I hope so
Also, can somebody please turn it off? I think we took this one as far as it’s worth
In reality, simulations would outnumber reality. So that’s the ratio and therefore the chances.
So I guess it depends on what you understand by “simulation”. What is really simulated as opossed to being “real”. Our reality is just an interpretation given by our senses, so in a sense it’s also a simulation of the real thing. Where’s the line that makes something really “real”?
about 3.50
God damn you love ness monster!
Loveless monster? Oh poor thing…
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).
Either 100% or 0% so pascal’s wager 50/50.
Just like the lottery, I either win or I lose, its a 50/50.
And the whole thing is “does it matter?”. To us, no, it doesn’t matter at all.
What are the odds that we are all in a simulation?
What are the odds that every bullshit that you ever heard is actually true?
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.
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.
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.
Then he got wacked by Tony Soprano.
Ignorance is bliss!
Just connect me to my reality.
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.
Same as the odds that a higher being (a god) exists.
Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it. All arguments for it speculative and subjective.
People claim that it is the most likely option because eventually tech will be so advanced that we could make a world simulation, and then we would make multiples, and therefore the probability of this not being a simulation is low.
This claim assumes that computers CAN get that complex (no indication that they could) it also assumes that if they could, we would create world simulators (Why? Parts of it sure, but all of it?) And it assumes that sentient beings inside the simulation could never know it (Why?)
It is as pointless as arguing about god.
This claim assumes that computers CAN get that complex (no indication that they could)
I mean, if you take an existing physics simulation and just scale up the hardware…
I would hope that we wouldn’t build such a thing just out of ethical concerns for the inhabitants, but then again we’ve built a giant AI-training network with very little knowledge of if they have some kind of limited consciousness during the process.
Biggest reason to to a complete simulation would be reversed time dilation. Run the simulation until the civilization is a few hundred to a few thousand years more advanced than your own, and see what technologies they have invented and refined.
More likely than us being in the “real” base reality
A simulation wouldn’t be this stupid
You telling me you never did absolutely stupid things in sim games?
That’s just what the agents want us to think, man!
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)
50%. We are or we aren’t.
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
50?! You’re crazy! 0.5 at best!
Nah, at least 0,50
I saw someone analyse this on YouTube once. As I remember it, if you assume two possibilities are equally likely until we have information favouring one or the other (the principle of indifference), it depends on if we make any simulated universes. If we do, there’s basically no way we’re in the first. Otherwise, there’s a chance this is the base reality.
One can question whether the principle of indifference applies here, though. Or even if a deeper reality we can never access counts as a an object you can talk about normally. For example, pragmatic epistemology would say no.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh no! All my thoughts and prayers!
That’s no different than saying the universe is a simulation.
Or we are NPCs in a game played by a 9 year old.
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.
