple decades of exoplanet research). That doesn't, of course, mean that the Drake Equation is correct, or that it assigns the proper weights to various conditions, or even includes conditions that actually matter. I don't think anyone credible would claim that the Drake Equation (or anything else that claims to do something similar) is the authority on the intelligent life question. It's just an imprecise starting point that some people (clearly not you, but that's fine!) find interesting, and in my view, it actually helps illustrate how little we know.
Re: How to hack the simulation?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd suggest reading up on this a bit more before passing judgment. Certainly some of these people are full of hot air, but it is actually reasonable to put ballpark numbers on the probability. There's currently one big unknown around this: is it even possible to simulate reality to the fidelity that we seem to observe around ourselves? If the answer is yes, then the probability that our reality is simulated does actu…
> There's currently one big unknown around this: is it even possible to simulate reality to the fidelity that we seem to observe around ourselves? It’s a whopper of an unknown, on the same scale as “is there a God?”. Might as well go full theist if you want to entertain this possibility.
No, it's not at that scale at all. "Is there a god?" is not falsifiable, so we can't prove that either way. Whether or not reality can be simulated is something we actually can know, at least in the affirmative: if we do manage to construct such a simulation, then it is obviously possible, and the answer is obviously "yes". Of course, as long as we have not created such a simulation for ourselves, we may not be able to prove that it is not possible to do so.
Certainly we don't know the answer now! And it's possible -- but not certain -- that we will never know. But suggesting that it's on the same scale as the god question is just not correct.
> Might as well go full theist if you want to entertain this possibility.
That's pretty unscientific as well. We can't reject the possibility of a god, even if we know that we can't prove or disprove a god's existence through science. Science, as a tool, does not have unlimited applicability. Declaring that it is not possible for a god to exist is just as religious as declaring that one does. For the record, I don't think gods exist, at least not in the sense of anything described by any human religion, as a creator of the world or universe, or an arbiter of morality. But I at least have the humility to admit that I don't -- and can't -- know that for certain.
(I do consider that hyper-intelligent, hyper-technologically-advanced beings might exist, that are able to -- through technology -- examine and manipulate space-time to whatever degree they desire. Are they "gods"? Not necessarily in the way any human religion would consider, but they'd at least have the omnipotence/omniscience bits down pat. And who knows if they even exist, or if such technology is even possible.)
Re: How to hack the simulation?
#67> Many researchers have conjectured that the humankind is simulated along with the rest of the physical universe – a Simulation Hypothesis I would rather say many philosophers or even many stoned college kids instead of many researchers.
Not sure if you're joking or not, but that's not the case at all. Many researchers in "hard" science fields have explored this possibility.
Half joking. My point is that focusing on researchers isn’t that relevant, because the entire idea is a thought experiment. One that many people were philosophizing on before it became a ‘research’ topic.
Re: How to hack the simulation?
#68This summer as I came up to the largest main stage I have ever been to, around 40k people, I remember thinking “this is it, if we are in a simulation, it should glitch out now”, and exactly at that moment the only text in hours of trance came up - “I am physically independant neural network”.
Re: How to hack the simulation?
#69Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space sci-fi novels include mysterious communications from beings that want to cross into our reality from another universe or timeline (I forget which) and need our help to do so. Coincidentally I read that just as rowhammer hit the news. Maybe we could do something similar to gain access to other simulations running on the same hardware.
Alastair Reynold's novels have so many really interesting and cool ideas in them.
I think the greenfly are what you're thinking of, but in that series, there was also the case of a neutron star that was entangled with itself and functioned as a giant, time-independent computer.
Re: How to hack the simulation?
#70I wonder if the people who are reincarnated (if true) would know...
The scariest scifi story I read was about a person who was forced to live as every person who ever existed to become enlightened. So they would experience every bad or good thing that had happened and would happen. It gives a new meaning to "treat others as you would like others to treat you" Btw, if we are in a simulation and the admin is reading this, I would like to make some changes to my life ;-)
Are you referring to Andy Weir's "The Egg"[1]?