Is the world a simulation ? (Read details pls)?

Question

lets say computer technology doubles its capabilities every three years, and our ability to create simulations doubles every 5 years, and we assume that this process will go on for a sufficiently looooong time....would we be able to create a simulation just as much perfect like our world and universe we live in ?
Are we already living in such a simulation ....?

yes i know it sounds like 'the matrix' and i gonna take the blue pill next time...
but.. british scientists examined this idea to the bone and came to the conclusion that we would just realize its a sim if something is VERY strange .. and i think quantumn physics and generally things below the planck scale seem to be very strange, so what ? SIM ?

Answer 1

You only know things are simulated when you have experienced the real things already.
There is nothing separating a mental experience and an actual experience other than the corroborating witnesses. This has always been a sticking point psycologically. We have limited sensory input which are easily tricked.
You would never know, for example, if the color you have always been calling green looks red to other people without a serious study of wavelength interation with retinal pigments. Even then, the way you brain interprets may be different based on the conditioning.
Great apes are raised in simulated physical environments. It is difficult to know if they understand this or not but in order to put them in their real environment they require years of training and reeducation.
There are other feature of the human mind that suggest the possibility. Some unlucky enough to have amputated limbs experience phantom limb syndrome. They have all the sensation of having a limb without the limb.

Answer 2

All human senses have a finite acuity.

We have a finite number of rods and cones in our eyes, for example. So it would be theoretically possible to create a display device with enough resolution that what we saw was indistinguishable from reality.

We have a finite number of nerve endings, so if we could find a way to stimulate them on demand, we could simulate any sensation.

Similarly (and more simply) with hearing.

Taste and smell are much more difficult, because it isn't entirely clear how they work. Never the less, eventually anything they pick up gets passed through nerves, so we could tap into them at that stage.

Actually doing the simulation would be much harder. Great graphics and sound is only a tiny part of it: simulating things in the world is very very hard indeed.

Without a shift in the way computers are constructed, it would be theoretically impossible to simulate everything, because not everything is computable (see Church-Turing thesis).

But imagining there is a different type of computer processing a simulation at full resolution and piping it into our nerves (or simulating the fact we have nerves by piping into whatever our real body has for sensory systems). Then we could be in such a simulation.

But why stop there. If we could simulate that, we would have to be able to simulate things at least as complex as a person. We could be part of the simulation itself, rather than receiving its output. We could think we exist, because the computer needs its AIs to think they exist to be properly simulated.

But of course we're into silly territories. We could be a china teapot circling the sun, dreaming it was an AI simulated by a strange computer.

When you get into hypotheses that can't _possibly_ be observed or distinguished one way or the other, they are unfalsifiable. And by definition outside the realm of philosophy or science.

Answer 3

Yes I tend to think you are on the right track. Now just keep following the idea to where ity may lead...
Many wish to refer to matrix and sci fi, but does anyone realize Socrates had these same sort of questions?
Read Plato's Cave Allegory in the Republic, then read The Myth of Er in the end of Republic.
It is not that we are all in a video game like some wish to make it sound so glibly.
Certain drugs replace serotonin at the serotonin receptors. The result are very symbolic images we call hallucinations.
My question is are all the masses sharing a shared hallucination caused by serotonin???
The Bible states that we have been given the Truth and turned away from it to the point that God has allowed a veil of deception to cover our eyes.
The Truth is rejected because we find out...we realize that our reality is of our own creation so ultimate responsibility lies in our own laps. The world is exactly how WE have made it.
This idea is very empowering and liberating but also convicting at the same time.
Not a popular concept in todays, 'Oh I am such a victim' society.
If you wish to continue this train email me .

Answer 4

as a hypothesis, "sure, it's possible."

However, I am left with the problematic question:

"How can a person actually 'test' this to determine what the 'reality' of the world is?"

this question leads to some fairly drastic answers,

There *have* been written several science-fiction stories based on this theme ... "Matrix" was certainly not the first.

I don't think that quantum mechanics is understood by very many people, although it has become the current "strange" place-holder by folks who have a "friend of a friend, whose sister ...." sort of familiarity with it.

"below the planck-scale" time becomes a dis-continuous thing and there might be "gaps", which is pretty cool but I just can't *DO* anything with it. I think that rather than reflect the "absolute truth of da Universe" it more likely indicates a limitation to the human ability to comprehend.

is "the Matrix" a symptom of hubris? I dunno

Answer 5

Well, I never was a fan of the royal family and feel that they took horrible advantage of the naive Diana Spencer. To play the devil's advocate, though.... If you are in love with someone, you generally do not WANT to be in love with anyone else. Although Diana's bulimia and severe depression probably were the direct result of social and political pressure, she was often out of control and very hard for Charles to understand. These are not exactly circumstances which would have lent themselves Charles 'learning to love Diana' as strongly as he felt for his mistress. In fact, Camilla was probably a great comfort to Charles when Diana was cutting herself and doing vatious other things which were very hard to just sit back an watch. The world saw Diana from far away; Charles saw her from very close up. Ultimately, I think itis pretty clear that the two just weren't compatible. It would have been nice to have a fairy tale ending, but that is obviously not what happened. I hope that the Crown will remember what happened and realize that the kids should just be allowed to marry whomever they want without experiencing the pressure to choose from a very narrow margin of society. As it is, the papparazzi alone is stessful to ANY royal romance. I think William in particular has already been the focus of far too much media attention, but that' also not to suggest that Harry has remained unaffected. And Diana, of course, becomes the martyr figure. She didn't have a happy life, so I hope that she is finally resting in peace.

Answer 6

Very interesting. But I don't think we are a man-made simulation. If so, where is the original?

But for a long time, people have believed maybe we exist on other planes, paralel universes, if you will...

And this would explain many things! Like dopplegangers, or doublegangers, something like that...Where there are two of you, and if you ever meet each other you're dead?

Or people going back, or forward in time. And they're are some very intelligent people who have given some very detailed accounts of that.

Also, we don't really perceive the universe at it is as we are living in it, and I strongly expect you know that, or you wouldn't have asked this question.

Scientists have just realized and discovered, time may move backward and not forward!

And we just don't feel that, just like we don't feel ourselves moving through space at a tremendous rate, as the earth turns.

I still think man tries to hard. He always wants to find ways to give himself the credit.

He's determined to just think he has to be his own creator! Ego.

It's not science to think there is a creator, necessarily, but it isn't science to be convinced there isn't one when that hasn't been proved.

Answer 7

OK Blonde- You mean are we really living in a virtual reality. It is, in fact, possible that we are in a very complex simulation. There is a principle of a system that the system can't be view from inside the system.(The hunch-back can't see his own hump EXCEPT as a virtual image like a video, mirror, etc.) Then too one branch of metaphysics indicates that the closer we get to completing the simulation the more we change the system from inside so actually arriving never happens. We keep expanding and re-creating our own university. Check "In Search of Divine Reality."

Answer 8

The human ability to detect cheaters and cheats is developed very well in some. I think your simulation would have to be perfect in detail to pass. Then, what would be the difference between simulation and reality?

PS Quantum physics seems very strange, but only to us at the macro level.

Answer 9

It will be impossible to tell from the inside, for there is no way to measure. For instance when one ascends in an elevator, one is compressed slightly in height, however any device used to measure will be likewise depressed therefore giving an inaccurate, or an accurate measurement depending on how you look at it.
For all we know, we may as well toss in our lot with Descarte, who postulated that we are merely the dream of a Djinn. It's all illusory. Anyhow, it doesn't really matter, it's all a case of semantics anyway.

Answer 10

Vanilla Sky starring Tom Cruise