Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
- Thread starter Magical Realist
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Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Could a computer simulation in principle even figure out it was a simulation? It seems it would have to have some knowledge of the non-virtual reality that it was in fact entirely sealed off from.
Nick Bostrom has another paper where he poses Emulation rather than Simulation.
The main difference between the two is that a Simulation is what we currently term various computational models that are themselves not an actual reality (For instance there are simulations for training the armed forces which require shooting people, but no real people are actually shot), where as an Emulation is a fully working version running on a different platform.
So we aren't likely to be in a Simulation (Unless you have seen points pop-up in the corner of your HUD), this however doesn't rule out not being an Emulation. There are many potential avenues for reasoning in regards to emulation, obviously I'd pen mine here however I've already posted to enough threads here on the subject (albeit most of the time it will appear abstract word salad).
The main difference between the two is that a Simulation is what we currently term various computational models that are themselves not an actual reality (For instance there are simulations for training the armed forces which require shooting people, but no real people are actually shot), where as an Emulation is a fully working version running on a different platform.
So we aren't likely to be in a Simulation (Unless you have seen points pop-up in the corner of your HUD), this however doesn't rule out not being an Emulation. There are many potential avenues for reasoning in regards to emulation, obviously I'd pen mine here however I've already posted to enough threads here on the subject (albeit most of the time it will appear abstract word salad).
No because a computer isn't alive, breathing, eating or murdering people. A computer would have a more "ordered" type of world whereby things "fit" in well.
That would explain the dead pixels in the sky.
No. A full blown sim is not likely. If the human brain were hackable data can be injected from an off planet source...or an on planet source. I have not seen any evidence of brain hacking though.
Sure then all the hackers would need to do is intercept visual transmissions and alter decisions, actions\reactions. Right down to deciding very basic tasks.
Not necessarily. Remember in The Matrix it was explained that there was a first Matrix that was a perfect world. Problem is, it was too good, so people didn't buy into the illusion and kept dying off. Part of what makes reality is how crappy it is.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
So would an emulation still be a virtual reality albeit one it which the players would suffer real world deleterious effects and rewards? Something like the Matrix in which a fatal kick by Mr. Smith resulted in real bodily/brain damage in the chair?
Sure. The body feels what the mind tells it to feel. Is there some person who can construct a completely intelligent universe to simulate or emulate their own and can merge the dimensions together like "Inception"?
Possibilities are endless. Realities come and go with the "now".
Possibilities are endless. Realities come and go with the "now".
This bares the question "What is a Singularity?"
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keith1
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The html doesn't address the the more plausible dynamic, that is evident as the naturally-occurring, finely resolute, Planck realm/quark emanations.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
But doesn't the idea that everything is based on a sort of fizzy quantum foam where particles pop in and out of existence of match the scenario of a pixellated substrate? It seems rather identical to me. In fact, if you rub your eyes for like about 10 seconds, you first see the beautiful array of fractal-like yellow squares. But when you stop, about 2 seconds later the "screen" will fade into bluish-white TV noise--the EXACT same thing we see on out TV sets when it on a stationless channel! This is surely irrefutable proof that we are sitting inside a video-transmitted matrix of SOME sort..
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
If Reality is crappier than our Matrix then maybe it's better to live inside the Matrix and think IT'S Reality. In fact, maybe we ourselves created our Matrix in the far future so we wouldn't have to live in the crappy reality we found ourselves living in. Question is, what could be crappier than THIS Matrix-generated Reality of ours?
Logging in and finding even more of your posts.Question is, what could be crappier than THIS Matrix-generated Reality of ours?
As John Searle once said, a simulation of a pizza wouldn't become edible to an actual biological entity even if you represented the pizza down to its molecular structure with those electronic relationships of countless on-off switchings. That latter is the problem: Hardware remains hardware and manipulated electricity still remains electricity. No matter how complex you make their connections they never literally transform into the virtual fairy tale expressed on the monitor. The pixels on the screen aren't even conceptualized as that until the light/sound waves are finally inputted into an observer's brain.
But that said, a variety of substrates producing mental states in general may be not be much of a problem, since they're just micro-processes producing outward body behaviors: Beliefs and judgements consist of talking about and acting on internal operations relating to such. But the 'conscious experiences' part, OTOH, is more along the line of "Let's assume warpdrive, wormholes, or hyperspace transitions are possible, so we could colonize this part of the galaxy fairly fast..."
Until it actually is confirmed that a computer simulation of a brain can have visual, auditory, and so-forth experiences arising like its literal biochemical counterpart, the issue is simply hanging in the air. Because if the brain simulation doesn't have such manifestations in conjunction to what corresponds to its perceptual and dream activity, then there's little need to bother with this topic's question. Virtual beings living a life in absence to itself is not a complete replication of a non-virtual life.
If consciousness could compute things that have been proven to be uncomputable, then this would imply that consciousness looked like it was associated to the hardware of the brain, but was really running off some hardware that could compute our physics, but cannot be computed by our physics. That's about the only thing I could think of as evidence.