Simulation or Life?

Some people have theorized that we might be living in a computer simulation left to run. There is nothing truly physical about our universe. Well, there's a problem. Let's say someone from the real physical universe wants to create a simulation. They would need to use physical material from their universe to run the computations. The material would have to configured in such a way as to have variations that represent data whether its gears in a mechanical computer or a on-off switch representing 0's and 1's in an electronic computer. Since the computer would have to be made from material from the real universe, the simulation can not have the same level of variability/complexity as the real universe that it occupies. If anything, it would be a simplified dumb down version of it. This is more of an issue if there are sapient programs in the simulated universe the programmer is trying to fool. The way around this is to give the illusion of a whole, complex universe.

An example is the night sky in a video game. The white dots in the black background are just that-white dots against a black background. The programmers did not program the video game to simulate convection currents of the plasma, which composes a star, as it interacts with gravity, magnetic fields, and fusion reactions. So each time someone looks through a telescope and sees something that is not visible to the naked eye, they offer evidence that we are not living in a simulation.

Okay, so the programmer is hiding the cheats deeper in the software. That he has a telescope.foolsims subroutine that gives a false image in every telescope. But then he would need another .foolsims program for microscopes and another one for Geiger counters and another one for X-ray machines and another one for space probe instruments and...you get the point.

Once upon a time, natural phenomenon such as lightning, rain, storms, earthquakes, disease, etc were the venue of the gods. Then humans took a deeper look and found no man behind the curtain operating nature. Lightning is a discharge of static electricity when an excessive electric charge builds up in the clouds. Rain is just water vapor condensing into water and falling back to Earth. Storms are produced by the differiential heating of the Sun creating low pressure cells high pressure regions. Earthquakes are the products of plate tectonics. Disease is caused by microscopic parasites. Now the gods or god has been relegated to setting up the physical laws of the universe at the very beginning and letting everything run on autopilot. While this is fine for a deist, this is a far cry from the interventionist gods of myth and sacred text.

Just as human exploration of the cosmos has showed there was no god in a chariot pulling the sun or pixies making flowers bloom and has shrunk the hiding places where the gods might dwell, so too does that same exploration shrink the places where the divine programmer of the hypothetical simulated universe could hide his programming shortcuts.

Pic is of the Hubble Deep Field Image - an extremely long exposure of an otherwise empty spot in the night sky where nothing should be and where we would find signs the universe we exist in is a lie.

The simulation hypothesis is like a modernized version of the demiurge. The idea that some being created us, but he himself was bound to some physical laws. It's an interesting thought experiment but I never found the idea too convincing. If we were created by a demiurge/simulator, who created him? It opens up more questions than it answers. Occam's Razor says we should look for the simplest, most elegant explanation.

The universe has an undeniably mathematical quality. You look at how all these mathematical concepts show up repeatedly in nature - Fibonacci sequences, the golden ratio, fractals, etc. All physical laws can be described mathematically. And these patterns show up at every scale. Consider the way the hydrogen filaments that join galaxies together resemble neurons, or how both honeycomb cells and Saturn's poles have hexagonal shapes.

I believe Plato had it right, that the physical universe we experience through our senses is a shadow of some underlying reality, but I don't believe that underlying reality is physical in nature like our own world. I see it more as a world of pure primordial logic and truth.

Here's a fun thought experiment. When you look at this M.C. Escher drawing, where does the picture exist exactly? Does it exist in some server as a series of 0s and 1s describing the RGB value of each pixel? Or is the picture the photons of light coming off your screen? Or is the picture the qualia, the colors and patterns that your mind sees?

1. If it's a simulation you will never leave it, you are the simulation.

2. Our reality is too complex to be a simulation.

3. Where does the universe of this computer running the simulation come from?

4. You would need infinite energy, infinite computing power and infinite materials to infinitely upgrade this computer.

5. No need to simulate an entire universe or an entire lifetime of a human being.

I’ve heard from several people each with their own bads in life. And of different race and backgrounds. That they don’t like certain countries or their laws because they put you in a simulation systems that’s against everything the US is for. So they don’t really travel abroad. Their warnings were the only validity such system exists. Apparently they are known to be used on people validating patriotism or prisoners, educators. We supposedly didn’t agree with it because it means encroachment into personal property and space. Plus you don’t know how it might screw you up. However a doctor told me later on that such technique has gotten approval in US. They could techniquely have you live a different life upto that point then form a continuum to bridge it with physical life. That’s how powerful it is. Even instigated thats how they first created Jewry, a public that doesn’t break character. In theory you’re forced to Judaism by circumstance. So they use it to restart life.

1. You can, just move to another computer, or acquire the interface to interact with the parent universe.

2. Looks pretty primitive for me.

3. From just another universe.

4. First, infinity is not necessary. Second, it is not impossible.

5. Of course, but that defeats several previous points.

Actually I would say the existence of dreams is in opposition to simulation theory as there is a material basis for dreams in such a situation and so you have to have the processing power and resources fully devoted to the act of dreaming of which half the world's population of humans and mammals are experiencing at any given time

And then theres the confirmed phenomenon of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer takes full control of their dream, and the dream can become as realistic as real life, and this is something that can be learned or be a natural ability for someone since childhood. Literally a simulation within a simulation by your reasoning, taking up even extra processing power and resources compared to a non-lucid dream because your simulation is now processing a super realistic simulation within the simulation and having to account for the extra resources of the brain conscious within a dream which is more active and processing different regions of the brain than the non-lucid dreaming brain.

The only argument against this you have is that the processing power of the simulation is nigh-infinite and these things take up so little resources and power in comparison that they are just left in or ignored, but you have no evidence of that, you are arguing for the existence of your belief system non-scientifically.

You can also argue as others have that these concerns dont matter because this simulation is limited compared to the power and energy available in the universe running it, that's no different from the planes argument of metaphysics that these are the lower material planes and there exist higher planes on alternate "higher" strata of reality that govern our realm. If anything lucid dreaming supports that theory as a glimpse of what is possible in those other realms.

You are making the same unprovable arguments as these essentially, only thinking that cloaking them in the veneer of higher speculative technology is somehow different.