Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's certainly possible, but it doesn't make your experiences any less real
It certainly does because in this case there is no “you”
You is a very loaded word here.
Existing in an un-simulated reality
71–80 of 94 posts
Re: Existing in an un-simulated reality
#72This is similar to David Lewis's modal realism, which says that every possible world is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism There isn't really much of a connection between this and Bostrom's simulation argument. The simulation argument is about calculating the probability that we live in a simulated universe based on certain assumptions about human behavior and technological development. Bostrom's argum…
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Re: Existing in an un-simulated reality
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we can explain everything that we experience in terms of quantum field theory and general relativity Everything we experience, except experience itself. Conscious/qualia/whatever is still… well, none but God knows what it is, and I have no evidence for the existence of any god let alone that one.
That's because consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental physics. Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics, and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Our theories of neuroscience aren't developed enough to explain it yet, but there isn't any reason to believe that there is something magical or non-physical going on.
Why believe consciousness arises from matter?
Versus matter arising from consciousness?
Re: Existing in an un-simulated reality
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Infinite universe doesn’t necessarily imply what you’re suggesting. Removing all even numbers from a set gives you another infinite set - but it is still an infinite set that will never contain a multiple of 2 in it. Similarly, our universe may be infinite but isn’t at all guaranteed to produce multiple Earths with identical evolutionary history such that another or even many “versions” of you exist somewhere/when.
I’m not sure I agree on your take. There are of course different definitions of infinity which would have different rules based on said definition. But if our universe is infinite and physics as we know it remains true then we would have to run into all the variations of every molecule combination possible again and again. Saying we won’t see any even numbers in an infinite set of odd numbers is obvious as the rules…
The universe appears to be expanding close to e^t. If it continues to do so, each fundamental matter particle may end up isolated in a Hubble volume where the only photons from the rest of the universe have been red shifted to wavelengths larger than that Hubble volume.
Re: Existing in an un-simulated reality
#75Re: Existing in an un-simulated reality
#76I believe that you are more real than Donald Duck if and only if the future is not yet determined. In philosophy, theories of time are categorized in A- and B- theories [1]. In B-theoretic time, the difference between past, present and future is only subjective. Objectively, all points in time exist and are equally real. I view this to mean that there isn't any particular difference in the degree of reality between o…
One of the similarities between philosophy and art is that in both fields, non experts seem to think they are qualified to give their own opinions. Unfortunately this means the public discourse becomes more about what people enjoy than what is actual.
Re: Existing in an un-simulated reality
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental physics. Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics, and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Our theories of neuroscience aren't developed enough to explain it yet, but there isn't any reason to believe that there is something magical or non-physical going on.
Why believe consciousness arises from matter? Versus matter arising from consciousness?
Because we can change brain states (ie, manipulating a material object) to go from conscious to unconscious, which is strong evidence for the former. What evidence is there for the latter?
Re: Existing in an un-simulated reality
#78This is similar to David Lewis's modal realism, which says that every possible world is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism There isn't really much of a connection between this and Bostrom's simulation argument. The simulation argument is about calculating the probability that we live in a simulated universe based on certain assumptions about human behavior and technological development. Bostrom's argum…
Modal Realism was the inspiration for the somewhat infamous, slightly tongue-in-cheek "Possible Girls" paper where Neil Sinhababu argues that people across different modal realities can fall in love with each other (and that explains imaginary relationships)
https://philpapers.org/archive/SINPG
It's a fun read
Re: Existing in an un-simulated reality
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we can explain everything that we experience in terms of quantum field theory and general relativity Everything we experience, except experience itself. Conscious/qualia/whatever is still… well, none but God knows what it is, and I have no evidence for the existence of any god let alone that one.
That's because consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental physics. Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics, and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Our theories of neuroscience aren't developed enough to explain it yet, but there isn't any reason to believe that there is something magical or non-physical going on.
> consciousness is an emergent phenomenon
That's a theory that has yet to be tested, not a certainty.
> Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics...
These are assumptions. They're very plausible and useful ones. They may turn out to be absolutely correct, but it's still worth noting that they are theories.
"Every atom behaves..." so far, so good, yes it does.
"...according to the laws of particle physics"-- presumably yes, with this caveat: The existence of a complete set of inviolable "laws" that explain _all_ physical behavior is an article of faith. It's a plausible potential outcome of the extremely practical process of collective scientific inquiry that so far seems to hold up, but still-- the concept of a set of laws as programs and constraints for absolutely all physical phenomena is fundamentally a philosophy. It has proven to be extremely useful, but it's not a proven or even probable fact. It's a powerful axiom.
> ...and somehow consciousness emerges out of that.
Back to the assumption that consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges from the physical activity of a brain:
Is a (functional) brain both necessary and sufficient for consciousness to "emerge"? I don't know, I'm just a person interested in this stuff, but I think it's an important question without a definite answer.
We tend to assume that having a brain is a necessary requirement for consciousness, but testing for consciousness (not to be confused with mere rationality) is difficult, as far as I know. I can't prove that a stone, plant, or region of spacetime has no consciousness.
Even if we came up with a test for "consciousness", and that this test _did_ prove that a brain (or a similarly complex network) is necessary for consciousness to appear, there is still the issue of whether the brain is sufficient. How would we know?
Whatever it is that we call consciousness may emerge from the complex physical phenomena of brain activity, as you said. Or the brain may be a catalyst for the phenomena we label consciousness. Or a brain (or human body) may only be a prerequisite for us, with our current capacities, to be able to observe the experience we have come to label "consciousness".
"Light" used to mean only the visible spectrum, until we understood there was more to it: Light went beyond the limits of what we had up til then used to recognize its existence, and indeed it occurred even in what we had called "darkness", and blue things didn't contain blueness in and of themselves, nor were blue things producing blue light.
I'm not advocating for any particular alternate theory, or proposing that consciousness operates outside of known physical constraints, I'm just a stickler for reminding ourselves what concepts are articles of faith, even in science itself
Re: Existing in an un-simulated reality
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
In response to your second point, at a high level I believe the calculation device would exist inside _one_ universe but calculate another one... the idea that you could calculate your own universe and use that to predict future events does seem covered in paradoxes. For one, the universe you're predicting would (recursively) have to include the computer you're using to predict it. ... but that's different to what I'…
My premise was that the universe was universal, i.e. there is no other universe. Again, I'm not saying that this is the case, or that there is any reason to believe that it is so, but I don't see a good reason why there would be more than one universe. (Note that all of this depends a bit on the definition of a universe -- for the sake of argument, I'm assuming our universe to be a system closed under physical intera…
[Wyslawa Szymborska's "Coversation With a Stone"](https://web.archive.org/web/20201127013535/https://www.tweet...)
And also
> Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones: But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.
-- Richard Wilbur, from ["Epistemology"](https://web.archive.org/web/20211109141828/https://www.poetr...)