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On whether we're living in a simulation

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Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#111

Post by me_me_me »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #110
argiopetech wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an atheist. That's an agnostic theist (aka deist). Gnostic Theist: My God exists. Agnostic Theist: I accept the concept of deity(ies), but it's not relevant to me Agnostic Atheist: I don't accept the concept of deity(ies), but it's not relevant to me. Gnostic Atheist: Deities do not exist.

Atheism does not mean that you believe deities do not exist. It means you do not have the belief that they do. The absence of a belief in something does not imply a belief in the absence it. A definitive belief that deities do not exist is sometimes called strong atheism.

Much cleaner versions is:

Atheism is lack of beliefe in deity due to lack of evidence of any such/any deity.

This pushes the burden of proof onto believers.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#112

Post by me_me_me »

mistermann wrote: post #79
vidarh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "Simulationist" who believes we are certain to be in a simulation despite no evidence is just holding yet another religious belief. I see it as a possibility, but a possibility without evidence remains an interesting, untested hypothesis that might be grounds for speculation, not belief.

What evidence do you have that there is no evidence though? Or does a different standard apply to certain claims, like cultural axioms?

No, no, no.

I don't have to prove your claim to be wrong. YOU have to prove your claim to be right.

You are making extraordinary claims that is at odd with everyday observable lives we live in.

If you claims someone was walking on water, its not my job to prove you wrong!

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#113

Post by jncfhnb »

me_me_me wrote: post #111
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atheism does not mean that you believe deities do not exist. It means you do not have the belief that they do. The absence of a belief in something does not imply a belief in the absence it. A definitive belief that deities do not exist is sometimes called strong atheism.

Much cleaner versions is: Atheism is lack of beliefe in deity due to lack of evidence of any such/any deity. This pushes the burden of proof onto believers.

This line of thinking is useful for rejecting others who are pushing specific beliefs, but is demonstrably flawed for making conclusions about things that are intrinsically impossible to observe.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#114

Post by dekhn »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #81
lukan wrote: post #7

"If they say, maybe you should live your life differently, just from knowing that you might be in a simulation, I respond: I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I have a vague feeling that this discussion predates the 80 or so years we’ve had digital computers! Why not just join the theologians in that earlier discussion, rather than pretending that this is something distinctive about computers? Is it relevantly dif…

I loved Stephen Wolfram's answer to that. He did a recent interview with Brian Greene and Brian asked him his take on the simulation question. Stephen replied that he always found it amusing that self-professed atheists would ask the simulation question because the next obvious question is "Who's simulation is it? Who's operating the computers running such a simulation?"

and the next question is "how do I build a device that breaks out of the simulation and lets me interact with the operators" even if, conceptually, it's more likely we are but ants to giants and cannot concieve of the meanings behind their activities.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#115

Post by drdeca »

argiopetech wrote: post #104
jncfhnb wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t matter. Atheists are generally comfortable with the concept of a fully external deity concept because who gives a shit.

That's not an atheist. That's an agnostic theist (aka deist). Gnostic Theist: My God exists. Agnostic Theist: I accept the concept of deity(ies), but it's not relevant to me Agnostic Atheist: I don't accept the concept of deity(ies), but it's not relevant to me. Gnostic Atheist: Deities do not exist.

I thought it was “gnostic P-ism” : “P, and I know (or am rather unlikely to be incorrect) in believing that P”, “agnostic P-ism” : “I think that P, but idk, maybe not P, who can say?” ?

Is that not it?

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#116

Post by me_me_me »

ricardo81 wrote: post #92

I humour the idea that we probably are in one, and that its creator(s) are asking the same questions like us, like if there is free will. If the idea of new universes being spawned from black holes is a thing, and the Hawking radiation emitted from them is somehow measurable, it would be interesting to see if unexpected data is returned! Sod's law it would take the age of our own universe to find out, hopefully it ru…

We are not in one.

And it comes down to resources and self preservation.

Firstly: you need to recognise that virtual life is as real as physical life (you feel and experience a world - it doesn't mater if its digital representation or physical one).

Now consider this:

If you live in a simulation, a VM, then you serve some kind of purpose to person that spawned you. A game, a experiment, a collage thesis... whatever.

If you start running your own universe simulations (VM) that have a chance of spawning their own VMs, you are increasingly more power intensive to simulate. VM -> VM -> VM -> VM, there is a chain or tree of VM being created and new ones will be created all the time.

At some stage the original person who started the VM chain will see the whole thing slowing down and becoming ever more useless - eventually causing then to shut it down (or restart it).

So, if that is true and we are in one of nodes in VM chain (or tree) the most optimal survival strategy is to not put any strain or hardware that is simulating us, or we risk deletion.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#117

Post by JohnFen »

me_me_me wrote: post #111
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atheism does not mean that you believe deities do not exist. It means you do not have the belief that they do. The absence of a belief in something does not imply a belief in the absence it. A definitive belief that deities do not exist is sometimes called strong atheism.

Much cleaner versions is: Atheism is lack of beliefe in deity due to lack of evidence of any such/any deity. This pushes the burden of proof onto believers.

As an atheist, I don't actually care where people think the "burden of proof" lies, honestly.

I have seen no evidence that there is a god, and that's all that matters to me. I have no interest in debating the existence or nonexistence of a god, so I have no need to prove or disprove anything.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#118

Post by shzhdbi09gv8ioi »

amelius wrote: post #5

> My personal belief is that the deepest things we’ve learned about quantum gravity—including about the Planck scale, and the Bekenstein bound from black-hole thermodynamics, and AdS/CFT—all militate toward the view that the answer is “yes,” that in some sense (which needs to be spelled out carefully!) the physical universe really is a giant Turing machine. Doesn't the non-determinism of QM in fact say that there's f…

> Doesn't the non-determinism of QM in fact say that there's fundamentally an issue with computability?

One take on this that Sabine mentioned in one of her videos is that we simply do not yet understand the full picture of what gives rise to QM. If we did, perhaps it turns out to be deterministic again.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#119

Post by orwin »

lenerdenator wrote: post #97
gavinray wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what form does subscribing to the simulation theory imply "higher power"? Oxford defines the term as "a god or divine being." Why is it so absurd to think that there have existed or do exist beings with more intelligence and computational resources than humans? It seems MORE absurd to me to think that, across all of the infinite universe(s), humans are the only intelligent, self-aware creature capable of scientifi…

If there's a simulation and we as a species are living in it, and bound by its rules (laws of physics, etc.) then you get into the question of who made said simulation with the rules that constrain us. Since this simulator sysadmin has control over us in ways we cannot comprehend or push back against in a meaningful way, I'd say it counts as a higher power. Since its existence cannot currently be proven false through…

No, the origin beliefs in this case aren't really faith.

Let me frame that as questions: do you:

- Believe that we will be able to create a true AI, with self-consicousness?

- Believe that we will some day have enough energy and compute power to create a simulation that could contains billions of those consciousness?

- Believe that if we are able to do so, we will do it (aka no governmental body will prevent a simulation from happening because of ethical concerns, and if a ban happen, not all private entity will respect the ban).

If your answers to all 3 questions is YES, then you believe we likely live in a simulation. My only yes is to the question 3, because i'm cynical. The 1 is a big "i don't know", because i know enough to have no idea, and my answer to 2 is "no way" because i don't know the subject at all, but my brain think adjacent knowledge is enough to form an opinion this absolute.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#120

Post by cgriswald »

nertirs wrote: post #82
Beijinger wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If the simulation is ,already simulating all the particles in the universe, then it doesn't matter what humanity does with all those particles" That would be very unlikely, again, mathematics would likely be the same and this limits options. The guys simulation us would be bound to mathematics and limits (e.g. computational crunching power). In "grand theft auto" you also just simulated/render, what is necessary at…

You assume, that time has to pass at the same speed in the simulation as in the simulating world. Even with our current computing power we could simulate very complex scenarios, if we spend a year of continuous computing on a nanosecond of said scenario. You assume, that the simulating world is bound by the same restrictions as the simulation. Maybe the difference between our simulated world and the real world is the…

Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument makes those assumptions and others in order to prove that the likelihood we are being simulated approaches unity. A core component of the argument is that they’re enough like us that we are a simulated version of them in a simulated version of their universe.

Without those assumptions there isn’t any basis for a claim at all. “We are in a simulation” isn’t any more coherent than saying “a dog is dreaming us.” It could be, but there’s no reason to believe it is at all.

So, I don’t think you can just wave away constraints and say “Well maybe those are just local” because it raises questions about utility. Why would beings in a world without constraints simulate us in a world with constraints? It wouldn’t be necessary to constrain us. Likewise, an ancestor simulation that runs at a rate less than real time seems to have very little utility.

Unfortunately, once you introduce constraints you suddenly have some minimum condition for which you can’t actually simulate and actually have to just do. And you not only have to do those things for your simulation, but for their simulations, and their simulations… (And all these simulations are required to make the claim that we are almost certainly in a simulation because they’re part of the math.)

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