Is it possible we are living in a simulation?

ervin

@Gavinski said:

@Gavinski said:

@NeuM said:

@wim said:

@Blipsford_Baubie said:
Time to stop torturing my mind with all these possible explanations. I’m pulling out the Occam's Razor card and will settle for this:

@NeuM said:
I know it’s the preferred theory of both Elon Musk and Scott Adams, but the human brain is a complex organ that helps us interpret and frame reality in order to keep us alive long enough to reproduce. That’s it. That’s the purpose of life.

Then why do we keep living so gawd awful long after we reproduce? Such waste!

Through most of human existence the average lifespan was in the 20-30 year old range.

This is a common view but it is based on a misunderstanding actually. Low lifespan statistics in the past mostly reflected the massive rate of infant and childhood mortality. People who survived childhood lived much longer than to the age of 30 average - depending of course on circumstances of a particular era, whether they were free or enslaved, rich or poor and so on.

For more, see here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/

This is not going back to prehistoric times but I am pretty sure I remember reading something similar about earlier periods too, probably in Jared Diamond's book on traditional societies

I mean, duh. Every civilised person knows we actually lived longer in the past. Methuselah, anyone? It's remarkable how many people go ahead and opine on these things without reading their Old Testament first.

@mjcouche said:
We are back to sitting in caves. We can just communicate between them now.

This is a genius take 🎖️

dendy

@ervin
I mean, duh. Every civilised person knows we actually lived longer in the past. Methuselah, anyone?

Simon

@dendy said:

@Simon said:

@dendy said:

@Svetlovska said:

this is exactly what i was talking about when i mentioned we don't see thinks which are there )) thanks.

Not a great video - I saw all the passes and the gorilla.

then try this

No way.

I've got a perfect score. Not going to risk spoiling it.

dendy

ok Neo, looks like you hacked matrix.

Any chance you're diagnosed with high functional autism or especially asperger syndrome ?

cuscolima

I saw marmalade at one moment…

knewspeak

Most people would actually see the whole experiment but throw out ‘junk’ information, if hypnotic regression was used I wouldn’t be surprised if most people recount more information about the experiment.

ervin

@dendy said:
I’m even not sure if it is posdible to prove “no”

I don't think it's possible. But on a positive note, if you could actually prove a "no", you could probably use the same line of argument to prove the non-existence of god as well 👊🙂

Simon

Sorry, forget what I said earlier. All bets are off. I misread the question.

I thought it said "are we living in a stimulation?".

Gavinski

@Svetlovska said:
@Gavinski : think you just gave me the title of my next thing: ‘Spirits in a flesh suit’

I like that! I think Lovecraft would too! Has a ring to it for sure

@dendy thanks, I'll look that up, cheers!

Danny_Mammy

@dendy said:
i think physicists are only one who can give definitive answer to this question by finding and proving glitches in simulation (as developer i know every complex system has bugd, glitches )

You won’t get answer from philosophers, mystics, shamans, religious ppl and similiar.. if there is proof, then most likely it is hidden in sub atomic scale and/or eventually inside theory ofquantum gravity (which we still don’t have) ..

my candidates where we shoukd search for such bugs/glitches:

• quantum entanglement
• quantum wavefunction
• dark energy/ dark matter
• sonoluminiscence
• information paradox of black holes
• ghosts, ufos, various “paranormal” events

Does it make any sense to even try ? It depends. If answer is no, then it would be jzst endless wasting of time/resources. I’m even not sure if it is posdible to prove “no” - that’s why i tend to gravitate to opinion it’s pseudoscience (every scientific theory must be falsifiable)

If answer is yes but it changes nothing on our existence - then it may have very negative impact to mental state of many ppl and societies in general.

If we can leverage such proof for our benefit (like use ot to obtaining infinite free energy, or other things beyond the limits if current reality) then it may be to try.

It may also mean end for us in case that main purpose of this simulation is to find proof if virtual life whuch evolved innit is capable of find it exists in simulation 😂 . So, if “they” get answer, no reason vo continue running simulation 🤣

So in general to me looks better to not to try find out - looks like it has more disadvantages or potential bad outcomes than good ones.

Some questions should remain unaswered

I think you underestimate philosophy and religion and their importance to discovery. Many of the greatest scientists where philosophers and or religious/Mystics and people like Pythagoras, Isaac Newton and Kurt Gödel come to mind. Philosophy and religion/mysticism came before the science in order for these geniuses to reach their conclusions.

SevenSystems

@dendy said:

@wim
beyond what we directly observe with our own senses in our immediate vicinity.

It’s because it actually runs for you “simulation” what you see and in it’s data about relation of those objects is stored that they are fixed to earth surface so there is no reason they should jump around just because image feed from eyes is jumping around

That's btw also the reason why the moon looks bigger when it's just rising or setting, compared to when high up in the sky. The brain tries to correlate sizes of objects in the visual field, and it manages to do so when the moon is near the horizon (as there are other objects, even if only the horizon itself, in the field of view), while there are no references when the moon is in the plain sky above, so it "falls back" to a "default size".

SevenSystems

@dendy said:

@wim
beyond what we directly observe with our own senses in our immediate vicinity.

brain runs for you simulation/model of outside world which is up to 100ms behind “now” and just updates this model based on relatively thin data stream from sensory inputs, which are unfurtunaltelly very noisy (especially from eyes). What you “see” is lot more based on what brain “thinks” you should see than what comes from eyes.

To make matters worse, there is no "now" at all. Anything you see, even without the processing delay through the brain's "simulation", is a bunch of photons that have emerged in the past, at different times. The sun could literally already have exploded minutes ago while you're still seeing it neat and bright in the sky. Many of the stars you see in the night sky have already exploded long ago, so the fact that you're seeing them is, in 2023 terms, "misinformation" 🤣

Even worse, depending on where you are in the universe, your reality will be completely different from anywhere else. If you're closer to one of the stars that has exploded long ago, it will actually be missing from your sky.

Just imagine that. A star appears in the sky of a person on one planet, but not on another (and it's not because of obstruction). Crazy but true! Reality itself is indeed completely subjective, even physically and not involving the brain at all.

Or a star might appear blue in one sky, and red in another, because in one sky, it's moving towards the planet, and in another it's moving away. For the same reason that an ambulance siren sounds higher when the ambulance moves closer, and lower when it moves away. So even the sound of an ambulance siren has no objective "reality".

Damn, now I need to take off my philosopher hat and see if I can scrape together some money with app development 😂

Svetlovska

Ah, yes, but when the stars are right…

NeuM

@Simon said:

@dendy said:

@Svetlovska said:

this is exactly what i was talking about when i mentioned we don't see thinks which are there )) thanks.

Not a great video - I saw all the passes and the gorilla.

I ignored the passes and only watched the gorilla... because that's me.

ExAsperis99

@ervin said:
The 2022 sci-fi novel Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel takes an interesting look at the simulation question. Worth reading it, especially if you (like me) weren't already aware that women tend to write some of the most interesting new sci-fi books these days. 👍

OK, so I dived in, and it was great. Thanks for this recommendation. She seems to have a similar ambition to David Mitchell in that her novels seem to all talk to one another and share characters and events. And while I don't think she has the same pyrotechnical gifts as Mitchell ("Cloud Atlas" is really something), the writing in "Sea of Tranquility" is measured and beautiful; one of the best books I've encountered in ages. It also deals with the simulation question in a really novel way.

mjcouche

@ExAsperis99 said:

@ervin said:
The 2022 sci-fi novel Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel takes an interesting look at the simulation question. Worth reading it, especially if you (like me) weren't already aware that women tend to write some of the most interesting new sci-fi books these days. 👍

OK, so I dived in, and it was great. Thanks for this recommendation. She seems to have a similar ambition to David Mitchell in that her novels seem to all talk to one another and share characters and events. And while I don't think she has the same pyrotechnical gifts as Mitchell ("Cloud Atlas" is really something), the writing in "Sea of Tranquility" is measured and beautiful; one of the best books I've encountered in ages. It also deals with the simulation question in a really novel way.

Cloud Atlas tho

Simon

@ExAsperis99 said:
She seems to have a similar ambition to David Mitchell in that her novels seem to all talk to one another and share characters and events. And while I don't think she has the same pyrotechnical gifts as Mitchell ("Cloud Atlas" is really something), the writing in "Sea of Tranquility" is measured and beautiful

"Pyrotechnical? er, no...".

SealTeamSick

A series of mere sense impressions of consecutive events, like smoke rising from a fire, can be synthesized into the judgment that the relation between the two events is one of causality only because the mind already possesses the concept of cause.

Hence what the senses perceive as only a sequence the mind understands as a real consequence. And the category of “cause” could not be abstracted from nature were it not already present in the mind’s perception of nature. Sense data is always already organized into a form called experience. This “formal” condition of experience is logically prior to empirical data (a priori).

hes

@SealTeamSick said:
A series of mere sense impressions of consecutive events, like smoke rising from a fire, can be synthesized into the judgment that the relation between the two events is one of causality only because the mind already possesses the concept of cause.

Hence what the senses perceive as only a sequence the mind understands as a real consequence. And the category of “cause” could not be abstracted from nature were it not already present in the mind’s perception of nature. Sense data is always already organized into a form called experience. This “formal” condition of experience is logically prior to empirical data (a priori).

Not sure how all that's supposed to be relevant here, but it sounds important. These are ideas that were first clearly thought by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, in 1781.

I at first thought the text above was something generated by ChatGPT. Maybe it was, but it turns out it's also a passage from "The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss" (2013), by David Bentley Hart.

ervin

@ExAsperis99 said:

@ervin said:
The 2022 sci-fi novel Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel takes an interesting look at the simulation question. Worth reading it, especially if you (like me) weren't already aware that women tend to write some of the most interesting new sci-fi books these days. 👍

OK, so I dived in, and it was great. Thanks for this recommendation. She seems to have a similar ambition to David Mitchell in that her novels seem to all talk to one another and share characters and events.

Glad you liked it. She did talk about wanting to build a universe for her characters/books in an interview I read.

And while I don't think she has the same pyrotechnical gifts as Mitchell ("Cloud Atlas" is really something)

Is it still worth reading the book if I saw the movie?

knewspeak

@hes said:

@SealTeamSick said:
A series of mere sense impressions of consecutive events, like smoke rising from a fire, can be synthesized into the judgment that the relation between the two events is one of causality only because the mind already possesses the concept of cause.

Hence what the senses perceive as only a sequence the mind understands as a real consequence. And the category of “cause” could not be abstracted from nature were it not already present in the mind’s perception of nature. Sense data is always already organized into a form called experience. This “formal” condition of experience is logically prior to empirical data (a priori).

Not sure how all that's supposed to be relevant here, but it sounds important. These are ideas that were first clearly thought by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, in 1781.

I at first thought the text above was something generated by ChatGPT. Maybe it was, but it turns out it's also a passage from "The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss" (2013), by David Bentley Hart.

This is true, nature prime’s all, usually to enhance survival, to recognise patterns, but diving into the realm of the quantum, patterns and causality take on a whole ‘new’ meaning, often counter to intuition.

dendy

@SevenSystems said:
That's btw also the reason why the moon looks bigger when it's just rising or setting, compared to when high up in the sky. The brain tries to correlate sizes of objects in the visual field, and it manages to do so when the moon is near the horizon (as there are other objects, even if only the horizon itself, in the field of view), while there are no references when the moon is in the plain sky above, so it "falls back" to a "default size".

Lol cool, never realised this .. Pretty amazing how distorted is reality which our brain presents to us )))

SevenSystems

@dendy said:

@SevenSystems said:
That's btw also the reason why the moon looks bigger when it's just rising or setting, compared to when high up in the sky. The brain tries to correlate sizes of objects in the visual field, and it manages to do so when the moon is near the horizon (as there are other objects, even if only the horizon itself, in the field of view), while there are no references when the moon is in the plain sky above, so it "falls back" to a "default size".

Lol cool, never realised this .. Pretty amazing how distorted is reality which our brain presents to us )))

☺️ there's also a small physical component to it due to the atmosphere slightly distorting the image but it's far smaller than the psychological component.

ExAsperis99

@ervin said:

@ExAsperis99 said:

@ervin said:
The 2022 sci-fi novel Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel takes an interesting look at the simulation question. Worth reading it, especially if you (like me) weren't already aware that women tend to write some of the most interesting new sci-fi books these days. 👍

OK, so I dived in, and it was great. Thanks for this recommendation. She seems to have a similar ambition to David Mitchell in that her novels seem to all talk to one another and share characters and events.

Glad you liked it. She did talk about wanting to build a universe for her characters/books in an interview I read.

And while I don't think she has the same pyrotechnical gifts as Mitchell ("Cloud Atlas" is really something)

Is it still worth reading the book if I saw the movie?

Absolutely, though you will be robbed a little of discovering the brilliant structural conceit of the novel since you know what's going to happen. I also recommend "The Bone Clocks," though it does get a little bit woo-woo in some of the fantasy arcana. Also, "Slade House," which was started as a twitter thread with leftover characters from "The Bone Clocks," is one of the most gripping and terrifying reads I've had in a while.

For those who haven't seen the movie, don't read this. But I will say that when I first comprehended the overall structure of "Cloud Atlas," like, 100 pages or so in? It was like a religious epiphany. Been a huge Mitchell fan ever since, which might cloud my appraisal of books like "Utopia Avenue," which focuses on the birth of a Pink Floyd-esque band forming in late-60s London. Very entertaining, but....

ervin

@ExAsperis99 said:

@ervin said:

@ExAsperis99 said:

@ervin said:
The 2022 sci-fi novel Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel takes an interesting look at the simulation question. Worth reading it, especially if you (like me) weren't already aware that women tend to write some of the most interesting new sci-fi books these days. 👍

OK, so I dived in, and it was great. Thanks for this recommendation. She seems to have a similar ambition to David Mitchell in that her novels seem to all talk to one another and share characters and events.

Glad you liked it. She did talk about wanting to build a universe for her characters/books in an interview I read.

And while I don't think she has the same pyrotechnical gifts as Mitchell ("Cloud Atlas" is really something)

Is it still worth reading the book if I saw the movie?

Absolutely, though you will be robbed a little of discovering the brilliant structural conceit of the novel since you know what's going to happen. I also recommend "The Bone Clocks," though it does get a little bit woo-woo in some of the fantasy arcana. Also, "Slade House," which was started as a twitter thread with leftover characters from "The Bone Clocks," is one of the most gripping and terrifying reads I've had in a while.

For those who haven't seen the movie, don't read this. But I will say that when I first comprehended the overall structure of "Cloud Atlas," like, 100 pages or so in? It was like a religious epiphany. Been a huge Mitchell fan ever since, which might cloud my appraisal of books like "Utopia Avenue," which focuses on the birth of a Pink Floyd-esque band forming in late-60s London. Very entertaining, but....

Thank you. I'll get the book.

dendy

food for thoughts

it’s absolutely fascinating to watch even such simple life simulation systems

Now.. do you really believe people will not run same simulations with much more complex entities, even like complex humans, when computers power will allow it ?

I have zero doubt that we will.

Svetlovska

I watched this vid a while back in the debate. The ‘scan line’ / phalanx sweep behaviour the ‘hunters’ evolve will be a core element in the HKs which will be used to terminate the last human survivors. After all, if it ain’t broke…

jollyDodger

Hal, these are your new rules “love has no strings attached and don’t tell god(me) what to do.”

What happens when the A.I. learns how to create it’s own a.i.? Oh wait a sec Magritte, you reading this is the a.i, wow, imagine that? Horse walks into a bar and the bartender says why the long face? Wake up you are sleeping you do not want to believe!

Try this experiment that’s indicates that you have no head. Then voluntarily practice hallucinating/imagining voices in your no-head, and start a listening conversation with yourself while playing a hyper-realistic piano generated with machine learning using a computer in your pocket.

@cyberheater How do I know It’s all for real fam? Kick me.. life is good, and yes I am the hat you mistook for your wife … good luck with your entropy.

jollyDodger

Simples: