Are you more real than me?

Archive WT Thoughts & Theories
21

That Zoom looks beautifully complex, but we are still moving more or less in the terms of order…

The problem is, that Chaos and Order can never be fully seperated. Or as it is defined in the Chaos Theory: “…dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions”.

So my question is: How can there be “real” Chaos in a Simulation, when the Chaos in the Simulation is bound to the Law of it’s own Orders. Even the Chaos is as Complex as the Simulations Orders and not more. If you continuously heat a liquid until it reaches the point where it can’t equalize the heat any more it will become a bubbling chaos. But there is no way it will ever turn suddenly into ketchup this way.

Please take note that i am not a physician or mathematician (indeed i am doing my high school grades atm in evening classes…) so if i get some things wrong, excuse me :wink:

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22

Complex order of the infinite kind seems like the best stuff to build worlds…

Is there really something we can call Chaos? There is entropy, and uncertainty… Variables unknown, or that change if you measure them…

But if all data from our universe was replicated to the quantum level inside a simulation, you would see “chaotic” effects of the same complexity… yet perfectly unreal.

Could be argued, that without real “procedural seeds” that allow for that, such simulation would take to run as much energy as what is contained inside the real universe it’s trying to simulate. This would prove a full universe simulation too much for even the fabled type1 civilizations (able to harvest the energy from a whole galaxy) But we could go beyond an imagine a type_0 civ, able to “harvest” hold dimensions?

Not to worry about credentials, one needs them not to be right, and all truth is so, even before it gets proven.

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23

You still have to define real. I mean, anything in a simulation really exists as a thing in a simulation. If you replicated everything to the quantum level inside a simulation, then is it really a simulation?

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(I’ve decided that I am going to play the part of the epistemological solipsistic, here)

There is no way of telling what real is beyond our senses, but to answer that… Would be a simulation (And not your plain´ol creationistic universe) if it was created with an actual purpose… beyond deity amusement.

Whatever. It could even mean, that far from an exact copy of an indeterministic universe, all you would need is a convincing representation of the electrical input that ultimately conforms your experience of being. Or even that what we/I experience far from the real thing is but a crude representation… A 2D platformer made to fool only our very limited senses.

This ties with the realistic dreams question in the sense, that while at it, your consciousness cannot tell apart what you are experiencing from vigil… when in actuality, you are at the time a brain in a jar experiment for the duration of the dream, taking for real what are just (electrical impulses?, chemical reactions?, dimensional shifts?..)

EDIT: Thinking on procedural seeds for our universe, could be argued there are clues…

FURTHER EDIT:
https://forums.etarc.org/t/just-received-my-survey/1176/80?u=virakotxa
https://forums.etarc.org/t/just-received-my-survey/1176/81?u=virakotxa

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27

https://forums.etarc.org/t/are-you-more-real-than-me/1203/17?u=virakotxa

I had to think about what you meant there… It relates to the in-control part of the survey. If we accept to be a part of the simulation, are we in control?
It was hard being a yes or no answer… It’s definitely not a sandbox, we are in. But the survival and free-roaming aspects are spot on, for sure. After all, within the parameters, you had the choice of killing or not.

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28

Prepare for another essay. :sweat_smile:

I think everyone is getting caught up in elegant thoughts. A reality boils down to a few basic elements.

  • A space in which things can be localized and separated from each other
  • Energy to drive events so things can happen
  • Time to separate events so things can happen in a sensible order
  • It and all the elements in it are self-consistent without obvious contradictions or paradoxes, so there is a certain level of order

And really, that’s about it. Elegant, deep metaphysics aren’t necessary.

“Things” don’t necessarily mean physical things, as in spiritual realities. But for the sake of argument, I’ll keep it to a space which supports the existence of matter. I would also include in it, the ability to support life and consciousness which can perceive and understand the realm it is in. Now this opens the door to some possible absurdities. Are our thoughts real? Are shows and movies real? Are our dreams real? Are video games real? :yum: I’ve wished SO hard many times that some movie, cartoon or game could possibly be real in a parallel dimension, in some form or fashion. I still do.

I’ve been thinking about this subject quite a bit for years, and driven in particular to want to know what Reality ultimately is. And I have pondered the curious nature of the mind. Everyone is more real than the other beings around them by the nature of our minds. We’re the only beings that know what is going on in our own heads. This is all we really know for certain. Everything else is an assumption: we assume that everything going on around us is real and true, and full of weird beings that often don’t do what we expect or want. :upside_down_face:

It’s a funny quirk of consciousness that the universe stretches out to infinity from our vantage point in our minds. WE are the center of the universe. WE are the most real thing in it. WE tend to put ourselves first, our needs and wants and considerations before others, because of this strange property. Now it’s usually not so self-centered. Most of us operate on a certain level of diplomacy and etiquette and accommodation of others. We all make sacrifices so that we all get something we want, particularly family members and loved ones. But the peak of the Pyramid of Our Reality will always be us.

I’ve often wondered how to empirically test whether this world brought to life in my head is real or not, and ultimately as I said above, reality exists in our minds. Our senses paint this holographic construct in our head, and we trust them to be honest with us. So unfortunately, anything we do to challenge this reality is going to be filtered by those senses, and I know of no way to validate them. I’m not crazy enough to jump off a cliff to see if Reality or God or ME or whatever will rescue me from extinction. I’m not going to take hallucinogens, though some friends urged me to. I don’t have the patience or inclination for transcendental experiments.

But I don’t have to. I’ve had enough spooky experiences and fascinating dreams that came true to know that this universe is as totally real as any reality can be, and has aspects that most people are completely unaware of.

So how real can a simulation be? How alive can an artificial intelligence be? I’ve concluded that the way to go is to accept the possible as true, because we just don’t know enough to be sure one way or another. I wrote a Ratchet & Clank fanfic because I wanted those adventures to continue, and I have bigger ideas than Insomniac can put into a game. Part of the things I explore in it are artificial intelligences. Robots and computers. People accept them as citizens in that universe, beings that can own property and hold jobs, probably have the right to vote. I’m still exploring that. Another example are the Synths in Fallout, artificial biomachines, androids. Most people consider them to be nothing but animate objects, and distrust and fear them. They themselves distrust and fear their makers and many yearn for freedom. I’ve decided to err on the side of caution, and consider any entity which exhibits traits of intelligence and self awareness is sentient in some way, whether artificial or not, especially if they have distinct personalities.

Is the Simulation real? It’s real for me when I’m in it, and I treat every being with the same courtesy and dignity I want for myself.

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Agreed. For the sake of argument… Would you consider an artificial entity if you met it, less real than you?

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Great question, and one that would elicit some interesting responses to those who could think that though thoroughly. In my case, no. Not less real, just different. As a writer of sci-fi/fantasy, I see artificial entities like Clank, the Synths, David in Promethius as due the same respect that organic ones do. The Korvax are in this situation. Do I consider an entity converted into software to be less valid than they were as a living being? I don’t. I feel a certain kind of affinity to Nada. I have no doubt that if I was allowed to spend time with him that I would feel friendship with him, and regret it if/when he departed to rejoin the Convergence. It’s not just because he has an anthromorphic form. I’d feel the same to an entity in a computer, and have a “friend” in some of my stories who is an “arti” like that.

And here is a fascinating thought experiment for you all. Suppose a scientist copied your minds and hosted them in a computer, and you could talk to it. How would you react? For me, it would initially be rather creepy, particularly as it explored its new existence as disembodied thought. Would you wonder how valid and real it was as an entity? Would you want it turned off?

I’m way too busy lately. I want to hang out here and explore this situation with you guys this summer.

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31

Thank you for the input!

The upload of consciousness or a simulacra of a human mind?

The old dream. Our best chance at immortality, and at the same time, an easy trick for any Borg-like entity to assimilate us all without resistance…

If consciousness (my point of reference) can not also be uploaded, I don’t want nothing to do with it…

The upload cannot be a destructive process for me to accept it without a fight (The only kind I can think of that would theoretically copy something to the quantum level) Since the only way I would accept that not to be a trick to assimilate my knowledge destroying “me”, would be if the process can be shown to be reversible.

A test subject manifesting that his self was actually “transferred”. I would still have my doubts that the machine didn’t run a backup simulacra and transferred some information in the moment of “going back”, while in actuality, the subject could have been kept “braindead” and the experience retrofitted.

Aside of uploading “oneself” to a machine, the idea of having your mind replicated inside a machine would probably be a surprisingly cruel experiment… Our minds have grown and are adapted to a reality made out of sensory, chemical… in short, physical experience that would have you listen to yourself screaming in the agony of a newly made tetraplegic, confused and probably suicidal. Or you could give yourself access to the grid and destroy the world.

A “sane” artificial intelligence, has to be born artificial, in my opinion… It could still inherit many of our conceptual flaws or achieve its own type of crazy in new creative ways, but it’s the best bet.

What could maybe work, is a Matrix-world scenario, where the main functions are controlled by a superior AI and the uploaded organisms get a sort of free-range into a virtual sensory environment in which they can manage, somehow. The main AI would have to be really dumb or find us really cute for it not to decide those “viruses” are not only redundant, but cause more harm than good for the “system”.
*Edit: Had to share this…

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32

I think it relates to shrodingers cat, us being the cat.

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https://forums.etarc.org/t/the-simulation-hypothesis/1662?u=virakotxa

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The only me is me. Are you sure the only you is you?

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35

COGITO, ERGO SVM… That much I know.

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For thousands of years, the great majority of humanity did believe they were living in a simulation. They believed that all of existence was a made thing, a creation, that could be unmade at any time.

Of course, they didn’t call it a simulation, they called it God, but it’s effectively the same thing.

It’s only relatively recently that large numbers of us stopped believing in the God simulation, and many people still do.

In this case, I think we could do worse than call on Karl Popper, who said that we should not accept any scientific proposal that cannot be proven false (note - not that it is false, but if it were, we could prove it to be so).

By Popperian standards, most religious concepts of God cannot be accepted as scientific proposals, because they’re couched in such terms that if they were untrue, we could never prove it.

I believe a similar standard applies to discussions of a simulated universe. It is impossible to prove the concept is false, and it should not, therefore, be accepted as a scientific proposal.

Even as a philosophical discussion, the argument is ultimately circular.

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Agreed, as long as there are only delusions of inmortality and the abiss of random chance to look back at you… But the mentioned data would suggest “physical” virtual evidence…

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There’s no “data”.

And this is why you shouldn’t put philosophers and theoretical physicists in a room together.

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Pedere te, cogito ergo sum!

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Nothing can be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. We can only have varying degrees of evidence in favor of something being true or false. We can’t even prove that our reality exists at all and isn’t just a dream, but if we accept the evidence coming in through our senses, it seems very likely that our reality does exist.

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Sorry, there might be no clear proof, but what I call data, here, is the body of observations, facts and overall analisys that we make of our surrounding, and are able to share with other individuals, so a common reality can be conveyed… Through, how do you say? Agreement, accord?

The thing about software code being possibly embedded in the fabric of our reality, would be evidence…

Realistic dreams are proof that our consciousness can be fooled into taking a sensorial simulacra for reality…

My solipsistic hypothesis is nothing but a hunch…

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