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Mass shooters, Doctor Who and The Matrix

RobertU

RobertU

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Some mass shooters have apparently embraced the notion that their targets and maybe even themselves are not real human beings but merely the products of a simulation or other manipulated reality. Perhaps they are right.

(Spoiler alert) A recent episode of Doctor Who seemed to accept killing as a valid response to discovering that you are not real. In the 10th season episode “Extremis” of the Peter Capaldi cycle, people kill themselves after discovering they are computer simulations that are part of a preparation for an alien invasion. In one scene, scientists at CERN have gathered around tables armed with time bombs.

If we are living in a simulation, there is no such thing as murder, only disruption of data streams.

It all harks back to the Columbine massacre and The Matrix. As noted by ABC News:

When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attacked Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, killing 13 people and themselves, investigators said the killers evoked Neo, Keanu Reeves' character in The Matrix. The two teens were known for wearing long black trench coats similar to the one "Neo" wears in the film and for calling themselves the trench coat mafia.

Perhaps the Columbine killers decided that the predictable, petty pursuits of their fellow high school students was evidence that “reality” was “all a game” that is already rigged to produce the most frustration and conflict. The pattern was repeated on May 18, 2018 in a shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas, in which 10 people were killed and 10 others were wounded. The attacker, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, routinely work a black trench coat to class.

Not all mass killers are deep thinkers who think they are in a simulation but probably most believe that a large portion of human existence is manipulative or phony. Indeed, I bet many here have looked at the Trump election and presidency and said to themselves, “I can’t believe this is real.”
 
Material Reality is a simulation. There's no question about that. But the simulation is created in the mind. Every mind is a Matrix.
One of the problems with those shooters is that they didn't think deeply enough.
That seems to be a problem shared with many who don't shoot people down in cold blood, and so I'm afraid it doesn't get us far in the understanding of active shooters.
Welcome to DP, RobertU.
 
Angel said:
Material Reality is a simulation. There's no question about that. But the simulation is created in the mind. Every mind is a Matrix.
One of the problems with those shooters is that they didn't think deeply enough.
That seems to be a problem shared with many who don't shoot people down in cold blood, and so I'm afraid it doesn't get us far in the understanding of active shooters.
Welcome to DP, RobertU.
Click to expand...

It seems quite unlikely that all our simulations coincide with others so closely to allow for human interaction with each other and with physical reality. How do two people manage to play catch? How is it possible to sneak up on someone and scare them? Am I imagining you or are you imagining me?
 
devildavid said:
It seems quite unlikely that all our simulations coincide with others so closely to allow for human interaction with each other and with physical reality. How do two people manage to play catch? How is it possible to sneak up on someone and scare them? Am I imagining you or are you imagining me?
Click to expand...
Not unlikely if the human mind is human as well as individual.
 
Angel said:
Not unlikely if the human mind is human as well as individual.
Click to expand...

So how can we be sure it is really a simulation if it makes no noticeable difference if it actually isn't? In other words, if the result is the same either way, why is a simulation more likely?
 
devildavid said:
So how can we be sure it is really a simulation if it makes no noticeable difference if it actually isn't? In other words, if the result is the same either way, why is a simulation more likely?
Click to expand...
Empiricism tells us it's a simulation.
 
Whether a being is simulated or not is immaterial to whether or not it is unethical to kill them, IMO. What matters is if they have a conscious mind. It is the extinguishing of a mind that makes murder unethical just as it is the conscious experience of pain that makes torture unethical. It doesn’t matter if a being is fundamentally organic, pure data, or an Android. If it has a conscious mind it is wrong to kill it because from its own subjective point of view it is real.
 
Just a little while ago, before even seeing this thread, I talked about the simulation hypothesis in this thread:
https://www.debatepolitics.com/scie...its-first-black-hole-test.html#post1068857029

I’ll paste what I said below:
Skeptic Bob said:
I often joke that we are living in a computer simulation. But I am only half joking. The following things are interesting:

-Our universe is mathematical. Programs are mathematical.
-Computers have processing limits. The universe also has one. The speed of light.
-Lag occurs in computer simulations when more than normal processing is required. In our universe time “slows down” at high speeds and near gravity wells.
-Computer simulations are digital. Our universe is “digital” in that the smallest length is the Planck length.
-Computer simulations only rastorize the parts that are being observed by the player or operator at any given time. -In our universe, at the quantum level, matter only exists as probabilities until observed, measured, or interacted with.
-In our universe entangled particles can influence each other instantaneously regardless of distance, even light years apart. In a computer simulation all points of the simulation are equal distance to the origin of the simulation, the processor.

A common objection to the simulation hypothesis is that in order to simulate every particle of the universe would require a computer the size of the universe. I have two counters to that. First, the computer would only need to rastorize the parts of the universe being observed. And second, that is assuming the computer running the simulation of our three dimensional universe is only 3 dimensional itself. A computer created by beings existing in higher spatial dimensions could simulate a 3 dimensional universe FAR more easily than a 3 dimensional computer, just as our 3 dimensional computers can run 2 dimensional simulations with significantly less resources than a 3 dimensional simulation takes.

Note, this is speculation, not science. There is no way to prove or falsify this so it is outside the bounds of science. But it is fun as hell to think about. :)
Click to expand...
 
devildavid said:
It seems quite unlikely that all our simulations coincide with others so closely to allow for human interaction with each other and with physical reality. How do two people manage to play catch? How is it possible to sneak up on someone and scare them? Am I imagining you or are you imagining me?
Click to expand...

We could all be in the same simulation. There are two ways to ways to look at at it, I think.

1. We are all in the same simulation, and we are each sentient beings. Kind of like a multiplayer game. In that case killing other characters is wrong.
2. This simulation is a single player game and only I, or you, are sentient and all the other “people” are just mindless characters impersonating sentient beings. In that case it wouldn’t be unethical to kill other characters. That is also akin to “solipsism”.
 
RobertU said:
Some mass shooters have apparently embraced the notion that their targets and maybe even themselves are not real human beings but merely the products of a simulation or other manipulated reality. Perhaps they are right.

(Spoiler alert) A recent episode of Doctor Who seemed to accept killing as a valid response to discovering that you are not real. In the 10th season episode “Extremis” of the Peter Capaldi cycle, people kill themselves after discovering they are computer simulations that are part of a preparation for an alien invasion. In one scene, scientists at CERN have gathered around tables armed with time bombs.

If we are living in a simulation, there is no such thing as murder, only disruption of data streams.

It all harks back to the Columbine massacre and The Matrix. As noted by ABC News:

When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attacked Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, killing 13 people and themselves, investigators said the killers evoked Neo, Keanu Reeves' character in The Matrix. The two teens were known for wearing long black trench coats similar to the one "Neo" wears in the film and for calling themselves the trench coat mafia.

Perhaps the Columbine killers decided that the predictable, petty pursuits of their fellow high school students was evidence that “reality” was “all a game” that is already rigged to produce the most frustration and conflict. The pattern was repeated on May 18, 2018 in a shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas, in which 10 people were killed and 10 others were wounded. The attacker, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, routinely work a black trench coat to class.

Not all mass killers are deep thinkers who think they are in a simulation but probably most believe that a large portion of human existence is manipulative or phony. Indeed, I bet many here have looked at the Trump election and presidency and said to themselves, “I can’t believe this is real.”
Click to expand...

don't forget descartes
 
and b5 has a hologram helping to kill real people who seem bad to him good on him

 
RobertU said:
Some mass shooters have apparently embraced the notion that their targets and maybe even themselves are not real human beings but merely the products of a simulation or other manipulated reality. Perhaps they are right.

(Spoiler alert) A recent episode of Doctor Who seemed to accept killing as a valid response to discovering that you are not real. In the 10th season episode “Extremis” of the Peter Capaldi cycle, people kill themselves after discovering they are computer simulations that are part of a preparation for an alien invasion. In one scene, scientists at CERN have gathered around tables armed with time bombs.

If we are living in a simulation, there is no such thing as murder, only disruption of data streams.

It all harks back to the Columbine massacre and The Matrix. As noted by ABC News:

When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attacked Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, killing 13 people and themselves, investigators said the killers evoked Neo, Keanu Reeves' character in The Matrix. The two teens were known for wearing long black trench coats similar to the one "Neo" wears in the film and for calling themselves the trench coat mafia.

Perhaps the Columbine killers decided that the predictable, petty pursuits of their fellow high school students was evidence that “reality” was “all a game” that is already rigged to produce the most frustration and conflict. The pattern was repeated on May 18, 2018 in a shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas, in which 10 people were killed and 10 others were wounded. The attacker, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, routinely work a black trench coat to class.

Not all mass killers are deep thinkers who think they are in a simulation but probably most believe that a large portion of human existence is manipulative or phony. Indeed, I bet many here have looked at the Trump election and presidency and said to themselves, “I can’t believe this is real.”
Click to expand...

Sociopaths will say anything to convince themselves that they are not because...

1. There is still enough humanity left in them for them to understand the shame.

2. Social conditioning suppresses it and causes them shame.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
Just a little while ago, before even seeing this thread, I talked about the simulation hypothesis in this thread:
https://www.debatepolitics.com/scie...its-first-black-hole-test.html#post1068857029

I’ll paste what I said below:
Click to expand...

But, consider. Any universe with fixed physical laws will be describable with mathematics. Those mathematics will describe various limits (ie, speed of light, or the planck length), the effect of various things on each other (ie, mass, gravity, and space-time), etc.

Basically, unless a set of physical laws can fluctuate, then the universe they govern is going to behave according to describable rules and in that sense necessarily resemble a potential program.
 
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