An interesting video on the simulation principle

[Ostronomos]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/6TnG_pck5gA

This video draws on entropy and other concepts to argue the possibility that we live in a simulation.

[C C]

https://youtu.be/6TnG_pck5gA

This video draws on entropy and other concepts to argue the possibility that we live in a simulation.

In terms of everyday conversation, though, most Abrahamic religious people reject simulation theory. They don't even seem to apprehend that it's the solution to the problems and evidence that non-theists present them with. Or else they are just offended, and don't like the idea of God being a dweller in another world like this one, using technology instead of whatever genuine magic is supposed to be.

But to avoid infinite regress, at some point a fundamental simulation has to fall out of something besides technology and the kind of spatiotemporal world that we're familiar with. A level that exists in a radically different manner, that does not require a prior-in-rank cause or provenance for itself in that hierarchical direction of Russian dolls within Russian dolls. Thereby ending the repetitious sequence (however shallow or deep it is).

VIDEO EXCERPTS: And third, advanced civilizations do create simulations, meaning the odds are we are already living in one. [...] statistically we are way more likely to be inside of a simulation than the original universe.

[...] if a civilization is advanced enough to create a simulated universe and is indistinguishable from a god, then maybe traditional religious ideas were onto something all along.

[...] the moment someone observes them, the particles stop acting like waves and behave like solid objects again. Yeah, this is real physics. Somehow the mere act of observation changes reality itself. Reality might actually change depending on whether or not someone is looking at it. Now, let's go back to video games.

When you're playing in an open world game, the system only renders what's in your field of view. Everything else stays in low res or it doesn't load until you get closer. This saves processing power by only generating what the player needs at any given moment. If the universe behaves the same way, only rendering when observed, then that's exactly what we'd expect if we were living inside a simulation...

[Syne]

In terms of everyday conversation, though, most Abrahamic religious people reject simulation theory. They don't even seem to apprehend that it's the solution to the problems and evidence that non-theists present them with. Or else they are just offended, and don't like the idea of God being a dweller in another world like this one, using technology instead of whatever genuine magic is supposed to be.

But to avoid infinite regress, at some point a fundamental simulation has to fall out of something besides technology and the kind of spatiotemporal world that we're familiar with. A level that exists in a radically different manner, that does not require a prior-rank cause or provenance for itself in that hierarchical direction of Russian dolls within Russian dolls. Thereby ending the repetitious sequence (however shallow or deep it is).

If there's any chance of any infinite regress, it's not a solution to non-theist arguments. It's just another in the eternal/cyclic universe scheme that never answers the ultimate question of origin. God, even just by definition, cannot be contingent... even on another level of reality. You could certainly postulate that such a simulator being would likely be indistinguishable from God, from our perspective, but it satisfies neither the definition of God nor an answer for an ultimate origin.

VIDEO EXCERPTS: [color=#660000]And third, advanced civilizations do create simulations, meaning the odds are we are already living in one. [...] statistically we are way more likely to be inside of a simulation than the original universe.

Why would the existence of a God and a single reality conflict with that reality being a simulation? Assuming everything that exists can only be the essence of a creator god (barring infinite regresses), it almost certainly is simulation. We see our perceived reality while the underlying truth is far different.

[stryder]

A duality of Real and Augmentation (symbiotic simulation) would exist for a duration to a point where the real becomes overly complex and bloated(Feature Creep), which therefore means it cancels out the further augmentation leaving just the real universe behind.

So in essence, no... the universe is definitely not a simulation.

[Magical Realist]

The problem is how do we distinguish between a so-called reality and a simulation then. We know our dreams aren't real for example because we always wake up out of them into another "real" world. But if everything we experience is a simulation, then we have no realer world to compare it to and so lack any basis for seeing it as a simulation. As with any arbitrary and given presentation it is just what it is and is just as present and engaging as any reality could be. And with no experience of another realer world being simulated, it might as well be a reality in itself. IOW, in an absolutely monist reality, there is no difference between being real and being a simulation. It's all just whatever happens.

[confused2]

Look at a puppet. Strings attached. Nothing moves unless pulled by a string.
Throw a lemming over a cliff .. in a sim there have to be strings guiding it every instant of the way.

In a 'real' world you just let go of the lemming and everything works itself out without the need for divine intervention.
Me no see strings attached to everything so me think reality is real .. kind'a wild if you wanted it put that way.

[Secular Sanity]

Look at a puppet. Strings attached. Nothing moves unless pulled by a string.
Throw a lemming over a cliff .. in a sim there have to be strings guiding it every instant of the way.

In a 'real' world you just let go of the lemming and everything works itself out without the need for divine intervention.
Me no see strings attached to everything so me think reality is real .. kind'a wild if you wanted it put that way.

Ah…from Disney’s "True Life Adventure" series, but there are strings guiding it every instant of the way.

If you threw a lemming off a cliff, like they did, among the infinite of imaginable trajectories it could have taken, it is constrained to follow exactly one: the path of least action. It’s just that lemmings have large actions compared to ħ.  So only paths extremely close to the true paths of least action survive.

So yes, the paths of least action are the puppet strings that "True Life Adventures", (Nature) flawlessly operate. You might not see them, but they’re there…kind'a wild if you wanted it put that way, eh? 

[Ostronomos]

All very interesting responses.

I especially liked CC and Syne's responses about the terminal point of the simulation and how it fails to fully explain its origin. I recently read CC's recently posted article on black holes and found it promising. Simulation hypothesis is not a far cry from the mysterious nature of black holes.

[confused2]

Look at a puppet. Strings attached. Nothing moves unless pulled by a string.
Throw a lemming over a cliff .. in a sim there have to be strings guiding it every instant of the way.

In a 'real' world you just let go of the lemming and everything works itself out without the need for divine intervention.
Me no see strings attached to everything so me think reality is real .. kind'a wild if you wanted it put that way.

Ah…from Disney’s "True Life Adventure" series, but there are strings guiding it every instant of the way.

If you threw a lemming off a cliff, like they did, among the infinite of imaginable trajectories it could have taken, it is constrained to follow exactly one: the path of least action. It’s just that lemmings have large actions compared to ħ.  So only paths extremely close to the true paths of least action survive.

So yes, the paths of least action are the puppet strings that "True Life Adventures", (Nature) flawlessly operate. You might not see them, but they’re there…kind'a wild if you wanted it put that way, eh? 

As the lemming falls the Earth's centre of gravity changes (ever so slightly) .. the Moon takes a different orbit, the Sun shifts (not by much) .. the planets take new orbits. Other stars shift in relation to the Sun, the Galaxy moves (ever ever so slightly) .. the nearby galaxies move .. and so on .. slowly the whole Universe takes a new path as a result of what we did to one lemming.

[C C]

The problem is how do we distinguish between a so-called reality and a simulation then. [..] And with no experience of another realer world being simulated, it might as well be a reality in itself.

Yah -- it's arguably not necessary to bother with the distinction. But in an Ostro thread, it becomes more a matter or question of "who benefits" from the simulation conception, like the theists (whether they individually accept it or not). The fundamental level or reality that various (potential) stratified simulations rested on would be radically different in nature from the content of those subordinate levels -- lacking a speed of light limitation and finite resources, and not being subservient to having need of yet another hierarchical-oriented "cause or origin" for itself.

At first glance, another group besides supernatural theists that would profit from simulation are the advocates of temporal presentism. Because the latter already seems to entail a hidden process that is continually generating new configurations of reality, since its world only survives for the duration of a subatomic event and is then replaced by another change or slightly modified universe (yet consistency between those fleeting states is reliably maintained throughout the repetitive procedure).

For the presentist, cosmic existence never endures (as in four dimensionalism or Parmenides' original ancient conception). Any particular instant is akin to a kind of "illusion of being" or short-lived simulated installment of a strictly algorithmic procedure (albeit such might occasionally be lax to accommodate randomness).

However, as Max Tegmark proposed below, computation doesn't have to imply temporal presentism. And indeed, even in Minkowski's block-universe and whatever warped spacetime version of that which GR would correspond to, all the sequential operations of a computer would co-exist with each other. But as he remarks: "not designed by anybody" is also what the fundamental stratum would have to be -- no technological dependence. Whether the theists want to regard that level as God or the presentists want to conceive it as the source of regulation or laws (the nomological realm governing their literal "passage of time" view of the cosmos).

Max Tegmark: ... 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 - either 2007 or 2019)​