What do you guys think about the simulation theory?

Debate Room
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Hello guys. I want to talk about the simulation hypothesis, and ask what do you guys think about it.

Here is it’s main argument from my understanding: Because highly advanced civilizations are likely to want to create a computer simulation of life forms when they have the technology to do so, we are likely to be living in one of them.

To me, this argument is speculative, but it makes sense. What do you guys think? Do you guys think advanced civilizations would be likely to create simulations?

Next, we have to talk about its implications on our lives. Some of these I’ve heard from others and don’t completely understand.

  1. It’s possible that we are being controlled.

If we are in a simulation, then it’s likely that we are being controlled. This is something I’ve heard a lot from others. “The simulation creators likely programmed our minds to make us think that we have free will, even though we are being controlled like video game characters”. To me, this seems unlikely, and I don’t even think that the simulation hypothesis has much of a correlation to free will.

  1. The physical world is fake.

To me, this is difficult to grasp. This would mean everything physical is an illusion, including my hands typing on this keyboard. This can be a scary slippery slope. This can lead to ideas like solipsism being a million times more likely than before. If the physical world is fake, then why are other people considered real? Their body must be fake too, like mine, so then the only thing real would be their minds, right? This is a very hard thing to grasp. I’m gonna need help understanding this more.

My questions and arguments against it.

  1. How would the simulators create life (minds) through a computer? This to me doesn’t make any sense. All advanced AI Robots are just that: AI and Robots. They don’t have a real, conscious mind. Even if it’s possible to create one mind, that would take so much energy and would be extremely complex, even for advanced civilizations, let alone hundreds of billions of minds, including the minds of all animals on earth that are either living or dead! This connects back to the second implication that I mentioned: This possibly makes solipsism way more likely than before, which is horrifying. Advanced Civilizations would definitely favor only having to create one mind instead of hundreds of billions of minds. By the way, I’m not trying to argue for solipsism, I’d much rather be able to argue against what I stated. I really hope you guys have an argument against what I said because this is horrifying.

  2. What happens to the history of the universe?

Think about it, the developers would’ve had to’ve waited 13.8 billion years for humans to come to existence. Thats hundreds of millions of generations! Now, people might reply and say “oh, it’s an illusion”, but this wouldn’t make any sense. Unfortunately, like the previous argument, this is explainable with the solipsism hypothesis. Now I know it probably sounds like I’m arguing for solipsism despite what I said earlier because I keep throwing it in, but I’m throwing it in a lot because I’m really terrified of it being true. If the argument that I mentioned for simulation theory is true, then that seems to make solipsism a million times more likely, considering that my arguments against the simulation hypothesis aren’t relevant if solipsism is true.

Now I know by now I probably sound crazy, and maybe I am, but I want to hear what you guys think. What do you guys think about the simulation theory? What do you guys think about what I said, and what responses do you guys have?

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I think it is unfalsifiable bs.

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It is unfalsifiable, but it’s not blind like religions. It makes 100 percent sense for advanced civilizations to want to create a simulation.

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The thing is, do we even know if they have that capability.

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Define what you think unfalsifiable means please?

To whom?

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Can’t be 100 percent proven or disproven.

And I’m not talking about the theory, just the first argument that advanced civilizations would want to create a simulation.

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Me. What about you? I’m curious to se what others think.

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No reason I can think of to call it a theory.

  1. Possibility needs to be demonstrated. There has been no demonstration. There is no ‘theory.’
  2. If the universe is being simulated, what is doing the simulation if everything is simulated? (Kinda circular)
  3. Simulated or not, the physical world is all you have. Act as if it is a simulation and you will die for real in that simulation. This ain’t the matrix.

** Physicist Marcelo Gleiser objects to the notion that posthumans would have a reason to run simulated universes: “…being so advanced they would have collected enough knowledge about their past to have little interest in this kind of simulation. …They may have virtual-reality museums, where they could go and experience the lives and tribulations of their ancestors. But a full-fledged, resource-consuming simulation of an entire universe? Sounds like a colossal waste of time.”**

1 Like
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What about advanced species that aren’t post human?

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Ok that explains a lot. Something is unfalsifiable if we can conceive of no way to falsify it, even were it to be false.

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No, not at all, I’d need to see some compelling objective evidence first…

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When I was young I had an ant farm. Don’t see them around anymore but they were essentially a narrow glass box filled with sand into which one added ants and occasionally something for them to eat and drink. Sometimes they were class projects and sometimes kids just had them for their own edification. It was interesting to watch them work work work building tunnels laying in food stores watching them hunt tasty morsels introduced and sometimes fight and die when those tasty morsels fought back.

Of course an ant farm was not a simulation to the observers or, I imagine, to the observed but it was an example in one species controlling another. Do you think those ants knew they were living in a totally controlled environment or that they were being studied by some ten year old boy? Would it even matter?

At this point in our scientific journey we can, or so I’ve been lead to believe, slip on a pair of goggles and be immersed in an alternate reality. The Micral N was the world’s first “personal computer”(1973). That is only 51 years ago. What do you suppose science might provide us in the next 50, 100, 1000 years provided we have survived as a species that long?

There isn’t anything to debate in this topic and might be better off in Random Fun- just my opinion.

2 Likes
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If your life is more interesting because aliens are controlling you, have fun.

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At least aliens are a possibility. We know for a fact life has occurred once. The possibility of life forming in this universe is 100%. Now we are trying to see if it can occur more than once. As big as the universe is, with as many earthlike planets as there are, and with life existing in completely inhuman environments, the possibility grows. I hope I am still around when the first life beyond human existence is discovered. That would be awesome. It would be more awesome than a universe-creating, invisible, eternal, child murdering, deity, who had to butcher his own son to forgive us for a mistake he made.

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Frequency is the next what-if. So far our factor is “1”. Anything else is a SWAG, but that shouldn’t stop the discussion.