People who believe in simulation theory are people who were born/ raised staring at screens and continue to stare at screens too much.
But mom says it’s my turn with the simulation
It’s crazy Plato was talking about this back in the day, and in the last 2,000+ years of science and technology, we kind of just found more stuff that it’s not only possible, but statistically likely that even if this isn’t, we’ll have the tech eventually.
Not in any of our lifetimes, but in another couple thousand years at least.
Well, we can’t simulate our universe inside of our universe (it’d take more matter and energy than our universe has, since it’s trying to calculate our universe). We will be able to (and can) simulate simpler systems though. Potentially our universe is a simplified version in an even larger version though, and that could also be another simulation. Things like the Planck length and time make this seem more reasonable to me, since an expected simulation would have minimum sized units where it stops storing extra data.
We should still all behave like it isn’t a simulation, since nothing changes if we do or don’t. Still, it is interesting to consider.
What about the equivalent of foveated rendering? They’re only simulating the bits conscious observers can see, the rest is …not simulated to the same level? I guess you’re kind of going there with your model within a model thing. If we are the point of the simulation, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to simulate much beyond the planet besides what little astronomers can work with? Gonna crash this thing with enough players!
There’s a weird SF story that has blood cell sized intelligences and reality starts to break because there are so many observers on such a small scale that reality can’t change without being observed and then they all “poof” into another dimension or something and humans are left alone again. Anyway, the number of players crashing the simulation made me think of it. Blood Music by Greg Bear.
Planck scale units aren’t known or typically assumed to be minimum units. They’re just the units that come out of combining some fundamental constants and are thought to represent a scale where the effects of quantum gravity have too much effect to be ignored. They just represent a theoretical limit to the validity of our current models.
Human knowledge will continue to push these boundaries as long as humans still exist, but it’s arrogant to think our current human limitation is a universal limitation.
Yeah, I oversimplified it but it’s the scale where the data doesn’t matter anymore. It isn’t a minimum distance or time, but it is a minimum distance or time that actually matters. It is in no way evidence of a simulation, but a simulation could be expected to have things like that, because infinite precision would require infinite data.
Not only we can’t simulate our universe, but the total simulating capacity of every level of every one of our simulations can’t reach the size of our universe either.
The pseudo-probabilistic argument people use is bullshit on many levels, but the simplest reason is that there will always be more universe outside the simulations than inside it.
I would like to know more about Plato’s version of the simulation theory. It sounds fascinating.
I think they’re referring to the Allegory of the Cave. Which isn’t quite simulation theory, but it does tread some of the same questions.
Ah, I’m familiar with that one in particular but I thought there was a different one I had missed.
Which isn’t quite simulation theory, but it does tread some of the same questions.
I mean, for someone who had never heard of electricity, it’s about as close a comparison as he could get.
He explained it the only way someone from his time would have been able to.
How would we know it were actually happening if it were possible?
I’ll see you all in the next level
What if we’re just cannon fodder npc in an fps shooter simulation? In that case let’s pray the older brother doesn’t take control of the player character.
Splitter!
Dude needs to look up a guide.
I kinda think he played us for a few hours and then bounced off the game. He’s never picking us up again
I’m not sure the author of this knows what a simulation is
What if we’re part of an early machine learning cycle? Things will get worse and worse until our simulation fails so future generations can become better.
Remind me of Iain Banks’ theory in The Algebraist:
…The Truth was the presumptuous name of the religion, the faith that lay behind reality. It arose from the belief that what appeared to be real life must in fact - according to some piously invoked statistical certitudes - be a simulation being run within some prodigious computational substrate in a greater and more encompassing reality beyond. This was a thought that had, in some form, crossed the minds of most people and all civilizations. However, everybody quickly or eventually came round to the idea that a difference that made no difference wasn’t a difference to be much bothered about, and one might as well get on with (what appeared to be) life.
The Truth went a stage further, holding that this was difference that could be made to make a difference. What was necessary was for people truly to believe in their hearts, in their souls, in their minds, that they really were in a vast simulation. They had to reflect upon this, to keep it at the forefront of their thoughts at all times and they had to gather together on occasion, with all due ceremony and solemnity, to express this belief. And they must evangelise, they must convert everybody they possibly could to this view, because - and this was the whole point - once a sufficient proportion of people within the simulation came to acknowledge that it was a simulation, the value of the simulation to those who had set it up would disappear and the whole thing would collapse.
If they were all part of some vast experiment, then the fact that those on whom the experiment was being conducted had guessed the truth would mean that its value would be lost. If they were some plaything, then again, that they had guessed this meant they ought to be acknowledged, even - perhaps - rewarded. If they were being tested in some way, then this was the test being passed, this was a positive result, again possibly deserving a reward. If they had been undergoing punishment for some transgression in the greater world, then this ought to constitute cause for rehabilitation.
It was not possible to know what proportion of the simulated population would be required to bring things to a halt (it might be fifty percent, it might be rather smaller or greater), but as long as the numbers of the enlightened kept increasing, the universe would be constantly coming closer to the epiphany, and the revelation could come at any point.
The Truth claimed with some degree of justification to be the ultimate religion, the final faith, the last of all churches…
…It could also claim a degree of universality that the others could not. All other major religions were either specific to their originating species, could be traced back to a single species - often a single subset of that species - or were consciously developed amalgams, syntheses, of a group of sufficiently similar religions of disparate origin…
… The Truth could even claim to be not a religion at all, where such a claim might endear it to those not naturally religious by nature. It could be seen more as a philosophy, even as a scientific postulate backed by unshakeably firm statistical likelihood.
There were some potentially unfortunate consequences implicit in a profound belief in the Truth. One was that there was a possibility that when the simulation ended, all the people being simulated would cease to exist entirely. The sim might be turned off and everybody within the substrate running it would die. There might be no promotion, no release, no return to a bigger and better and finer outside: there might just be the ultimate mass extinction…
Is this a book in the culture series? I’m about half way through consider phlebas
It’s from the Algebraist which I think is technically not a Culture book. But many people say you can read it as a sort of Culture prequel.
I will now read from the .wiki
Characters.
Main.
Combos.
A. B. A. B. B. A.
Imagine telling your deity of choice to git gud noob
Older brother: Here bro, that’s your controller.
Now this is a religion I can get behind
The younger brother running the simulation hits the reset button or deletes the game file to restart again.
The fact that we keep avoiding the end of the world probably means he is save scumming.
Who says we avoided the end of the world? It probably happened hundreds of times already but the kid keeps resetting everything and doing it over and over and over again.
That’s their point, hence “save scumming”.
