Maybe I am ignorant but trying to distinguish between simulation and reality seems to me a lost case right from the beginning. You have to look for a difference but we know neither the rules of the simulation nor of reality. If we look at the universe and find a difference between what general relativity predicts and what the universe does, maybe it even looks exactly like floating point rounding errors - this tells us nothing. It might be an imprecise simulation but it may as well be that general relativity is just an approximation and the real behavior of the universe is floating point general relativity.
Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
31–40 of 67 posts
Re: Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
#32Obviously this is a theme that has been explored in SF a fair amount (recent examples include Ken Macleod's The Restoration Game and Iain Banks' Surface Detail). One obvious problem is that it appears to be highly immoral to generate a simulation in which millions or billions of sentient beings suffer, which presumably would weigh heavier on a more advanced species (human or otherwise).
It is pretty easy to ignore the suffering of others if you can convince yourself that it is a different and simpler form of suffering than you feel -- just look at how a lot of humans (and I'm talking about ones that are accepted by society, not crazy psychopaths) treat animals (eg. circus elephants).
Re: Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
#33> Should any error [in the program] occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. This seems really problematic to me. Why would you assume that a full-on universe simulator has a concept of a brain? If you're in the business of simulating the interactions of nanoparticles, having a "brain" object doesn't seem to make much sense. I…
I agree, i'd assume the simulator would be programmed with the fundamental laws of the universe and the basic particles and then let loose. Everything after that would just be a collection of basic particles, it shouldn't even have a notion for what an atom is, let alone a brain.
Re: Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
#34[deleted]
Re: Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
#35Are you kidding! Of course it matters!! If it's a VM, we can start hacking it, until we find the universal equivalent of a buffer overflow or some kind of edge case branch mispredictoin, and can start injecting our own payload. After a little bootstrapping, and experimentation that hopefully doesn't crash the VM, we are now running whatever physical laws we want. Matrix time!
Re: Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
#36The notion of simplification, which I hadn't considered, might explain - if testable - certain things such as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, i.e. limiting the precision with which one can measure a particle's position or momentum would make it more difficult to discover the underlying true reality. I'm tempted to use Occam's Razor but probably can't because the simulation hypothesis assumes an intelligence creat…
Occam's Razor doesn't disprove the idea. It merely suggests that it is a less likely explanation.
Re: Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
#37If it's the case that we are currently a part of a simulation then we can assume those above use are part of a simulation too and eventually we will create a simulation below us and it's turtles all the way down....and up.
That's why the simulation hypothesis is quite likely. We can simulate very simple universes. We will simulate more complex universes as time goes on. And there's nothing to prevent that universes to become really complex, so complex that beings there will become conscious. And it's only matter of time when those beings will simulate another universe.
And, considering that every civilization simulates many universes, there's an exponential growth of universes beginning from the "root" civilization. So there are (or there will be) billions of billions of universes, one inside other, like russian dolls. And possibility of us living in the "root" universe is quite low.
Either that or there's some fundamental nature law preventing us from creating a simulation of conscious intelligent mind. And even if we didn't create that simulation yet, I don't believe that those laws exist. We have billions stars to consume for energy and matter and billions of years to improve our technology. Why don't we create megacomputers with that power potentially at our hands?
Re: Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
#38Energy, though.
I mean, the host universe may have completely different laws of nature, but assuming that the 2nd law exists in it...
Organising information (storing it in RAM, carving it on a rock...) decreases entropy and thus takes work (entropy overall increases, because you had to get the energy to do your work by increasing entropy somewhere else by more.)
The cost of accurately simulating an entire universe, down to atoms, would be extreme, like you'd need galaxys worth of stars' to even begin.
At which point, the question becomes, why not just observe the real universe?
Re: Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you define "uber-reality" and explain how it doesn't really make sense?
The issue he's talking about can be pretty easily illustrated with "turtles all the way down". A simulation must be, by definition, simulated by something that is external to the simulation itself. If this isn't infinitely recursive somehow, then there must be an instance that is not a simulation. This is the uber-reality he speaks of.
Ok yes I understands. Thank you.
It all depends of the definition of gods, like I said, if it's omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc.. then I feel like we can consider it our god which would include the one that made our simulation. That would means that they would respect that definition of gods towards us. In the same way, nothing stop gods from having gods themselves. I don't know too much about gods but don't some Greeks gods had some sort of power over each other? It's all relative in a way.
I'm also not actually believing it's the truth too, I'm just acknowledging the possibilities. I don't believe usual religions because I find it hard to believe their "why". The computer simulation does have a why that I believe could be a possibility.
Re: Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
#40Obviously this is a theme that has been explored in SF a fair amount (recent examples include Ken Macleod's The Restoration Game and Iain Banks' Surface Detail). One obvious problem is that it appears to be highly immoral to generate a simulation in which millions or billions of sentient beings suffer, which presumably would weigh heavier on a more advanced species (human or otherwise).
Humans have no problem in letting billions suffer in real life.
Are beings in a simulation "sentient"? This seems illogical.