# Anybody believe this? We're virtual, not real? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 15, 2007, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756 "2007-08-15T23:40:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/21 "2007-08-16T01:33:56Z")
[QUOTE=biometricks] I was about the same age, although I was using my time a little more constructively and playing Sim City at the time ;). My thought was that we were in a game, much like Sim City, and the person playing the game wanted to see how long it took us to make fire, build a plane, destroy the planet, etc. Then I started thinking that it was a little more simple than that and that we were actually in a snow globe. I mentioned my theory on life to my older brother and he pretty much just laughed at me. Then the Matrix came out few years later and I felt somewhat vindicated. [/QUOTE] [OT]Hah, same here! 'Cept I was probably playing Populous, the granddaddy of God games. Damn you, Computer Game Designer, for all the unanswerable questions of divinity your stupid time wasters forever seared into our young and malleable minds! Did you EVER stop to think it would shatter our precious, sheltered realities and replace them with lifelong confusion and mental torment?! …Games aren’t educational my ass. Molyneux, Wright, Meier and co, along with their Hollywood brethren, taught me much, much more than any dry philosophy or religious book ever did.[/OT] ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/22 "2007-08-16T02:05:09Z")
This idea is not only crackpot, it is incredibly academically unsound and dishonest. It is really nothing more than a repackaged God(s) debate that have existed throughout time including today. The common phrasing is that God created the universe and everything in it with a specific design for it to run on its own for variously specified purposes. That is no different than the proposed “simulation” and whatever created it would be God under many definitions whatever that might be. We already know that we live in an apparently closed universe and physics tells us that we may never know what caused the Big Bang. From that perspective, the odds are 100% that we are living in some kind of simulator caused by something although the use of the word simulator is misleading. It may be caused by an unconscious physical process that pops out universes with various laws and lets them run until they expand into a heat death or collapse again. I am not a fan of the man or idea. It is freshman level pot smoking talk and not something an established doctorate should be spewing out for the innocents to fall prey to. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/23 "2007-08-16T02:09:03Z")
[QUOTE=SmackFu] [Brain in a vat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat) is the only thing I remember from Philosophy 101. [/QUOTE] ♫ “One: cut a hole in a vat…” /♫ ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/24 "2007-08-16T02:09:35Z")
[QUOTE=groman] Given that they come up with the concept of non-quantized to begin with. [/QUOTE] I think that they probably would. I think that a quantized universe would look superficially continuous at the scale necssary to support an intelligent creature running around a quantized landscape. Just speculating though. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/25 "2007-08-16T02:11:59Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Suppose that we built a simulation inside a digital computer, and there were intelligent life forms living there. One thing they would probably notice is that their universe is quantized. Makes you go hmmmmmm. [/QUOTE] Well in digital communications we try to remove systematic bias from quantization by adding a random element when we round calculations. So I suspect that the Heinsberg uncertainty principle is really a similar rounding effect for the finite resolution simulation we live in. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/26 "2007-08-16T02:32:13Z")
The 6502 processor occasionally hangs, and I can TOTALLY tell when they reboot. Deja vu, my ass. ---
**Author:** ![Strinka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/strinka/32/512_2.png) [@Strinka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strinka)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/27 "2007-08-16T03:03:26Z")
Is it possible? Sure. Does it matter? Absolutely not. We can’t tell if we’re in a simulation or not so for all intents and purposes, we’re not. ---
**Author:** ![Khampelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Khampelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khampelf)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/28 "2007-08-16T03:14:09Z")
I think ‘reality’ as we know it is even wierder. Everything you ‘know’ about the universe is stored on a spongy biological battery circuit we call a brain, that’s how we percieve, the universe we know is inside our head. This head is contained by, and ruled by the laws of the universe it percieves. Your head is in the universe, and the universe is inside your head. Yeah, I miss Robert Anton Wilson, and I never met the man. ---
**Author:** ![Cubsfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Cubsfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cubsfan)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/29 "2007-08-16T03:52:45Z")
That’s crazy. You would need 25-28 PS3s chain running their 8 core cell processors just to make a working model of the former Soviet Union. Think of how many you would need to do the WHOLE ANALVERSE! ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/30 "2007-08-16T03:56:09Z")
[QUOTE=Stinkpalm] ANALVERSE! [/QUOTE] Analverse. _Analverse_ hokeydokey then. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/31 "2007-08-16T04:15:17Z")
I can PROVE Dr. Bostrom is wrong! In any simulated universe, it would be a fatal error for someone to get paid for making such a ridiculous statement, therefore we must live in the real universe. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/32 "2007-08-16T04:28:45Z")
> [@](#): > > How do you know that this is reality and not an incredibly detailed simulation? In the end, since there’s nothing you can do about it does it really make a difference? I don’t know, of course, but I can speculate that if in fact we were ‘born’, ‘grew up’ and ‘died’ in a simulation, it wouldn’t have to be anywhere near as richly detailed as it seems to be. Pretty much any level of detail we witnessed would seem sufficient, as we would not know any better. If we are simulated cereal-eating beings, would one brand of each of cornflakes and puffed rice not be sufficient to represent the concepts of each? Would there be any significance at all to rendering celestial objects in the billions that we could catalog but apparently have not the slightest chance of ever reaching? If our whole universe appeared to us to have been constructed from the ASCII character set, would we have any way of knowing that this was not an especially accurate model of reality? So, that’s the best I’ve got: it’s far more complicated than it needs to be for a simulation. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/33 "2007-08-16T04:32:29Z")
Perhaps the programmer wanted it complicated. Perhaps they want a rich and thoroughly detailed simulation. Or perhaps the universe we live in _is_ spartan and bare compared to the universe the programmer lives in. ---
**Author:** ![lowbrass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dc4da7/32.png) [@lowbrass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lowbrass)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/34 "2007-08-16T04:55:01Z")
I think there’s a 100% probability that philosophy = mental masturbation. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/35 "2007-08-16T04:56:50Z")
I agree. It’s one of the very few subjects I never wanted to know more about. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/36 "2007-08-16T05:02:44Z")
I hate philosophy too. I feel like an idiot for wasting so much time on it. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/37 "2007-08-16T05:14:47Z")
[QUOTE=DocCathode] What if I’m actually the programmer operating a puppet construct to inspect the simulation from the inside? What if I’ve drugged/hypnotized/programmed myself not to remember that this is a simulation or that I created it? What if you’re really the programmer and have caused yourself to forget? [/QUOTE] Isn’t that the basic premise of Scientology? ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/38 "2007-08-16T05:18:15Z")
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers] What if _we’re_ the sewer of an even greater society above ours? [/QUOTE] I know what you’re thinking right now…Why didn’t I take the blue pill :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/39 "2007-08-16T05:49:55Z")
[QUOTE=Stinkpalm] That’s crazy. You would need 25-28 PS3s chain running their 8 core cell processors just to make a working model of the former Soviet Union. Think of how many you would need to do the WHOLE ANALVERSE! [/QUOTE] There’s a shortcut to that. While everything and everyone are objects with properties, the actual value of that property isn’t assigned until it is accessed. Therefore, while there is a Stinkpalm.dna, it is a null value until such time as another process attempts to access it’s value. Of course, all this is moot. Only I exist. The rest of you are merely words on my screen. This post was merely an event triggered by Stinkpalm.comment.new ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756/40 "2007-08-16T06:11:40Z")
[QUOTE=Projammer] Of course, all this is moot. Only I exist. The rest of you are merely words on my screen. This post was merely an event triggered by Stinkpalm.comment.new [/QUOTE] Liar! You’re wrong. I can prove it. Alas, only to myself ☹ I guess subjectively nonexistent opponents just aren’t very convincing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anybody-believe-this-were-virtual-not-real/415756.md?page=3)