Musk: 'We are probably living in a simulation'

[+and-then]

IF we're living in a "simulation"... who's running it?  Or did it just randomly appear, like all life in the universe?  Too funny...

[RAyMO]

20 minutes ago, and then said:

IF we're living in a "simulation"... who's running it?  Or did it just randomly appear, like all life in the universe?  Too funny...

Ah the universe as we know was built by a higher level being - probably a student - who hasn't paid must attention to his experiment from the time he stirred the ingredients. He will get a shock when his test tube explodes.

This explains the multi universe theories -  a lot of students, a lot of universes.

Edited September 11, 2018 by RAyMO

[Rlyeh]

10 hours ago, Piney said:

Itself. It never had gender.

That is a Judeo-Christian concept because El (The Judeo-Christian God) was once a personified fire god and part of a pantheon of many gods and goddesses.

Wasn't El the head of the Canaanite pantheon?

[Piney]

27 minutes ago, Rlyeh said:

Wasn't El the head of the Canaanite pantheon?

The whole North-Western Semite pantheon. The Hebrews, Canaanites and Phoenicians were all one people originally and worshiped the same gods. I'm under the opinion that the Hebrews broke off as a patrilineal sect  of the Proto-Canaanite Religion. 

[moonman]

I'm getting tired of all this "the universe is a simulation" nonsense.

[+OverSword]

14 hours ago, Habitat said:

It is a theory I can't see any upside to, whatsoever.

Can you see an upside to theory that we are not in a simulation compared to the theory that we are a simulation?

[+OverSword]

1 hour ago, moonman said:

I'm getting tired of all this "the universe is a simulation" nonsense.

Nobody forces you to discuss it.

[+OverSword]

9 hours ago, danydandan said:

I'm specifically speaking about the 300million cut in funding for the department that approves Scientific research in college's. Mr Trump think college's should be for profit organisations apparently.

They are for profit organizations here.  Would that explain why our colleges are inferior?  LOL!

[+OverSword]

7 hours ago, and then said:

IF we're living in a "simulation"... who's running it?  Or did it just randomly appear, like all life in the universe?  Too funny...

I don't think it's being run, it's running.  And the answer weather or not it's computer generated is the Creator.

[Amanda Evans]

Too much wacky baccy Elon...

[zep73]

23 hours ago, Rlyeh said:

The simulation argument doesn't treat consciousness as special and is part of the simulation. So according to what you wrote it would be closer to materialism.

Deciding the agenda that "they" have for this reality is a common trap. Even Bostrom started off by jumping into it.
Truth is that we can't know "their" reasons, or how much "in here" is random.

I can think of 3 agendas:

1: They wanted to see how/if life and intelligence would emerge. It is all random. They observe us, but don't interact. Materialism rules.
2: They set the laws of nature according to their own, and designed the earth and us to simulate their own past. (The Bostrom argument). Ruler unknown.
3: This is their entertainment. The supernatural is real, and occurs when they "play" with us. Everything is designed (like in #2). Idealism rules.

In agenda 1 there is no interference at all. In #2 the intereference stopped after the first human was designed.
In #3 there is a continuous interference. In both #2 and #3 consciousness is their invention. Perhaps the peak of their ingenuity.

The only way we can ever know what agenda they have, is if we can obtain reliable data about interference - if there is any.

Edited September 11, 2018 by sci-nerd

[zep73]

22 hours ago, Dark_Grey said:

100%. That's the biggest draw in creating simulations of anything - it allows you a platform to explore ideas and test theories without destroying the original. A "sandbox" environment, as it's commonly known.

I'd put that as agenda 2B in my above options.

[danydandan]

It's all irrelevant, what does it matter anyway? Not like we can decide not to be part of the simulation.

[White Crane Feather]

On 9/10/2018 at 5:54 AM, Vlad the Mighty said:

The Great Elon was recently asked a serious question, from a serious business journalist, about the likelihood of Tesla ever making a profit at any time at all in the foreseeable future, or it being able to survive without enormous subsidies. His reply? "Boring, boneheaded questions are not cool. Next!" Now, he may be a visionary genius, but when it comes to actually running a company he's a ******* liability. 

Tesla’s are selling faster than they can make them. Im friends with someone working on the charging infrastructure. It’s going to be huge.

[White Crane Feather]

There are some striking observations in nature that give a lot of push to simulation theory. It’s not just a probability argument anymore. Quantum machanics shows that nature seems to be conserving processing power much like a simulation would indeed do. We can also demonstrate that the fundamental laws of nature arise out of functions not the result of material. Instead of cogs turning against each other we have a simple program. 

 

 

[+OverSword]

18 minutes ago, danydandan said:

It's all irrelevant, what does it matter anyway? Not like we can decide not to be part of the simulation.

I had an idea years ago for a novel (if only I could write ) in which some beings living in a simulation figure out a way to gain control of the real world.

[White Crane Feather]

8 minutes ago, OverSword said:

I had an idea years ago for a novel (if only I could write ) in which some beings living in a simulation figure out a way to gain control of the real world.

Whach the “Black Mirror” episodes on Netflix. We naturally assume that the creator of a simulation is more intelligent than we are, but that dosnt  have to be the case. The ultimate simulation won’t even need much hardware the human mind is capable of creating universes anyway. 

 

A twist on the idea I’d that we actually live in the mind of a much older and larger entity. 

Edited September 11, 2018 by White Crane Feather

[+OverSword]

I had forgotten about this little tidbit discovered by James Gates about apparent computer code discovered in the math that underlies our reality

Quote

 

If we are living in the Matrix, Jim Gates will probably be the first one to figure it out.

The theoretical physicist, a professor at the University of Maryland and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth, has spent his entire career looking for supersymmetry. What that is is a concept tough for many to wrap their heads around, but it proposes that all particles have partners (that we haven’t discovered yet).

Along the way, Dr. Gates has gotten attention for discovering what he says is computer code in the math that underlies our world. (Specifically, he said it was an error-correcting mechanism; others have analogized this code to the checksums that make the Internet work.) This has led him to speculate--in a mostly-joking way--that we might in fact be living in a giant computer simulation.

What this would mean for our universe is not yet clear. But Gates is content to keep looking until he finds out.

 

Source

[danydandan]

8 minutes ago, OverSword said:

I had forgotten about this little tidbit discovered by James Gates about apparent computer code discovered in the math that underlies our reality

Source

Maths is an abstract construct. It's not real. Unless you believe what Plato wrote.

Edited September 11, 2018 by danydandan

[White Crane Feather]

It’s actualky not that hard to create a virtual reality of its own making. All you really need is a measure of uncertainty. That uncertainty will breed things that can survive the uncertainty more and more through simpler evolution. Ultimately the best thing at surviving uncertainty is intelligence, because intelligence can recognize the uncertainty and plan for it. Sure there will be a lot of failures, but that is the way evolution works. If one wanted to play God, simply create space with uncertainty build into it. Then sit back and watch the fireworks over billions of years. 

[zep73]

17 hours ago, Habitat said:

This whole idea is just a modern re-casting of the God proposition, where creation is replaced by "simulation", and whatever made it, is the "new"  creator. I really don't see what problem it solves, though, even if there are a multiplicity of nested simulations, we are just back to the old problem of the endless regression of causes, which is a question that offers no prospect of an answer. I think it relieves people of a sense of responsibility, they can imagine themselves unwitting pawns of a game they at bottom, have no skin in, created by some unscrupulous trickster. That is bound to feed an "anything goes" mentality. When you have a proposition people can't get their heads around, the riddle of existence, just insert one people are familiar with, a computer simulation. In the end, it really is a worse than useless idea, because it is potentially socially disruptive, in offering an excuse for bad behaviour, after all, "this world is just a game, not real", like where players shoot people by the dozen in computer games, this is just a more elaborate version, but still not real, just a simulation. 

I disagree. God is not replaced with a simulation. The Big Bang is. It's replaced by new options/knowledge and technology. Instead of a mysterious big expansion out of nothing, we now have a source. The source is data from a "higher dimension" (if you will). Miracles, wonders and chance are gone, and replaced with a simple, logic answer/solution.

An "anything goes" mentality would be very stupid to adapt, because no matter how little you believe that policemen and prisons are real, they will get you and put you in one. People who entertain this hypothesis are usually a bit smarter than that.

[+OverSword]

57 minutes ago, danydandan said:

It's all irrelevant, what does it matter anyway? Not like we can decide not to be part of the simulation.

You don't know that.  Suppose for a moment that we and our universe are a computer simulation.  If we can realize that reality is a simulation then at that moment we gain understanding of how it works.  Once we have that understanding perhaps the next step is learning how to manipulate reality.  Cure all disease, stop aging, create something out of nothing.  Do you have an imagination at all? 

 

Edited September 11, 2018 by OverSword

[+OverSword]

snip

Edited September 11, 2018 by OverSword

[danydandan]

13 minutes ago, OverSword said:

You don't know that.  Suppose for a moment that we and our universe are a computer simulation.  If we can realize that reality is a simulation then at that moment we gain understanding of how it works.  Once we have that understanding perhaps the next step is learning how to manipulate reality.  Cure all disease, stop aging, create something out of nothing.  Do you have an imagination at all? 

 

Hugh assumption.

Sure I do, I play D&D. But we are talking about reality here. When people claim to know the nature of reality I take off my warlock hat and put on my skeptical hat.

Edited September 11, 2018 by danydandan

[zep73]

47 minutes ago, OverSword said:

I had an idea years ago for a novel (if only I could write ) in which some beings living in a simulation figure out a way to gain control of the real world.

I have three. If I one day write them, it will be sort of an anthology.