Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation • Hacker News Board

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#261

Post by ensignavenger » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 9:21 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #100

Insanity wrote: post #86

I am not sure what to make of the whole universe-is-a-simulation argument. The problem is that, this is as far as I know, not an hypothesis we could ever hope to prove. Not any more than we can proof that a diety exists outside of this world. I highly doubt that there is a higher creature, whether that would be a God of some kind, or a whole civilization outside of our universe that somehow simulates us. But let's fo…

I think it's interesting to speculate what the simulation argument means for religion. The existence of a simulation creator doesn't actually disprove the existence of an ultimate god, after all the beings running the simulation might have a divine creator, so it just pushes the question up a level. But it does pose a problem for imminent religions that believe that god intervenes in the world to cause miracles. How…

Who is to say that God and the sim operators aren't one and the same?

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#262

Post by Retric » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 9:50 PM UTC

pdabbadabba wrote: post #256

Retric wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many, non western philosophies are are not necessarily religious and do hold that A and not A can both be true. Many non religious western philosophers hold similar beliefs as do most religious western philosophers. Now you could argue that a majority of non religious western philosophers agree with the excluded middle, but that's a fairly weak argument. PS: Read some of the crap that showed up from poor understandin…

Sure, but does any of this establish that "most philosophies" don't observe the law of the excluded middle? > you could argue that a majority of non religious western philosophers agree with the excluded middle, but that's a fairly weak argument. But perhaps pretty strong when my claim was only that it is "widely accepted." :) At any rate, no need to argue further about what "most" people believe. I just wanted to ma…

Ok, 'Most philosophies' might be overkill, but it's well past a simple majority. That said, it can feel like non religious western philosophy makes up the majority of thought systems, but it's actually a surprisingly 'small minority'. :-)

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#263

Post by pdabbadabba » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 10:16 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #262

pdabbadabba wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but does any of this establish that "most philosophies" don't observe the law of the excluded middle? > you could argue that a majority of non religious western philosophers agree with the excluded middle, but that's a fairly weak argument. But perhaps pretty strong when my claim was only that it is "widely accepted." :) At any rate, no need to argue further about what "most" people believe. I just wanted to ma…

Ok, 'Most philosophies' might be overkill, but it's well past a simple majority. That said, it can feel like non religious western philosophy makes up the majority of thought systems, but it's actually a surprisingly 'small minority'. :-)

> it can feel like non religious western philosophy makes up the majority of thought systems

Definitely. And alarmingly so. The unsettling fact is that I don't feel like I have any idea at all whether most people believe in things like the law of the excluded middle--despite the fact that I'd be hard pressed to come up with a proposition that is more basic to my own view of the universe, or that of virtually everyone I know (including both people I know personally, and people whose work I've read).

The world is really big.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#264

Post by simonh » Wed, Mar 22, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #229

simonh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me that, and 'I think therefore I am' are just I'm a special snowflake arguments. I take the simulated Intelligence argument the same way. Suppose you could create a simulation of an intelligence that was indistinguishable from a real one? Well then, you'd have created an artificial intelligence. If such a thing reported that it experienced qualia I'd have no reason to doubt it. Edit: to put it differently. Suppos…

I think you're wrong about them being "special snowflake" arguments, and likely miss the point of them. Those arguments are very low-level in the intellectual stack, and can only address matters of subjective self because what they seek to establish or discuss is more fundamental than concepts like objectivity. (Well, cogito ergo sum is establishing an objective fact from a subjective one to give a basis for later ob…

But the qualia argument isn't just that a full description of a mind must explain qualia, it's that the nature of qualia are such that no description of a mind can possibly explain them. Philosophers like David Chalmers are making a specific very strong claim, which I see no reason to accept. I can't right now explain how qualia arise from the mechanisms in our brain, but I see no reason to suppose that such an explanation is impossible.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#265

Post by TelmoMenezes » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 12:40 AM UTC

captn3m0 wrote: post #258

acomar wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are degrees of accuracy in simulation. I expect the effect of distant galaxies to be an extremely low-order impact and so I might reasonably exclude them.

But what if you were working on the LIGO project?

Well, even in this case I doubt that you need to factor in the latest political scandal in the planet Zykonn-5. But even if you need to include every minute detail, it is still finite. IF the the totality of things that exist is infinite, infinity wins.

Of course it is also possible that we are alone in infinity, but that seems unlikely given what we know about evolutionary processes (perhaps even impossible given infinity, I'm not sure).

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#266

Post by mannykannot » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 2:08 AM UTC

ensignavenger wrote: post #261

simonh wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's interesting to speculate what the simulation argument means for religion. The existence of a simulation creator doesn't actually disprove the existence of an ultimate god, after all the beings running the simulation might have a divine creator, so it just pushes the question up a level. But it does pose a problem for imminent religions that believe that god intervenes in the world to cause miracles. How…

Who is to say that God and the sim operators aren't one and the same?

The sim operators would be gods. It is gods all the way up, but not the sort of gods that most religions imagine.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#267

Post by michaelmrose » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 2:12 AM UTC

codebolt wrote: post #23

michaelmrose wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universe is composed of particles, waves, or strings or whatever you prefer math describes each constituent part so why does math not describe the whole?

Like I said, I don't accept this physicalist assertion, because it ignores the problem of qualia and the Penrose-Lucas argument (which demonstrates quite clearly how the human mind is able to violate Gödels incompleteness theorems, and therefore is not equivalent to any purely computational system).

After even brief research as an uninitiated individual the underlying philosophy seems to have the same relationship to logic as reverse the polarity of the photon torpedoes has to physics. All the words are real meaningful terms but the combination doesn't make terribly much sense.

The problem is that when math doesn't gel its obvious that 2+2 doesn't equal 3 but with philosophy its entirely possible to become unglued from reality, further successive lifetimes of work may be built with no logical connection to underlying reality and no sanity check.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#268

Post by mannykannot » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 2:49 AM UTC

Maybe I am just not following, but the arguments of Sabine Hossenfelder, Scott Aaronson, and of a great many posts here seem to assume that reality is something like what we (or should I say I?) experience. If our (my) universe is a simulation, nothing we (I) perceive about it is trustworthy, and that applies as much to odds as to absolutes. Has there been any argument against the possibility that does not either beg the question by tacitly assuming that our perceptions inform us about the ultimate reality, or alternatively squeeze the essence of the problem into a tight little knot and thereafter avoid dealing with it directly, as I think Kant (among others) did? I do not actually think I am a simulation, but I cannot argue against it.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#269

Post by Insanity » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 8:46 AM UTC

ue_ wrote: post #237

pavel_lishin wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Not any more than we can proof that a diety exists outside of this world. > Why can't this be proven? How would it be?

Aquinas' cosmological argument, or the ontological argument have been attempts to do so. Some such as Edward Feser still uphold that the cosmological argument is valid (I'm not well versed enough to say either way myself). I'm unclear as to whether you are dismissing the very idea of whether God's existence can be proven, or whether you are rejecting arguments made hitherto on a case-by-case basis.

Sure enough there have been arguments made for God (and against God) by philosophers, but that does not make any of these testable nor sufficient proof as we would understand it in science.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#270

Post by ue_ » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 10:47 AM UTC

Insanity wrote: post #269

ue_ wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aquinas' cosmological argument, or the ontological argument have been attempts to do so. Some such as Edward Feser still uphold that the cosmological argument is valid (I'm not well versed enough to say either way myself). I'm unclear as to whether you are dismissing the very idea of whether God's existence can be proven, or whether you are rejecting arguments made hitherto on a case-by-case basis.

Sure enough there have been arguments made for God (and against God) by philosophers, but that does not make any of these testable nor sufficient proof as we would understand it in science.

I didn't mean to say that the proof could be used in science, but neither can the proofs of pure mathematical theorems, either, such as the ones involving infinity. You don't have to test something for it to exist logically.