Also known as the “Brain in a Jar” question or “The Matrix”. Do you believe it is possible what you perceive as the world is not real?
I think it is possible. I don’t believe that it is so (i.e. I think the world is real) but I think that it could be true and here is why:
We have been a technological civilization for only a few hundred years and we are already very close to figuring out how to feed sensory information directly into a brain. It is probably only a decade or two away. The Universe is about 14 billion years old. It stands to reason that someone else already did this and if someone else already did this, it is possible we (or just me!) are the result of that.
Like I said I am sure the world is real but can I honestly say I am 100% sure? No, not 100%. What do you think?
I think it is possible I am a brain in a jar but I also think that functionally whether I am a brain in a jar thinking it’s a human moving and interacting with a world or just a human moving and interacting with a world is irrelevant, so I assume the latter is true and not the former.
I think you are conflating two distinct ideas. One is the “brain in a jar”, either in solipsistic or “Matrix” form, see here:
The other is the simulation hypothesis, see here:
In the latter link, note “Bostrom’s trilemma”. There is an idea that if any self-aware intelligent species develop technology, they will eventually be able to simulate many universes, and will do so. Therefore, we should expect many more simulated universes than real universes. Therefore, our own universe is more likely to be a simulation than real.
The Planck length and quantization in general do kind of look like pixellation, right?
If it is a simulation, who made it? God? Why would God need to run a simulation? Simulations are for answering questions. That’s why we run them, to find out things we don’t know.
Unless it’s for porn. We know how that stuff turns out.
Pft. I see your Poe and raise you a much, much earlier Calderón de la Barca (who I have long suspected of inventing emo way before its time). Segismundo’s monologue, from La vida es sueño. Partial translation mine.
Of being king the king dreams, and he lives
under this lie giving orders,
requiring and organizing;
…
Dreams a rich man in his riches,
which worry him as naught else;
dreams the poor man as he suffers
in his poverty and his worries;
dreams he whose fortunes raise
and those who work and toil,
dreams he who insults and offends
and in the world, at long last,
everybody dreams they are
although not one understands.
I dream that I am here
in this prison, by chains weighed,
and I dreamed that in a better
place I otherwise was.
What is life? Frenzy it is.
What is life? Illusion only,
and the greater good be small;
for life is all a dream,
and dreams… only dreams are.
I think I heard right here on the SDMB that if you removed all the empty spaces between bits of matter all the matter in the universe would likey fit into a bucket. Things like this make me suspect that maybe we are just virtual but it doesn’t really matter if that is our reality.
An entity that arose in a real universe, and then developed the technology to simulate universes. Or an entity that arose in a simulated universe, and then developed the technology to run simulations within the simulation.
The idea that our universe is a simulation run by such an entity either for some purpose or just for entertainment is the only notion of “God” that I think is worth entertaining a real possibility. To paraphrase Arthur C Clarke, any entity with sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a God with magical powers.
A little tongue in cheek, obviously - this is a little like college students getting high and speculating about solipsism - but the underlying idea seems valid to me.
I hope not, because whoever made the universe, made it knowing there’d be suffering and death. All life on Earth eventually dies, and most living things die in unpleasant ways. Very few things die of old age, or peacefully. Our creator would have to be a dick of cosmic proportions. I think I prefer that no one did that on purpose.
Nope. There’s room there in your question for a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life but if you’re having a hard time accepting the reality of this physical world and our existence within it you really need to see a shrink.
Yeah, but, see, you experience stuff, and if this is a simulation you’re not dying in an unpleasant way; by contrast, the living things that do die in unpleasant ways could just be a framing device: they act like background characters in someone else’s story, but they’re just animated images going through the motions as if they’re suffering.
(What? If it’s a simulation, the whole setting is up for grabs.)
