More thoughts on the simulation hypothesis

Preston Greene’s concern is that the simulation might be shut down by its builders (thereby extinguishing our existence) once we discover that it is what we are part of, that it is our real “reality”. The builders and maintainers of the simulation created us as experimental "lab rats" or something, and their purposes would no longer be served by maintaining the system. Oh well, change some parameters and start again. 

Greene's fear is predicated on the materialist assumption that our consciousness is somehow a result of or one and the same as, neural data processing in the brain, some sort of illusory epiphenomenon or other. Then, he thinks, this makes it possible that we ourselves are some sort of a hypercomputer simulation. So he thinks that if the universe, our world, is a simulation, we also must be part of this simulation.

In my opinion, for numerous reasons including a large body of empirical evidence this materialist assumption is false and consciousness is existentially separate from the brain and neuronal data processing – it can’t be computed, simulated, etc. In this view AI systems will probably never achieve true conscious awareness.

That means that if we are living in a simulation generated by some other (higher) beings, we must really be the users of or participators in the “virtual reality simulation game” and our real existence is outside the simulation. If the simulation is terminated, we, our conscious awareness, would presumable not be wiped out – we would simply forcibly exit the simulated world/reality into the higher reality of the simulation system and its builders, which might really be our home. Like the gamer having his computer and other virtual reality simulation game equipment turned off on him. His computer, virtual reality goggles and keyboard/controller, etc. no longer work, involuntarily returning his consciousness to the real physical world.

I think this view is reflected in Marcus Arvan's Peer-to-Peer Simulation Hypothesis, one of the better formulations of "the world is a simulation" ideas. 

It's also interesting that this has parallels with some spiritual New Age conceptions of human existence.

So anyway, I don’t think Greene’s concern is valid.

Well this is a tricky question, because Arvan has suggested immaterial consciousness can be focused by structure so that simulated entities in some kind of computer would have consciousness. Admittedly this seems in opposition to his previous work on the P2P Hypothesis and his own arguments for dualism...but he has said he's working on a paper reconciling his ideas.

OTOH, I don't think Greene's concern is valid either or rather we've no idea what any potential Simulators would want. Arguably this level of reality is engineered if one believes in a variety of wisdom traditions, created by God/gods or perhaps even our Higher Selves. Yet we have no idea what the reason for this arguably non-simulated reality is for...

Well this is a tricky question, because Arvan has suggested immaterial consciousness can be focused by structure so that simulated entities in some kind of computer would have consciousness. Admittedly this seems in opposition to his previous work on the P2P Hypothesis and his own arguments for dualism...but he has said he's working on a paper reconciling his ideas.

OTOH, I don't think Greene's concern is valid either or rather we've no idea what any potential Simulators would want. Arguably this level of reality is engineered if one believes in a variety of wisdom traditions, created by God/gods or perhaps even our Higher Selves. Yet we have no idea what the reason for this arguably non-simulated reality is for...

It doesn't require belief in spiritual wisdom traditions. This level of reality (the physical universe) is very evidently engineered and created by higher Intelligence just considering (among other factors) the very exact and intricate fine tuning of the laws of physics for the existence of life as we know it, the great body of evidence for a single formative event (the Big Bang), and the evolution of life on the Earth despite the total inadequacy of blind and purposeless Darwinism to explain it.

It doesn't require belief in spiritual wisdom traditions. This level of reality (the physical universe) is very evidently engineered and created by higher Intelligence just considering (among other factors) the very exact and intricate fine tuning of the laws of physics for the existence of life as we know it, the great body of evidence for a single formative event (the Big Bang), and the evolution of life on the Earth despite the total inadequacy of blind and purposeless Darwinism to explain it.

I just meant reality was made for a purpose, rather than just indications of design.

I just meant reality was made for a purpose, rather than just indications of design.

It seems to me that if it was designed, this designing must have had some sort of purpose, but unfortunately one that is beyond our ken. Wisdom traditions and New Age teachings have some answers, but they go way beyond the evidence.

I suppose this kind of speculation is quite interesting in a way, but the analogy of a multiplayer computer game seems very much "of its time," rather like Doctor Who using what looked suspiciously like a BBC microcomputer in the 1980s, and being menaced by a Megabyte Modem. I wonder how well this book will age.

I think it will age quite nicely. We still talk about Plato's Cave even though few of us are well acquainted with cave life.

Everything is circular. Everything is metaphor. So IMO, all good metaphors that evoke the feeling of ineffability and transcendence and penetration of the veil are timeless.

Two presentations at a recent event called the Cucalorus Festival seem to have sparked quite a bit of online comment. One, by Julian Keith, just compared the human mind to an "interface" allowing us to interact with the physical world, and discussed our resulting vulnerability to technology that didn't exist when the interface evolved. The other, by Curry Guinn, went further and suggested we could be living in an advanced computer simulation:
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2019/11/17/...nowing-it/

Part of the reason for the comment was Guinn's invocation of earlier comments by Elon Musk, in which he said he thought we were almost certainly living in a simulation. Musk said in 2016 that the odds of this being "base reality" were only a billion to one. If I understand correctly, his argument was a kind of probabilistic one based on an estimate of the number of such simulations he expects to exist in the universe, based on their technological feasibility:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/2/118378...simulation

Guinn also suggested that there may be some tell-tale signs that we are inside a simulation:
"Glitches in the system. Deja Vu, such as in the Matrix movie when a character sees a cat crossing a doorway repeatedly, may be one glitch. Ghosts, ESP, coincidences may be others."

Jason Colavito dismisses this as "fake science ... Since there is no evidence for ghosts, no compelling proof of ESP, and no statistical evidence for an anomalous number of coincidences (whose meaning, incidentally, is subjective to the observer), the supernatural evidence for “glitches” in the simulation is non-existent, no more compelling than claiming that witchcraft, lycanthropy, and blood-drinking corpses—all onetime beliefs with exactly as much evidence in their favor—prove an occult layer beneath consensus reality. It is, however, part of a disturbing trend that New Age folk mythology is increasingly assumed true by dint of the generation that grew up exposed to midcentury pseudoscience aging into power and repeating faulty claims for each generation that followed."
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/is-the...simulation

Computer Scientist: Ghosts Could Be Sign Universe Is Simulated

Dan Robitzski

To figure out whether or not we’re in a simulation, Guinn suggests looking for bugs.

“Glitches in the system. Deja Vu, such as in the Matrix movie when a character sees a cat crossing a doorway repeatedly, may be one glitch,” Guinn said. “Ghosts, ESP, coincidences may be others. The laws of physics in our universe seem peculiarly designed with a set of constants that make carbon-based life possible. Where are the edges?”

It is difficult to put this into words so I made a sketch...



Basically... there is oneness and in order for there to be anything interesting this oneness begins fractal splitting... And the very first split is internal/external or subject/object...or another way to put it... the very first split means that everything that is not an experience is a computer.

There is linear processing which is useful for certain things, but you're right there is no symbol grounding in qualia. But the linear model is really just a segment of a circular highly networked parallel processing. In fact every node is networked to every other node so all nodes can be defined as Oneness. The networks of information transformation extending out from this single node are both generative and perceptive.

I’m glad to see the physicists are catching up with me. ;-)

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/phy...simulation

And to further confirm it, here's Stephen Wolfram and Lex Fridman talking about how Quantum mechanics emerges from the "multiway causal graph" which is something I've been envisioning, but didn't previously have the vocabulary or mathematical theory to communicate it the way Wolfram does.

I've been thinking for a while that the way to wrap ones head around quantum weirdness such as the double-slit experiment is to think of the now moment as an observer instantiated slice and when we look back in time there are many possible paths that lead to the present physical features of the moment. So the interference pattern is a slice of the "multiway causal graph" which is what I had tried to illustrate above and is exactly what Stephen Wolfram says in this clip!