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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

#141

Post by snakeyjake »

Surely the likelihood of me being simulated and the likelihood of the world in which my simulation is running also itself being a simulation are equal, right?

That must be true. It doesn't make any sense that my reality is simulated but the reality in which my reality is being simulated cannot be a simulation.

If that is true, then the chances of me being in a simulation and that simulation itself being just one of an infinitely nested series of simulations are also equal. And this simulation can itself have infinite simulations and the simulation layer that is simulating my simulation can itself have infinite other simulations each one of which is an infinitely nested stack of simulations.

We may be so deep down in the simulation stack that each femtosecond of my time takes 10^10^10^10^10^10 quadrillion years to simulate several layers up in a universe with entirely different rules than our own.

If there is an infinite number of simulations each hosting an infinite number of simulation stacks then we aren't living in a simulation, that is just the nature of our existence-- it is reality.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#142

Post by bowsamic »

scruple wrote: post #140
bowsamic wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but it really upsets some people when someone else gets off the academic treadmill

Thank you for spelling this out. I've seen the GP opinion multiple times and it never connected for me before.

I was on twitter during the whole "anti academia" movement in physics and there is a lot of craziness on both sides. You have everything from professors saying that anyone who quits academia wasn't smart enough to be in it, or that they have betrayed academia, to people who left for the industry who insist that all peoples' experiences in academia are terrible or even that anyone who stays is complicit in some kind of continuation of abuse.

I generally landed on the pro-academia side because the communities of people who had quit academia were a much worse eco chamber, often even pro capitalist and/or claiming that being an academic is also being a proletariat or some weird stuff. The worst part is that they spend a lot of time convincing other younger academics that they should quit, and portray having a job as some kind of beautiful and perfect time compared to academia. However, I don't blame anyone for quitting academia, or focussing their efforts elsewhere. Academia is ultimately a very conformist and social thing. You have to network and collaborate, you have to be buddies with a lot of gatekeepers, etc.

Job = do the thing and get paid for it, but you can't just go home at lunch because you want to put a wash on

Academia = do whatever you want, but that's also not enough, you have to beg for your salary even if you complete amazing work

Zizek's position is kind of the best of both worlds then, he makes enough money from his casual writing that he retains the freedom of academia while not having to suck up to anyone. That's probably why people don't like him

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#143

Post by namaria »

jprd wrote: post #100
williamcotton wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is common enough that it came out of the mouth of a priest during a theology lecture! Edit: It is still astonishing to me that they let these hippies into the papacy!

PESRONAL OPINION AND EXPERIENCE: I was SO LUCKY, growing up Irish-American Catholic, that I had so many local parish Priests that were Jesuits. THEY ECOURAGED QUESTIONING FAITH. Open Q&A, without saying a dogmatic response - sparking discussion instead. These cats allowed myself and my peers the latitude to poke holes in all of it, pontificate (apologies on the pun) on our personal viewpoints and challenge any confli…

Wow you just unlocked a weird memory. Back when I was in High School Jesuits actually taught me the principles of microeconomics.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#144

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

JohnFen wrote: post #128
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.

> A definitive belief that deities do not exist is sometimes called strong atheism. Yes indeed! My variation of atheism is often called "ignostic" -- that is, I can't tell you if I believe in god or not until you tell me what, exactly, you mean by "god". The more proper name for this is "incompetent atheism", but I dislike that name because it implies a different meaning than it has. Philosophy is fun!

Ignostic, nice, I like it. That's a new one for me :)

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#145

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

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.

Strictly speaking, no. There does not have to be any reason to not have a belief, although the one you cite will be common among those who have considered it.

And you could still be an atheist even if there was evidence of a deity.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#146

Post by nertirs »

cgriswald wrote: post #120
nertirs wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 say…

I am not saying, that the simulating world has no constraints. Only that there is no reason for the constraints present in the simulation to perfectly mimic the real world.

I would argue, that a perfect simulation is most of the time less efficient than a simulation with very specific parameters. For example, humans studying game theory with artificial agents create very specific environments.

There are also plenty of reasons to run a simulation on a slower tick rate than a real world. For science, we simulated a black hole, which required hundreds of hours to simulate a single frame. For entertainment, we made movies, for which it is not uncommon to require thousand hours of cpu time just to render a single minute.

The stacking problem can be easily solved by applying the concept of entropy to it. You can't expect to receive the same amount of energy you put into a system. Therefor a simulation can't perfectly simulate the world running the simulation. Which means, that at the end of every single simulation chain exists a simulation not yet capable of generating a simulation. But this statement provides us no more information about the relationship between the simulator and the simulation.

We can introduce whatever constraints or assumptions we want. It makes no difference. My argument was against the statement, that one can say something is more likely or more reasonable, when debating if we are living a simulation. One can't.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#147

Post by slowmovintarget »

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.

> Atheism was first used to describe a self-avowed belief in late 18th-century Europe, specifically denoting disbelief in the monotheistic Abrahamic god. In the 20th century, globalization contributed to the expansion of the term to refer to disbelief in all deities, though it remains common in Western society to describe atheism as "disbelief in God".

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

The complication of the term for debate purposes only seems to come up in intellectual circles like ours, here.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#148

Post by pavel_lishin »

steve1977 wrote: post #135
pavel_lishin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're just code being executed on some machine, we could be executed on a different machine - one that can move around in "their" world. Basically, getting uploaded into an android frame. (Assuming that their world would even be comprehensible to us; but again, as others have pointed out, so much of this is effectively theological...)

But we would still be code, we could not escape our "non-corporality" I guess. Or if you want to have a theological take, we could not become god(s).

The beauty of the simulation hypothesis is that we know nothing about the "real" world one level up. For all we know, they can grow a body on-demand and slap any set of patterns into whatever they have for brains.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#149

Post by b112 »

jncfhnb wrote: post #133
b112 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even gzip will store lots of zeros in a tiny, tiny space. If a region of space isn't observed, it's a big fat load of null. If it is observed up close, whatever persistent storage you use for that space can be wiped, when the observer ceases to exist. Even now, when we observe close planetary systems, it isn't as if we are looking at all the atoms. We certainly aren't observing all the space on the planets. It's all…

Eh, you can’t really guarantee that internal actors can observe things in any meaningful fashion that requires data storage. You can’t guarantee that you’re actually experiencing anything you believe yourself to be from the perspective of an outside observer.

Well yes I can, because it's part of the theory I concocted above.

You're welcome to espouse alternative theories of course.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#150

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #147
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.

> Atheism was first used to describe a self-avowed belief in late 18th-century Europe, specifically denoting disbelief in the monotheistic Abrahamic god. In the 20th century, globalization contributed to the expansion of the term to refer to disbelief in all deities, though it remains common in Western society to describe atheism as "disbelief in God". -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism The complication of the…

And the very first sentence of the Wikipedia article says "Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities.".

I first understood atheism to mean an absence of belief in god as a child, and I wasn't hanging out in intellectual circles at the time!

But it is certainly true that the meaning of it has shifted over time.

I wouldnt say that the complication is for debate purposes only. It is a rather fundamental difference to me.

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