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[Battersea Power Station]

Crazy I was gonna make this exact topic on GAF but kept putting it off.

I'm with OP on this one. Simulation theory ties so well with religion and existence of God to me. Whoever created the simulation is our God basically so why believe one and not the other?

Well, I don't really understand OP's question, and others probably feel the same, which is why no one is really addressing it.

Simulation theory is a mathematical, philosophical exercise, as summarized here:

Is your question (and OP's question): "If you believe Simulation Theory (really should be called Simulation Hypothesis) then would you call our creator God?"

And I guess, yeah, we can. But that's not really an interesting question. You can call our creator whatever you want: God, Mad Scientist, Lab Girl, whatever. His question is about the essence of what we believe. If he's asking "If we're in a simulation, then would our creators be omnipotent?" Yes, they would, and that would make them gods to us. I don't think Musk or any other "tech-bros" would disagree with that, so I don't know who the question is aimed at.

Maybe @ womfalcs3 can clarify?

 

[cpp_is_king]

A rock can stay as a rock for billions of years but a higher intelligence is required to create life.

This makes no sense. A higher intelligence isn’t necessary to create a rock, but is to create life? They are literally the exact same thing : a collection of atoms arranged in a certain way. Given an infinite amount of time, you will necessarily encounter the arrangement that leads to life eventually

A billion years is nothing. How about 1b to the power 1b? If time has neither beginning nor end then we are at an infitesimally small point along the way,

 

[Airola]

This makes no sense. A higher intelligence isn’t necessary to create a rock, but is to create life? They are literally the exact same thing : a collection of atoms arranged in a certain way. Given an infinite amount of time, you will necessarily encounter the arrangement that leads to life eventually

A billion years is nothing. How about 1b to the power 1b? If time has neither beginning nor end then we are at an infitesimally small point along the way,

It's also really hard for a rock to appear from nothing.
Plus, I don't think it's possible that time hasn't had a beginning.

 

[cpp_is_king]

Life doesn’t appear from nothing either? That would violate the law of conservation of energy

 

[LittleBusters]

Even if it is a simulation, the God is a scientist in a higher dimension. It certainly isn't the god of the 'holy books'. Those are simplistic by comparison to this super being. Star Trek gave us a clue with Q.

 

[Death Dealer]

Fred Hoyle is a bit of a Henry Heimlich: brilliant in one way, but trying to force his brilliance in places it doesn't belong. He rejected the Big-Bang Theory and was also a proponent of a steady-state universe. Also he thought that sun spot cycles might match up with flu epidemics, which, hey why not.

Einstein rejected Quantum theory. "God doesn't play dice". It's easy to see things in hindsight, but until certain theories are proven, I can understand people having different viewpoints.

Here's the source where I read that about Hoyle. It's from the book Alien Agenda by Jim Marrs.

 

[womfalcs3]

Life doesn’t appear from nothing either? That would violate the law of conservation of energy

Conservation laws are only applicable to our universe. Obviously, to start something from nothing (as would be the case in real creation), we would violate those laws. That is why I believe that God is beyond the logical systems our fallible minds can comprehend.

I understand the argument that, in history, we have always left anything we couldn't comprehend as "God". Then, as science matured, we found explanations. Some people believe that those explanations, because they exist, prove that a god doesn't exist. I tend to look at those explanations as phenomena that can be predicted mathematically and scientifically, which in my view, makes the existence of a higher being all the more plausible.

 

[down 2 orth]

How do you simulate conciousness?

 

[cpp_is_king]

How do you simulate conciousness?

Consciousness is just a bunch of atoms moving around in a particular pattern. You simulate it by first understanding the pattern, then simulating it

 

[zombrex]

If a higher intelligence is required to create life then where did that higher intelligence originally come from? Not a very logical statement.

 

[womfalcs3]

Consciousness is just a bunch of atoms moving around in a particular pattern. You simulate it by first understanding the pattern, then simulating it

How do you know? You can take the mass somebody before and after death... They'd have the same mass. So what is consciousness? What is the soul that makes us alive?

 

[womfalcs3]

If a higher intelligence is required to create life then where did that higher intelligence originally come from? Not a very logical statement.

That is just it. Logical flows for us may not apply outside the universe.

 

[cpp_is_king]

How do you know? You can take the mass somebody before and after death... They'd have the same mass. So what is consciousness? What is the soul that makes us alive?

The atoms change pattern after you die

 

[womfalcs3]

The atoms change pattern after you die

Did you read this in a scientific publication?

 

[cpp_is_king]

You don’t have to read a scientific publication to know that your heart stops beating when you die, or that your brain stops firing neurons throughout your body to control the functions of your various organs and muscles. All of these are, unsurprisingly, atoms moving around. Wouldn’t you agree that a beating heart is a different motion than a non beating heart? And thusly, a different pattern of atoms moving around.

Likewise, a brain firing a neuron throughout your body is not just a made up thing, it involves actual particles moving throughout your body in a very specific way

 

[TheShadowLord]

Einstein rejected Quantum theory. "God doesn't play dice". It's easy to see things in hindsight, but until certain theories are proven, I can understand people having different viewpoints.

Here's the source where I read that about Hoyle. It's from the book Alien Agenda by JimMarrs.

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Einst...-he-was-a-major-contributor-to-quantum-theory

What Einstein objected to was not quantum theory itself, but the interpretationthat Bohr and many others adopted. Einstein was a physical realist, while Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation denied that certain properties of subatomic particles have well-defined values independent of specification of a measurement apparatus. Bohr maintained that the probabilistic quantum mechanical description of a system is a complete description of the objective state of the system, while Einstein was convinced that there must be a real state of affairs hidden behind the probabilities. These are called hidden variables. The famous Bohr–Einstein debates focused on many of these issues Einstein had with the interpretation of quantum theory. See Is quantum theory a complete description of reality?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr–Einstein_debates

@ Battersea Power Station

I really enjoy Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell videos. They are very informative and easy to understand

 

[BANGS]

Because people are dumb...

 

[James T. Kirk]

It's possible we are because anything's possible. I don't believe it, though.

 

[down 2 orth]

Consciousness is just a bunch of atoms moving around in a particular pattern. You simulate it by first understanding the pattern, then simulating it

But how do you know that? None of what you said has come close to being proven in any possible way.

 

[bitbydeath]

I'd give it more credit than some guy making everything and vanishing.

 

[James T. Kirk]

I'd give it more credit than some guy making everything and vanishing.

This.

 

[LordPezix]

I think to better understand this we need to begin with a few key conceptual agreements.

First off is if there is a beginning, there must be an end. The conceptualization of infinity and its very existence will collapse once the ability to perceive the idea passes.

That is step one.

Next you need to grasp the fundamental principle of life which is to live, thus prioritizing survival, perpetually striving to forever put off death, such as evolution.

If you can recognize the human race as being the dominate species on this planet, then you can recognize our development of methodologies we use to stave off inevitable death.

Ok this is the big one, survival is directly correlated with the mastery and use of the surrounding environment, eg. We live on earth because we have evolved/adapted to sustain ourselves through breathing air, drinking water, eating food, etc.

Now if we can tie the ideology of the Kardashev scale with the natural relation between survival and environmental mastery it is only rational to see that once a civilization has expanded their power usage to a solar system, or a galactic system, it becomes very easy to see how our existence could very well be part of an experiment.

Because even if we look at what we do now at the level of our tech. We run our own simulations to the best of our ability. Flight simulators, racing simulators, computer models, hell even look at the Stanford Prison Experiment.


I can't even imagine what kind of tests/experiments/simulations a civilization that has advanced to such a technological level as to harness our solar system, yet alone a galaxy would create in order to answer the questions they pondered?.

This to me is what is so interesting if you include things like the Fermi Paradox, where mathematically we should see other civilizations when we don't.

Our we the control group of an experiment to see how this particular strand of DNA would develop without influence from the outside world? I mean we already grow cultures in labs to study micro life forms. To believe that we could be an different is a dangerous line to walk.


I think what is most intriguing thing is either, we are, by some insane, truly insane, chance that we are the very first civilization therefore can't possibly be living in a simulation. Or, we aren't, and the possibility that another life form achieved a technological level far superior than we realize possible today and developed a simulated reality in which we live in and they study.

Remember that it is based on probability, neither of those two scenarios can be true, but they do exist within the realm of possibility based on the current knowledge we possess.



If we can theorize the idea of a simulated reality, then only by natural progress do you also believe it will be achievable one day, in one form or another.


I don't think many people would have believed humans could fly in 1000 AD, and then some started to, and then we did. It is just progress.

 

[cpp_is_king]

But how do you know that? None of what you said has come close to being proven in any possible way.

Which part of this is anything less than extremely obvious?

Your entire body is comprised of matter. Matter is comprised of atoms. Reconstruct the exact configuration of atomic and subatomic particles and you have an exact clone. I’m confused about why this is confusing

 

[down 2 orth]

Which part of this is anything less than extremely obvious?

Your entire body is comprised of matter. Matter is comprised of atoms. Reconstruct the exact configuration of atomic and subatomic particles and you have an exact clone. I’m confused about why this is confusing

Your body is composed of atoms, yes, but there is still no indication that conciousness is, or that conciousness is even confined to one's body. I think it's worth considering that science is not even close to answering many of our questions as of yet.

 

[Airola]

Our we the control group of an experiment to see how this particular strand of DNA would develop without influence from the outside world?

Is this a way to say that if it ends up being so that we are alone in this universe, it would just mean that the ones who made the simulation specifically made this universe to contain us to see how our types of creatures would develop without influence from outside?

Remember that it is based on probability, neither of those two scenarios can be true, but they do exist within the realm of possibility based on the current knowledge we possess.

Not really, as currently we have zero evidence that lines of code could have individual consciousness and experience of self. No matter how detailed the simulated world would be, it could be just that: a simulation, that looks to its observers that the characters (combinations of lines of code) would have the experience of self, but them actually experience themselves exactly like we do is still behind a massive leap of faith without a single strand of evidence it could be done.

Detailed simulations that look to their observers that there are individuals with individual sense of self: sure, why not.
Self-experiencing NPCs: nah, not really.

 

[Airola]

Which part of this is anything less than extremely obvious?

Your entire body is comprised of matter. Matter is comprised of atoms. Reconstruct the exact configuration of atomic and subatomic particles and you have an exact clone. I’m confused about why this is confusing

So, if they have exactly the same configurations of atomic and subatomic particles and our sense of self and consciousness is made out of that and nothing else, would you and the clone still have their own individual sense of self? If me feeling I'm present in this body with this mind and with these thoughts and with these memories and with this experience of what I sense around is only all about atomic and subatomic particles being in certain configuration, then how two people with the exact same configuration can feel they are individuals of their own?

A man can burn his finger in a fire. It hurts. Pain is a feeling that is felt only within the physical shell of the one who touched fire.
That is something that is very well explained by atoms etc.
But then there is the sense of "me" that is the sole experiencer of the situation and the pain and that's different from the chemical reactions when pain occurs.
There is still nothing that explains this experience. All people can do is assume it's about the same thing that makes a living human to react with pain and react to pain, but nothing really is even remotely proving it is so.

I would say it is completely impossible to ever make an exact clone of a person because you can't clone the exact same sense of "me" the person who is cloned senses.

 

[Arkos]

The elite are all about transcendence and living forever and the secrets of the universe and they want to know all this, some are good some are bad some are a mix; but the good ones don't ever want to organize, the bad ones tend to want to organize because they lust after power. Powerful consciousnesses don't want to dominate other people, they want to empower them so they don't tend to get together until things are really late in the game, then they come together and evil is always defeated. Because good is so much stronger. And we're on this planet and Einstein's physics showed it, Max Planck's physics showed it- there's at least twelve dimensions. And now that's all the top scientists and billionaires are coming out and saying it's a false hologram, it is artificial, the computers are scanning it and finding tension points where it's artificially projected and gravity is bleeding in to this universe. That's what they call dark matter. So we're like a thought or a dream that's a wisp in a computer program, some God's mind, whatever. They're proving it all, it's all coming out.

Now, there's like this subtransmission zone below the third dimension that's just turned over to the most horrible things, it's what it resonates to, and it's trying to get up into the third dimension; that's just a basic level consciousnesses, to launch up into the next levels. Our species is already way up at the fifth, sixth dimension consciously, our best people. But there's this big war trying to basically destroy humanity because humanity has free will and there's a decision to which level we want to go to. We have free will so evil is allowed to come in and contend and not just good. And the elites themselves believe they're racing using human technology to try to take our best minds and build some type of breakaway civilization where they're going to merge with machines, transcend and breakaway from the failed species that is Man. Which is kind of like a false transmission because they're thinking what they are is ugly and bad; projecting it onto themselves instead of believing no, it's a human test about building us up.

And so Google was set up 18, 19 years ago so that they wanted to build a giant artificial system. And Google believes the first artificial intelligence will be a supercomputer based on the neuron activities of the hive mind of humanity, with billions of people wired into it with the internet of things, and so all of our thoughts go into it and we're actually building a computer with real neurons in real-time that's also psychically connected to us that are organic creatures so that they will have current prediction powers, future prediction powers- a true crystal ball- but the big secret is once you have a crystal ball and know the future you can add stimuli beforehand and make decisions and control the future. And so then it's the end of consciousness and free will for individuals as we know and a true 2.0 in a very bad way hive mind consciousness with an AI jacked into everyone knowing our hopes and dreams, delivering it to us not in some P.KD. wirehead system where we plug in and give up on consciousness because of unlimited pleasure but because we were already wired in and absorbed before we knew it by giving over our consciousness to this system by our daily decisions that it was able to manipulate and control into a larger system.

God bless you Tesseract.

How do you know? You can take the mass somebody before and after death... They'd have the same mass. So what is consciousness? What is the soul that makes us alive?

I’d also like to acknowledge this hot take straight out of the 1700’s / introductory philosophy. Solid.

 

[cpp_is_king]

So, if they have exactly the same configurations of atomic and subatomic particles and our sense of self and consciousness is made out of that and nothing else, would you and the clone still have their own individual sense of self? If me feeling I'm present in this body with this mind and with these thoughts and with these memories and with this experience of what I sense around is only all about atomic and subatomic particles being in certain configuration, then how two people with the exact same configuration can feel they are individuals of their own?

A thought or a feeling is simply a state of your brain. 2 identical brains would share identical thoughts and feelings. Of course it is a bit more complicated than that, because simply by standing in 2 different places the two identical brains would receive slightly different visual stimuli (they would not observe the exact same image) and this would cause their brains to develop differently, so they would only be identical for an instant.

I would say it is completely impossible to ever make an exact clone of a person because you can't clone the exact same sense of "me" the person who is cloned senses.

Sorry, but I believe in science as it is our best model of how the universe works. And current scientific wisdom suggests that all observable behavior of the universe is the result of atomic particles moving around. I will grant you that we don’t know everything yet. For example, scientists just recently discovered the Higgs Boson particle and there may be other things we also do not yet know about. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist or are not have a physical basis.

I do agree that it is probably never possible to clone someone, but not for the reason you mentioned. More because you would have to snapshot the entire state of all ~10^70 atoms in a persons body in a single instant, which seems very unlikely

 

[Arkage]

A computer simulation doesn't require an entity with God-like attributes to create it. It could basically be a human that creates such a simulation 3,000 years from now given sufficient technological advances.

The concept of God, on the other hand, has to confront a wide range of unique problems. One example: A simulation designing human 3,000 years in the future has an explainable origin and history. God does not, and in fact has no origin and exists outside time. This makes believing in God much more difficult, as the philosophical problems become overwhelming.

 

[Airola]

A thought or a feeling is simply a state of your brain. 2 identical brains would share identical thoughts and feelings. Of course it is a bit more complicated than that, because simply by standing in 2 different places the two identical brains would receive slightly different visual stimuli (they would not observe the exact same image) and this would cause their brains to develop differently, so they would only be identical for an instant.

A thought or a feeling is still a different thing than the experience of self while having those thoughts and feelings. Experience of self is also different from you just seeing or hearing things. A thought or a feeling or reactions to what you see or hear could be there without a sense of self - a sense of "me" experiencing or being along the ride.

Sorry, but I believe in science as it is our best model of how the universe works. And current scientific wisdom suggests that all observable behavior of the universe is the result of atomic particles moving around. I will grant you that we don’t know everything yet. For example, scientists just recently discovered the Higgs Boson particle and there may be other things we also do not yet know about. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist or are not have a physical basis.

I do agree that it is probably never possible to clone someone, but not for the reason you mentioned. More because you would have to snapshot the entire state of all ~10^70 atoms in a persons body in a single instant, which seems very unlikely

I also think that even if it was all just about those atoms, a person needs those actual atoms to be a conscious person, or to even exist. A computer simulation is just a computer simulation. It doesn't move actual atoms that make physical reality exist, but it only moves atoms that are subject to whatever computer the simulation masters are using. An atom inside a person is not a line of code. A line of code is not an atom inside a person. If we would now make a computer program that simulates a simple atomic movement and its reactions, the atom inside the program is not the atom it simulates but it is part of completely different atoms that are moving around in the computer system.

Even if they were able to make the most realistic tree ever with every single atom and its movement simulated exactly the way they move about in a tree and it would be 100% photorealistic and would grow and die 100% the way they do in nature, it would not be a tree of nature because the atoms are not the atoms that make an actual tree, but they are pieces of code in a computer that only imitate the ways of the atoms.

To be able to make a simulation where the NPCs have a self experience like us, they would have to control actual atoms outside of the computer. And at that point why call it a simulation anymore as it is them controlling actual nature to build an actual world. It would be closer to alchemy or maybe even occultism than a computer simulation.

What comes to physical cloning, I don't think a cloned apple is the apple it was cloned from. We can look what kinds of combinations of atoms make what kind of things. A certain combination is an apple. But aren't the atoms themselves individual things too? The atom that is a certain part of the combination of an apple is not the same exact atom another apple has in that certain place in the combination. It's not that it is in different location that makes it different, but it is different on its own no matter what its location is. I think that individuality especially in the case of self-experiencing consciousnesses the essence of what makes a person an individual self-experiencer go beyond the subatomic particles.

We might be able to make an imitation of an atom, but we can't make complete imitations of what the subatomic particles are made of. Not only we would have to make imitations of those ~10^70 atoms, but we would have to be able to go through each individual atom and create imitations of every single thing that happens inside an atom. We would have to make imitations of protons, and then imitations of quarks inside the protons. And whatever it is that makes up those quarks we would also have to be able to imitate. And then we would have to be able to imitate every single quark in a way that makes it vibrate in a way that - when in correct vibrations - will make a person cry. And not only that, but we have to be able to make those quarks - or whatever is inside them - in a way that makes us remember a thing that happened, say, 10 years ago to that person. And we would have to go even deeper. We would have to make them vibrate in a way that makes people mix memories in a way that gives them false memories. And even deeper, we have to make them vibrate in a way that makes us dream. And even deeper, we have to make them vibrate in a way that makes us think abstract things like love or the idea of a square.

All of that would have to be understood so well that it will make our universe be the way it is. And they would have to be able to make every one of those quarks to move in a way that gives every single individual, young and old, and every new individual that comes into existence, its own individual sense of self.

So to make an actual physical universe like this would seem to be impossible to me and not really even theoretically possible. And in case of computer simulations, even if the computers would be so powerful they would be able to do all that, there is still the obstacle of being able to understand how those movements of quarks work in different combinations and how they make a person to think of a hole without borders and be aware it is "me" who thinks of said hole. Even the best computer possible wouldn't be of any help if these things weren't understood and their ways being completely controlled by the programmers. And I don't think it's as simple as to make one template and then copy-paste it with different variations. They would have to program it so that different individuals will eventually appear through evolution too. So not only they would have to be able to understand how those quarks work what comes to consciousness in modern humans, they would also have to understand how they worked in our ancestors millions of years ago and even through those animals that have gone extinct. And they would have to make the program to imitate new life being born too and forming into another conscious person.

And who knows what lies beyond those quarks and who knows what lies beyond whatever the quarks are made of. I'm sure whatever it is, their movement is essential to our consciousness and without understanding that I don't think it's possible to create neither a physical conscious clone nor an imitation of a conscious person within a computer program.

The idea of us living in a simulation is fantasy and interesting sci-fi at best that takes major leaps of faith in realism to achieve a mind-titillating fantasy concept.

 

[Airola]

The concept of God, on the other hand, has to confront a wide range of unique problems. One example: A simulation designing human 3,000 years in the future has an explainable origin and history. God does not, and in fact has no origin and exists outside time. This makes believing in God much more difficult, as the philosophical problems become overwhelming.

It's completely the other way around for me.

The creators of the simulation must've been on a roll when they programmed in the movements of quarks within the movements of protons within the movements of atoms that make you become overwhelmed by the philosophical problems and make me be ok with the philosophy.

 

[Jon Canon]

Ok, since humans are very self absorbed, we of course understand ourself to be at the center of this simulation, and our abstract concept of morality to be what somebody would watch us evolve from a primordial soup to a #metoo civilization to study.. BOOOORING.

 

[Jon Canon]

Ok, since humans are very self absorbed, we of course understand ourself to be at the center of this simulation, and our abstract concept of morality to be what somebody would watch us evolve from a primordial soup to a #metoo civilization to study.. BOOOORING.


Are we part of a simulation? Probably.
Will we know why? No
Does it matter? Absolutely not

Carry on doing whats meaningful for you.

 

[KevinKeene]

How do you simulate conciousness?

Are you conscious?

 

[synchronicity]

Your body is composed of atoms, yes, but there is still no indication that conciousness is, or that conciousness is even confined to one's body. I think it's worth considering that science is not even close to answering many of our questions as of yet.

Yes, the possibility of the body/mind as the object rather than being the subject is not something that many consider, that is to say that the body/mind is external to the essence of being - consciousness/awareness being primary, the world, including the "self", being secondary.

 

[infinitys_7th]

Are you conscious?

It depends how you define consciousness, or what aspects of life you believe lead to consciousness.

 

[infinitys_7th]

This to me is what is so interesting if you include things like the Fermi Paradox, where mathematically we should see other civilizations when we don't.

There is no concrete mathematical evidence that we should have seen other civilizations by now, and (especially) no acknowledgement that we have not had any significant chance to do so on an effective scale. We can't simultaneously monitor significant portions of the universe. We can't resolve EM signals well enough to monitor those significant portions and distinguish location; rather, we have to focus on a location.

In terms of someone finding us, they are limited to detecting us because we have barely sent out detectable signals for a century.

Give it another millennium or two before claiming we should have seen something.

 

[MMaRsu]

If people seriously believe this they are fucking idiots. Disregard anyone who says this with a straight face, same goes for ppl who say earth is flat.

 

[Boss Mog]

Truly a horrible comparison in the OP. People who reject organized religion don't necessarily reject the idea that there's being(s) greater than themselves, therefore rejecting organized religion doesn't preclude somebody to believing we are in a simulation. Believing that there something greater out there and believing that it's an old man with a beard who we'll meet when we die are two very different things.

 

[Catphish]

The elite are all about transcendence and living forever and the secrets of the universe and they want to know all this, some are good some are bad some are a mix; but the good ones don't ever want to organize, the bad ones tend to want to organize because they lust after power. Powerful consciousnesses don't want to dominate other people, they want to empower them so they don't tend to get together until things are really late in the game, then they come together and evil is always defeated. Because good is so much stronger. And we're on this planet and Einstein's physics showed it, Max Planck's physics showed it- there's at least twelve dimensions. And now that's all the top scientists and billionaires are coming out and saying it's a false hologram, it is artificial, the computers are scanning it and finding tension points where it's artificially projected and gravity is bleeding in to this universe. That's what they call dark matter. So we're like a thought or a dream that's a wisp in a computer program, some God's mind, whatever. They're proving it all, it's all coming out.

Now, there's like this subtransmission zone below the third dimension that's just turned over to the most horrible things, it's what it resonates to, and it's trying to get up into the third dimension; that's just a basic level consciousnesses, to launch up into the next levels. Our species is already way up at the fifth, sixth dimension consciously, our best people. But there's this big war trying to basically destroy humanity because humanity has free will and there's a decision to which level we want to go to. We have free will so evil is allowed to come in and contend and not just good. And the elites themselves believe they're racing using human technology to try to take our best minds and build some type of breakaway civilization where they're going to merge with machines, transcend and breakaway from the failed species that is Man. Which is kind of like a false transmission because they're thinking what they are is ugly and bad; projecting it onto themselves instead of believing no, it's a human test about building us up.

And so Google was set up 18, 19 years ago so that they wanted to build a giant artificial system. And Google believes the first artificial intelligence will be a supercomputer based on the neuron activities of the hive mind of humanity, with billions of people wired into it with the internet of things, and so all of our thoughts go into it and we're actually building a computer with real neurons in real-time that's also psychically connected to us that are organic creatures so that they will have current prediction powers, future prediction powers- a true crystal ball- but the big secret is once you have a crystal ball and know the future you can add stimuli beforehand and make decisions and control the future. And so then it's the end of consciousness and free will for individuals as we know and a true 2.0 in a very bad way hive mind consciousness with an AI jacked into everyone knowing our hopes and dreams, delivering it to us not in some P.KD. wirehead system where we plug in and give up on consciousness because of unlimited pleasure but because we were already wired in and absorbed before we knew it by giving over our consciousness to this system by our daily decisions that it was able to manipulate and control into a larger system.

Holy goddamned shit, I don't know what I just read, but I loved it. Please recommend me some stuff to read/watch.

 

[Nintendo Switch]

There is no supporting evidence for a single godlike being that created everything. It’s illogical and irrational to belive that a god came from nothing and created everything eventhough this is what all monotheistic religions claim.

There is plenty of evidence that the laws that govern our universe are simulated. At nanoscales, every thing is digitized into bits and pieces like pixels would be, even time. Thats well documented. The laws that govern physics in our universe are also very improbable (a billion to one) if they came about from randomness.

Even probablistically, given that we will soon be able to make nearly infinite numbers of life like simulations, its probable that other higher level beings are as well. When thats taken into account, the odds of being in base reality vs a simulated one become very lopsided.

This would also solve the fermi paradox.

If you want to call these higher level beings that likely created and run our simulated reality gods, beyonders, thats perfectly fine. Hopefully Doom will save us all when they decide to shut down our simulation (that was a reference to Hickman’s secret wars by the way).

Hell, lets start a new religion. One that is actually consistent with our current understanding of the universe.

 

[Airola]

There is no supporting evidence for a single godlike being that created everything. It’s illogical and irrational to belive that a god came from nothing and created everything eventhough this is what all monotheistic religions claim.

No, they don't claim God came from nothing. You have understood it completely wrong.

Even probablistically, given that we will soon be able to make nearly infinite numbers of life like simulations,

Nothing suggests we will soon be able to make that. And as I wrote earlier in this thread, there is a huge difference between actual certain atoms forming a thing in nature and lines of code that represent those atoms in artificial way.

 

[Croatoan]

In 200 years we will likely have the power to create a copy of our universe down to sub atomic particles with self aware beings in it. So, yes, it's possible we are living in a simulation.

 

[down 2 orth]

Are you conscious?

Yes, I am.

 

[JimmyJones]

I went to a catholic school as a kid and at a young age decided I didn’t believe in god. Why would a god allow so much bad shit to happen in the world?

I can say, “fuck you god” and nothing happens to me?

How the fuck did Mary have a kid when she didn’t even have sex?

Jesus got fucked up and his ghost managed to roll a boulder and escape his tomb? Come on now I know I’m a kid but how stupid do you think I am?

I used to consider myself an atheist and still believe all religions are bullshit, however, I am massively interested in space and believe there has to be something bigger than us out there that we can’t comprehend.

Where the fuck did the universe come from? What is it’s purpose? It is a complete mindfuck to even think about.

 

[black_13]

Well, I don't really understand OP's question, and others probably feel the same, which is why no one is really addressing it.

Simulation theory is a mathematical, philosophical exercise, as summarized here:

Is your question (and OP's question): "If you believe Simulation Theory (really should be called Simulation Hypothesis) then would you call our creator God?"

And I guess, yeah, we can. But that's not really an interesting question. You can call our creator whatever you want: God, Mad Scientist, Lab Girl, whatever. His question is about the essence of what we believe. If he's asking "If we're in a simulation, then would our creators be omnipotent?" Yes, they would, and that would make them gods to us. I don't think Musk or any other "tech-bros" would disagree with that, so I don't know who the question is aimed at.

Maybe @ womfalcs3 can clarify?

Fair point and I guess I always thought people who believed in the simulation theory always dismissed the presence of a "God". There are a few people in this thread that do dismiss God over the simulation theory though.

This makes no sense. A higher intelligence isn’t necessary to create a rock, but is to create life? They are literally the exact same thing : a collection of atoms arranged in a certain way. Given an infinite amount of time, you will necessarily encounter the arrangement that leads to life eventually

A billion years is nothing. How about 1b to the power 1b? If time has neither beginning nor end then we are at an infitesimally small point along the way,

So you're saying just cause a rock and a living organism are both made of atoms then they are the same thing? Go ask a scientist which one is harder to create in a lab. Which one requires a higher intelligence? A rock can be formed with just gravity and heat/pressure. Life requires that "spark" to get it going. You aren't going to get life by chance no matter how much time passes without that spark.

 

[cpp_is_king]

I didn’t say it’s not more complicated, I just said they are both composed of the exact same materials. If, by a “higher intelligence” you mean that literally, as in you just need to be smarter, then sure. But a supernatural power? No. Single cell amoebas are life, and they are pretty small. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see us synthesizing them in my lifetime

 

[cpp_is_king]

Oh wait, it’s already happened

http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/531557a

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

It's also really hard for a rock to appear from nothing.
Plus, I don't think it's possible that time hasn't had a beginning.

Not hard actually supposedly inevitable given infinite time. Even brains, and I would presume computers too.

In physics thought experiments, a Boltzmann brain is a self-aware entity that arises due to extremely rare random fluctuations out of a state of thermodynamic equilibrium...

The fatal flaw with Boltzmann's "Boltzmann universe" hypothesis is that the most common thermal fluctuations are as close to equilibrium overall as possible; thus, by any reasonable criteria, human brains in a Boltzmann universe with myriad neighboring stars would be vastly outnumbered by "Boltzmann brains" existing alone in an empty universe.

Boltzmann brains gained new relevance around 2002, when some cosmologists started to become concerned that, in many existing theories about the Universe, human brains in the current Universe appear to be vastly outnumbered by Boltzmann brains in the future Universe who, by chance, have the exact same perceptions that we do; this leads to the absurd conclusion that statistically we ourselves are likely to be Boltzmann brains
-wiki

I would say it is completely impossible to ever make an exact clone of a person because you can't clone the exact same sense of "me" the person who is cloned senses.

That is an extraordinary claim what basis or evidence for that have you?

I do agree that it is probably never possible to clone someone, but not for the reason you mentioned. More because you would have to snapshot the entire state of all ~10^70 atoms in a persons body in a single instant, which seems very unlikely

Don't think so neurons can be lost in an instant and you remain you. The rest of the body matters not it is only the brain, and despite constant change of its composing atoms you remain you.

As many have said given infinite time sometime somewhere the same configuration with same life history will recur.

Obviously even if your same exact consciousness existed simultaneously in more than one place, you could never know without a connection that affected memory. Even in your current body get drunk enough or be given certain drugs, and you will be conscious, in some cases with full mental capabilities unimpaired, but you won't recall what actually happened during a given period of time. Was that you during that period? Yes it was, do you remember that you during that period? No you don't. You aren't necessarily aware of your entire past, it is conceivable that you've existed prior to your earliest memory, it is also conceivable that you could exist simultaneously elsewhere with a different set of memories.

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

Also my take is that discontinuity does not end consciousness. If a particular state exists here and now but it is brought to an end, yet the next state in the sequence occurs elsewhere, consciousness should continue.