>The chance we are not living in a computer simulation is

File: descartesDemon.jpg (444KB, 1000x1500px) Image search: [Google]

444KB, 1000x1500px

it's impossible to know. retards think assigning statistical chances to things is some kind of magic but it's just a representation of what we do know, and we don't know anything at that level.

see pic for perspective

There is none, this shit is as undisprovable (and as unprovable) as solipsism. There is no logical reason not to believe in it.

>>2665555
Our development of computers does not entail development of simulations by other species.

>>2665555
If this is a simulation, then simulate THIS, bitch!
*punches you*

>>2665597

How is that an argument? Are you saying sensations can't be simulated?

File: 1482054150709.jpg (42KB, 544x499px) Image search: [Google]

42KB, 544x499px

>>2665555
It's based on the assumption that given enough time, probability for developing tech capable to run a simulation approaches 1.

>>2665555
luvvin them dijjits gurl

If you try really hard and are extra clever you can gain the attention of the programmers.

It's been done before but I've had a few words back and forth.

They mostly tell me that we all need to stop fucking each other over and that there's enough for everyone if we did it right.

They say to get along with one another and don't kill each other.

And that we're all being graded down here. If we're pretty good people we move to a better simulation which is nice and comfy.

If we're very bad we reload and start over. But I asked them "Doesn't that make the whole simulation full of assholes???" and they laughed and said yes.

Then they told me to be good. Fuck. No one ever believes me.

>>2665604

Yeah, Elon Musk mentioned that when he first made that statement about the probability of not being in a simulation being one in billions. His evidence for why that assumption is true is that forty years ago video games were just two rectangles and a circle (Pong), and in less than a single human lifetime it's progressed at such an extreme rate that even if progress slowed down significantly you could still see how we're on a trajectory to perfect replication of reality in a game.

>>2665555

We have absolutely no idea whether it would ever be possible to create a computer capable of calculating all the variables of the Universe, we don't even properly understand quantum mechanics yet, never mind what lies beyond that. Nor do we have any idea whether we will hit some kind of physical limitation on computer design.

>>2665630
You need a computer at least the size of our universe to track information about every single particle in our universe.

>>2665630

>calculating all the variables of the Universe

You don't need to do that. Most of the research into our own perception tells us what we're actually aware of from moment to moment is a lot less detailed or coherent than what we believe we're aware of. You can make a successful simulation without needing to waste anywhere near the computational cost required for fully reproducing every little detail of how the universe appears. Your real target isn't perfectly reproducing the universe, it's creating something that perfectly tricks observers into believing it's the universe.

How is the "universe is a computer simulation" meme differ from the idea that the universe was created by god(s)?

They're both untestable hypotheses that assign creative power to higher beings.

12 I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3 And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— 4 was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. 5 I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses.

>>2665555
Of all things, why did "computer simulation" become a meme? What does it signify differently than any other ontological construct?

no evidence

>>2665662
Much worse

In the new tech paradigm it's all fake AND there are no consequences for actions

It's a moral relativists wet dream

>>2665652
>implying it isn't an infinitely nested simulation
You actually need to be able to run infinite sub-simulations as well.

>>2665555
He assumes that people would want to create or live in a computer simulation in the first place. Who wants to undergo the grind of No Man's Sky times 10 for the 'exploration'?

>>2665662
We have created computer simulations, whereas we have not yet created universes.

>>2665662

Agreed. In the end its just stating that there's a higher power that created us somehow. It doesn't make our reality any less real either.

>>2665604
How did they beta test this tech? How is this tech actually powered? It would take an ungodly amount of power most likely. I'm pretty sure this approaches AI-Complete territory.

>>2665681
Procedurally generated.

>>2665662

>How is the "universe is a computer simulation" meme differ from the idea that the universe was created by god(s)?

The god idea says there's a magic being who can be used as an explanation for the universe existing because lol magic.

The computer simulation idea in contrast isn't about magic and isn't even used as an explanation for why the universe exists. It's just the observation that our own progress from Pong to modern computational power has been so great that you can easily imagine computation of the near future being capable of simulations indistinguishable from reality. And if we're on that trajectory in such a tiny fraction of time relative to our overall evolutionary history, then it isn't unreasonable to think about how this sort of progress isn't unique but in fact commonplace in the history of the universe.And if it's commonplace, then we don't know whether we're in the prime universe or a simulated one. And if you bring in the Copernican principle that we're probably not special and probably don't have a privileged position in reality (e.g. the Earth probably isn't the center of the universe), then we're also probably not in the prime universe but instead in one of the billions of simulated universes.

>>2665555
Even if it is a simulation your understanding of the word, reality, simulation and everything would be simulated. So either we are not living in a simulation, in which case thinking about whether we are is futile, or we are living in a simulation, in which case all our ideas about how the world is are simulated, in which case thinking about this is futile. QED it doesn't matter.

>>2665697
Sure, but your hardware needs to be able to support infinite layers.

>>2665706

No it doesn't. It just needs to let you think it does.

>>2665568
>retards think assigning statistical chances to things is some kind of magic
True it can never offer a 100% guarantee, but unfalsifiable statements are essentially pointless in the realm of arguments, since you can't really empirically corroborate or challenge them. Educated guesses do matter in the real world.

>>2665710

>Educated guesses do matter in the real world.

You mean they matter in our simulated world?

>>2665689
>How did they beta test this tech?
by testing it?
How is this tech actually powered?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain

>>2665698
Who programmed the simulation?

>>2665716
I did. Sorry for the niggers.

>>2665716

Non-magical biological organisms that are a lot like us because they probably based our characteristics on our own?

>>2665721

*on their own

>>2665698

> you can easily imagine computation of the near future being capable of simulations indistinguishable from reality.

No you can not. Your analogy is like using the progress between horse drawn carriages and modern Formula 1 cars to assume that we will at some point have cars that go infinitely fast. Not only is the assumption of linear progression in technology false, there are physical boundaries that we can not overcome.

>>2665725
False equivalence.

>>2665721
Where did they come from?

>>2665725

>infinitely fast

You don't need infinitely good computation to successfully simulate a universe. It only needs to be good enough to pass for a real universe.

>>2665715
I mean how is it tested when there would be glitches? Wouldn't people realize something is off? And Dyson sphere? Who built this and with what resources? Are humans even doing this or are aliens creating the simulation? See where I'm going here.

This assertion and it's logical implications become more and more complicated and convoluted as the concept is tossed around. Any potential proof one way or the other will always be suspect because of the nature of the problem. Rationality is even suspect. What I'm saying is that this is some of the most useless conjecture possible. We'd be better off discussing Bigfoot than something that can't readily be proven, disproven, or even understood.

>>2665710
retard, the point was that unfalsifiable statements don't become falsifiable because you word them as a probability.

>>2665731

They either evolved naturally in the prime universe or were simulated by other creatures who either evolved naturally in the prime universe or were simulated by other creatures. At some point, there were probably prime universe creatures who evolved naturally to begin with.

>>2665732
So you mean able to fool billions of beings possessing the most complex and powerful natural computer(brain) imaginable?

>>2665698
>simulations indistinguishable from reality to humans must be perfectly representative of the entire universe in total

you realize any simulation we make of the universe would deal entirely with those objects we can actually perceive, right? It could never include objects we are incapable of perceiving, and thus there will ALWAYS be some shadow of doubt over the project.

After all, how many things in the universe can we actually perceive?

>>2665727

Not at all.

>>2665732

Simulating something like that would quite likely run into simple physical limitations. Your assumption that we will inevitably become capable of doing such a thing is unfounded.

>>2665741

Which still requires way, way, way less computational power than faithfully reproducing every detail of the prime universe.

>>2665743
>After all, how many things in the universe can we actually perceive?

Literally everything.

>>2665738
I explicitly acknowledged that you fag

>>2665751
>requires way, way, way less computational power than faithfully reproducing every detail of the known prime universe

fixd, also can you substantiate this claim? It seems to me that if your simulation only needs to *pass* for real, then the human simulation of the universe inside all our skulls already seem to meet your definition.

>>2665740
But where did they come from? That just reads like piling on the original question.

>>2665684
>>2665698
That is not evidence.

If I create some hydrogen sulphide in a laboratory that does not prove there are other versions of me throughout the universe who manufactured all the naturally occurring hydrogen sulphide.

>>2665764

I'll repeat that the simulated universe idea isn't meant to explain the origin of the universe the way the god idea is. The origin of the prime universe is explained the same way it is in mainstream cosmology. We're just probably not in that prime universe but instead in a simulation that was either constructed by creatures in the prime universe or else creatures in a universe simulated by some other layer.

>>2665754

how many fingers am I holding up? Exactly how many particles and how much energy exists in the entirety of reality?

We couldn't even accurately simulate the actions of the sun down to the minute if we wanted to.

>>2665778
*looks*

You have one hand on your dick

>>2665774
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

>>2665778

You don't need to accurately simulate every particle in the prime universe. You only need to create a passable simulation.

>>2665771
You didn't ask for evidence, you asked for the difference.

And the difference is that computer simulations are a reality, so the idea is naturally gaining traction.

>>2665774
This approaches the point of being so "unknowable" that it's effectively irrelevant to even discuss.

>>2665555
His logic denies reality.

>>2665784

I don't understand what you're trying to argue.

The simulated universe idea isn't meant as an explanation for how the universe began. Take the mainstream cosmological view of the big bang and natural evolution, that's what happened in the prime universe. All the simulated universe idea claims is that we're not in the prime universe. It exists and we could be in it, but there are billions of more chances we're in one of the simulated universes downstream from it instead.

>>2665778

We can perceive all those things.

>>2665555
this is ridiculous because it assumes you can replicate conciousness in a computer. Who's to say that my video game characters aren't already "living" then? there's only a difference in complexity

>>2665787
>You only need to create a passable simulation.

a merely passable simulation wouldn't be very stable, and it would actually be very small. You certainly wouldn't be able to run very many simulations within the simulation, since there would be a degradation effect due to the incompleteness of the prime simulation.

>>2665802

The assumption "The universe was magically created and then spawned intelligent life that was capable of making infinitely nested simulated universes" seems more unlikely than the assumption "The universe was magically created and then spawned intelligent life".

File: IMG_1080.png (51KB, 480x480px) Image search: [Google]

51KB, 480x480px

>>2665802
>According to the Big Bang theory, the universe emerged from an extremely dense and hot state (singularity). Space itself has been expanding ever since, carrying galaxies with it, like raisins in a rising loaf of bread. The graphic scheme above is an artist's conception illustrating the expansion of a portion of a flat universe.

>After a classical education at a Jesuit secondary school, the Collège du Sacré-Coeur, in Charleroi, Lemaître began studying civil engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven at the age of 17. In 1914, he interrupted his studies to serve as an artillery officer in the Belgian army for the duration of World War I. At the end of hostilities, he received the Belgian War Cross with palms.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître#

>>2665803
>we can perceive all particles that exist

anon that's not true

>>2665801
People have been doing that for 3000 years

>>2665826
??

>>2665824

Tell me which existing particle we can not perceive?

Dude should read up on gnositiscm. It's the same thing without techno-mumbo jumbo. We are Spirits of light trapped in mortal shells but through God's grace and our own efforts we can transcend this world after our death.

>>2665814

>replicate conciousness
>Who's to say that my video game characters aren't already "living" then?

You're acting like consciousness is some single attribute that things either just "have" or "don't have," when I think a better understanding of it would be as a suitcase word for lots of little details of behavior. And yes, existing programs already have some of these details of behavior today. Why do you think self-driving cars exist? It's not that those self-driving cars have been explicitly programmed with everything they need to do to maneuver around on roads with other drivers on them. They were trained to learn this in ways that are comparable to how we learn.

>>2665555
I think the argument against this is that you'd need a computer bigger than the universe to simulate it.

Computers don't compute on a subatomic level, unless you count passing electrons from atom to atom. Therefore, a part of the computer in charge of computing a certain subatomic particle would have to be larger than the particle it is simulating.

If it were the same size, it wouldn't be simulating, it would just... well... be.

Additionally, each individual particle would have to be computed at the same time as one another. Each particle would have to have its own computer, which would be hook up to a network of other computers. This networking may or may not result in a an even larger computer system.

I think the universe is much better explained as an abstraction of the interactions between its fundamental particles.

>>2665837
If we can't perceive it, how can we know they exist? Although It's ill informed hubris to assume we can observe every particle in the universe at this point.

>>2665849

>you'd need a computer bigger than the universe to simulate it

Only if you're trying to perfectly simulate every single detail of a universe. Which you don't need to do. You only need to make a passable simulation. You don't need to simulate a tree falling in a forest when no one's there to hear it.

>>2665862

> You don't need to simulate a tree falling in a forest when no one's there to hear it.

You do actually. The simulation would very quickly become inconsistent if you didn't.

>>2665821

>The assumption "The universe was magically created and then spawned intelligent life that was capable of making infinitely nested simulated universes" seems more unlikely than the assumption "The universe was magically created and then spawned intelligent life".

Sure, and both are way less likely than the assumption the universe non-magically emerged and then spawned intelligent life that was capable of making finite nested simulated universes.

>>2665823

Yes, everyone knows George Lemaitre was a catholic priest. What's your point? There's still a mainstream cosmological model of the universe's emergence that doesn't involve creator gods.

>>2665874

You can simulate the illusion of consistency.

>>2665877

Magically in this case simply means "beyond our (current) ability to understand". And you need some magical creation occurring at some point, unless you have a theory for existence came to be in the first place?

>>2665850

Their existence is defined by our ability to perceive it. If we can not perceive it, it effectively does not exist.

>>2665888
>Their existence is defined by our ability to perceive it. If we can not perceive it, it effectively does not exist.
We know colors exist that we can't perceive.

>>2665879

And as your simulated lifeforms become intelligent enough to understand more and more of their universe, your simulation eventually becomes equally complex as and thus indistinguishable from 'the real thing', because that's the only way to maintain consistency.

>>2665862
That's ridiculous. We can observe individual atoms and know certain subatomic particles exist. If what you are saying is true, then why would we be able to even see atoms? In fact, we 'see' atoms by firing electrons at them and observing how the electrons bounce back. This proves the existance of atoms and subatomic particles

>>2665883

>Magically in this case simply means "beyond our (current) ability to understand".

No it doesn't. "We don't know" isn't the same as "it was magic."

>And you need some magical creation occurring at some point, unless you have a theory for existence came to be in the first place?

Here's a scenario that doesn't involve magic:

There's an eternal ground of reality that's always just existed, and unlike the God iea, it's super-simple and not at all intelligent. And one of its attributes is it's always in a mild state of flux. So little universes that aren't eternal and do have beginnings and endings emerge from it like bubbles from the ocean. And the prime universe is one of those bubbles. It began with the big bang, but it wasn't the case that all of reality started with the big bang, just that particular universe.

The key thing that keeps it out of the magic zone is not putting inane characteristics like intelligence on the preexisting ground of reality since intelligence requires a shit ton of prerequisites for it to exist, making it the worst possible candidate for an attribute of the least built up, most basic state of reality prior to any particular universe's beginning.

>>2665896

Obviously we can perceive them because we know they exist. Perception is not the same thing as the human eye being able to distinguish them.

There are two questions here:
>A) What is wrong with the view that we are living in a computer simulation (i.e. simulationism)?
>B) What is wrong with the Internet-famous argument Elon Musk gave for simulationism?
Most people ITT are answering the first one but OP asked the second one.

Musk's argument is roughly:
>(P1) Based on the advancement of our own simulation technology, we should assume simulating a universe is possible.
>(P2) If simulating a universe is possible, we should assume civilizations that came before us and advanced to higher technological sophistication than us did it.
>(C1) So we should assume past civilizations were universe-simulators.
>(P3) If past civilizations simulated universes, we should assume they simulated not just one but a huge number of different ones (say billions).
>(C2) So we should assume there are billions of simulated universes created by past civilizations.
>(P4) If there are billions of simulated universes, then for any creatures now in existence, the probability that they find themselves in the one unsimulated universe ("base reality") rather than a simulated one is the number of base realities (1) divided by the number of simulated universes (billions).
>(C3) So any currently existing creatures have a 1 in billions probability of finding themselves in base reality.
>(P5) We are such creatures.
>(C4) So the probability that we find ourselves in base reality is 1 in billions.

>>2665911
Going by your logic though we would have never tried to find out because we would have assumed only our perceptions are real.

>>2665911

Knowing something exists isn't the same thing as perceiving it. You can infer something's existence abstractly without perceiving it.

>>2665910

>No it doesn't. "We don't know" isn't the same as "it was magic."

Yes it does because that's the way I used it. That's how language works. I used magic as a placeholder for "beyond our (current) ability to understand".

Your scenario in no way an answer to the question of how existence came to be. "It was always there" does not excuse you from answering that question, and it certainly isn't any less "magic" than an almighty godlike creator.

>>2665904

>We can observe individual atoms and know certain subatomic particles exist.

You can make a simulation where people believe that, yes.

>>2665910
>So little universes that aren't eternal and do have beginnings and endings emerge from it like bubbles from the ocean.
Wouldn't it run out of bubbles eventually?

>>2665927

>"It was always there" does not excuse you from answering that question, and it certainly isn't any less "magic" than an almighty godlike creator.

It's less magic because everything we know about intelligence tells us its emergence was entirely dependent on large amounts of prior physical evolution. It's one of the latest attributes to emerge in the history of known physical phenomena. If you're coming up with attributes for the eternal ground of reality that allows for finite things with beginnings like the observable universe to come into existence, intelligence is the worst candidate for an attribute. Having a non-intelligent ground of reality in contrast makes a lot of sense. In both cases there's a preexisting eternal ground of reality, it's just that in your case you inexplicably have it being a magic guy which shits all over the whole point that it's supposed to be the least built up state of reality.

>>2665922

We are now starting to argue semantics, but in my point of view this means we can perceive that it exist because we can perceive the logical inference that leads us to conclude that it exist.

>>2665929
How complex of an algorithm would you need for that? Wouldn't that just increase the size of your computer even more? That is, if you had make an algorithm for every possible scenario in which intelligent life discovers that they live in a simulation? Would the creators even be able to account for every scenario?

>>2665936

No, the bubbles pop and go back to the ocean and everything's conserved.

>>2665958
Then where do minds come from?

>>2665952

I don't think it's semantics to recognize the huge difference between perceiving something vs. inferring it through mathematics. They're two totally different processes.

>>2665951

You are assuming that what holds true in our universe is a useful indicator for what holds true outside our universe and can be used to infer things about how our universe came to be. This assumption I deem unfounded.

File: eldonstark.png (47KB, 329x328px) Image search: [Google]

47KB, 329x328px

>>2665789
>You didn't ask for evidence, you asked for the difference.
Is this a troll? Do you have difficulty keeping track of the context of a conversation?

If what you say is not valid evidence then there is no difference.

>computer simulations are a reality,
loaded statemet, you have yet to prove it is a reality

>the idea is naturally gaining traction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

You're obviously full of shit. I'm only interested in why you are so obsessed with this meme.

Are you all from some reddit echo chamber or something?

How did you attach this spook to your ego? Are you riding on the belief that all your problems will be solved once you hack the matrix?

>>2665967

What do minds have to do with anything? "Mind" is a word for the abstraction of behavior organisms exhibit. And these organisms are made out of matter which exists in one of the bubble universes that emerged from the timeless ground of reality.

>>2665976

Nothing was ever discovered by pure mathematics. Applying mathematics to things we have perceived has allowed us to infer from that the existence of things.

>>2665983
If that's the origin of matter what is the origin of mind?

File: Soviet-Space-Propaganda-21.jpg (111KB, 600x912px) Image search: [Google]

111KB, 600x912px

>>2665613

>>2665983

>bubbling timeless ground of reality

Not magic everyone! This totally make sense because you know I don't know

>>2665622
That sounds stupid. All the progress we have made is adding an extra z axis to video game space and making more detailed images by using smaller squares.

>>2665979

We can only work with the evidence we have. You can choose to throw out the evidence we have because "lol, we don't know it'll be the same," but that will move you further from reason and closer to magical thinking.

And that aside, why would you think intelligence would require all these prerequisites of incremental evolution to emerge and would further depend heavily on physical scaffolding to function on our planet if it was the least built up, purest original state of reality in the form of an intelligent God? That's pretty nonsensical.

>>2665914
Dennett argued (in the beginning of "Consciousness Explained") that the brain-in-a-vat scenario is physically impossible, because mapping all the possible outputs to different inputs results in a combinatorial explosion that requires computing technology beyond physical limits.
This argument could probably be used to deny P1.

>>2666009

You again assume that what you have is evidence. It has not at all been established that this is evidence. Your reason for doing so is simply "because its convenient". Its like you assume correlation to imply causation just because it is convenient to do so.

Besides that, there is nothing simple about an eternally existing bubbling thing that makes realities out of fucking nothing.

>>2665995

If we agree there needs to be a timeless ground of reality, then the only question is what this timeless ground of reality would be like. And non-intelligent is definitely less magic than intelligent. Everything we know about intelligence tells us it's the furthest thing from the simplest, least built up state of reality you could pick.

And also this all assumes you believe there does need to be a timeless ground of reality. I'm running with that assumption, but you could question whether that even needs to be the case. If it doesn't, then you can just say the finite observable universe came into existence spontaneously. I think the timeless ground of reality premise makes more sense personally, but I'm not claiming it's the right answer. I'm only claiming it's a corrected version of the God idea that gets rid of the intelligence problem.

>>2665914
But I think the main problem with the argument, and with simulationism in general, is P4.
There are two possible universe-simulations: A Matrix-style simulation, where unsimulated creatures are plugged into a virtual reality, and a complete from-the-bottom simulation, where any creatures that might exist are simulated wholesale.
Simulationists like Musk do not suggest that we live in a Matrix-style simulation, so they believe in a wholesale simulation.
But if we are creatures in such a simulation, then we do not exist. So P4 is false. The reason is this:
>If you are looking at a painting of people, you are not looking at people. No matter how realistic the painting is, or how much the people seem to exist, they do not. The fact that the painting is a painting of people consists solely in the fact that the painting is such that it is capable of giving the relevant range of creatures (here, humans) the impression that there are people.
>If you are playing a video game with people (or people-like characters) in it, you are not seeing people. No matter how realistic the video game is, or how much the people (or people-like characters) seem to exist, they do not. The fact that the video game has people (or people-like characters) in it consists solely in the fact that its interactive visuals are such that they are capable of giving the relevant range of creatures (here, humans) the impression that there are people (or people-like characters).
A painted person or a video game character is not a real creature but by definition simply something that appears like it to certain real creatures.
A simulation is the same way. A simulated creature is not a real creature but by definition simply something that appears like it to certain real creatures.
But we are real creatures (P5 is true). So if we are simulated, we are in a Matrix-style simulation. But this is not Musk's simulationism. So Musk's simulationism is false.

>>2666041

>there is nothing simple about an eternally existing bubbling thing that makes realities out of fucking nothing.

It would be by definition the simplest thing in existence. It would need to be because it exists prior to complexity and is the basis for the emergence of complexity. And again that's the problem with the God idea. It starts with an extremely complex / built up attribute (intelligence) which makes it completely fail as an origin explanation.

>>2665734
maybe they patch it? maybe there is a far more advanced civilization that is gaining the ability to emulate consciousness. maybe they want to transfer themselves into a large computer and we are just here to test things out.

>>2666041
>>2666058

Also:

>out of fucking nothing

That's wrong. The whole point is this timeless ground of reality isn't nothing. It's something, the something that's always been there. The universes emerge from it, not from nothing.

>>2665914
So we do not live in a wholesale from-the-bottom simulation (based on >>2666047).
So either we do not live in a simulation, or we live in a Matrix-style simulation.
Dennett's argument (>>2666033) works against the Matrix idea. But assume it's unsound.

Musk's argument doesn't work as well for a Matrix-style simulation anyway, since it requires real creatures to be plugged into the simulated universe in order for the question of where they find themselves to even arise.
Musk would have to hold either (i) that we are currently all of us alien creatures plugged into this Matrix--in which case, how many of those creatures have to exist such that we still get the billions of simulated universes with creatures in them? Or (ii) that each simulated universe, to fix the preceding numbers problem, has only one (or a few) creature(s) plugged into it, which is essentially solipsism.
Also, why would past civilizations have plugged creatures into their simulations like this rather than just simulate universes wholesale?
So if we are talking about Matrix-style simulations, P2 and P3 are implausible.

Now I've shown how all premises except P5 are questionable.
Does this answer your question, >>2665555?

>>2666047

>A simulated creature is not a real creature but by definition simply something that appears like it to certain real creatures.
>But we are real creatures (P5 is true).

I don't see how that follows. There's a difference between real and simulated creatures, just like how there's a difference between creatures with two legs and creatures with four legs. That difference doesn't mean you can't make statements about how both kinds of creatures work. You can say "simulated means they aren't creatures at all," but that's just a semantics game. The simulations are a lot closer to identical with the non-simulated creatures than the painted people are to non-painted people. The difference isn't great enough to simply discard simulated people as non-entities. You can easily entertain the notion of a simulated person who has every important characteristic a non-simulated person has. Most of what we consider important characteristics that define a human being are abstract / non-physical to begin with. We can easily accept Robo-cop as a human "on the inside" for example even though his body is almost entirely non-organic.

>>2666263
>You can say "simulated means they aren't creatures at all," but that's just a semantics game.
I don't see how you could maintain this without throwing away all of philosophy as a "semantics game."
>The difference isn't great enough to simply discard simulated people as non-entities.
Simulated people are entities, but those entities are not people. The difference is absolutely great enough to discard them as non-people. Same goes for painted people and video game characters. They are entities whose being painted imitations or virtual imitations of people consists in their appearing as people to a certain range of creatures.
This doesn't just go for creatures and their fictional (painted, video-game, simulated) versions but for everything. A simulated hurricane is not a hurricane. It's something that closely mimics a hurricane, closely enough for it to be a useful facsimile for our purposes. Similar remarks apply to painted landscapes, video game monsters and castles, etc.
Not understanding that simulated people are not people is like not understanding that a character in a book is not a real person, it's not understanding the difference between imitation and reality.

>A simulated hurricane is not a hurricane. It's something that closely mimics a hurricane, closely enough for it to be a useful facsimile for our purposes.

Well for one thing a hurricane is defined more by its physicality. A human is defined more by non-physical / abstract traits. You could change out the substrate for the human mind with something other than a brain and still end up with someone most of us would acknowledge as human if they can carry a conversation / pass the turing test.

For another thing, it isn't just a case of the real thing vs. a mere approximation. There's an entire spectrum of approximation leading up to the real thing. At the shallow end of the spectrum the approximation would be very different from the real thing. But the spectrum has another side to it where the approximation is increasingly close to identical with the real thing.

Calculus is based on the fact you can make an approximation that approaches the real thing and work with it as successfully as if you had access to the real thing itself. It's not on / off or is / isn't, it's a spectrum of increasing fidelity. You can't throw out all approximation / simulation as "not real." It doesn't work like that. What is real? Whatever answer there is to that question, that's what your simulation can approach. At 100% fidelity it would be interchangeable with the real thing, but 99.99% fidelity probably wouldn't be all that different from the real thing itself. It doesn't make any sense to throw out 99.99% fidelity because you equate it with a poor approximation like what you'd get with .01% fidelity.

>>2665555
Wouldn't making the proposition that it is the case that we could be living inside a computer simulation make a great number of assumptions to how the actual world (wherever it may be) is?

Quite simply, it seems that this is talk of icing, rather then talk of cake.
Supposing this doesn't add in a practical way to any of our knowledge. It just makes another claim we cannot investigate to any degree,
and to speak of it as if it were a priori seems incorrect considering the materialistic nature of what a simulation (in the technological sense) would be.

>>2665555

Shame, I thought he had a more abstract argument.

The flaw in looking at our own reality is...

Well think about it like this: Could Mario derive our reality from the one he's being simulated in?

There's no necessity of fidelity or "reverse-engineering" potential in a simulation in comparison to the frame which gave birth to the simulation.

Computers have given us the idea of a "simulation" but in terms of trying to reverse-engineer a higher reality...well we're in the same place as the ancients. Even a "discovery" of a "higher" entity could be merely part of the same frame.

>>2666483

I don't think Mario is complicated enough to have what you could consider thoughts. So I can't accept that as a functional analogy for what a simulation that can have thoughts would be able to do.

>>2666483

or to put it in another way

There's no use value in the idea of a universal simulation other than being more open to the use of morally relative strategies in, at least, our local space.

For all we know, we could be nested in an infinite set of simulations simulating simulations ad infinitum.

>>2666496
>So I can't accept that as a functional analogy for what a simulation that can have thoughts would be able to do.

Okay a subsystem of the simulation creates an analogous entity and attaches it to what it expects "Mario" to perceive. It expects a world of turtles and pipes. It doesn't need skepticism about the completeness of the reality.

It's not about how "complicated" Mario is. It's how necessarily "complete" a simulation has to be in order to insert goal-seeking and evaluative entities as observers (Hint: Not much).

>>2666513

>Okay a subsystem of the simulation creates an analogous entity and attaches it to what it expects "Mario" to perceive. It expects a world of turtles and pipes. It doesn't need skepticism about the completeness of the reality.

So what about simulations that do have skepticism about the completeness of their reality? I don't understand what you're trying to get at by making analogies using cases that are defined by *not* having the key attribute of the thing the analogy is supposed to clarify.

File: 1336363287411.jpg (105KB, 1506x1040px) Image search: [Google]

105KB, 1506x1040px

>>2665555

If there is a super computer that could generate 1 million false realities, then that means there is 1 million matrixes vs 1 real world, so the probability that you live in one of these false realities greatly outnumbers the odds of you living in the real world

thats basically the logic behind this shit.

>>2666527
>So what about simulations that do have skepticism about the completeness of their reality?

The point isn't the skepticism. The point is that trying to derive a higher simulation from attributes of a "lower" simulation is a fool's game.

Not to mention that another point is that skepticism isn't a necessary part of an evaluative entity. You can create ones that accept any bullshit data and act on that.

How is "turtles all the way down" different from "reality is like Big blue running calculations man!"?

>>2666445
>You could change out the substrate for the human mind with something other than a brain and still end up with someone most of us would acknowledge as human if they can carry a conversation / pass the turing test.
I don't know if this is true, but even if it is, there is an absolute difference between something that perfectly mimics a human and something that is a human.
>99.99% fidelity probably wouldn't be all that different from the real thing itself.
But every element used in the simulation is itself not the thing it simulates. The way you talk about "99.99% fidelity" is weird here, since e.g. the simulated hurricane would not consist of atoms at all but of simulated atoms; we would judge the fidelity of the simulation to the thing it is a simulation of based on how alike it is to the aspects we're interested in. Even at 100% fidelity, the simulation would not be the thing, not even the same type of thing (not made of the same materials, not of the same ontology, not having the same dimensions), but just a perfect simulation of it. A perfect simulation of something is not an absolute twin of the thing it is a simulation of. That would be an exact reconstruction or duplication, not a perfect simulation.
Think about the simulated universe Musk imagines we live in. Every atom in this universe is itself just a simulation of an atom; to what degree it is an "atom" at all consists in how useful a facsimile of an atom it is to the simulators--which is utterly unlike the ontology of real atoms. You can't get a bunch of simulated atoms to simulate interaction in a way that results in the constitution of a real person that really has his own perspective on the world; only a simulation of a person that may seem to you, the simulator, exactly as if there is a real person.

>>2666541

>The point is that trying to derive a higher simulation from attributes of a "lower" simulation is a fool's game.

Your only arguments for that being the case have been analogies where the subjects are deliberately stripped of the ability to question reality. I really don't understand at all where you're coming from with that. All you did was say "hey, imagine if an entity *didn't* have the capacity for questioning and/or deriving a super-context to their reality, then they'd never be able to question and/or derive a super-context to their reality!"

>skepticism isn't a necessary part of an evaluative entity.

It doesn't need to be necessary. It just needs to be possible.

>How is "turtles all the way down" different from "reality is like Big blue running calculations man!"?

Simulated universe isn't meant to answer the question of how the prime universe emerged. Whatever the standard cosmological answer to the observable universe's emergence is, that's what happened in the prime universe and there's your answer. Turtles all the way down is an infinite regress because it keeps trying to explain the origin of the universe. Simulated universe isn't an infinite regress, it's just an acknowledgement that there's a prime universe and simulated universes and it's extremely unlikely ours happens to be the prime one. Whatever the number of simulated universes is, it isn't infinite.

This is what happens when STEMfags try to philosophy.

>>2665879
>simulate the illusion of consistency

do you not understand what basic system instability is? If there is a prime simulation that merely passes for consistent (lets say to all humans to rule out differences in perceptual ability or tool sensitivity) and is not consistent in reality, then there can't be more than one simulation that merely passes for consistent with in it.

So the odds drop VERY quickly that we're in a simulation if it only passes for complete. It has to actually BE a complete system for those odds to increase exponentially.

>>2666577

>there is an absolute difference between something that perfectly mimics a human and something that is a human

I don't see what that difference would be in a perfect mimicry aside from negligible semantics. Assuming for a moment that we're real and not simulations ourselves, the perfect mimicry would be just like us. If you injure them, they'd respond with pain behavior just like us.

Now you could try to argue there's some magical "actually experiencing pain" thing that we have and they don't, but I don't buy that. My view of pain is that the behavior is the thing itself. We engage in pain behavior, or pleasure behavior, or surprise behavior, or anxiety behavior, etc, and we abstract out the ideas of pain, pleasure, surprise, or anxiety as shortcuts for expressing information to each other. The reason qualia seem so immediate and beyond scientific dissection in this view of things is precisely because qualia were never real things to begin with but rather abstract ideas like numbers are. You wouldn't ever find the number 5 in the fingers of your hand any more than you'd ever find the color red in an apple because in both cases these aren't real things, they're abstract methods for dealing with real things.

>>2666595

The more degraded the simulation is, the more degraded the capacity for the people being simulated to notice the degradation would become. So that problem solves itself. Retarded surroundings would have retarded people who'd fail to notice the retardation of their surroundings.

File: 1426466265145.jpg (71KB, 550x587px) Image search: [Google]

71KB, 550x587px

>>2665622
>>2665666
>>2665677
>>2665711
>>2665844
>>2665877
>>2665888
>>2665911
>>2665922
>>2666033
>>2666044
>>2666466
>>2666500
>>2666577

>>2666584
>Whatever the standard cosmological answer to the observable universe's emergence is, that's what happened in the prime universe and there's your answer.

? How is that an answer? You don't know anything about a "higher" simulation but you assume that the attributes of a "lower' one are necessarily ones that must be present in a "higher" one?

>where the subjects are deliberately stripped of the ability to question reality.

The point is that the material to question "reality" comes from what the reality presents to you. If all you have is shit, then you make shit models.

My issue isn't about "thinking". My issue is that a "lower" simulation is not bound to provide sufficient material from which to generate sensible hypothesis of what a "higher" simulation has.

>>2666632
you have to understand that it very quickly ceases to be "people" that are simulated, and instead becomes simple shapes, lines, etc. Things that symbolize real objects. None of these would be close to complicated enough to be actually perceptive.

File: 1491386526693.jpg (133KB, 640x863px) Image search: [Google]

133KB, 640x863px

simulationism is secular christianity. It's also as bad or worse than philosophic Idealism in every shape and way

>>2666613
>I don't see what that difference would be in a perfect mimicry aside from negligible semantics.
Compare: I build a snowman outdoors, my brother builds an exactly similar snowman next to it, and you go indoors and create a perfect replica of my snowman in your 3D modeling software.
There is "perfect mimicry" in both what you and my brother did, but there is an absolutely enormous difference between your product and my product that does not obtain between my brother's product and my product. You created something that is not at all a snowman, but just something that, due to our perceptual apparatus, can give us some illusion of the presence of a snowman when we examine it. You created an advanced painting of a snowman.
>My view of pain is that the behavior is the thing itself.
The simulated thing has neither pain nor behavior. Simulated behavior is not behavior but the simulation of behavior. You're confusing the painting with the painted. A simulation is just a very advanced painting.
When I'm playing a video game seeming to see things happening in the video game world, such as a person moving through an environment with events going on, obviously there is some behavior to the image (it's changing in certain ways) but the fact that it depicts a person moving through an active environment just consists in the fact that this is the illusion these shifting colorations give me, a creature with a certain perceptual apparatus.
There's a gradient from a painting to a movie to a video game to a perfect computer simulation. But they are all of the same order of reality. It is logically impossible for any of them to contain an entity that is not illusory, fictional, etc. In a way the environment and persons in a video game are just pretend. But persons and places cannot be real by someone else pretending they are real, or by seeming to be real to someone else.

>>2666718

>There's a gradient from a painting to a movie to a video game to a perfect computer simulation. But they are all of the same order of reality. It is logically impossible for any of them to contain an entity that is not illusory, fictional, etc. In a way the environment and persons in a video game are just pretend. But persons and places cannot be real by someone else pretending they are real, or by seeming to be real to someone else.

There's a gradient from a painting to a movie to a video game to an extremely high quality computer simulation to a brain's generation of a mind.

You need to explain why the brain's generation of a mind is fundamentally different from any other substrate's generation of a mind if you don't agree with that. And whatever that difference is, I'll just say "fine, then we'll cover those details too and now this new technology's generation of a mind is of the same order of reality as the brain's generation of a mind."

Bag joke that became a tool for aggrandizing the Musk brand. And here you all are, you little viruses.

>>2666750

No, he sounded pretty serious and went into details when asked about it. It wasn't just a marketing stunt, Elon's actually a pothead philosopher like that. But congratulations on tricking yourself into believing you were in on some deeper truth that everyone else missed, that probably made you feel nice.

>>2666750

Not a stunt; a component of a broad marketing platform. Muah could be perfectly genuous in the telling, but that doesn't change the telling's function.

>>2666763
>>2666785

Phrasing it in terms of marketing suggests too narrow an objective, though. Really this is part of an ideological campaign, turning minds toward a future that Musk and his ilk are trying to foment.

>>2666785

Not everything is some deliberate plan to market shit to people. Even at companies that are focused on selling shit to consumers you'd be surprised how little of their behavior is rationally planned beforehand. And Musk's operations are about as far away from consumer-centric as you can get. He does blue skies research, as in they prefer to explore more experimental / not necessarily profitable ideas for the sake of discovery than they do rigidly stick to only those ideas that immediately increase their next quarter earnings.

>>2666807

I honestly don't even think Musk thought about it in that way either. He genuinely seems like a clever pothead philosopher to me. He talks about the things he talks about because they're interesting to him in that moment, not because they're meant to condition you towards his new world order.

Case in point: An organized conservative planner type probably wouldn't have a bunch of accidental rocket explosions. His operations had those happen because he's an experimental improviser. A lot of his good ideas are good specifically because they're random shit he imagined without being pinned down by a lot of careful planning or prep work. His strength is he's willing to just run with random new ideas.

>>2666745
>There's a gradient from a painting to a movie to a video game to an extremely high quality computer simulation to a brain's generation of a mind.
I don't see how you place that last step on the same spectrum at all. It's completely out of left field.
>You need to explain why the brain's generation of a mind is fundamentally different from any other substrate's generation of a mind if you don't agree with that.
No. I don't think we can speak of "the brain's generation of a mind" in the first place, but anyway a simulation is not just a different kind of mind-generating substrate from a brain. A simulation is a portrayal of things. It creates certain appearances for certain creatures.

I'm saying that the simulationist is essentially someone who looks at a painting of a person and goes, "If only that image were moving and ultra-responsive, both visually and auditorily, and ultra-detailed, so you could zoom in on it and see a completely realistic portrayal of microphysical processes, etc., then that would be a real person." But it would of course always only amount to a more convincing or realistic portrayal of a person, never a person.

>>2666823
>>2666808

You guys aren't getting it: Musk is the rearward projection of the future machine-master-intelligence sent here to ensure its own realization.

Kinda like reverse Terminator.

>>2666844

>a simulation is not just a different kind of mind-generating substrate from a brain.

Maybe you wouldn't use the word "simulation," but that's a semantics thing.

Tell me this: what would you call a piece of technology that could generate a mind in a near identical way to how the brain generates a mind? That's the simulation I'm talking about, but if you just don't want to call that a simulation and still accept this thing by some other name can still exist, then there's nothing we have to argue about except for which name to call it by.

>>2665568
That comic is incredible. I wish it was much much longer.

the simulation wouldn't be a construct, but rather a dimensional projection. A reproduction with light on a scale impossible to imagine.

>>2665956
>Wouldn't that just increase the size of your computer even more?
The external universe could be so much larger and different than our current that any assumptions about it could be considered silly.

That said, I doubt we're in a simulation.

>>2666862
>Tell me this: what would you call a piece of technology that could generate a mind in a near identical way to how the brain generates a mind?
Like I said, I don't think it's true that "the brain generates the mind," but if we created a machine that had a mind and which had a part which was analogous to the brain, I would call that part an artificial brain. It would of course not be a simulated brain, because a simulated brain is a fictional brain. The artificial brain would not be analogous to the 3D model snowman in my example but rather to the second snowman.
We still disagree if you think there could be a simulated world in which certain creatures, wholly simulated, existed, who had their own actual perspectives on their simulated world and who, in principle, we might be. Those creatures would be just as fictional as NPCs in a video game.

I think what you call a "semantics thing" is actually a verbal dispute. I don't see any reason to think this is just a verbal dispute.

>>2665849
The prime universe wouldn't even have to be remotely similar to our universe. Like compare the rules of something like tetris to our physics. Why shoild the simulators of this universe live in a remotely similar world?

>>2666956

It's just a semantics thing because now I can say:

"Fine, forget about the simulation and call it an artificial universe. The computer/s running the artificial universe are a bunch of artificial brains. Everything else in Musk's argument then applies from there."

Which is exactly what people like Musk mean by "simulated." All you did with arguing your point about "simulated" is shift us over to a different word with the same meaning everyone except you already had in mind.

>I don't think it's true that "the brain generates the mind,"

I don't see how you could not think that's true. We have a pretty large amount of evidence for that being the case. Just take a psychoactive drug for example and it will pretty reliably alter your mind by alter the brain that generates it.