Comment by voidfunc
3 years ago
I like how there is an assumption that any simulation we run inside even follows rules, physics, or mathematics we can comprehend. If this is actually a simulation it's quite possible the outside world is so completely different it basically breaks everything we think we know.
Strong agree. It's like expecting video game characters (however sentient they may eventually / theoretically become) to understand the hardware instructions that power the assembly language that is running the process within which their reality exists.
More depressing is what happens if you do realize you're living in a simulation... You can't escape it unless the creator has the means to convert a sim to something real. You're just some shitty fake bits in a snowglobe.
This is one of the reasons why I hate the whole simulation argument. It doesn't make a bit or byte of difference if it's true or not. If in theory you could escape or 'abuse' the simulation there's no way for us to divine the intent that it is in fact an exploit or something intended by whatever is running the simulation.
It's a thought terminator. It's a way to seem smart while not being smart at all.
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You're not a creature from the upper level, so the simulation is your reality. So by going outside of it, if it was possible, you wouldn't be escaping into your reality (that was hidden from you), but to your creators reality. So that would be less like escaping and more like going to heaven or something...
What’s the real difference between what we think now, and if we knew for a fact we lived on a computer? Still feels real to me. I guess I would just go on with my life, what else could I do?
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The public thought got fixated on the VM style simulation. Consider another idea. The baseline reality is spacetime that can form any configuration with any number of space and time dimensions and everything in between. We live in the 3+1 layer, which doesn't exclude the existence of other 3+1 layers, just like one flat valley doesn't prevent the existence of other valleys. Those who know how to work with that spacetime can create arbitrary worlds, e.g. a toroidal 4+3 world. These world can be connected to each other in strange ways and transition between them may or may not be possible. Some local spacetime can be nested into bigger soacetimes with different configuration.
I think it's fair to say that obviously, anybody who explores 'breaking' the simulation is also aware of this and all their hopes are pinned on the admittedly infinitesemal chance that we're in a simulation that can be broken
And yet, in Minecraft you can build devices that detect features of the underlying software — eg, the update policy, circuit cache size, and server lag.
Perhaps we won’t understand the reality “out there”, but attempting to may nevertheless produce tangible benefits for us “in here”, eg, like wireless communication in Minecraft arises from detecting subtle variations in updates.
I think the idea is that *if* we're in an ancestor simulation, then "they" will make the rules as close to theirs as they computationally can. Why ancestor simulation? Why else would "they" spend all those resources?
Lot of IFs based on our view of their values, I know... I don't necessarily agree with this line of reasoning... just stating how I understand the argument.
To counter that argument, if "they" live in world where computation is cheap (eg they have something like Zeno machines[1]) they may not be spending what they view as lots of resources.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno_machine
>Why else would "they" spend all those resources?
Why the assumption that it takes a significant amount of their resources to run our simulation?
Limits like speed of light, planck length, etc might indicate some resource constraint in the simulator
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>Why else would "they" spend all those resources?
We could just in a video-game style world, with mechanics (laws of physics etc) totally different to the ancestor's world. Like we often do when we make games...
> Why else would "they" spend all those resources?
Entertainment? Random Number generator? Maybe they are in the future and doing some historical analysis. Plenty of reasons to spend resources.
> the idea is that if* we're in an ancestor simulation, then "they" will make the rules as close to theirs as they computationally can. Why ancestor simulation? Why else would "they" spend all those resources?*
This always struck me as the most WTF simulationist assumption. To the degree we simulate our ancestors, today, it’s in games. Given an infinity to ponder and simulate, it strikes me as ludicrous to assume even a significant fraction of computer power would go to ancestor simulations.
We're still at the very dawn of our computational age, though. There are still humans alive now who were born before digital computers. We have hardly any experience with them. It's very, very difficult to predict what we might be doing with them in a millenium or two.
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