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Are we living in a simulation?

Everything old is new again...

In one of the few famous (among intellectuals) moments in philosophy, Bishop Berkley had been droning on about how we were just a dream in god's mind. Sam Johnson's chronicler said he thought that was wrong, but there was no way to prove it wrong.
Johnson kicked a rock and said "I refute it thus."

Philosophy is full of castles in clouds, this is just another one.
 
Brewdog said:
I sort of lost you at turtles.
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Helix said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

i first read about this concept in Stephen King's "It."

from the Dark Tower series :

"See the turtle of enormous girth, on his shell he holds the earth, his thought is slow but always kind, he holds us all within his mind. On his back all vows are made; He sees the truth but mayn't aid. He loves the land and loves the sea, And even loves a child like me."
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it goes back and back and back in time

even the Native Americans played with the concept

it is complex and interesting, no surprise that King delved into it as I think he is incredibly intelligent

here's just one link of many if you guys are interested in the concept

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
 
BrewerBob said:
I have been toying with this idea for several years now. Yes, it falls under philosophy and speculation as it currently isn't testable or falsifiable.

If creating a simulation with sentient beings is theoretically possible, then I find it far more likely we are in a simulation than not. And I see no reason why such simulations are not possible.

And in many ways our universe has some properties one would expect from a simulation. It is "digitized" at the Planck length, has a processing speed capped at the speed of light, and at the quantum level reality doesn't "render" until observed. :)

Doesn't prove a thing, but kind of cool to think about. And if you can't distinguish a simulation from a non-simulation does it really matter which you are in?
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Total fantasy, fiction and an intellectual dead end. Worse than religious thought, which at least only creates a fantasy world we encounter after death in the real world. At least religious people are smart enough to acknowledge physical reality in some aspect.
 
images
 
Brewdog said:
I think that when I go to sleep that all of you just disappear. The rest of you are only here for my personal entertainment. And my personal misery.
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Ever see Vanilla Sky? Tom Cruise flick.
 
Brewdog said:
So, you're apparently going to refute everything I say without Googling anything on your own? You have your mind made up, so nothing will change it. I see you describe yourself as socialist. And if anyone is illogical, it's a socialist.

Tech billionaires convinced we live in the Matrix are secretly funding scientists to help break us out of it | The Independent

"Mr Musk spoke earlier this year about the fact that he believes that the chance that we are not living in a computer simulation is “one in billions”. He said that he had come to that conclusion after a chat in a hot tub, where it was pointed out that computing technology has advanced so quickly that at some point in the future it will become indistinguishable from real life – and, if it does, there’s no reason to think that it hasn’t done already and that that’s what we are currently living through."
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The Matrix was not a documentary.
 
zyzygy said:
The Matrix was not a documentary.
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Just because a film doesn't have Morgan Freeman narrating doesn't mean it can't still be a documentary.
 
Being in a simulation explains certain quantum behavior. We can easily explain why photons exist in superposition until observed. It's simply clipping. Just as in a video game, you don't bother rendering parts of the game world that aren't being observed, so in our own reality the calculations required to know where a photon exists in space-time aren't performed until they are actually needed (because someone is trying to measure it).
 
CrabCake said:
Being in a simulation explains certain quantum behavior. We can easily explain why photons exist in superposition until observed. It's simply clipping. Just as in a video game, you don't bother rendering parts of the game world that aren't being observed, so in our own reality the calculations required to know where a photon exists in space-time aren't performed until they are actually needed (because someone is trying to measure it).
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Wow, I didn't think of it that way. Somewhere up this thread I brought up the changes in the reactions of photons while being observed, but I didn't realize this conclusion as to why that might occur. That makes perfect sense.
 
I think we all have the same core program running at the source of our conscious awareness but that it eventually develops into individual Existentialism. Meaning that we're basically all grounded in the same energy source but with different parameters (forms) due to circumstances from the varying layers of reality. It's the only thing that explains why we all experience the same physically reality but have varying subjective outlooks and personalities.
 
Brewdog said:
Just because a film doesn't have Morgan Freeman narrating doesn't mean it can't still be a documentary.
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I have no idea what that parsing proof sentence means.
 
Or maybe it I just a bad dream:

 
Brewdog said:
I've been intrigued by the increasing number of scientists that proclaim it's very likely that we're living in a computer simulation, "The Matrix" if you will.

Do you believe it's possible that one day, say in a thousand years, quantum computers will be so powerful as to create a world where the beings believe they're actually real? Say, if you could take The Sims 4 and make those beings think their world existed. And if these computers could do that, couldn't these computers run billions of simulations at once?

So, is it more likely that we're the actual civilization that invents this technology one day, or is it more likely that we're just one of billions of simulations that our ancestors are running?
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I do not believe so. But, there is absolutely no way to know for sure.
 
calamity said:
I do not believe so. But, there is absolutely no way to know for sure.
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It's my understanding that there's some sort of Red Pill we can take.
 
Brewdog said:
It's my understanding that there's some sort of Red Pill we can take.
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Blue Pill, good grief don't mix em up, your head will spin right off.
 
Casper said:
Blue Pill, good grief don't mix em up, your head will spin right off.
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"You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe."

This is the pill the two major political parties hand out.

Either that, or the boner pill. Boioioioioioing!!!!
 
This whole idea is undermined if considered logically If the evidence we are using to suggest we are part of a simulation is only a part of the simulation we are in, then it really is not evidence at all. And the scientists who have come up with this are only characters in this simulation. You can't have it both ways. you can't pretend we are in a reality that suggests we are in a simulation. It's kind of like watching the movie "The Usual Suspects" The entire movie is really nothing but a tale being spun by Verbal. None of the action that takes place in the movie actually happened. But the audience is fooled because they are only presented Verbals story on the screen for the entire movie. The end of the movie is too clever by half, because the audience had no way of knowing the whole movie we just sat through is a fiction within a fiction.
 
devildavid said:
This whole idea is undermined if considered logically
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I suppose that Oxford University's Nick Bostrom and MIT's Max Tegmark just forgot to apply logic to this question. They must not teach logic at Oxford and MIT anymore. :roll:
 
CrabCake said:
I suppose that Oxford University's Nick Bostrom and MIT's Max Tegmark just forgot to apply logic to this question. They must not teach logic at Oxford and MIT anymore. :roll:
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Consider, too, that physicists tend to know more about the universe than anyone. And LOTS of them are on board with this theory. It at least explains a lot more than a Magic Man in the Sky that loves billions of us unconditionally (lulzor).
 
Brewdog said:
Consider, too, that physicists tend to know more about the universe than anyone. And LOTS of them are on board with this theory. It at least explains a lot more than a Magic Man in the Sky that loves billions of us unconditionally (lulzor).
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I wouldn't go that far.

My post was meant to ridicule an argument that attempted to claim that the entire theory is illogical and thus, by extension, those who are open to the theory are being illogical.

But now you're just devolving into a fallacious appeal to authority. That's also a bad argument.
 
CrabCake said:
But now you're just devolving into a fallacious appeal to authority. That's also a bad argument.
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Many times I will defer to the experts in a matter. If a bunch of legal scholars tell me something is unconstitutional, then I take it into account. There will obviously be other legal scholars that disagree, and I will take their views into account also.

If a bunch of extremely intelligent physicists say something, even though it's just a theory, then I will listen and try to understand their point of view.
 
Brewdog said:
Many times I will defer to the experts in a matter. If a bunch of legal scholars tell me something is unconstitutional, then I take it into account. There will obviously be other legal scholars that disagree, and I will take their views into account also.

If a bunch of extremely intelligent physicists say something, even though it's just a theory, then I will listen and try to understand their point of view.
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Appeals to authority can be legitimate, but this one isn't.

For one, you are appealing to the wrong authorities. The nature of reality is a metaphysical question, not a physical one. Thus you should be appealing to philosophers who study metaphysics, sometimes called metaphysicians; not to physicists. Nick Bostrom, whom I mentioned earlier, is one such philosopher.

Secondly, there isn't a consensus on this theory thus you will find opinions from experts on all sides of this issue. Therefore an appeal to authority would require you to selectively listen to one group of experts while ignoring the others.
 
CrabCake said:
The nature of reality is a metaphysical question, not a physical one. Thus you should be appealing to philosophers who study metaphysics, sometimes called metaphysicians; not to physicists.

Secondly, there isn't a consensus on this theory thus you will find opinions from experts on all sides of this issue. Therefore an appeal to authority would require you to selectively listen to one group of experts while ignoring the others.
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I believe that reality IS EXACTLY a matter of understanding physics. That's why we have scientists working with a supercollider trying to find out the origins of the universe. I will listen to philosophers' opinions, but I'll side with the physicists who are actually smashing particles instead of sipping lattes in Starbucks and discussing philosophical theories. There was a time when most people thought Charles Darwin was a nutcase because he was proclaiming something new and off the wall.

And I don't ignore opposing theories. I may discount them, but I still want to hear the other opinions. That's why I started this discussion. I find it fascinating.
 
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