Caporegime
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I disagree that the idea can be tested and also, who cares.
Do we live in a computer simulation?
- Thread starter Nightglow
- Start date
Yup..
If a computer powerful enough to simulate a universe existed then we should probably drop all we know about computers a stop trying to apply what we all ready know to this theoretical machine.
Also.
When i play Hitman on 360, I'm pretty sure the character i'm playing is like " ALL THIS KILLING IM TIRED"
Soldato
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no, i am saying that both sufficiently advanced computers and biological organisms can be argued to be life implemented in different ways (or simulations of life if you prefer). I mean, what is our DNA if you don't think of it as a (biologically implemented) piece of self preserving program.
I'm not explaining this very well but hopefully someone will understand what i'm getting at
Well, I think the fact that the first Oxford dictionary definition of life is that it is:
"the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter"
pretty much rules that theory out
I had my suspicions when i was in the shower one day and the next thing i knew the shower was on the other side of the room the toilet vanished, i had another room on my house and all the walls were painted a different colour. And i'd got a wife in the process who was stuck in the new pool outside after the ladder got deleted. But it was mainly the green diamond above my head that gave it away.
Why do you believe it can't be tested?
It's one of those things which is simply unknowable (as we would have no way of knowing how it was programmed, or if it was made in such a way detection was possible).
Regarding the testing point, I don't think we could know if it was testable or not - as an entity advanced enough to create a simulation with us in it, I'm confident would also have the ability to hide that fact from us (as if we can postulate a method of testing the hypothesis, they would have already thought of it too - as they would have considered the same prospect that they themselves lived in a simulation & most likely would have tested that before creating one) - assuming that it's not a multiple level simulation, which again we could not know).
It's still more plausible than any religion.
Regarding the testing point, I don't think we could know if it was testable or not - as an entity advanced enough to create a simulation with us in it, I'm confident would also have the ability to hide that fact from us (as if we can postulate a method of testing the hypothesis, they would have already thought of it too - as they would have considered the same prospect that they themselves lived in a simulation & most likely would have tested that before creating one) - assuming that it's not a multiple level simulation, which again we could not know).
It's still more plausible than any religion.
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I do. While I'm not arguing that life is a computer simulation, people seem to be missing the point that, if it is/was, they'd likely be unawares. 'Noes, I'm alive so it's not true' is profoundly understating the issue. You may think you're alive within the confines of your programming ('breathing', 'heartbeat' etc) but what makes you think that that's what life actually is? Perhaps life actually means silicon based, CO2 respiring (via dermis) and telekenetic? Perhaps you're a ten minute Photoshop on a super-advanced PC?
The box. Think outside of it. You're acting within your programming if you can't conceive of this idea.
No, i just have a higher level of common sense than the people who believe this could possibly be true, the people who believe this are no different than the people who believe that the world will end on the 21st December.
![[FnG]magnolia](/styles/overclockers/avatars/9.png){kind=avatar}
Caporegime
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I WOULD LIKE TO GET ON THE DERP BUS, HOW MUCH IS TRHE FARE PLOX?
Associate
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+1
However the people who believe this can't be proved wrong in 9 days when it becomes the 22nd.
Well you reached for three words before being wrong there...
Heres an idea.
MAYBE just maybe the world is real...
Thats ******* novel isn't it?
The answer to this question is No.
Its as simple as that, I could come up with literally ANYTHING right now that you wouldnt be able to argue against but is equally un true.
Sensible people don't "believe" anything, they consider the hypothesis & put forward ideas & thoughts to test it (if it's indeed possible to test).+1
However the people who believe this can't be proved wrong in 9 days when it becomes the 22nd.
As mentioned before, if we are a simulation - our entire laws of physics, the concept time, space & what we define as life could all be completely fabricated - which is also why I would be surprised if it's possible to test at all (as we would be applying the logic of our laws of physics against something which could be totally different) but don't get me wrong I may be testable (I don't have the required knowledge to say one way or another), but I'd be shocked if it was.
On a side note, this isn't a "common sense" hypothesis.
Well no, this hypothesis is based within a few simple reasonable assumptions, which another theory may not be based within.
All you need to accept is a couple of basic assumptions as being worthy of consideration.
1. That at least one species will have the technological level required to create universe simulations at any point in the future of the entire universe.
2. If multiple simulations exist & only one is the real universe is more probable we are living in a simulation than the real world.
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I love how people just entirely miss the point, and get all GDish about it. It's meant to stimulate your thoughts and lead you to investigate your own reality and the nature of it. What constitutes reality? What is consciousness? How can we, subjective as we ultimately are, understand this reality without being outside of it? It's the entire point, almost, that ancestor simulation isn't real, but how would you know, and what is?
But GD is GD. Herp derp, there are no Gods, aliens, ghosts or homoeopaths. All hail science... even though we generally don't know what that actually means, but the bandwagon seems mighty big so I'm on it!!!eleventy11!
It's not a serious proposition per se, it's a thought experiment. How many lol-ers actually read the paper and related literature and thought it through before replying? None? One?...
Because at whatever level you test it, the response from the sceptic is "Well that's also contained within the simulation".
The computer simulation argument is one form of skepticism, and it's generally accepted in philosophy that there are no good "responses" to skepticism. The best ways of working with the problem do so by building it into that belief system, such as Husserl's phenomenology.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/#AcaSke
Eliot, as Rainmaker has said you have entirely missed the point. Maybe the world is real. The question is about how we know that the world is real, and what it means for our understanding of ourselves and of science if it might not be real.
You're right, you could come up with any rubbish right now, and I couldn't disprove it. "There is a colony of pink and blue polka-dotted swans somewhere in Africa." Short of collecting every swan in Africa, I can't disprove that.
However, that is asking a question within our current belief system. It *could* be proved/disproved by my collecting every swan in Africa.
The skeptical question is not within our belief system, but about our belief system. How do we know what we know? What makes that knowledge valid?
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SkodaMart
SkodaMart
Ask a Police officer who was the first on the scene at an horrific fatal road crash if he thinks it is a computer simulation. 