More thoughts on the simulation hypothesis

The notion that unique "relevant structural aspects" of the brain including "lattice structure to preserve needed resonances" generate human consciousness clearly implies that mind = physical brain in some sophisticated sense, where a very special sort of biological data processing mechanism is needed for consciousness to be generated. This is untenable, mainly because there is a large body of empirical paranormal evidence to the contrary, especially veridical NDEs and reincarnation cases. There also are theoretical difficulties, such as the "Hard Problem".

Of course, the Hammeroff/Penrose Orch OR theory could be right in a dualist sense, that preexisting consciousness needs that precise kind of mechanism to manifest in the physical. Also, interactional dualist concepts assume that the soul still requires some sort of "spirit body" to manifest itself even in higher spiritual realms of existence. 

I take your point as being that if this dualist view is correct, then perhaps preexisting human consciousness could manifest in the physical in some other sort of very special sort of data processing mechanism, one designed to host the massively multiplayer world simulation.

But the structural necessities are there regardless of whether one is speaking of Idealism, Materialism, etc. Empiricism strongly suggests you need a brain for human embodied consciousness to be in this world.

My point re: Orch-OR is that - as noted by Hammeroff, who's also posited the possibility of a "quantum soul" - you can have a simulation in which conscious entities exist in a virtual world while rejecting Computational Theories of mind.

Of course this does lead to a hyper-skepticism problem, namely that our phenomenal brain is merely an icon that may bare little to no resemblance to the structures actually involved with instantiating our consciousness....so how much can really be said about the reality beyond the simulation via investigation within it. Paranormal phenomenon wouldn't really sway the argument either way since if you're in a simulation why shouldn't there be paranormal phenomenon? There are ghosts, heavens, hells, etc in video games after all.

All that being said, a bare bones description of a simulated reality is one in which one frame of reality creates within itself a "lower" frame, with the simulation's reality dependent/bound to events in the "higher" reality. That description is pretty much aligned with Classical Theism, Panentheism, Creationism, etc.

Building Human Worlds – DMT and the Simulated Universe 

Andrew R. Gallimore

As computational power continues to grow, and VR technologies are honed and polished, we can now immerse ourselves in fully synthetic worlds less and less distinguishable from the real one. But which is the real one?

In DP [digital philosophy], the computation that is physics runs on an engine that exists in some place that we call “Other”. There is no reason to suppose that Other suffers the same kinds of restrictive laws present in this universe. Computation is such a general idea that it can exist in worlds drastically different than this one; any number of regular spatial dimensions or almost any kind of spacetime structure with almost any kind of connectivity." (Fredkin 2003)

Whilst Fredkin stops short of enthroning a super-intelligent alien programmer as the architect of the cosmos, his view of the universe certainly doesn’t rule out the possibility, and it’s hard to resist inserting such a creature into his so-called Other.

So, if we allow for the possibility that our Simulators might have an interest in or desire for us to gain true experiential insight into SIM, then it would make sense for them to leave more explicit clues, although perhaps not as explicit as Bostrom’s ‘window’.

The late great psychedelic bard and grand speculator, Terence McKenna, felt the experience elicited by the powerful natural psychedelic, N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), was the most intense a human could have “this side of the yawning grave,” firing the user into ineffably bizarre alien realms replete with a dazzling array of peculiar creatures, many of which actively communicate with the tripper. The online trip report literature is filled with tales of DMT users’ voyages in these unimaginably extraordinary territories and of their meetings with the locals. In other articles, I have discussed at length the problems in attempting to explain the worlds visited during the DMT experience (Gallimore 2013, Gallimore 2014). When trying to understand any world appearing to consciousness, whether it be the regular waking world we're all familiar with (the consensus world), or an alien world visited at the peak of a DMT trip, it’s useful to think of the brain as the ‘world builder’ – the informational structure of the world must have a representation in the brain. It doesn’t matter whether the world is real or hallucinatory – the world must be built from information encoded in the patterns of activity of the billions of interconnected neurons over large areas of the cerebral cortex. The difference between a ‘real’ world and a hallucinatory world is the former is built with the aid of sensory data from that world, whereas the latter is built entirely without the guidance of such externally sourced data (Llinas et al. 1998, Behrendt 2003). In the case of the waking consensus world, this external data would include light and sound, for example. But, of course, the world is not built from light and sound. These merely guide the construction of the world, which happens entirely in the brain. Even without sensory input, the human brain is perfectly content building the consensus world, and will continue to do so even during sleep, during dreaming. But, even when awake, only small amounts of sensory data are required to help shape the world (Edelman 1993, Tononi et al. 1998). This is because patterns of sensory data have sculpted and moulded the connectivity of the cortical neurons such that the brain now builds the consensus world as a default. In fact, the consensus world is the only world your brain knows how to build. Or, at least, it’s the only world your brain ought to know how to build. But, of course, within seconds of DMT levels surpassing an undefined threshold, the brain begins building bizarre alien worlds of crystalline clarity and inexpressible complexity. This is perhaps as hard to explain as a child, brought up in a monolingual English family, suddenly shifting into fluent Siberian Yupik. It’s comfortably glib to dismiss the DMT experience as “an exotic aberration of the brain's perceptual mechanics” (Kent 2004), but the reports of thousands of users across the world suggest otherwise. When the content of large numbers of trip reports is analysed (see (Gallimore 2013)), in many cases, the worlds visited under the influence of DMT seem strikingly similar across users and yet to bear no relationship whatsoever to the consensus world, and the assertion that this results from the “brain's own pattern-matching systems trying to impose order on chaotic patterns” (Kent 2004) becomes less than persuasive. Whilst it is tempting to appeal to the brain’s unbounded and yet normally untapped creativity to explain the DMT visions, those dismissing the DMT worlds as purely hallucinatory offer no convincing explanation as to why the brain would impose ‘order’ on chaotic brain activity by generating visions of elves singing impossible objects into existence, or super- intelligent entities weaving the fabric of reality. This difficulty in explaining how the brain could render these worlds without access to extrinsic sensory data from them, together with the large proportion of DMT users arriving in the same type of world – highly artificial, constructed, inorganic, and in essence technological (Hancock 2006) – and meeting the same types of entities, leads many to conclude that the DMT worlds have an objective existence independent of the user and that the brain does receive data from them....But here’s the problem: even if the DMT reality is real – and there’s nothing in the laws of physics to rule out alternate universes as such – the most astonishing revelation would not be the existence of such a world, but the fact we had the ability to access it. There seems to be no mechanism for the brain to receive, parse, and render sensory data from an alternate reality – this is what I call the data input problem. However, the simulation argument might provide a solution.

It is not clear whether the DMT reality is part of a much larger simulated reality of which our universe is also a part, or the actual Simulator reality. Both alternatives are conceivable, although certain characteristic features of the DMT reality might make us lean towards the latter. For example, surveying DMT trip reports reveals a striking number of users that, whilst deep in the DMT space, develop an inexplicable ability to directly perceive beyond 3-dimensional space. Many are confronted with environments and objects that are not only extremely strange, but impossible...

...A 3D reality is subsumed by any higher-dimensional system, in the same way our 3D world subsumes a lower dimensional one, such as a 2D ‘flatland’ world. Pertinently, physicist and SIM theorist, Brian Whitworth, points out that “every virtual world must have at least one dimension outside it, in its containing reality (Whitworth 2007).” If DMT users can indeed perceive 4- and higher-dimensional objects, then the reality in which these objects appear must be beyond consensus 3D reality. This is consistent with the requirement that the Simulator reality possesses more dimensions than the simulated reality (our reality), and suggests our brain is a 3D projection of a higher-dimensional processor and capable, with the appropriate programming, of rendering higher- dimensional data.

Commensurate with the requisite advancement of any Simulator civilisation, it is also common for DMT users to note many of the inhabitants of these hyperdimensional realms appearing to possess a level of intelligence beyond that of any human...

If we accept this view of the universe as a genuine possibility, it’s natural to wonder about the Simulators. Whether you lean towards Bostrom’s post-humans or hyperintelligent aliens from a parallel universe, it’s easy to feel like the unwitting, and entirely unconsenting, subjects of a rather cruel experiment. But a far more positive outlook is also possible, and it makes sense to end on such a note. Drawing much of his worldview from Vedic thought, the philosopher Alan Watts likened the universe to a game of hide-and-seek played by the Godhead, the Self:

“God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, He has no one but himself to play with. But He gets over this difficulty by pretending that He is not Himself. This is His way of hiding from Himself. He pretends that He is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way He has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when He wakes up they will disappear.” (Watts 1970)

The game of hide-and-seek is the play of the Self in creating worlds into which He can stride, wander, and become lost. Simulated universes might be one way the Self hides from Himself, and our universe one of His strange and wonderful adventures. The DMT molecules scattered throughout the natural world are, perhaps then, Hansel’s pebbles, glistening in the moonlight, winking, and leading us home.

Michael Prescott has a blog post made up of extracts from Rizwan Virk's book, "The Simulation Hypothesis," which nbtruthman cited in the opening post:
https://michaelprescott.typepad.com/mich...hesis.html

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.

To my mind the extracts from the book seem like a list of things that superficially sound as though they make sense, but really only prompt more questions than they answer. If optimisation is a consideration, why on earth have time steps of 5x10^-44 seconds in your simulation? Why not something a bit closer to what human perception would require? And how does having to keep track of huge numbers of alternative realisations (quantum indeterminacy) help with efficiency? Why would anyone in their right mind simulate a quantum universe rather than a classical one, if they were strapped for computational resources?

Above all, why would the players - if they belong to an unimaginably technologically advanced civilisation - want to become humans for life? If we are those players, does that mean we represent a small fraction of the population that is unbelievably bored and/or stupid?

Some perhaps interesting "scientific" speculations on multiverse theories. Are they really science, really just fiction or more likely, a combination of the two? From Sabine Hossenfelder's blog: 

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/06...there.html

"1. Eternal Inflation.

We do not know how our universe was created and maybe we will never know. But according to a presently popular theory, called “inflation”, our universe was created from a quantum fluctuation of a field called the “inflaton”. In this case, there would be infinitely many such fluctuations giving rise to infinitely many universes. This process of universe-creation never stops, which is why it is called eternal inflation. 

These other universes may contain the same matter as ours, but in different arrangements, or they may contain different types of matter. They may have the same laws of nature, or entirely different laws. Really, pretty much anything goes, as long as you have space, time, and matter.

2. The String Theory Landscape

The string theory landscape came out of the realization that string theory does not, as originally hoped, uniquely predict the laws of nature we observe. Instead, the theory allows for many different laws of nature, that would give rise to universes different from our own.  The idea that all of them exist goes together well with eternal inflation, and so, the two theories are often lumped together. 

3. Many Worlds

Many Worlds is an interpretation of quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics, we can make predictions only for probabilities. We can say, for example, a particle goes left or right, each with 50% probability. But then, when we measure it, we find it either left or right. And then we know where it is  with 100% probability. So what happened with the other option?

The most common attitude you find among physicists is who cares? We are here and that’s what we have measured, now let’s move on.

The many worlds interpretation, however, postulates that all possible outcomes of an experiment exist, each in a separate universe. It’s just that we happen to live in only one of those universes, and never see the other ones.

4. The Simulation Hypothesis 

Video games are getting better by the day, and it’s easy to imagine that maybe one day they will be so good we can no longer tell apart the virtual world and the real world.

This brings up the question whether maybe we already live in a virtual world, one that is programmed by some being more intelligent than us and technologically ahead? If that is so, there is no reason to think that our universe is the only simulation that is going on. There may be many other universe simulations, programmed by superintelligent beings. This, too, is a variant of the multiverse.

5. The Mathematical Universe

Finally, let me briefly mention the idea, popularized by Max Tegmark, that all of mathematics exists, and that we merely observe a very small part of it. It is this small part of mathematics that we call our universe."

On eternal inflation, concerning the claim, "Really, pretty much anything goes, as long as you have space, time, and matter." Why so restrict this infinite array of different realities? Surely things could exist that we can't even remotely imagine.  

On simulation universe ideas, they rapidly enter an infinite regression of possible simulations of the simulations, and simulations of the simulators themselves.

Peter Sjöstedt-H's review of Alien Information Theory has some fuel for thought:

The reading a thermometer gives neither is, nor generates, the heat. Applied to Gallimore’s examples, if we, for instance, analyse what the energy level (N) of an electron is, we realize that it is a reading that merely points to the actual reality: energy. The energy is represented by information, but the information is not the reality—just as the thermometer reading is not the heat. Energy is not a number; in fact, its concrete reality is still unknown us.

Information itself is merely abstraction. It can only exist in relation to: (i) the object for which information is acquired, (ii) the data that the object emits, (iii) the interface that can convert that data into varieties of information,[10] and (iv) the recipient or subject that becomes informed. If there is no object, there can be no information about it, and the same object can provide infinite information according to the interface.[11] Moreover, we should not assume that the data emitted extrinsically by an object is a sufficient, complete description of that object.

No reason is given for the claim that time exists in independent instants, except that it would make it easier to consider the Universe as completely grid-like in terms of both space and then time, so that computation could take place with the numbers t1, t2, etc. in tandem with the aforementioned particle quantum numbers. But the issues against such a convenient view—especially Bergson’s distinction between time and duration[13]—are not touched upon. Breaking time into separate units causes many further difficult problems such as explaining the direction of time, the width of the specious present, the denial of motion, the denial of direct interaction, Zeno’s paradoxes, how parallel universal updates conflict with issues of succession and simultaneity in Relativity theory, etc. How one instant of time follows another, if they are separate units, is ultimately explained by appeal to the great Other: it is He who set in motion the Code. But this is an obvious appeal to miracle that seems to be motivated by a desire to fully comprehend reality by throwing a conceptual net of numerical parts thereover. Alan Watts cautioned against such modes of thought...

Peter Sjöstedt-H's review of Alien Information Theory has some fuel for thought:

This actually led to a discussion between the two regarding this particular variation of the Simulation Hypothesis:

Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

Preston Greene

So far, none of these experiments has been conducted, and I hope they never will be. Indeed, I am writing to warn that conducting these experiments could be a catastrophically bad idea — one that could cause the annihilation of our universe.

Think of it this way. If a researcher wants to test the efficacy of a new drug, it is vitally important that the patients not know whether they’re receiving the drug or a placebo. If the patients manage to learn who is receiving what, the trial is pointless and has to be canceled.

In much the same way, as I argue in a forthcoming paper in the journal Erkenntnis, if our universe has been created by an advanced civilization for research purposes, then it is reasonable to assume that it is crucial to the researchers that we don’t find out that we’re in a simulation. If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation — to destroy our world.

A good thing that Reality cannot ever logically be a computer simulation.

From my perspective, Reality is so vastly complex that it's impossible to reduce even a fragment of it to a bunch of numbers that can be processed by some super CPU.

Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

Preston Greene

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.