Could change be an illusion, thus leading to the conclusion of a kind of "Matrix"?

[Ostronomos]

Consider the fact that the span of recorded History began 5000 years ago with the development of Sumerian cuneiform script.

It was not long after that Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great left their indelible mark on the world.

I realize that I am merely describing events in History without the proof that change is an illusion. But I feel intuitively that a "Matrix" reality is the only possible conclusion.

During the latter part of the Stone Age, we were just beginning to form tribes and agriculture.

What I find most mind-boggling is that we find ourselves in the information age. With all its technological marvels.

There seems to be a mutual relationship between information and reality.

[C C]

You are copying all kinds of code from somewhere else (the Religious forum?) that causes your text to shrink to nearly unreadable size when pasted in this forum.

To avoid that problem for good, you need to click the USER link on Scivillage. Then in the User Control Panel go down to where it says Other Options, and check-mark the box where it says: "Put the editor in source mode by default". Then click Update Options (i.e., save).

It was not long after that Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great left their indelible mark on the world.

I realize that I am merely describing events in History without the proof that change is an illusion. But I feel intuitively that a "Matrix" reality is the only possible conclusion.

During the latter part of the Stone Age, we were just beginning to form tribes and agriculture.

What I find most mind-boggling is that we find ourselves in the information age. With all its technological marvels.

There seems to be a mutual relationship between information and reality.

Those are merely examples of putative "change"? Otherwise (as you perhaps suggest) we don't get how the incremental developments in civilization you mention would perversely imply that change is an illusion. (I.e., beyond the insufficiency of "intuition", nothing is submitted for making the case, with respect to the question or proposal.)

In the eternalism or block view of time, there is still a sequence of different states of the universe -- and content being different in one particular conscious moment compared to the rest. Crudely akin to a flip book, but without the flipping of pages (a literal objective flow).

"Change" usually entails more than dissimilarity, though. It variously implies transformation or transition or replacement. Occasionally it can merely indicate a relational difference between two states, perhaps minus being loaded with passage and action (but the latter is perhaps iffy).

Tegmark (below) actually proposed that a block-universe itself could still be a higher dimensional simulation (without requiring computation as an action or happening). The concept of a simulated reality, however, does not necessitate either technology or a biological brain being the provenance of such. The simulation could be something falling out of a more fundamental stratum that is quite unlike the regularities and things abiding within the simulated realm itself. (Explaining a situation with a repeat of that situation is a recursive fallacy. That does not forbid nested, quasi-replicated levels from ever finitely being the case. But at some point there must be something completely different in characteristics that serves as the ultimate origin of them.)

Max Tegmark: [Seth] Lloyd has advanced the intermediate possibility that we live in an analog simulation performed by a quantum computer, albeit not a computer designed by anybody — rather, because the structure of quantum field theory is mathematically equivalent to that of a spatially distributed quantum computer. In a similar spirit, Schmidhuber, Wolfram and others have explored the idea that the laws of physics correspond to a classical computation. Below we will explore these issues in the context of the MUH.

[...] Suppose that our universe is indeed some form of computation. A common misconception in the universe simulation literature is that our physical notion of a one-dimensional time must then necessarily be equated with the step-by-step one-dimensional flow of the computation. I will argue below that if the MUH is correct, then computations do not need to evolve the universe, but merely describe it (defining all its relations).

The temptation to equate time steps with computational steps is understandable, given that both form a one-dimensional sequence where (at least for the non-quantum case) the next step is determined by the current state. However, this temptation stems from an outdated classical description of physics: there is generically no natural and well-defined global time variable in general relativity, and even less so in quantum gravity where time emerges as an approximate semiclassical property of certain “clock” subsystems.

Indeed, linking frog perspective time with computer time is unwarranted even within the context of classical physics. The rate of time flow perceived by an observer in the simulated universe is completely independent of the rate at which a computer runs the simulation.

Moreover, as emphasized by Einstein, it is arguably more natural to view our universe not from the frog perspective as a 3-dimensional space where things happen, but from the bird perspective as a 4-dimensional spacetime that merely is.

There should therefore be no need for the computer to compute anything at all — it could simply store all the 4-dimensional data, i.e., encode all properties of the mathematical structure that is our universe. Individual time slices could then be read out sequentially if desired, and the “simulated” world should still feel as real to its inhabitants as in the case where only 3-dimensional data is stored and evolved.

[...] In conclusion, the role of the simulating computer is not to compute the history of our universe, but to specify it. ... Each relation of the mathematical structure is thus defined by a computation. In other words, if our world is a well-defined mathematical structure in this sense, then it is indeed inexorably linked to computations, albeit computations of a different sort than those usually associated with the simulation hypothesis: these computations do not evolve the universe, but define it by evaluating its relations. --The Mathematical Universe (paper)

[Magical Realist]

I've come up with a few hints that we are living inside a fictive holographic movie instead of an objective reality:

1) when I become unconscious, it doesn't exist to me anymore. A reality shouldn't do this.

2) it has a beginning and an ending, like a movie. A reality shouldn't. '

3) it all happens from a highly relativistic standpoint from a specific person's pov in a specific geographical location at a specific time in history. A reality shouldn't do this.

4) it is all about me and my physical and psychological needs and cultural values and beliefs, always being a subjective 1st person story. Reality isn't like this.

5) it morphs and changes and flickers and lapses from moment to moment like an animated scene. A reality shouldn't do this.

6) it is ephemeral and fleeting, like an insubstantial dream. A reality shouldn't be.

7) it all is generated inside our brains. A reality is not..

[stryder]

I've come up with a few hints that we are living inside a fictive holographic movie instead of an objective reality:

1) when I become unconscious, it doesn't exist to me anymore. A reality shouldn't do this.

2) it has a beginning and an ending, like a movie. A reality shouldn't. '

3) it all happens from a highly relativistic standpoint from a specific person's pov in a specific geographical location at a specific time in history. A reality shouldn't do this.

4) it is all about me and my physical and psychological needs and cultural values and beliefs, always being a subjective 1st person story. Reality isn't like this.

5) it morphs and changes and flickers and lapses from moment to moment like an animated scene. A reality shouldn't do this.

6) it is ephemeral and fleeting, like an insubstantial dream. A reality shouldn't be.

7) it all is generated inside our brains. A reality is not..

I would say the world we are in is very real, however there is the chance that we can have additional layers (or branes) that are not.
One simple rule (unwritten and implied as common sense) should be never to try to venture our world into a box, as it might be easy to escape into one but very difficult to emerge out of one (although not impossible). Such boxes would likely have pay masters that would keep you paywalled inside if you decide to enter (kind of like a form of ransomware where anything you create while inside is forfeit to them)

Another rule is to never build a universe out of universe sized building blocks (as in Droste effect) as that could lead to some really awkward situations.

[Ostronomos]

I am copying and pasting this response now that CC exposed my meanderings:

Do you not value the supremacy of logic? Is that not enough? How about Einstein's special relativity as a way of reinforcing the simulation hypothesis? No doubt that can bring one closer to truth, if only intellectually.

[C C]

Do you not value the supremacy of logic? Is that not enough?

Logic merely uncovers what is already contained within concepts and one's preferences (our already existing assumptions and beliefs) -- items which might otherwise be obscure or hidden without that analysis. And it can pursue what falls out of new combinations of those thought elements and axioms of a system (synthesis), which otherwise might not be known or realized.

Reason may predict and "prove" that a proposed _X_ resides in or belongs to one of our invented language games, but can not do to that with respect to reality existing independent of that game. Even if it's a game that was contingently modeled on aspects of the empirical world (was intended to be a knowledge representation), it will not be an accurate or exhaustive account of physical reality. Those defects accordingly mean that it is useless for discovering/confirming things in the context of the real world -- at best only anticipating an _X_, without literally producing and validating it on its own.

For instance, one of the things missing in Bostrom's limited "language game representation of the world" (below) is that we have not produced a convincing and thorough simulation yet, as well as demonstrated that conscious entities are possible in them. If we finally do accomplish that, then the argument starts lighting-up like a Christmas tree. But still without verification -- just as we can reason that intelligent life surely exists elsewhere in the universe based on yata-yata selective assumptions, but that still does not yield the genuine sapient ET.

Simulation hypothesis: In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed the simulation argument, which suggests that if a civilization becomes capable of creating conscious simulations, it could generate so many simulated beings that a randomly chosen conscious entity would almost certainly be in a simulation. [The odds explode exponentially.] The argument presents a trilemma: either such simulations are not created due to technological limitations or self-destruction; or advanced civilizations choose not to create them; or we are almost certainly living in one. This assumes that consciousness is not uniquely tied to biological brains but can arise from any system that implements the right computational structures and processes.

... can bring one closer to truth, if only intellectually.

If a person was born into the "cult of this is a simulated world", and accepted that as part of their cultural belief and identity as a member of that community... Then certainly having an intellectual argument or set of arguments that allows such to be a possibility would aid in the defense of the community and apologetics for it. But it is usually useless for proselytizing to skeptics or as an incentive for a disinterested non-believer to join-up. A soapbox with the aim of increasing membership should target those with an existing [but malnourished] predilection, and not waste resources on the immune or vaccinated crowd.

[Magical Realist]

I would say the world we are in is very real, however there is the chance that we can have additional layers (or branes) that are not.

I feel like that may be the case. Reality in my mind seems a vastly overrated property. So many meaningful experiences in our lives aren't actually real at all in the sense of involving physically independent things. Movies, dreams, stories, art, music, relationships, thoughts, conversations, reading, writing, games, erotic fantasies, etc all go to compose most of our lives and yet are real only in the sense of being immediately involving and impactful to us.

Perhaps the meaning of the word "reality" has been degraded over the years by philosophers to mean only objectively physical rather than as "real" as in a genuine experience. I think that's what matters in the long run--the realness we feel and experience in the world. Pain is always real, as are terror and wonderment and grief and love. We could be in an illusion for all we know, but all that really matters are the powerful experiences we go thru in it--the soulful story that plays out in our lives. It is all over way too soon. Why does it even matter if we were in an inanimate independent reality or not? It is the story that matters in the long run. The experiences.

"The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it, because it's only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles, wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on."
Chuck Palahniuk