Counter question; would it make any difference?
That’s the point - it wouldn’t. People seem to expect that things would be different or meaningless if we did but I’ve never understood that logic. Even if we do live in the base reality it could just as well be a simulation and nothing would need to change.
Exactly. Even if it was definitely proven that this is all a simulation, there is exactly zero chance humans could ever break out of it or hack or exploit or even begin to understand the machine the simulation is running on. We have still not even figured out the rules for our universe and understanding what the real universe where this is a simulation is way beyond the scope of human understanding. We could not affect it in any meaningful way except maybe some laboratory tests or cause some hideous corruption. Yet we think and feel and experience living in the only way we know. Hence, I’d argue it would not matter.
This is quite literally how many religions view their divine beings. They are so massive that they are beyond your comprehension and we would be powerless to impact them.
Including the Abrahamic religions except people are simple and have rewritten the mindboggling idea “can not comprehend” to punishable dogma “must not mention by name, gaze upon, depict”.
The prohibition is for any graven image not just God. That’s why there aren’t a ton of sculptures of living beings/animals made by Jewish artists in the ancient world.
Except then the same gods are really worried about what you eat, or do with your specific meat-based mammalian reproductive anatomy.
A remote, totally amoral deity a la Lovecraft is at least consistent with facts. Nobody wants to believe in that one, though. You could go polytheist to avoid immediate falsification, too.
The believers would argue that of course these gods have desires but you wouldn’t understand them because you cannot much like the fly in front of me cannot grasp astrophysics.
Yeah. Saying “you just don’t get it and never will” is a great way of defending anything you want. Even if, like in this case, it’s not consistent with the facts. The “it’s a sin to question, so don’t or else” approach has also seen quite a bit of use.
And for some reason, what god is telling us is always convenient for the powerful, and for the dominant culture…
Ignorance is bliss!
Just connect me to my reality.
Then he got wacked by Tony Soprano.
I think it would matter if these simulations existed if we could interact outside or between them somehow.
If we’d manage to communicate with parallel universes, would it matter if they are all real or simulations along with ourselves?
How could we possibly interact with any machinery sophisticated enough to be our entire universe or the parent universe where these machines can be conceived?
It’s like pacman breaking out of assembly language and figuring out how to sneak out of the arcade.
A simulation could be hacked, and that’s really fun to think about
If we are in a simulation, I’m pretty sure it’s already been hacked or infected by a bad virus at least.
Fictionally, sure. Realistically, humans could hack a simulated universe like fish can hack the aquarium.
It’s questionable whether it’s even a well-founded question because of this. Like, it depends on your choice of theories about ontology and epistemology. This shows up if you try to do math about it, which I mentioned a bit in my own reply.
50%. We are or we aren’t.
Removed by mod
Nah, at least 0,50
Just because we do t know something doesn’t masks it 50%
I don’t know if there’s a gorilla in my upstairs bath at the moment but the odds aren’t 50/50
On the question of god or a simulation, they aren’t 50/50 either
- Whoosh
- Given the lack of any meaningful information to base an estimate on, they essentially are.
Belief in a simulation implies intelligent design of some sort, so this is, in my opinion, just a 21st century way of asking the age old question, does God exist?
God is a loaded term though. Yes there would be a creator but it could be a completely passive observer.
Why would being in a simulation require that those who create or maintain it only observe?
Edit: I misread, merely observing is certainly a possibility.
Not OP, but they said “but it could be”, not that it is required.
That’s no different than saying the universe is a simulation.
The modern Christian God is mostly a passive observer, whenever him or his agents have visited us there have been tons of miracles and magical shit, but that does not happen very often, and we’ve been basically alone for millenia while He is busy in his own realm. If Christ visited again, it would likely portend the end of the world, at least in a lot of Christian world views.
Christians are shitty con-artists who spread their filth by lying to, subverting, and intimidating others.
I’ll never get over how they call the Torah the “old testament.” They do this as a sneaky way to make it seem like it’s all Christianity with no ties to Judaism.
Oh no! All my thoughts and prayers!
The world already ended, and all that jazz. Happened in 1844. Just look around you. If you brought a “modern homosapien” from 12,000 years ago to the year 1800 or even 1840-1850, they would recognize things from their world. Those things may have had eons of refinement, but a horse is still mostly a horse. Bring a modern human from 1850 to today, and they will recognize almost nothing. Their world is gone. A new one took its place, as was predicted.
He might be passive but the implication is that you’re supposed to live certain way or you’ll end up in hell. This most likely isn’t the case in a simulation.
Or we are NPCs in a game played by a 9 year old.
Maybe it implies intelligent design, but I don’t think that it implies that we are a part of that intelligent design, necessarily. I mean there’s a whole universe out there that’s mostly just hot hydrogen and the space in-between with spacetime shaped accordingly. Who’s to say that life on earth isn’t just noise? Outside the scope of whoever is running the simulation? It would seem like a waste to calculate a whole universe through all of time specifically to study the great apes of earth.
I’m inclined to believe that if our universe is running on a machine in a higher universe, it’s for something bigger than us, and its operator is likely not specifically aware of this galaxy, let alone us humans as individuals. Given the consistency we observe, any intelligent design would only be in the laws of physics and perhaps the initial conditions of the universe, everything else would be calculated based on those from there.
We need to be careful not to be too human-centric in these discussions, because every human-centric theory of the universe that humanity has come up with so far was eventually proven wrong.
@midribbon_action@lemmy.blahaj.zone @OneSpectra@lemmy.world
A simulated cosmos wouldn’t necessarily imply an elder bearded endomorph man in light robe and sandals, surrounded by blue-winged curly-haired kids. The Conway’s Game of Life is an interesting example of order emerged out of chaos with no sentient intervention at all, just randomness.
What we know as “randomness” is actually a complex interplay of countless factors, adding up to the “random”. The double pendulum experiment is also a great example of that.
Then, there are esoteric beliefs that don’t oppose to Science but, rather, bring scientific concepts seasoned with a bit of mythopoetic meaning-making.
For example: Ordo ab Chao is a concept stating that everything is just order that emerged from a primordial chaos. Science tells us how life is a result of dynamic physical and chemical interactions known as Evolution, and how celestial bodies are a result of similar dynamic known as stellar formation.
Science doesn’t know how exactly said interactions took place (e.g. could amino-acids have been produced outside Earth’s oceans, such as brought by asteroids as part of panspermia? Science can’t be sure about that, yet). There’s where esoteric comes.
Esoteric, or at least what I believe to myself, tries to see things as close to Science as possible. In fact, if we consider Cosmicism (Lovecraft), we end up perceiving how the universe is simply uncaring, and how we’re definitely not the center of the existence as anthropocentrism leads us to think.
And this indifference doesn’t necessarily imply “no belief”. There can be awareness of cosmic indifference and lack of divine intervention, AND the belief that the all fundamenta of existence emerged from some tug-of-war between transcendental principles (e.g. Yin-Yang, Darkness-Light, Chaos-Order). Transcendental principles and forces beyond the moral duality of good and evil, but transcendental nevertheless.
To a certain extent. that’s what I believe: indifferent, cosmic principles that neither care about humans nor about any life in general, they simply are.
It doesn’t necessarily imply I couldn’t worship those forces as one could worship the vastness of cosmos. In my case, I worship the “darker” aspects of it, the “destructive” and “deconstructive” aspects, the chaotic pole of Ordo ab Chao.
I personally call this aspect by many names, from entropy (the physical tendency to disorder) to Lilith (Mighty Sumerian Goddess of storms who later became part of Jewish esotericism) and Her “masculine” counterpart Lucifer (no introduction needed; the rebellious principle of the very “Architect” behind existence).
The latter also shows how the belief that God exists doesn’t necessarily implies worshiping said God. I do believe God exists as cosmic principle of order, but I’m not gonna worship him, because “his” order feels so forced and fleeting. Rather, I prefer to worship the forces opposing said order, the Chaos, the Darkness, Her.
nah
What, did the simulator get assembled by a passing tornado? Everyone who believes in simulation theory thinks this reality was designed, constructed, usually by someone that looks like us. That’s pretty damn close to Christianity.
about 3.50
God damn you love ness monster!
It was at that moment I realized frankenswine was a 30 story tall monster from the paleolithic era!
well, you’re asking this question in a platform which has the sole purpose of presenting a digital representation of social interaction, so I’d say pretty fucking high.
You don’t need the matrix plugging needles into the back of people’s heads for the world to be a simulation. smartphones and computer screens are more than enough.
I figure that we are all definitely living in a simulation because, even if the world has real physical existence, consciousness is essentially a simulation created our brain to make sense of the world.
thanks Baudrillard
There is no connection because consciousness is not fundamentally tied to society (although obviously its contents can be heavily influenced by it).
consciousness is essentially a simulation created our brain
Have you ever been surprised?
I have no idea what you are trying to get at by that.
So now you wonder what you need to answer.
surprise is simply the sensation of unexpected information
A simulation wouldn’t be this stupid
That’s just what the agents want us to think, man!
You telling me you never did absolutely stupid things in sim games?
I mean is there any proof we don’t live in a simulation? Like I am not arguing for simulation, neither am I arguing against it just, personally, I don’t see simulation theory as something life changing and important. Odds would probably be 50/50, but don’t see how it changes anything. If I live in simulation, I live in a simulation and someone is either controlling me or someone predestined me to do what I do, and it would be their fault for bad things happening. That would actually raise question why didn’t they gave us more clear understandings of morals so we don’t do bad things to each others, also why did they make us kill, and get sick…
If simulation is not real, then that doesn’t change anything we still have questions about who or what made us, who or what was before our universe even existed.
You can’t prove a negative.
The positive assertion is “we live in a simulation”. All that can be done is gather evidence to support this assertion.
You can’t prove a negative.
That principle doesn’t apply here, because you can use simple language to turn the words around, and then you have a positive, while the task of proving it remains the same.
Specifically: when you say you can’t prove that we don’t live in a simulation, then it is the same as saying you can’t prove that we do live in reality.
But “we do live in reality” is a positive. Now the words are different, but the task is the same: prove that we live in reality.
The only way it matters is that maybe there’s a way to escape ‘to a higher plane’. But even without a simulation, there’s always opportunities to understand the universe better and maybe make some fundamental breakthrough. Or there’s mysticism. Of those three, a simulation may offer the least chance for a breakthrough.
Greater than zero.
You wanna tweak your melon a bit? Look up “Last Thursdayism.” It’s a thing — due to the way short term and long term memory work, the theory goes that anything before “last Thursday” is a lie. It’s an arbitrary day of the week. The movie Dark City played off of this, when the — I forget what they were called — did their tuning and rearranged things and swapped peoples’ memories around.
There is no sensible definition of probability that makes that question answerable.
In reality, simulations would outnumber reality. So that’s the ratio and therefore the chances.
Assuming reality and/or consciousness can be simulated, which we have no way of knowing is true (for now).
it depends, can simulations run simulations inside themselves? because if so, i think this would increase the odds. if we were able to model reality, down to the subatomic level, with perfect accuracy, then maybe there’s another world simulating us. unless we’re in a pretty bad or locked-down simulation that doesn’t allow recursion.
We don’t need to model reality, only people’s perception of it.
I think the smallest computer that can simulate the universe is the universe. Though I guess you may be able to get rid of one of the dimensions due to that one projection theory. Which means you may be able to get ride of more than one dimension. Which means maybe the universe can fit into a single infinitely dense point. So maybe we can make black hole computers. We’d just need to bend space time in a real specific way because what’s the point of a computer you can’t get any output from?
tl;Dr: I bet we could figure out how to simulate a whole universe within a decently small computer. Seems hard though.
I don’t know.
Well, until we see people randomly floating or chunks of the world disappearing, the answer will probably remain “who knows”
People floating would go against the laws of physics of this simulation.
Best way to know if you’re in a simulation is to observe when it glitches (in a way that can’t be explained by a glitch in the sub-simulation that is human perception).
You and several complete strangers see someone floating in the air without any technological support, assuming y’all haven’t been poisoned in a similar way and are hallucinating, either a) there’s some support you don’t know how to look for, b) there’s a condition of reality that hasn’t been accounted for in the study of physics yet, or c) the rule set just straight broke somehow.
I don’t think anyone has totally eliminated glitches in the human or an incomplete understanding of physics to really support a ‘we live in a simulation’ explanation for strange phenomena, at least not yet.
@brachypelmide@lemmy.zip @OneSpectra@lemmy.world
You already see chunks of the world disappearing, it’s called “fog” or “haze”. 😆
I think this depends on how you look at it.
In a certain way, we do live in a fictional world that is constructed of information. If you consider your daily routines, they’re probably following instructions of some sort to earn money, besides other things.
Both of these things - the instructions and the money - are made up. You can see this even more clearly with the money. Money itself is a piece of paper or not even that - a number in a database - that has no real value, yet people believe in it and that belief is what gives it value. In other words, the value of these numbers in databases exists in people’s head more than it does in reality. Now, you could consider this a simulation, because it happens inside a computer and influences what people think.
However, i truly doubt that such a view is meaningful. No matter what is written in the databases, you still have to go through your own, individual life. I feel the biggest question you’re implicitely asking is whether there could exist some kind of cheat code or glitch, like in video games, to shortcut through the world and reach your goals easier. Again, depending on how you look at it, there both are and are not such cheats.
You could consider human technology a sort of cheat. Instead of toiling on the agricultural fields ourselves, we use heavy machinery that is powered by fossil fuels, but more importantly mathematics, to do the work for us. Same goes for all other technologies. As such, the mathematics itself becomes the cheat code.
If a true cheat code would exist in today’s world, you can take solace in the fact that not only you are looking for it, but so is everybody else who has an interest in achieving their goals. Now, you see, the whole economy is simply based on the concept that people want to reach their goals, and to do so, they need resources, for which they need money. So, if a cheat code existed, every single company would have a high interest in finding it and exploiting it. Since the number of people engaged with these desires is quite high, you can assume that significant progress towards that goal is continuously made whenever possible. In fact, people research and invent new things and useful tricks all the time to help us with our daily lifes. If you really wanna know more about this, you should start by studying economics, physics, and society at large. Thank you for your attention, if you have any more questions, let me know :D (i studied philosophy, i might help you)
