Well as we experience the ‘real’ subjectively, it’s real as the word real is defined. Asking whether or not the real world is actually real is like asking whether or not a car is really a car.
Paging Dr. Planck
I think I’ll go with the flow and assert that my computer isn’t a computer because, when I tapped commands in morse code on the side of the monitor, they had no effect.
Do you mean 'Modes '?
Well, it certainly is a bit eyebrow-raising to note that the universe is quantized - in other words distance, time, energy etc., all are in finite increments as though digital or “pixelated”.
It’s also a little odd that matter can pop out of nowhere (virtual particles) and that matter accreted into black holes can evaporate into nothing through a similar mechanism. Or quantum entanglement.
Consciousness is also pretty weird. I’m not a believer in free will, as far as I’m concerned I’m just a combination of molecules and chemistry interacting with my environment according to physical rules, same as all other life. But somehow, life feels “real”, and I feel like I’m in control of my own destiny - even though the evidence seems overwhelmingly against such a thing being possible.
However, we have a problem - living in a simulation will always seem “normal” to its inhabitants no matter how odd things are; there’s no reference for comparison.
If this universe were the Super Mario Brothers game it would seem normal to start in the same position over and over and stomp on little characters for “points” to appease some abstract god (or maybe for fun). We would be unable to imagine life outside the screen in much the same way that it’s hard for people to understand that the universe can be expanding without something for it to expand “into” - our everyday experience is just not applicable anymore.
I can’t come up with a convincing reason why the world has to be continuous to not be a simulation, and since we haven’t solved physics yet it’s unclear whether that’s even a correct model at all. In the limit, a fine enough granularity is continuous.
My gut instinct is that we’re a simulation though…
As I’ve posted before, there’s a big problem with there being no apparent mechanism except for random quantum effects to mediate the progression of events. Since we don’t understand or control that randomness, we therefore can’t be in control of our own lives - each moment is an inevitable physical consequence of the previous one in a recursion back to the beginning of time.
But the fact that the world is quantized is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It PROVES we’re inside a simulation. But if we were REALLY simulated, surely we’d be programmed to NOT NOTICE that it’s a simulation. Therefore, since we CAN prove that we’re inside a simulation, we aren’t. Q.E.D.
–Douglas Adams was really quite the philosopher wasn’t he? I wonder if people will be referencing passages from his works millennia hence. For all I know, that one Chinese guy may have written some hilarious literature, but his butterfly dream anecdote is the only bit that anyone ever bothers quoting.
Me, I dream that I’m all kinds of things. But when I share those dreams, do other people ever tell me what a profound philosopher I am? No, they just move to another seat on the bus.
How do we know that?
… is it’s own reward.
Of course the argument is infinitely recursive, but data for it wouldn’t be.
This is kind of like proving or disproving the existence of intelligent extra-terrestrials - when we haven’t seen a single example of life that isn’t on earth (which we can’t prove how it started/how long it takes to start with any given environment/Panspermia, etc). In all intuitive probability there is intelligent life elsewhere, and in all intuitive probability we aren’t in a computer simulation (that is a human idea anyway - would a being that could create such a powerful simulation find it that useful?). Furthermore, if it really is a SIMULATION (of the REAL and actual universe) - isn’t it impossible to harness enough power with all the matter in the universe to simulate all of the matter in the universe (…I assume by “simulation” you mean "accurate simulation). Matter cannot simulate itself; one must have more matter/space than the matter/space being simulated - if not, one is breaking the laws of conservation, thus breaking the rules of the simulation itself!
I’m guessing if the simulation rules are broken, then the “simulation machine” being used with also either break fully or partially - and I haven’t seen any signs of (simulation-machine-caused) breakage in my reality. Therefore, I am pretty certain that we are not in a computer simulation.
From whence comes this idea that a simulation programmer would bother to program limits into their simulated creations to prevent them from noticing they were in a simulation?
Typically when one makes a simulation they simplify or approximate aspects of the real thing being simulated. One would presume that real reality has no planck length and nonrandom quantum effects, for example. (I think this answers your argument here.)
Wait; you can show that the simulation rules are broken? 'cause if you can’t, then (by your statements here) one wouldn’t assume that the “simulation machine” to have broken, and therefore one would not expect to see signs of such breakage.
Realistically, if the “simulation machine” did break, then your (simulated) ability to notice that fact would cease along with the rest of the simulation. And should teh system be restarted, it would be in the interest of the entity running the simulator to restart from a backup and make every effort to ensure that the restarted simulation is exactly as it would have been if no crash occurred - so you wouldn’t notice a thing.
If you guys aren’t careful you’re going to become Christians without knowing it, with the Infinite Creator living outside of his finite creation.
Simple. The whole point of a ‘simulation’ is that it resembles reality. If your simulated creations know that they’re in a simulation, they will not behave like real beings.
Yes; noticing the planck limit has caused humanity to all start acting like Q-bert.
More realistically, if you see that behavior in your simlulated entities and cared that it was occurring, you’d improve the part of the simulation that they noticed the discrepancy in and restart it. That would be much more straightforward than trying to ‘block off’ the wide variety of thought processes that might detect the problems in the simulation, that level of limitation sounds unlikely to create a sentient-seeming simulated being to me.
It might not be so easy for a simulator to control the thoughts of an entity in the simulation, or even to tell what’s going on in the simulation.
I highly reccomend the story “Cookie Monster” by Vernor Vinge.
Well that’s exactly the point! Of course we haven’t stopped acting like real beings. That’s because we’ve proved that we’re inside a simulation, which in turn demonstrates logically that we’re NOT inside a simulation, and therefore we are real. So of course we continue to act real.
A real being, by definition, can never accurately conclude that they are a simulated being. But what happens if a simulated being concludes that they are a simulation? Is this an accurate conclusion? No, it is a simulation of a real being making an inaccurate conclusion. Therefore, we can always conclude with perfect accuracy that we are NOT in a computer simulation.
Except, of course, that your actual argument (in post #47) bases the conclusion that we’re not in a simulation on the assumption that simulated beings could not conclude that they are in a simulation, which you contradict in the next paragraph quoted when you accurately note that a simulated being could theoretically simulate an unsimulated being’s mistaken belief of being simulated.
In short, your argument collapses, due to bad premise.
(It also contradicts due to being an anrgument based on internal contradiction; you do realize that Adams was joking with his God/no God proof, right?)
Bzzt! Wrong. If a simulated being concludes that they are a simulation, then they are correct. This is true even if their reasoning is incorrect, such as in the case where their reasoning is identical to that of a non-simulated entity reaching the same (incorrect) conclusion, but you haven’t even limited the situation to that case; you haven’t excluded the idea that the simulated person might have found evidence that they are in a simulation; in fact that case is an integral part of your initial (contadictory) argument!
This logic of yours is so bad that I have to ask: are you wooshing me?
Sorry, I thought I was being obviously silly. I figured that it wouldn’t be too far out of line, since others had already weighed in on the topic with references to Tron and sim porn.
No harm no foul. (And I know people who would seriously think that logic was good, if it defended a point they were invested in defending. There’s one or two on this board even. Er, not to name names or anything…)
This is the “quantum” part of quantum mechanics. I’m not prepared to explain or defend that entire branch of science, but it’s generally accepted that energy is quantized and from there it’s possible to derive quantum lengths, masses, time intervals, and so on.