JackRiddler wrote:MacCruiskeen wrote: 20% chance we're living in a simulation - Oxford prof
A simulation of what?
A sadistic computer-god's ideally entertaining universe? (Better than TV!)
I think it's like sfnate said above.
In my own simplistic terms, if we're in any universe that was consciously created by entities of a parent universe, then it's a simulation, innitnow? So Genesis would qualify.
(PS - Heh. I believe you may have demolished this line of thinking in the fewest possible words.)
Not so fast. The question of what is being simulated is answered best by the simulation. A tautology that won't sit well with you. I wonder if there is an inverse relationship between the willingness to entertain the idea that one is a simulation and the size of one's ego.
sfnate wrote:That we exist in a vast active living intelligence machine that computes our reality into some kind of illusory experience environment is probably truth without the formality of verification. The identity suggested in this analogy is almost certainly unknowable in itself. That is the gift of our paradoxical condition, to never know for certain that we are the authors of all things, in some experiment of creation that generates itself forever within the finite space of our own awareness.
All that means is that ignorance is bliss, maybe like a vacation from the ennui of omniscience.
I think one of the more interesting questions to ponder is what was the intent of the simulator/s. While
A sadistic computer-god's ideally entertaining universe? is an entertaining answer I think I lean toward coffin_dodger's view when they wrote, "If its a sim, my guess would be that it would be free-running with no tinkering.", which means trying to imagine the original intent is much harder. Perhaps the intent is to occasionally produce a Shakespeare.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
or perhaps a Camus:
that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.
Maybe it's cheaper than a billion monkeys.
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.