It's looking more and more like we may live in a simulation

radkrish
Why would an advanced civilization simulate something in the first place?

. Instead of picking up a history book (for example), you actually become one of the characters and remember, history would be a matter of perspective, so either being the Queen or living as a peasant would present each a valid historical perspecrive.. So how many roles would you play in a particular series of time coordinates to provide sufficient knowledge and understanding? I feel that each one of us are one of the those from the advanced civilization and we have emersed ourselves into this simulation for either experimentation, to learn or for entertainment or all of the aforementioned. PEACE.

reply to post by jaffo


It's a voluntary thread, in the philosophy and metaphysics forum. You cannot be compelled to read or reply to it.

Some of us enjoy philosophy and metaphysics. We don't spend a lot of time barging into your monster truck rallies screaming about how pointless it all is.

0zzymand0s
reply to post by jaffo

 

It's a voluntary thread, in the philosophy and metaphysics forum. You cannot be compelled to read or reply to it.

Some of us enjoy philosophy and metaphysics. We don't spend a lot of time barging into your monster truck rallies screaming about how pointless it all is.

Star for making me laugh my *** off.

I just made myself an account to answer to this thread, to which i think i may bring something new to the discussion.

Have you ever taken into account the nature of language in how we perceive and emotionally react to these things?

What's the difference between a god creating the universe, an out of the blue particle imploding into the universe, or an advanced civilization creating a simulation of the universe?

If you think about it there really isn't any other than the historic context from which we are analyzing the matter of reality and it's nature. Either if god, the big bang or an advanced civilization created us it is just the #ing same, it's a logic faulty argument because it gives on to a never ending loop:
Who create god?
Who created the particle?
Who created the first civilization?

All these theories share in common that they imply that somehow, magically and unlogically (opposed to all we know about the universe), a circle had a starting point. (Because we are talking about something creating something, which implies "something"s need to be created in order to exist, therefore the first one should too!)

So in all of these ideas, we are on the same base question: ¿HOW THE # DID IT BEGIN? ¿How, and where, did god or the particle or the ancient humans sprung into being? ¿Is where a real thing or just a linguistic notion regarding our ability to travel and reference different locations because of their particular visual arrangements of matter?

And from a comunicator /chamanistic / political viewpoint, this three theories imply the same : we are living individuals in some kind of "stage" which is separated to our true nature and to which we can GET BY SOME KIND OF EFFORT that the comunicator / chaman / politic / scientist / preacher / truth-holder, knows and we didn't until he so elloquently explained it to us.

I really think this whole simulation stuff is nothing more than a rethoric attempt to create a belief system that does not deviate from the "progression hypothesis" of knowledge and humanity, which is the main argument of why we have to keep up doing bull#-power-gathering-stuff instead of managing loooong delayed problems of humanity.

There really have been two main belief systems in this world if one just takes attention to what it take us to believe:
- Humans are separated by consciousness (or the ability to KNOW the universe) from the rest of the universe, and are thereby the responsibles of a big enterprise of divine proportions.
- Human consciousness is just another universal form such as a snowflake, a leaf, a plant, a dog, a star, or any other weird, effect-provoking, "code determined" system of matter arrangement, and therefore the knolewdge it attains is the same as any other existing being, only in it's own unique way.

And what most strike me about this distinction is that the second one is just so much in touch with the nature of our beings (being made of organs, which are made of bacteria, which are made of particles, which are made of elements, which are made of atoms, which are made of... it just seems like there is pattern over pattern of "coded matter" overlapping each other, and thinking we are the ultimate stage of it or that we are like robots is just silly...

Besides, ¿what is distance without measurement?

Another thing: We can't even stop ourselves of doing the things we don't like about ourselves and we are going to reverse engineer the whole of the consciousness system? Come on, we don't even know how the # we can get to KNOW things, ot MOVE IN SPACE, or what half of the brain chemistry does, and we are just going to recreate ourselves? What if we need a replica of the universe to actually make this work? 95% of the universe's matter is said to be "dark matter" which is another word for "don't #ing now"...

Don't get up too carried in the science hype, it's not the saver of the human kind.

The only 1 who knows the
reply to post by jonnywhite

 

I don't know where to start. I been thinking, reading, learning for about 50 years now. If this is a Sim program that we live in, where do we un-connect or do we leave this Sim at death? I think the Sim we are in wants us to un-connect with out dying or before we grow old regenerate then reconnect. There is some truth in the Matrix programs. The Matrix movie makes several points that if he's the one why not we all are the one. We all have this energy to re-connect anywhere we want to create our own Matrix. They are trying to find this Higg Blossom, but the Higg Blosson id the God Particle or better it's our souls I figure. If our soul or memory is a part of this we should be able to connect to the mainframe of this Sim. Or known as each free will. The only way for this to happen is we are in a 3D Sim and yes we are in a matrix. Don't forget about Peter who was able to leave the boat and go out with Jesus walking on the water but got scared etc. Jesus was a man just like you and me. He was teaching his fishers of men what he learned. I bet if we knew his secret we be like him. We could create our own world.

The Matrix movie talks about the uprisal of represented-world (linguistical representations (i.e the word "tree" (and all other words it stem), instead of a real, material tree) in detreiment of the real world, the whole idea is that machines are institutions (ongs, governments, countries, and any other kind of human group) which keep humans in a virtual reality (citizenship) that helps them both to exist in the #ed up planet. This is just a sci-fi metaphore for truth constructions and their effect on humans and the world, i.e : the kind of life a normal citizen has.

What matrix is saying is : You are not a citizen, you are a human, things do not have names, humans put names to things, instituions hold them fixed and police them for their own safety, due to their power being based on these names meaning the same to all the people.

Trying to be cleaner: Things have definitions, big things need to make sure their core (or justification) definitions don't change for them to continue functioning. That's why totalitarism or repression arises in every government which is questioned, instead of going through a paradigm change.

You can create your own world, just step off the tv and any other media you periodically check, stop hearing to anyone, and start deciding what to consume and what to not consume, what to believe and what not to belive, what to do , and what not to do, and you'll see things greatly #ing change when you can spend one day listening to a 70's band, the other reading a XXVII book, and the other just drawing in a piece of paper (may seem kind of all the same, just change it by will to the hell you enjoy doing), no periodic media, no government, no china, no worries, no stupidity, no tv shows, is like someone slapped your head for you to look into another completely new and problem-free direction.

And that is life, 6 billion directions instituions try to channel to their own.

This is the book Matrix is based of, you can see Neo hiding the disk he sells at the beginning in it : en.wikipedia.org...

There is also a borge's story that cover that subject

In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.


"On Exactitude in Science," Jorge Luis Borges

reply to post by arpgme


As you said

Nope, God is the simpliest explanation.

Yes indeed Our Holy Programmer!!

much like !

You Ready!!

Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is a software engineer formerly employed by ENCOM

en.wikipedia.org...

From Tron !
and

Tron Legacy

Where Kevin Flint Goes within a World He Created !! much like Jesus !or Aliens !!
from another Dimension! perhaps ? and His Son goes in like Jesus and Gets back Out!!


Ohh Here ! someone else thought like i did

Theological Points of Tron: Legacy
hilbertthm90.wordpress.com...

Are the Bible and the Qur’an like TRON?
March 17, 2012 By James F. McGrath
www.patheos.com...

'TRON' TELLS SPIRITUAL STORY OF SATAN AND SALVATION
Exclusive: Drew Zahn debates Christian themes of sci-fi sequel
Published: 12/19/2010 at 11:52 PM

Read more at www.wnd.com...
www.wnd.com...

Well Ironicaly The Female Hero in tron Legacy in named Quorra >?

It look as im not the only one that thinks of this !

Well we could very well be in a simulation... like tron !!

as the universe is pretty much look like Nerves in the brain

A Brain Cell is the Same as the Universe

by Cliff Pickover, Reality Carnival

Physicists discover that the structure of a brain cells (Neurons) is the same as the entire universe.

sprott.physics.wisc.edu...

well we could be within Gods Brain.. or his simulator! of his brain! LOL! Ya think !



Well if you think of code in our DNA and we Reveal it a Letters like G T I C A as Us Humans has broken that prgramable code through !! Computer simulation synthetic cell for example.. in a larger scale more back engineered our cells ..
Whos to say..

theclarificator55555
We are not living in a simulation.
We are living in a programmed and controlled physical world.
Our Universe is a big laboratory for other beings.
Our consciousness is part of the downloading system and everything in this Universe and in the life of everyone is controlled, even the blink of our eyes.
We do have certain Free will inside this laboratory but not enough to go outside our Bubble Universe and confront our "Creators"
The only thing that you can truly say is simulated is the huge edge of our Universe, which is only a projected video grid that slowly zooms out and it is unreachable by any human spaceship.
But if someday we reach that edge we would see all those galaxies and stars are just part of a screen projection, not even real.
I assume the location of the edge of our universe is at a distance of no more than two times our solar system.
Everything the telescopes see beyond that is just a projection on a concave screen, that could explain why the apparent expansion/contraction of the outer Universe and our solar system sometimes don't match.

Agreed.

HUMBLEONE

radkrish
Why would an advanced civilization simulate something in the first place?

. Instead of picking up a history book (for example), you actually become one of the characters and remember, history would be a matter of perspective, so either being the Queen or living as a peasant would present each a valid historical perspecrive.. So how many roles would you play in a particular series of time coordinates to provide sufficient knowledge and understanding? I feel that each one of us are one of the those from the advanced civilization and we have emersed ourselves into this simulation for either experimentation, to learn or for entertainment or all of the aforementioned. PEACE.

edit on 2-12-2013 by HUMBLEONE because: (no reason given)

Agreed !! just maybe the advanced civ 3s 4s 5s etc.. they just like Roll playing ... for entertaining themselves well as in the Old testament God was a Nasty selfish gamer then in the New testament well you know! a real live Sim city... speaking of which .. SIM Earth

SimEarth
en.wikipedia.org...

ok Folks nothing to see here we solved the riddle we one of Gods simulations..Games LOL

Here son.. play this for a while learn and improve then just maybe you can do the real thing.. once you .advance your self enough.. yes son I played the Game too but more primitive then you have here .. but I was selfish then learned to love my creation.. when i started in this Module simulation.. YHWH hands the Controls over to Jesus... and Son they may question some of those left overs before the add ons OOPS anomalies !! Dont answer them of how or why .... as i add some what ifs ! in the beta testing the new in the old.. LOL!

just like mmorpg games EVE , Asherons Call , World of Warcraft , Everquest to name a few LOL


gotta love it!! ATS ... well the HUMOR of it all!

when we find out would this happen ...






instead of ones and zeros we are a chemistry of molecules in a sequence of ATOMS aka makeup of letters
yeah i can BUY THAT!!

Oh come on, now you are just explaining your religions with the sense that "simulation" makes to you living in this century and gods just didn't.

Can't you see is the same bs?

reply to post by neoholographic


statistics are funny. here, these guys are proposing that one of the following outcomes must be true: humanity goes extinct before building computers capable of simulating the entire universe and all the experiences of the inhabitants living in it. or we do become advanced enough to do so but are simply uninterested in performing such simulations. or we are likely to be in just such a simulation.

statistics are hard to interpret, for instance you could add another possible outcome that could also be true, that it is impossible to create an artificial consciousness. so while a hypothetical ai may be able to pass the turing test, that is sufficient to convince a person that they are interacting with another person, it still is not conscious. its merely providing the proper responses to whatever was input into it. i think this would be the most probable solution imo.

regardless it all boils down to consciousness itself, are we all just merely responding to stimuli or is there something more going on there, is your personality just some bits in a computer, modulating response to various input, or are you you?

basically the same old questions, what is the meaning of life, why are we here, were we created by a omnipotent god, why is life so cruel sometimes? all digitally remastered.

i have other issues with it, as it would be fundamentally impossible to model the entire universe as the universe is infinite and computers memory is finite, maybe they would only simulate that which is being observed by the sims, i dunno, but id imagine it would be detectable if we were in fact simulated. its also possible that the logic which runs the sim isnt based on actual reality, just a neat hackish way to simulate it fairly accurately at a reasonable speed. but even then we know that the universe is expanding and we can measure time very very accurately, so their computer must increment time in units many times smaller than even that, and each time it increments the simulation becomes larger by an order of magnitude. we already have telescopes looking out in all directions from the earth, could this be bogging down the sim? even if we were causing it to run slowly we would never know, i guess until they pulled the plug.

an interesting thought experiment at any rate.

reply to post by snarfbot


I would agree if we were talking about artificial consciousness. This isn't artificial consciousness it's simulated consciousness. It boils down to information and computation. So I see it not as a matter of if but when. Unless computational power does a u-turn, I think these simulations will become more and more realistic. Simulated consciousness would mean when you build a city on Sim City, the simulated beings will consciously experience it even though it moves very fast when we look at it. You construct a building in a matter of seconds but simulated consciousness would experience in 2 or 3 years.

Terrile explained computation well when he talked about the computational power of the brain. If each grain of salt was a calculation then the human brain can calculate 100 Olympic sized pools filled with salt per second. Just imagine the simulations we could run when we get 500 or 1,000 Olympic sized pools filled with salt per second.

So we will simulate these things for scientific reasons and also for gaming. We already spend time doing this.

Second Life:



Sim City



Look how fast the sims are moving and how fast structures are built. If you had simulated consciousness, the sims could be experiencing a 45, 50 or 60 year old life . As computational power increases, we will be able to simulate an 80 year old life in an hour. The simulated consciousness will experience and 80 year life.

The Sims



From Wikipedia:

The Sims is a strategic life simulation video game series developed by Maxis and later by The Sims Studio, and published by Electronic Arts. It is one of the most successful video games series of all time. As of May 2011, the franchise has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide,[1] and is also the best-selling PC franchise in history.[2]

The games in The Sims series are largely sandbox games, in that they lack any defined goals (except for some later expansion packs and console versions which introduced this gameplay style). The player creates virtual people called "Sims" and places them in houses and helps direct their moods and satisfy their desires. Players can either place their Sims in pre-constructed homes or build them themselves. Each successive expansion pack and game in the series augmented what the player could do with their Sims.

Just think, when a simulation of New York or Las Vegas becomes indistinguishable from the real thing. People will be glued to the simulation they can control. Then if full immersion comes along, people will be experiencing these simulations like on the movie eXistenz.

This is totally different from artificial consciousness like on the movie A.I. or the new show Almost Human. I think simulated consciousness will precede artificial consciousness.

Imagine if somebody ran a simulation of Vegas and they wanted to hang out with the Rat Pack. If Sammy, Dean, Frank, Joey and Peter had simulated consciousness then Sammy, Dean, Frank, Joey and Peter would believe they're Sammy, Dean, Frank, Joey and Peter just like we believe we're us. Are we? ? I think we will eventually know the answer to this.

I don't think much would change if we were to discover that we were in a simulation. At the end of the day what could we do. I think we will ask who are the original simulators and what about life after death. Some people will not be able to handle it but for the most part, people will continue living there lives unless the simulators show up or maybe they're already here. I would suspect that part of the fun would be experiencing the simulation in real time. You could be the President of the United States or hit a home run in the bottom of the 9th to win the World Series or hang out as Hugh Hefner in the 70's and 80's.

Like I said, it's just computation and information so it's a matter of if not when unless we blow ourselves back to the stone age and computational power takes a u-turn.

reply to post by neoholographic


I am a lot closer to thinking its possible after seeing this program, called Space Engine, which is available on the net for free which is a simulation of the entire universe. This program can run on a contemporary desktop. Literally, billions and billions of stars planets and galaxies are simulated. With the expansion of computing power exponentially, at some point someone will try to simulate a universe with physics and life .Will those autonomous AI constructs know they are simulated? Think of this program as Pac Man and fast forward 75 years and you start to get the picture.

I want to make up my own world. Take no pill.

Heart Sutra.

This theory may lend some credence to the Bible verses stating that "God created the heavens and the Earth" in 7 days. Everything in 7 days? I don't know bout all that. But, a programmer creating a sim program in 7 days? Now that's definitely do-able.

Didn't have time to read entire thread. So, sorry if someone else has already said this.

Mankind has always been in a relationship with technology. At various time mankind has been the master of it while sometimes, the machines are the masters of mankind.

There has always been a delicate balancing act, a sublime ritual dance and a brutal war between man and machine. It has always been this way and it should always be.... because if mankind gives up... the machines will inevitably win.

Sadly, there are always traitors among us, the Cyphers, the Benedict Arnolds, the Richard Nixons, because self preservation is a natural instinct that some people cannot quite overcome.

Gladly, there are still some humans left who would fight for the existence of the human spirit, to deny the supremacy of the machines, irregardless of the human instinct for self-preservation, remember in the Matrix when Agent Smith asked Neo. Here is that conversation between man & machine...

"Why do you persist?"

Matrix Revolutions Transcript Part 16


THE MATRIX, SOMEWHERE ON A STREET:

Smith: Mr. Anderson, welcome back, we missed you. Do you like what I've done with the place?

Neo: It ends tonight.

Smith: I know it does, I've seen it. That's why the rest of me is just going to enjoy the show, because we already know that I'm the one that beats you.

Smith: Can you feel it Mr. Anderson? I'm closing in on you. Oh, I can. I really should thank you for it... After all it was your life that taught me the purpose of all life. The purpose of life is to end.

Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why? Why do you do it? Why? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom, or truth, perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception, temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself. Although... Only a human mind can invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson, you must know it by now. You can't win, it is pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson, why, why you persist?

Neo: Because I choose to. Source thematrixtruth.remoteviewinglight.com...

well consider this, how would you describe the universe in a computer program? for sake of argument lets only simulate electrons, protons and neutrons, leaving all the smaller particles out of it. say you were able to procedurally generate the entire universe in the sim using only a tiny seed file, like a portion of a fractal, and some other lightweight algorithm and it made a living breathing universe out of it. also everything was perfectly compressable, such that you only had to use 1 bit to store each discrete unit, maybe by using its position in the database, they infered its position in the world. this is the best case scenario, even a 100 years from now, likely impossible, but lets run with it anyway.

moores law transistor count doubles every 2 years, this is not sustainable anymore, as were already on the 22nm node. a nanometer is the diameter of 1 helium atom. therefore the feature size of all circuits must be greater than 1nm. so cant count on that for doubling performance every 2 years much longer, but lets say we hit a breakthrough or something allowing it to continue to scale, likely impossible, but lets run with it anyway.

my personal computer has a 2600k intel sandybridge processor, it was pretty sweet 2 years ago and is still competitive with the latest offerings, regardless this is what well use in our test, it can do 128,300 MIPS according to wikipedia. thats Millions of Instructions Per Second.

so in 100 years, the intel gigacore would do 144452958047908659200 mips, that is 1125899906842624 times as many as a quad core today. that sure seems like alot. but its a literal drop in the bucket compared to the amount of stars in the universe, not even considering the amount of planets, rocks, gasses, humans, all made of atoms, electrons neutrons and protons.

so even if it were possible to simulate it all, at extremely slow speeds, it simply not possible to store it all in any fashion. in real life the information storing an atoms state is stored in itself, any structure larger than that, like a mechanical hard disk stores data less efficiently than the original, therefore impossible.

There is no simulation.

The scientific progress is REAL. The machines are real. No single human controls this world. The "Kings" are also as helpless as you and me.

The rapid scientific progress on this planet is due to a unique occurrence - a clash of three different intelligent and evolved human species.

While the progress made is great and machines are great, the system is highly unstable and self-destructive. So this civilization will be destroyed in a great war, and then a more uniform race will pick up from there.

The only stable way for humans is to live harmoniously with nature - and let other animals and plants thrive as well. This world cannot revolve just around humans.

So, heres a question, if we are living in a simulation, has this partic ular sim being going on since the beginning of mankind, thousands of years ago, or is this sim relatively new? Are all the things that happened in the past, history, just memories planted by the programme?
Damn, its rabbitholingly fantastic.
Waiting for someone to say" there is no simulation" 3...2...1...

It's a simulation of sorts, but its not made by someone on the other side of a computer. It's running in the Mind of God.

People are taking the computer angle too literally because our modern mythology is materialistic, technological. The computer is very opaque metaphor... people can't see through it.

How Consciousness Becomes the Physical Universe

Abstract

Issues related to consciousness in general and human mental processes in particular remain the most difficult problem in science. Progress has been made through the development of quantum theory, which, unlike classical physics, assigns a fundamental role to the act of observation. To arrive at the most critical aspects of consciousness, such as its characteristics and whether it plays an active role in the universe requires us to follow hopeful developments in the intersection of quantum theory, biology, neuroscience and the philosophy of mind.

Developments in quantum theory aiming to unify all physical processes have opened the door to a profoundly new vision of the cosmos, where observer, observed, and the act of observation are interlocked. This hints at a science of wholeness, going beyond the purely physical emphasis of current science. Studying the universe as a mechanical conglomerate of parts will not solve the problem of consciousness, because in the quantum view, the parts cease to be measureable distinct entities. The interconnectedness of everything is particularly evident in the non-local interactions of the quantum universe. As such, the very large and the very small are also interconnected.