Are we living in a simulation?

[Ayaan_817]

Sometimes, it feels as if what we call real is really virtual. It feels as if I’m in a simulation.

Imagine, one day, a super advanced species in the distant future was taught in school that millenniums ago, there lived a species called homo sapiens and well, one curious student decided to know more. The student used his/her virtual simulation machine to visualise what life during the time of the homo sapiens was like. He created a simulation and generated brains that would process and get info that was necessary at a particular moment.

For example, if the brain was looking in a specific direction, then only the objects ‘present’ in his field of vision would be visible and this would reduce the amount of data to be processed.

He/she created multiple such ‘brains’ and pre-programmed some information into them that would allow each of them to function co-existentially.

I just hope the student’s mom doesn’t pull the plug on the simulation and ask the child to go do his/her homework!

[NukeBan]

Sometimes, it feels as if what we call real is really virtual. It feels as if I’m in a simulation.

Perhaps it's relevant to comment that most of the time we aren't really focused on what's real, but instead on what we think about what's real. So there is a sense in which most of the time we are living in (that is, focused on, paying attention to) a virtual world, a realm made of abstractions, symbols, data.

[Marvin_Edwards]

I've been reading Michael Graziano's "Consciousness Revisited". Near the end of the book he describes the steps required to simulate a working brain in a computer, including building a model of a virtual body. The fun part is where he describes someone going in to upload his mind to the computer. The uploaded person thinks it was well worth the money. But the real person leaves feeling it was a waste. Anyway, it's really cool how he describes all the implications of such a venture.

[Ayaan_817]

The fun part is where he describes someone going in to upload his mind to the computer. The uploaded person thinks it was well worth the money. But the real person leaves feeling it was a waste. Anyway, it's really cool how he describes all the implications of such a venture.

I hope you've seen the movie 'Chappie' where a scientist is able to upload his 'consciousness' onto a robot.
Here, the feelings that really count are that of the real person since the virtual one is under control of the real one.
Now this is just a question of ethics.

[thrasymachus]

Marvin_Edwards
I've been reading Michael Graziano's "Consciousness Revisited". Near the end of the book he describes the steps required to simulate a working brain in a computer, including building a model of a virtual body. The fun part is where he describes someone going in to upload his mind to the computer. The uploaded person thinks it was well worth the money. But the real person leaves feeling it was a waste. Anyway, it's really cool how he describes all the implications of such a venture.

Not unlike the Ship of Theseus: a ship of Theseus has all of its parts discarded over the years for new ones, then the old parts are used to construct an entire ship. Which is the "real" ship of Theseus? When Spock is beamed aboard, is it still Spock? Or was the real Spock scattered to oblivion and only the form of Spock, in full (if impossible) detail, preserved? Am I simply what atoms do in a certain, very specific and impossibly detailed, arrangement?

The physical seems fairly simple, for IF it is assumed that no two atoms (molecules or even quarks, subatomic particles; really not the point) are different in any way conceivable, then Spock is still Spock, for if the form is perfectly preserved, the content becomes the issue, and if the content is undeniably the same, then there is no deviation possible.

Obviously, this moves to the question of whether a person is just this, identifiable form and content. "Identifiable" is the operative term here. Keep in mind that atoms are not absolutely defined, that is, we are not God's with an infinite perspective of the nature of things, and humans are indeed very odd "things" in their emotions, cognition, conscious existence, ethics. Then again, this kind of thinking invades ALL of our ideas about things. No conception of a thing, a couch or a shoe, is absolute. Foolish to think so, as if one could encompass eternity in a thought.

The identifiable sticking point seems to be in the atoms themselves. My atoms, so to speak, are not yours. Atoms are local things, as is the case with everything else: this mountain comprises altogether different "stuff" than that one. One atom is here, another over there.

[Terrapin Station]

It's not impossible, but there's no good reason to believe it's the case.

Good for SciFi plots, though.

[Benj96]

It depends on how you would define a simulation... as in matrix style with code programmed by superAI or something more subtle and nuanced. For me a "simulation" is anything that copies or models another or actual phenomenon but is itself not authentic in respect to the actual phenomenon.
In this sense I would say if there is a single unifying reality - a substance of experience that we are all connected within that is "actual" and exists outside personal opinion (such as what the laws of physics pertain to) then each persons conscious awareness is a simulation of the true reality. We are limited to our personal experience of the universe, to our assumptions, prejudices and beliefs many of which may not be correct in accurately defining a singular unified and fundamental reality. So yes. . I'd say your mind itself acts as a simulator of something it cannot universally define. Consider dreaming, or future ambitions, desires, roleplays, creativity imagination and anticipation of events to come ... all of these mental functions are simulatory. They generate possibilities or speculations based of prior experience (off a model) to predict what may come. The mind is an excellent calculator and all incoming sensory information from reality is processed before it is fully experienced

[detail]

Well we are not living in a simulation made of humans. But sometimes i truly doubt that this world is not just an extended xbox or ps4 simulation of a person doing a super physics simulation in a parallel universe. Attempts to read human thoughts and even the movies in our mind show that it is possible to read the human mind via functional magnetic resonance , some kohonen maps and some support vector machines as well as some wavelet analysis. Read for this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2% ... _interface
and even
https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

So the conjecture the mind is far to complex to be ever computed is somehow disproved. Even by far more interesting is , how far our existing universe and it's physics can get replaced via an algorithm which simulates it, but this is by more a theme for number theory of discretisation of numerical mathematics. Although we know , that the "mathematical " complexity is always that hight that there is always a theorem that is still not proven.
This doesnt imply that this is of concern for the world of our physics , due to the fact that it would take quasi infinite time in the world of theoretical physics for all atoms of this universe , to simply state the conjecture for it.

[detail]

The funny thing is , that philosphers like schopenhauer simply state that this world is pure representation , derived from your own mind .
This is state in the world as will and representation from arthur schopenhauer the philosopher.

See for this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World ... esentation

[Terrapin Station]

The funny thing is , that philosphers like schopenhauer simply state that this world is pure representation , derived from your own mind .
This is state in the world as will and representation from arthur schopenhauer the philosopher.

See for this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World ... esentation

And babies think that they're hidden when they put a blanket over their heads.

[Atla]

Here's an angle:

To run simulations, we probably need devices, plus a universe hosting the devices and hosting intelligent life. The size of the universe is probably many orders of magnitude bigger, than the combined size of the simulations.

So most of existence is probably not simulated, only a small fraction of it is. The probability that we are living in a simulation, is almost zero.

(Plus there was never any evidence supporting the simulation idea.)

[detail]

Here's an angle:

To run simulations, we probably need devices, plus a universe hosting the devices and hosting intelligent life. The size of the universe is probably many orders of magnitude bigger, than the combined size of the simulations.

So most of existence is probably not simulated, only a small fraction of it is. The probability that we are living in a simulation, is almost zero.

(Plus there was never any evidence supporting the simulation idea.)

If you attach computers to several human minds , that interact with the bci , would you call this simulation or just an enhancement ( in the sense of augmented) of reality? Because if , you don't even need that much AI computational power . In the other case it would be extremely ornate to generate such a reality together with all laws of physics. In the case of mind connection, this is perhaps already in progress . See for :

https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

[Atla]

If you attach computers to several human minds , that interact with the bci , would you call this simulation or just an enhancement ( in the sense of augmented) of reality? Because if , you don't even need that much AI computational power . In the other case it would be extremely ornate to generate such a reality together with all laws of physics. In the case of mind connection, this is perhaps already in progress . See for :

https://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

I'd say it could be used for both. But I think most civilizations would destroy themselves before reaching a stage where they could put some of their people into such high-level simulations (where you can't even tell that it's a simulation). Or before they could give rise to a Matrix-like world of intelligent machines, that for some reason would put humans into such simulations.

So while the brain-in-a-vat scenario is probably many orders of magnitude more common than whole-universe-simulations, it would still be unlikely for someone to be in such a brain-in-a-vat simulation.

But this is of course just wild guesswork, based on how I guess probabilities probably work, across a multiverse that may not even exist.

[SubatomicAl1en]

If we were living in a simulation, we'd see signs.
For example, no computer, however strong, will be able to simulate infinite things. That means that if we are simulated, the universe would be pixelated, and there would be a smallest unit.
Also, there would be unexplained changes over time and things seemingly happening for no reason. If a bug appears, the simulators would have to fix it before we find out. This could mean a slow gradual change, or a sudden change that we can't notice.
Plus, even if our world was a simulation, and someone found out, they wouldn't tell us. This would cause a mass mental breakdown, political arguments, wars, etc etc. We don't want that.
Also, you mentioned how this person simulated a human and technically "became" the human in the virtual world. Well, this leads to another question: can we simulate human consciousness? Does consciousness "arise" from our physical biological traits, that we can code, or is it a thing by itself? This would be another problem if we were ever going to simulate humans.

[Jorgen Pallesen]

No, but reality can be manipulated like flicking a switch.