And we don’t know that they don’t have a dozen levels of subatomic particles lower than quarks before they get to some probabilistic abstraction, so in that sense the simulation could be much faster then reality.
You can defend any hypothesis indefinitely if you’re allowed to just tag on suppositions.
Each time we do that though, it’s really conceding that a straightforward read of the hypothesis doesn’t have supporting data.
We don’t know that the outer universe doesn’t have fewer levels of particle either.
But in any case, what are you saying? That the simulation really extends to the subatomic level for all matter that we see? Because to do that for the surface of the earth requires a computer as big (or as complex) as the surface of the earth per simulation.
If we’re still saying the subatomic world is JIT generated, then it’s largely irrelevant how many layers there are.
Exactly. The Simulation Hypothesis, in addition to being self defeating, has the same problem as “There’s an elephant in my backyard.”
Why can’t I see him? Invisible.
Why can’t I touch him? He keeps moving out of the way.
Why don’t I hear him moving? Wearing sound baffles.
Why doesn’t he leave any footprints? Anti-gravity boots.
And so on. If something can only make sense by taking on an endless serious of unrealistic additions, then it doesn’t make sense.
If we live in a simulation, then inside that simulation there will certainly be consequences if you rob someone… Or if you behave in an illegal or immoral way. Since we do not know which it is - simulation or reality, it doesn’t change anything. It’s a hypothetical question that doesn’t have any impact on our subjective existence.
Since there are historical data and proof for our history including the history of computers, they are likely to be part of the simulation as well. The technical progress of our everyday society wouldn’t be more than a part of the program. As would other people, animals, plants, planets, suns, galaxies, and the whole universe.
… And me? Am I part of the program too? And the computer on which the program is running… Is that too a simulation?
So, what remains as part of a hypothetical real world?
There is even latitude here to assail reason itself. How do we know the overworld has “laws” of any kind at all? Why do we assume “cause and effect” or “arithmetic induction” or even “yes and no” apply there? Perhaps the over-reality is a vast amorphous mess, and our “laws” are as artificial as the rules of Chess.
Only if the writer of the simulation chooses to write in these consequences. It’s just as likely that good will be punished and bad rewarded. Or that the outcome is random, which more or less sums up our world.
You can argue against an omnibenevolent god based on looking at the world, but nothing says that the simulation writer would be omnibenevolent or benevolent at all.
I don’t think you can assume that there is a writer. If it’s a simulation, then we/I who live inside it cannot know who is outside of it, or even if there is anything outside of it. It’s a bit like “What was before the big bang?” or “What’s outside the known universe?”
If there is no writer there is even less reason to think that God will sweep down and punish the wicked, because you’re positing a lack of God and a lack of in-sim agents deliberately created by God to enforce an arbitrary morality.
In actual fact, if we live in a simulation, the rules of the simulation will present as natural laws. Which to say, laws like the law of gravity - rules that are universally enforced whenever the conditions to trigger them are met. There could be a simulated universe where every person who robbed someone had their head spontaneously explode 13.4 minutes later, and in such a universe the rule against robbing people would be natural law. But there could alternatively be simulated universes without the 13.4 minute rule - there’s nothing about simulations that mandates that such rules must exist.
Compare the law of karma.
The good, bad, or neutral effects of all our actions come back to us. Perhaps instantly - if we put our finger in a flame, we get burned. Perhaps years or lifetimes later - in more complex, less physical and more moral, cases of causing help or harm.
All our current circumstances whatsoever are the result of our own actions in the past, either the immediate past, or the distant past. Our circumstances at birth are the result of our own actions in past lives.
And we have complete free will to act in the present, within the constraints of the circumstances we have knowingly or unknowingly created for ourselves in the past. The actions we choose in the present will determine our circumstances in the future.
A simple, elegant, and comprehensive law.
Well, the ‘law of karma’ and my 13.4 minute head explodey rule are indeed comparable in that they’re both completely made up and not really happening; that’s true.
However the two are different in a relevant way, relating to how easily people people can scientifically determine the rules of a simulation/universe by observing the behavior of the universe. If the 13.4 minute rule was real, everyone would know it was real, for certain - there would be no confusion about it, similar to how people don’t really dispute that gravity exists.
However, there indeed some natural laws that are more subtle, and there could be simulated laws that are subtle too - special relativity, for example, isn’t the most overt natural law in the world. It is still always happening, and can be verified as consistently happening if examined properly, but it’s definitely not one of the more overt laws of the world we’re experiencing.
(The ‘law of karma’ is of course not verifiable, even under close examination - because it’s specifically designed not to be, because being unverifiable is the only way people could persist in believing in it. The (not-really-)plausible deniability is built in, to give its a proponents a hand-wave out when people look around and note that it clearly isn’t a real thing.)
I don’t think so.
For all I know, I was an evil git in a previous life, and caused great harm to many people. But the person I am now, not only doesn’t recall those events, but has no desire to commit such acts. So…what would be the point of visiting suffering on me now? What would I learn?
And if, in my next life, I forget it all again and once again live a mean SOB life, what was the point?
Now, playing devil’s advocate, I could see some benefit in society believing in karma. e.g. It would encourage better behaviour, and give people comfort to believe that their transgressors will one day receive punishment.
But, if we’re going to start listing positives like that, we should also list the negatives. It would encourage us to be less sympathetic towards people under hardship. And less inclined to rectify injustices.
ok if were all in someone’s version of The Sims the player/creator has mental problems starting with a very disturbed sense of humor and had a fucklot to explain and or answer for …of course one could say the same about the Christian version of god/Jesus also
That’s a very Christian way of thinking of things - that there’s a deity somewhere who is ‘doing things to us’ for the purpose of teaching us things.
If we hit ourselves over the head with a hammer it will hurt. Maybe we will learn that it’s not a good idea to hit ourselves over the head with a hammer… or maybe not. But that’s just the way the laws of nature operate. Nobody is trying to teach us anything.
If we drink too much alcohol, we might have a hangover the next morning, but nobody is punishing us to teach us anything, it’s simply cause and effect. It doesn’t matter whether we know what’s good or bad for us or not. The laws of nature will operate anyway, regardless of our knowledge or ignorance.
Karma is simply cause and effect on a longer time scale, and with subtler action.
From the Yoga Vasistha:
What is called fate or divine will is nothing other than the action or self-effort of the past. The present is infinitely more potent than the past. They indeed are fools who are satisfied with the fruits of their past effort (which they regard as divine will) and do not engage themselves in self-effort now.
The wise man should of course know what is capable of attainment by self-effort and what is not. It is, however, ignorance to attribute all this to an outside agency and to say that “God sends me to heaven or to hell” or that “an outside agency makes me do this or that”—such an ignorant person should be shunned.
One should free oneself from likes and dislikes and engage oneself in righteous self-effort and reach the supreme truth, knowing that self-effort alone is another name for divine will. We only ridicule the fatalist.
And the wise seeker knows: the fruit of my endeavors will be commensurate with the intensity of my self-effort and neither fate nor a god can ordain it otherwise. Indeed, such self-effort alone is responsible for whatever man gets here; when he is sunk in unhappiness, to console him people suggest that it is his fate. This is obvious: one goes abroad, one appeases one’s hunger, by undertaking a journey and by eating food—not on account of a fate. No one has seen such a fate or a god, but everyone has experienced how an action (good or evil) leads to a result (good or evil). Hence, right from one’s childhood one should endeavor to promote one’s true good
Fate or divine dispensation is merely a convention which has come to be regarded as truth by being repeatedly declared to be true. If this god or fate is truly the ordainer of everything in this world, of what meaning is any action (even like bathing, speaking or giving), and whom should one teach at all? No. In this world, except a corpse, everything is active and such activity yields its appropriate result. No one has ever seen the existence of a fate or divine dispensation.
Sorry, perhaps I’m going on too long and getting off topic, but…
No, because karma operates on a moral level, on the level of consciousness, as well as the physical level. If we act with sympathy and kindness, we will get back those same things for ourselves. If we help people, we will receive help.
It comes down to the golden rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you”.
But with the twist that what we do to others will be done to us, sooner or later. And the extra twist that what others do to us now is only our own actions from the past coming back to us. Others can’t do anything to us except bring back our own karma, so we shouldn’t hate them or take vengeance if they harm us.
You’ve never played the Sims, have you?
In actual fact all it requires is for the creator of the simulation to not think of the simulated entities as people. To the simulated entities that makes him a sociopath, but from the creator’s view he’s doing no harm, because as far as he’s concerned, simulated pain isn’t “real”.
But you’re quoting just one of the questions I asked.
Essentially I was just trying to understand what about this concept seems elegant and comprehensive to you. It could be that you believe it teaches us something, or it could be something else.
Sure, but I don’t think you followed my point. I was really getting at the implications for justice and how it would affect our feelings eg sympathy.
I could explain, but since it’s a tangent to this OP, I’ll leave it there. If you make another thread I’ll go into it there 
How do I contact these over-beings? I’d like to be copy and pasted into a reality where I have super powers and sexy, sexy girlfriends.
You’re right. On rereading, I see that you were asking about loss of memory of previous lives.
Just as karma is carried over from one life to another, so also is individual consciousness itself, all unfulfilled desires, attitudes, feelings, the outcome of experiences, level of spiritual development.
All the results in consciousness of anything we’ve previously learned, experienced, or attained are carried forward, whether there is consciousness memory of it or not. The essence of our individual self continues. The whole sequence of previous lives may be remembered at some stage.
Quoting again from the Yoga Vasishtha (because it’s the clearest and most comprehensive account):
One who wakes up from a dream thinks, ‘It is like this, and not like that which I saw in the dream.’ After death too, one thinks, ‘It is like this, and not like that which I saw before death.’
The dream may be brief, and the life may be long, but the experience of the moment is the same in both.
Just as in one lifetime one experiences hundreds of dreams, so until one attains enlightenment, one experiences hundreds of waking states. Just as some people remember their dreams, some people remember their past experiences.
On the other question:
It doesn’t affect sympathy or administration of justice. Perhaps you could explain why you think it would?
I think it’s likely that we’re in a simulation because technology is growing so fast that there is no reason not to think scientists will invent this super powerful computer one day. In less than 80 years computers have gone from Alan Turing’s colossos which could do about 5000 operations a second to the Japanese Fugaku super computer which can do 415 petaflops per second (that’s 4 quintillion, 150 quadrillion - or 4,150,000,000,000,000,000 - operations per second!). And that took just 80 years!
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We live in a world where people assume computers will just get faster and faster for ever. That may not be true.
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The exponential rise in CPU speed does not give an expontial rise in ‘real life application’ power. Example: weather forecasts in the UK: a 2020 5-day forecast is now as accurate as a 1975 2 or 3-day forecast. So a machine may be 1 billion times faster, but that does not translate into ‘real life’ improvements.
In fact, try to think of anything that is a million times ‘better’ than 50 years ago and you will struggle - all the answers will technical, not real life.
So even if the next 80 years achieved ANOTHER 150 quadrillion (ie: 22,500,00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) that would not be able to simulate a universe.
You guys are way overthinking this. The simulation is real, and a bit less than half of us are living in it. Die-hard Trump supporters have their own social media, their own news networks, and their own faith-based belief system holding it all together. They are spoon-fed an alternate reality not by computers but by humans with a profit motive.
They have their own election maps.
In January, they will have deepfake video of McDonald’s second (of many) swearing-in, in front of the Capitol, as our new forever-president.
Life being good, they stay home with their guns and bbq and celebrate the triumph of the thousand-year empire.