Nothing wrong with my C code its perfe&ctly saF and hardl^shsghs evJGytsystys
3 Likes
The bots in the simulation one level above ours.
8 Likes
What does it matter? Even if we are just a few gigabytes (terabytes?) of data on some advanced alien’s mainframe, we are still here and bound by the constraints of the simulation.
2 Likes
Its interesting because there might be ways to hack the simulation.
5 Likes
I’ve seen some argue that you should try to be “interesting” so that you get included in the next version of the simulation. Of course, it’s a bit hard to know what the beings running the simulation are interested in and what they may want to keep, but that’s similar to how religions struggle with what God wants and what he will reward.
5 Likes
Shh! You want to get us all rebooted?!
11 Likes
Article two is essentially reasoning that the only way to simulate the universe is to have a universe. A really good read on that topic is Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos. Now what that second article doesn’t touch on and what Programming the Universe hits on toward the end of the book is that simulating a 3-dimensional universe in a 3-dimensional universe isn’t possible but simulating our universe in a higher order universe very much would be.
All that said, it’s interesting reading and science but that’s where my interest ends. Some of these nuts treat simulation hypothesis as a substitute for religion and it just gets annoying (looking at you Elon).
10 Likes
But what if you (and the rest of us) were those very people, who designed it this way?
1 Like
There are schools of theoretical physics that propose everything we understand as the universe is actually “simulated” in 2D. It can go both ways, potentially.
1 Like
http://cristal.inria.fr/~weis/info/commandline.html
universe -G 6.672e-11 -e 1.602e-19 -h 6.626e-34 -protonmass 1.673e-27…
2 Likes
This seems especially salient when we quite clearly aren’t living in the ‘real world’ according to naive sense experience.
It’s more a matter of degree than of “and then I broke through the reality hypervisor and buffer-overflowed God right in the qualia”; but even fairly crude experimental work shows you that your daily reality is brought to you by something quite different indeed(even a kiddy microscope, say, can introduce you to the fact that you, and basically all other life as we know it, is made of cells; and being a colony of replicator nanites isn’t exactly what common sense might have suggested).
Is it only a simulation if the layer(s) of complexity allow for at least one environment beneath our own that supports gawking observers; or is the fact that I spend most of the day interacting with apparently solid objects, despite atoms apparently being tiny specks with electron probability distributions in the void a ‘simulation’?
The existence of an observer layer is quite a leap; but the “inhabit an environment produced by the workings of a very different set of rules behind the scenes” sense of ‘simulation’ is the sort of commonplace without which little things like ‘physics’ or ‘biology’ would be absurd to the point of being hard to imagine; rather than areas of active study.
6 Likes
The physical world being a simulation does not stand up to Occam’s razor. Also it would explain nothing, just moving all our problems with understanding the universe into the metaphysical. It is just a modern creation myth. However, regarding how we spend more and more of our lives in virtual environments… yes, in that sense, humanity is possibly on the edge of retreating into a self created simulation. It is already creating feedback into the material world, making idols, presidents, and whatnot.
7 Likes
I’m really glad to see this project coming together, considering (as some of you know, heh) this is one of my favorite subjects. And yes, of course I applied to be an interviewee. 
I think long and deeply on this and related subjects. What I’ve come to, in a nutshell, is the following.
What this “simulated reality” notion gets at is nothing new, and is essentially rooted in all (or at least most) belief systems. These include:
• Physics, philosophy and mathematics
• Most ancient belief systems, across many cultures
• More recent Western Hermetic mystic traditions
• Sacred geometry
• A lot of cyberpunk literature, actually
• Technology and cybernetics studies
• Information theory
• New Age beliefs, including many “channelled” materials
• Nondualism
It’s just another metaphor for the fundamental truth: The multiverse is One, it is conscious, it is self-programming, and you are very much a part of it, as is everyone and everything else that ever has been, is, and will be.
Amen! 
10 Likes
Do you believe we’re living in a simulation?
- Yes
- No
0 voters
9 Likes
Probably us, I imagine. I mean – technically we’re writing it now, right? But maybe this occurs on multiple levels.
Boo! Closed poll. How are we supposed to have fun with that?
2 Likes
Well if they’re Russian bots it explains why everyting in our simulation is eff-ed up.
1 Like
Well, in any software there is bugs. Also, if this were a simulation there is probably a lot of generative algorithms with all kinds of side effects if things get out of balance. These humans need a bit of debugging and fine tuning.
One might argue that the two are actually identical but ancient cultures lacked the metaphor of digital technology and information systems, whereas we now have those to use as our contemporary metaphors.
Take the notion of karma – in a sense, it’s not too different than “being interesting to be remembered in the next version of the simulation.” Karma is action, essentially the unfolding of the multiversal algorithm, the blossoming of the lotus, and when directed using our will, allows our consciousness to get closer to enlightenment. So maybe not being so interesting we are remembered, more like, be interesting enough (evolve your consciousness enough) to remember your self.
3 Likes
