Counter question; would it make any difference?
That’s the point - it wouldn’t. People seem to expect that things would be different or meaningless if we did but I’ve never understood that logic. Even if we do live in the base reality it could just as well be a simulation and nothing would need to change.
Exactly. Even if it was definitely proven that this is all a simulation, there is exactly zero chance humans could ever break out of it or hack or exploit or even begin to understand the machine the simulation is running on. We have still not even figured out the rules for our universe and understanding what the real universe where this is a simulation is way beyond the scope of human understanding. We could not affect it in any meaningful way except maybe some laboratory tests or cause some hideous corruption. Yet we think and feel and experience living in the only way we know. Hence, I’d argue it would not matter.
This is quite literally how many religions view their divine beings. They are so massive that they are beyond your comprehension and we would be powerless to impact them.
Including the Abrahamic religions except people are simple and have rewritten the mindboggling idea “can not comprehend” to punishable dogma “must not mention by name, gaze upon, depict”.
The prohibition is for any graven image not just God. That’s why there aren’t a ton of sculptures of living beings/animals made by Jewish artists in the ancient world.
Ignorance is bliss!
Just connect me to my reality.
Then he got wacked by Tony Soprano.
A simulation could be hacked, and that’s really fun to think about
If we are in a simulation, I’m pretty sure it’s already been hacked or infected by a bad virus at least.
Fictionally, sure. Realistically, humans could hack a simulated universe like fish can hack the aquarium.
50%. We are or we aren’t.
Just because we do t know something doesn’t masks it 50%
I don’t know if there’s a gorilla in my upstairs bath at the moment but the odds aren’t 50/50
On the question of god or a simulation, they aren’t 50/50 either
- Whoosh
- Given the lack of any meaningful information to base an estimate on, they essentially are.
about 3.50
It was at that moment I realized frankenswine was a 30 story tall monster from the paleolithic era!
Belief in a simulation implies intelligent design of some sort, so this is, in my opinion, just a 21st century way of asking the age old question, does God exist?
God is a loaded term though. Yes there would be a creator but it could be a completely passive observer.
The modern Christian God is mostly a passive observer, whenever him or his agents have visited us there have been tons of miracles and magical shit, but that does not happen very often, and we’ve been basically alone for millenia while He is busy in his own realm. If Christ visited again, it would likely portend the end of the world, at least in a lot of Christian world views.
He might be passive but the implication is that you’re supposed to live certain way or you’ll end up in hell. This most likely isn’t the case in a simulation.
The world already ended, and all that jazz. Happened in 1844. Just look around you. If you brought a “modern homosapien” from 12,000 years ago to the year 1800 or even 1840-1850, they would recognize things from their world. Those things may have had eons of refinement, but a horse is still mostly a horse. Bring a modern human from 1850 to today, and they will recognize almost nothing. Their world is gone. A new one took its place, as was predicted.
Oh no! All my thoughts and prayers!
Why would being in a simulation require that those who create or maintain it only observe?
Edit: I misread, merely observing is certainly a possibility.
Not OP, but they said “but it could be”, not that it is required.
Or we are NPCs in a game played by a 9 year old.
nah
What, did the simulator get assembled by a passing tornado? Everyone who believes in simulation theory thinks this reality was designed, constructed, usually by someone that looks like us. That’s pretty damn close to Christianity.
Same as the odds that a higher being (a god) exists.
Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it. All arguments for it speculative and subjective.
People claim that it is the most likely option because eventually tech will be so advanced that we could make a world simulation, and then we would make multiples, and therefore the probability of this not being a simulation is low.
This claim assumes that computers CAN get that complex (no indication that they could) it also assumes that if they could, we would create world simulators (Why? Parts of it sure, but all of it?) And it assumes that sentient beings inside the simulation could never know it (Why?)
It is as pointless as arguing about god.
Biggest reason to to a complete simulation would be reversed time dilation. Run the simulation until the civilization is a few hundred to a few thousand years more advanced than your own, and see what technologies they have invented and refined.
A simulation wouldn’t be this stupid
That’s just what the agents want us to think, man!
You telling me you never did absolutely stupid things in sim games?
In reality, simulations would outnumber reality. So that’s the ratio and therefore the chances.
Assuming reality and/or consciousness can be simulated, which we have no way of knowing is true (for now).
I figure that we are all definitely living in a simulation because, even if the world has real physical existence, consciousness is essentially a simulation created our brain to make sense of the world.
thanks Baudrillard
There is no connection because consciousness is not fundamentally tied to society (although obviously its contents can be heavily influenced by it).
There is no sensible definition of probability that makes that question answerable.
I hope so
Also, can somebody please turn it off? I think we took this one as far as it’s worth
I don’t know.
Probably about the same as for whether a god exists.
Either 100% or 0% so pascal’s wager 50/50.
Just like the lottery, I either win or I lose, its a 50/50.
Well, until we see people randomly floating or chunks of the world disappearing, the answer will probably remain “who knows”
People floating would go against the laws of physics of this simulation.
Best way to know if you’re in a simulation is to observe when it glitches (in a way that can’t be explained by a glitch in the sub-simulation that is human perception).
You and several complete strangers see someone floating in the air without any technological support, assuming y’all haven’t been poisoned in a similar way and are hallucinating, either a) there’s some support you don’t know how to look for, b) there’s a condition of reality that hasn’t been accounted for in the study of physics yet, or c) the rule set just straight broke somehow.
I don’t think anyone has totally eliminated glitches in the human or an incomplete understanding of physics to really support a ‘we live in a simulation’ explanation for strange phenomena, at least not yet.
More likely than us being in the “real” base reality
