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Yea that requires more words that mean something. The base idea of inability to differentiate real reality when you've lived your whole life in a mock reality is thousands of years old. The dream scenarios are another variant of the base idea. Are you saying that because some nitwit has do some work in an obscure field that slightly relates to this it only requires 17 leaps of faith to make simulation reality almost likely instead of the usual 18. Or has something been discovered that connects some dots based on their current knowledge and only a few mildly silly assumptions (this has traditionally created some of the best theories). Or even a full breakthrough in silencing the 5 year old niece that keeps asking why?
There's a reason why there isn't a history channel special for war of the roses that runs for 30 years in real time.
welp, case closed i guess.
"World on a Wire" is an interesting viewing on the theme of a simulated reality, even for a 1970s-movie tech level, with English subtitles for non-German speakers, and slow moving for action junkies. Not sure where to find it now, but it was on Hulu+ a few year ago.
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0070904/
Quote:
Plot summary
Somewhere in the future there is a computer project called Simulacron one of which is able to simulate a full featured reality, when suddenly project leader Henry Vollmer dies. His successor Dr. Fred Stiller experiences odd phenomena. A good friend, Guenther Lause, disappears in the middle of a conversation and a week later nobody has ever heard of him. And those fits of dizzyness - Stiller cannot believe himself to be fool. There has to be an explanation for all this. Could Simulacron have something to do with it?
i feel like this entire thing has been done before...........
with Jeff Fahey.....and Remmington steele............
oh yeah....I remember!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCxFGxqLsHE
fun fact: Stephen King has said this is the worst adaptions of any of his movies ever made (he previously had stated that Maximum Overdrive was)
and before that, Paul Verhoven did it as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFMLGEHdIjE
And by Paul Verhoven and Jeff Fahey you mean Phillip K. Dick ("We Can Remember It for You Wholesale") and Stephen King.
Even though I was a huge fun of the (1990 version of) Total Recall, I don't believe in any of this simulation BS.
The "1 in a billion chance" thing is a copout, because it allows people to make ridiculous assertions, and then defend it with, "I said it's only 1 in a billion. So all I'm saying is that there's a small chance!" And then you look like a closed-minded asshole for dismissing it.
But no, we're not in a simulation. This is it. This is reality. It doesn't get any better than this.
You don't know if we are or we aren’t in a simulation.
I can't prove that god isn't real.
I like to ponder and explore different theories, i never understood how some people who were very intelligent, very good at school, it always boggled my mind to see such smart people not get nuance.
As if their brain is wired differently.
Not judging anyone, all im saying is some people just don't compute nuance and dissmiss any notion that doesn't fit in their world, or anything they can't explain.
I for one dive head first into such theories, i entertain anything from lizard people to simulation theory, all the way to hollow earth theory and the electric universe. Doesn't mean i believe in lizard people, i just find it mostly entertaining, but truth is stranger then fiction, some things we can't prove. Except flat earth, thats just retarded, there's obviously so much evidence. It doesn't hurt to entertain it.
Since you asked...
(1) The first issue with such a conjecture -- yes, a *conjecture*, which is what "theory" means in this context -- is that it is essentially untestable. It's a techno version of the question of whether an omnipotent mankind-loving diety, i.e. God, exists, oversees everything, loves us, wants us to not sin, etc. Because regardless of the absence of irrefutable positive proof, a believer can come up with an untestable rationale for why we can't find it ("God is testing our faith in Him.")
(2) Even if this conjecture is true, how would believing such a notion rationally change how we decide to live? Musk's assertion is that we should adopt physically incorporating technology in order yo survive if we are living in a simulated reality controlled by "superintelligent AI". And is unsubstantiated by his premise.
Specifically, his assertion about melding with tech to survive doesn't even remotely follow from just the condition of SuperInt AI running that simulation. Other very specific conditions would need to be added in order for that assertion to follow, including that the SuperInt AI would *allow* us to use that melded tech to save ourselves. For all we know, it/they want to see us eventually suffer the fate of despoiling our Earth/Solar system-sized petri dish. Just to test a hypothesis it dreamed up, and just for its own shits and giggles. Who the fuck knows?
Overall, the open-ended possibilities of the true set of conditions of such a simulated reality, while great for motivating entertaining/reality-distracting/thought provoking sci-fi stories, is essentially useless for developing a testably useful understanding of how the universe works. And if it isn't remotely useful as a premise for doing so, why assign any probabilitistic weight to its veracity?
Oh no no he's fully in to drinking the man piss. He's saying there's 1 in a billion chance that our reality is the real reality. He's not saying this is funny little thought experiment that could be true, but that it's almost 100% that were living in a simulated reality.
The 1 in billion number is based on Nick Bostrom doing the maths based on a few semi random assumptions that have no necessity of being true and then running the numbers with a formula that had few other baseless assumptions. And when a few mathematicians threw small rocks at him for being a dumbass he made brand new baseless assumptions that provided a base for his previous assumptions. So basically if you're drinking the kool aid then the maths have been done and the story checks out.
There is no way to convince a person who has a certain worldview that they are wrong simply by saying so. Spirituality has been bulldozed by western culture and this is handed down from generation to generation. Because hard scientific proof is not available (for either side) materialists have run the show for some time. Ironically, technology is providing evidence, that what you see is not what you get.
As to your last comment......This is it. What is reality, and how do you know 2 shakes about that proclamation and whether it gets any better or not?
It's all theoretical.
Even Einstein's theory of relativity is just a theory that we accept but a theory nonetheless.
These ideas are meant to be debated and discussed, its up to you.