Could we be living in a simulation?
How likely do you think this is? What are the major arguments for and against the idea of a simulation? Would you mind personally if it were? And do you think a simulation must be determined (programmed) or could it allow for free will (a sort of self coding open-simulation) ?
Comments (88)
If we carefully thought through what we mean by simulation, I think we would conclude it wasnt such a remarkable situation. We have to start by considering all the ways we are exposed to the cultural, artistic and technological creations of others. Sitting in a movie theater or participating in an immersive video game , we are exposed to forms of simulation. But what we are being exposed to isnt simply the furniture of the world, visual , auditory and tactile things that follow rote laws, but events that we actively participate in and influence. The most meaningful aspects of our word are the way we responsively change and are changed by communicating with other people. A simulation running canned algorithms would soon become irrelevant to us.
The Matrix
:fire:
Depends on your definition of 'living in a simulation'.
One view is that we are simulated. Somewhere there is an entity that drives the mechanics of a certain set of physical laws, the ones that we know. Life forms, even sentient ones, form or come as part of an initial state, however implausible. The creatures are thus simulated. I think this is the scenario that 180 means when he points out that it cannot make any difference one way or another.
The power of the simulating entity matter not. It can run one instruction per minute, or stop entirely for months at a time. The simulated thing cannot notice. The precision of said entity on the other hand is already beyond our physics. 64 bit floating point numbers just don't work.
The other view is a real (not-simulated) mind, being fed by said external entity a simulated input stream. This is a virtual reality, or BiV scenario. The presumption leaves absolutely zero evidence of there being other minds, or any evidence of anything for that matter. But it can be tested in a way. One's 'body' is part of the simulation, and is sort of an avatar being controlled by the mind in question. It isn't too difficult to examine the avatar and note that the thing isn't calling its own shots, but rather is remote-controlled by something other than the physics being presented.
Here the power of the simulating entity matters since the mind would notice if the world simulation suddenly couldn't keep up. It has to be done on the fly in real time since the universe is contained by time instead of the other way around.
Flat out zero in my opinion. The arguments involved (usually based on probability) don't hold water.
A simulation of our physics cannot be done with our physics, so the next level up has to be something far more complex, lacking in annoying rules like a limit of information travel speed, limit of three dimensions, etc. So on a pure probability scale, it's kind of like proposing a god: Something far more complex to explain something simple, but still too complex for you to explain. It makes the problem worse.
As for the VR, one might as where the subject mind comes from and why it doesn't remember being hooked up to the VR. Every video gamer still knows deep down that he's sitting at home wired to the computer and is not really in Mordor or wherever.
The VR guy is also prevented from doing certain things like examining the function of his own body, since any such examination will quickly reveal the secret.
Programmed doesn't mean determined. One can program randomness. The simulation would implement one of several interpretations of QM, some of which involve deterministic physics (Bohmian, MWI for instance) and some of which involve randomness (Copenhagen, RQM, or anything with physical wave function collapse). Free will as defined by the dualists (am not part of physics) is out the window for a simulation, which is a monistic proposal. Randomness or lack of it has nothing to do with it.
VR on the other hand has that kind of external-control free will. Physical law is overridden in places, making for an easy empirical test for it.
For someone like Cypher, knowing we "live in a simulation" makes no (positive) difference.
If it looks like a duck, and quakes like a duck....if the Shoe Fits...
For someone like Neo, with a splinter in his mind and a boring corporate life...what has he got to lose from following the white rabbit and popping the red pill? Maybe the slop they serve in Zion is better when you aren't able to enjoy the simple pleasures of the simulation. At least there he gets to play the messianic leader of group of freedom fighters.
Is there a Neo and Cypher in all of us?
:smirk:
A movie metaphor is one thing, but are we really going to spend our lives trying to break away from a simulation that 1) hasn't been demonstrated to be the case and 2) if true, may well be inescapable. Do we want to dedicate our lives to such a sci-fi conspiracy theory? It's no different really to dedicating one's life to a religious pathway, in the hope of reaching paradise.
Quoting 180 Proof
:death: :flower:
Are we gonna spend our lives trying to get satisfaction and meaning out something that might not even be real?
Are we content to build our houses on sand?
It would take enormous amount of computing power to simulate such a vast universe to such a great detail.
and even if that's possible, computer simulation doesn't handle biology.
You need to provide a compelling reason why you would take this seriously first. 'Perhaps' isn't enough. The world is full of 'perhaps' none or many of which we don't engage with. Have you ruled out Scientology or Catholicism? The simulation model to me seems just an updated tech-inspired form of idealism of which there are many models and possibilities.
Its simple. I have yet to find any solid foundation on which life as we know it is grounded upon, therefor I remain open to the possibility that no such foundation exists.
Sure. Me too. But I'm not investing energy plunging down those capacious rabbit holes of possibility.
Its impossible to live in a simulation because the act of entering a simulation occurs after, and never before, a state of affairs in which we already live.
The question is an aspect of the more general question: What is reality? Or, how do we know what's real?
Why wouldn't you want to use simulation theory as a tool to refine your understanding of reality and epistemology?
This is a meaty philosophy topic. One of greats.
Because, as I said, there is no way of knowing if simulation theory is useful for understanding anything. How do you propose demonstrating that simulation theory (or idealism, which is what it amounts to) is a true account of reality? Answer: you can't.
And even if someone could somehow prove that idealism is true, it would not change how I behave (as far as I can tell). The world we appear to share may just be appearances, but really we have no choice but to accept it as provisionally real.
Quoting Yohan
Agree. But I have no confidence humans can make any progress on the matter of what is 'real' or indeed what 'real' is meant to refer to.
[quote=Dr. Lanning (I Robot)]That, my friend, is the right question.[/quote]
Pragmatic, I salute you!
Re Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz & his law of the identity of indiscernibles. As you can see, if I can't tell the difference between x and y then, in my world, x = y. That's all there is to it! From the uchi (inside), identical but from the soto (outside), not! We have to somehow exist the simulation safely (stay intact, sensu amplissimo) and then, only then, can we discover the truth of the matter.
1. Figure out the hallmarks of a simulation. Just like how NASA looks for biosignatures, we too must first suss out and then search for simsignatures.
2. Reconstruct the mind of our creator (the coder who developed the sim) e.g. quite clearly His/Her moral compass needs work but that's only assuming the bad isn't a necessary evil, a software package sorta thing.
'Demonstrate' leans toward an empirical epistemology, which I don't think is the right kind of epistemology to use when exploring metaphysical claims.
It's more a question about how we map out reality.
A materialist map and an idealist map can both be the same in the broad strokes.
The difference is what the materialist and idealist consider the metaphysical status of the map itself.
Is a map a tool to understand matter, or is matter a tool to understand the map?
The idealist recognizes that 'matter' as a map-independent whatever, is a self-contradictory map.
While 'matter' as a map-dependent concept, is not a self-contradictory map.
Quoting Tom Storm
Like some Zen guy said. Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water? Is that a reason to not seek enlightenment?
I hope this is all relevant enough to the OP....
Quoting Agent Smith
But then an idealist will say "If the world(x) is indistinguishable from a hallucination(y), then the world is a hallucination."
The brain doesn't need something outside of itself to run a simulation. We run simulations when we dream.
Oh! But he can't say thaaat, can he now?
It has exactly the same weight as saying we are living in Einstein's dream, in another universe. How can you prove we are not? There's no way to do this. You can only say, justifiably, that I made it up - but it doesn't eliminate the plausibility.
Then again, we could be cells in God's body or anything else. But if you continue making up scenarios infinitely, as one can, you see that this is just a game with little value.
At least Putnam's brain in a vat, has uses about our mental capacities and the relation we have with the world. Simulation arguments don't even have any saving grace.
Also, why assume an entire universe is generated instead of only what is observed? So in the simulation there would be no quantum universe except at the moment when you'd be looking for it. Rendering observations for 8 billion people and a bunch of equipment is less complex than an entire universe.
Do you disagree that empirical science suggests all your experiences, ideas...whatever makes up you and your world view is in and created by the brain?
Isn't the only question whether or not the brain has sort of created a copy of an actual world?
The idealist takes it to the logical end. If everything we know can be reduced to brain states, then even the brain can be reduced to a brain state. That leads to infinite regress.
On the other hand, if the brain is an outward representation of consciousness, then the brain is reducible to consciousness. No infinite regress.
A logical question arises: If we live in a simulation, how can we never know it?
Do we know in our dreams that we are dreaming? And wed do think, for a brief moment, that indeed we are, this would be part of the dream and only because we know what a dream is and what a conscious, awake state is.
In an awake state on the other hand, we don't know any other kinds of conscious states so that we can recognize and call the existing one as a simulation.
However, there are different kinds of conscious states and awareness. But they do not make someone lieve and have some other kind of existence. E.g., in a state of expanded consciousness, we would still be living in a simulation, and the whole Universe, as we know it, would be part of it.
Bottom line is that there's no much meaning or use in thinking and talking about living in a simultation. Well, except if we are writing a science-fiction scenario or book. :smile:
Just think about a limited scenario: What if in this Forum there are only two people and you, @Benj96, are the other and the other one is just a frantic administrator using clever algorithms to create different kind of answers from so-called "other" people? Actually, nobody else than you can join into this forum.
Even in this more limited scenario, the above mentioned issues would take hold: So? What is your problem if it would be so? You won't meet us... likely you won't take the bus and notice the person sitting next to you is on the Philosophy Forum. As @180 Proof said above:
Quoting 180 Proof
Empirical science is agnostic about metaphysics. You may occasionally hear the odd statement about being a "materialist" and even more rare, being an "idealist", but most scientists don't have a metaphysics - they probably don't even think about it, which is fine, the work they do does not require it.
I agree that the organ we take to be a brain, are what we - with good reason - take to be the source of experience. That's a representation. The thing is, I don't think it intelligible to suppose that experience "copies" anything. It represents, from rather poor stimulus, a very rich world. That's not a copy.
The topic here, as I understand, is that we are literally living in a computer simulation. There is no evidence for that at all. You could call the world we construct a "simulation". I think that terminology is rather strange. But, everyone is free to use these terms as they wish.
OK
A computer simulation? Run by a CPU? No. We aren't a program, you can prove that to yourself by observing that you can define anything however you want, or by observing that you can make up any symbol you like to stand for any meaning you like. There's no program for that; it's protocomputational.
A self-simulation, (a la Chris Langan) whereby reality as a monic substrate is replicated within all of its constituent parts? Yes, that's how anything is allowed to interact with everything else.
There's a whole class of these kinds of thought experiments ... brain in a vat, the dream argument, The Matrix as Metaphysics (Chalmers), The Butterfly Dream (Zhuangzi), Zhuangzi And That Bloody Butterfly (Tallis), maya (the Vedas), Descartes' evil demon, the veil of Isis, ...
Formulated as a proposition, p, they're often thought up in such a way that all available evidence is compatible with both p and ¬p. So, metaphysics, indeterminate, like a difference that makes no difference.
EDIT: ditched quantum woo comment
:smirk:
This is all the Boltzmann brain's dream! :snicker:
Shout out to @Wayfarer if you're watching.
Quoting Manuel
Simulations are only mind generated. You can't "literally" live in a simulation. When you play a video game the mind projects 3dimensional depth onto the screen. It would be the same if a computer were directed linked to the mind.
Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
This I agree with.
I'm not following the bit about the computer being linked with the mind. Does that mean that we are living in a videogame of some kind? You can describe life in many different ways.
Depends on the goal.
I should have said directly linked to the brain I guess.
Videogame machines/programs are tools we use to create simulations. Usually we create these simulations consciously and for fun, knowing its a sort of sub-reality.
We can talk about the rules (laws of nature) of video game worlds, but we don't mistake the nature of the videogame world for the nature of reality on the whole.
Likewise the laws of the world we imagine ourselves to be in now aren't necessarily the laws of reality on the whole.
We may be in a sub-reality.
I'd say we don't know enough to determine whether the laws we study are or are not fundamental to the universe. So, not so much sub-reality, as representations. We seem to be locked away from "things in themselves."
We don't have technology advanced enough to create a simulation potentially good enough to trick the human mind so it is not really here or there for us to try to predict what such a simulation would be like. The only thing we do know is that it will be awhile before we get there and it is likely that "if" a good enough simulation is built, it is almost a given the human mind wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
I don't know about other people but I think it is a given that almost all people need an "escape" from reality from time to time whether it be watching tv, reading a book, drinking, playing video games, going to a strip club, etc., etc. where our minds are not dong something productive. However to be trapped in some place which isn't "real" can be scary, especially if such place isn't that pleasant to being with. The only thing I can associate with such a possible experience is sometimes when I'mtrapped in a dream, I know I'm in a dream, and I can't wake up and sometimes these dream are at the same time unpleasant in other ways.
I guess if a simulation (or something else that is similar to a dream like world) was pleasant enough it might not make that much of a difference as long as didn't have anyone on the outside that was in some way dependent on me. There are several variables to such a situation but it is kind of safe to say that someone that stayed in a simulation too long there would be problems if they also had a real world to contend with, and if a so called brain in a vat (BIV) lived it's entire existence in such a place it would likely be as content (or as much as the simulation choose to let them be) unless for some reason they found out that they were actually just a BIV. I don't know the psychological term or condition when someone goes from being in something like a fantasy world to something like the day to day world we like in, but I'm guess it would be something like an extreme version of culture shock.
Back in the 90's there was a video game called "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" that kind of dealt with the potential social, technological, political, etc. issues with potential future technology. One of those technologies was called the Mind/Machine Interface. The reason I think it is worth mentioning MMI is that it is almost given that some form of MMI would need to be created before it would be possible to have any kind of simulated world you mentioned in your OP. Also the old X-box 360 had a game called "Remember Me" where in a future dystopian world people could record and play back memories - either for themselves or other people. Obviously there would be good and bad things that could happen with such technology.
Braincomputer interface
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface
While I don't know what kind of world it will be like when we get around to creating real viable MMI that everyone can use, but it is almost a given that it will create as many (or likely much more) problems than when people started being able to use personal computer. While I know there are many authors wrote books and several movies where made on the subject of MMI, I think you get the general idea without me having to go too far on the subject.
Alpha Centauri Mind/Machine_Interface
https://alphacentauri.fandom.com/wiki/Mind/Machine_Interface
Alpha Centauri quote for MMI
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/alphacentauri_en/images/6/66/Mind_Machine_Interface.mp3/revision/latest?cb=20211006173731
Intro to Remember Me video game
Remember_Me_video_game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remember_Me_%28video_game%29
I find it very easy to question the ultimate reality of this "world."
I can easy imagine it not existing.
In fact, a common question philosophers ask is why there is something rather than nothing. In other words, why does the world exist?
We ask this question because it seems strange that there is anything at all.
Intuitively timeless spaceless total nothingness makes more sense.
There should be nothing, but apparently there is something.
But it can't be made sense of.
Something coming from nothing doesn't make sense.
And the idea of this world of space and time always having existed also doesn't make sense.
If anything, this world existing is self-contradictory.
"When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the case." Arthur Conan Doyle
After eliminating the possibility that the world 'exists', however you take that word, something else must be the case. No?
I don't know, I think I was talking nonsense
Rather, to what extent do I live in simulation?
My guess is that most of what I think of as "the real world" is my own projection and narrative, most of which I adopted from somewhere.
The question is a basic error in reasoning.
Other questions that follow this dead end are what is real? instead of simply addressing what we mean by real and understanding that our understanding is necessarily limited. The limitation of our senses allows us to develop knowledge, as knowledge exists purely as a point of reference not as some irrefutable source all springs from.
To a pragmatic non-philosopher a realistic simulation would make no difference. But inquiring minds want to know. For example, Descartes, skeptical of his own ability to know the ultimate truth, postulated that a "demon" could be deceiving him, except for the solipsistic feeling of knowing thyself. Today, we might call that demon an extraterrestrial Alien, or a mundane AI that has miraculously become omniscient & omnipotent.
However, Descartes seemed to be confident that his skepticism would reveal any "glitches" in the Matrix. That self-assurance was based on his "mind-better-known-than-body doctrine". So, the "difference" for a philosopher seems to be confidence in his own reasoning ability. However, if you discover no glitches, despite being alert for them, pragmatically it's all the same to you. Unless, you are an impractical idealist philosopher by nature. :cool:
mind-better-known-than-body doctrine :
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/
Okay put it this way. Consider you're born with locked in syndrome - you're paralysed and can only think and receive input from your senses. Luckily I have technology to provide you senses with whatever input I wish. I can feed your brain motor feedback so it feels like you can move around and navigate and interact with the biome that's programmed and fed to you. Your nutrition health etc all you needs are met but you're floating in a stasis tank.
The programming can be changed to any parameters - a day could be 52 hours long, all food could taste like pizza, dogs may be replaced with a completely new animal that doesn't exist. You've never known anything else but this world I've coded and am transmitting to your brain via your senses. The reality I see every day is quite different to to the one you know. Would you say you live in a simulation? Or would you say you live in the same reality as me except you nothing about it due to the illusion I have upheld around you for your entire growth, development ever since you could remember.
And how would you feel if I suddenly turned off the machine and showed you what's actually outside the tank?
Why so? Is a simulation not at its broadest definition a set of conditions that restricts and directs the ways in which a person believes reality exists. At what point is the general commonly experienced reality different enough from an individuals to say they are living in an illusion constructed for them?
For example the truman show. A fake world with paid actors all there to fool one man for TV. That technology is already avaliable. If you put someone in a specific place and restrict their movement and coerce their behaviours to avoid questioning it... Making sure they don't stray to the border of their confines who's to say they arent living in a simulation? One scripted just for them
Such a scenario only shows this better. You cannot expect me to be completely fooled by your hypothetical simulator and yet not be fooled by it at the same time.
[quote=Steven Wright]Black holes are where God divided by zero.[/quote]
:up: :sparkle:
:down: :zip:
:sparkle:
Sy?d, simulation, sim-creator/God?
The simulation depends on ourselves! The imagination of humans is extraordinary :sparkle:
Sy?d, we could be simulating an older version of our world, one less-than-perfect.
Interesting. That's would mean there are different time versions of our real world. Then, the "real" world (who is simulating others) is the only one who is living in the correct time. If we think it deeply, probably you and me would be 150 years old in other reality
Sy?d, this is a possibility we should look into, oui? Nostalgia is one reason why we would want to simulate an older version of The Matrix.
:up: :sparkle:
The Cambridge dictionary defines nostalgia as: a feeling of pleasure and also slight sadness when you think about things that happened in the past.
It is interesting because the cause of nostalgia is on the fact that we no longer can live those experiences. If we able to do so, we would not feel nostalgia then.
:ok:
Philosophically, this seems the soundest approach. If reality in general is "of the nature of a simulation" then that doesn't add or subtract anything from the idea of reality as it affects or is affected by us.
On the other hand, this sense doesn't seem to cover what is meant by simulation, which is something that is done or made by someone. So the next logical step in a simulation hypothesis would seem to be the Cartesian demon. In that case, I suppose the possibility arises that we can in some way escape or transcend the simulation. Perhaps in the sense that one seeks to transcend Samsara.
Zapffe & Camus call this "absurd". And Buddhists' say "ignorance" of anicca, etc aka "karma". Spinoza refers to it as an "inadequate idea". Etc.
Personally I love the simulation although the sex could be better and what the hell is up with viagra on all this
Anyway its definitely a cool thing this so called world I kinda like and as for death itself what the hell is it anyway ? Must be similar to sleep
:up: :sparkle:
:rofl: Sy?d, on point! Nevertheless, we're unable to distinguish real vs. unreal which is, to the coder/programmer behind the sim, a compliment, oui mon ami?
The arguments I've heard are along the lines of probability that more lives could be simulated than could exist; but that argument still requires at least one real world. There's nothing that requires any simulations to exist. So, in any case (such as this one) the expected value for a real world is 1 and the number of simulations is between 0 and unknown. The reasonable bet is on a known outcome, until we know there exists simulations of real worlds where people exist and can't tell the difference.
Syat ...
What was taken for real (out there, distinct and separate from us) is being questioned; it could all be a hallucination (in our heads). As for considering the world tentatively/provisionally real, I'm all for it, but note, the damage is already done.
The simulation hypothesis is fun for computer nerds to contemplate, perhaps because they see no personal consequences of the notion of artificial Reality. In Existential Physics, physicist Sabine Hossenfelder admitted, "I quite like the idea that we live in a computer simulation. It gives me hope that things will be better on the next level." (heaven?) But that hope seems to be based on faith in the good intentions of the unknown programmers. She goes on to note that, "this simulation hypothesis . . . has been mostly ignored by physicists, but it enjoys a certain popularity among philosophers and people who like to think of themselves as intellectual. Evidently, it's more appealing the less you know about physics".
But, what does she know about computer simulations, except for the mathematical models that theoretical physicists create to emulate how the physical world actually works? She seems to think the alien simulations are actually patterned after traditional religious beliefs about super-intelligent super-powerful beings. "The belief in an omniscient being that can interfere with the laws of nature, but that for some reason remains hidden from us, is a common element of monotheistic religions". Unfortunately, my own explorations of philosophical origins questions are typically placed in the obsolete notion basket, without any knowledge of the actual proposal. It suggests a logical explanation why an immaterial programmer would remain forever beyond the reach of our materialist metaphors. And why the programmer allows the program to run without miraculous interference.
Reality Simulation games would be no fun for emotion-driven players, if they couldn't play god, by occasionally over-riding the program. But an abstract bodiless self-existent Programmer (pure Logic, pure Math, pure Information) would presumably have no hormonal urges to over-ride the original end-state-intent (teleology) of the program : the Final Cause output. That makes sense to me, but Hossenfelder might still reject it as philosophical speculation beyond the hard physical evidence. But, that's OK, I don't pretend to be a physicist. Just an explorer beyond the edges of the known world. :nerd:
PS__ Hossenfelder goes on to say that "physicists have looked for signs that natural laws really proceed step-by step, like a computer code". But what if the universe functions more like a non-digital integrated brain. . . . . Just philosophical fodder for unfettered thought.
UNCHARTED TERRITORY --- HERE BE DRAGONS
DOES THE UNIVERSE RESEMBLE THE HUMAN BRAIN?
https://phys.org/news/2020-11-human-brain-resemble-universe.html
Ironically, Neo had to take a magic pill to open his mind to the possibility that his reality might not be what it seemed to his brainwashed senses. Where can we find such pill in our own Matrix? :wink:
The red pill is a metaphor for the willingness/desire for knowledge no matter what the cost.
Also what is the first question you would ask the designer of such a simulation?
Another question if this world is simulated and corresponds in law to the real world that created it then does it really matter if it is a simulation?
Where can I get a prescription that that? :smile:
Nick Bostrom's simulation argument is the one I am familiar with. According to Nick, if a future civilization develops and chooses to run ancestor simulations, then the odds are that we are simulated persons, rather than people in the real world. This probability is because future civilizations would have the computational resources to create many many simulations with many many simulated people (way more simulated people than there are real people).
I would definitely have a problem with being a simulated person as I think it would mean I do not have a free will. There are no computer programs that "self-code." All computer programs are deterministic. Accordingly, a simulation would also be deterministic. And in that case, if I were in the simulation I too would be deterministically programmed.
But we do have free will. Therefore, we must not be living in a simulation.
A problem with the simulation argument is that it is unclear to me why an entire civilization would choose to dedicate its resources to ancestor simulations. Not only would doing so be highly unethical and a complete waste of resources, (not to mention it would take a lot of time and resources to build this simulation) it would also be entirely pointless, given that everything that will happen in the simulation is already known, given that the simulation world is deterministic.
Additionally, I do not think consciousness can be "simulated." Only living things can be conscious, not computer programs or anything contained in computer programs.
The problem with your argument is simple.
When you were a child, say 6 years old, are whatever your earliest memory was. You thought it was the ultimate reality. Everything you knew was all there was to know. Everything you did was the wisest or at minimum most reasonable course of action at the time of doing it. But you got older. Some humans die at a young age and this was their ultimate reality. Surely even you must acknowledge some adults die in a similar stage, that is to say ignorant of a greater reality, way of life, or series of talents that could have brought upon a greater experience and as a result existence?
Surely you cannot be so naive as to think the ultimate reality that could ever be experienced was from the first opening of your eyes to your last breathe nor even that of the smartest most wisest and accomplished person to ever life? Surely not..
Then you would definitely reject hylozoism and pan-psychism.
Quoting NOS4A2
Er, not at all. One can have an entirely deterministic and very simple program to find the value of pi that can run forever producing new digits that were unknown until the program was run.
More generally, there is a literal world of difference between a matrix world in which real humans are immersed in a digital world that they believe is real, and a simulated world with simulated humans - There can be no escape from the simulation for simulated persons, if such are possible, and since for them it is their only world, for them it is reality, and the programmer is God.
Then again, it's conceivable that simulated humans could be real AI's, immersed in a virtual digital world. Conceivably, they might be fooled.
(Though, more realistically, they would probably need to interact with a real environment in order to develop a proper semantics, and be fooled about anything, in what we ought recognise as a conscious, and hence relevant, way.)
I do agree that a literal world of difference remains, though, between that conceivable scenario, and simulation hypothesising (Bostrom et al), in which fictional worlds with fictional humans magically become real.
Quoting unenlightened
:100: :lol:
@Benj96
The simulation theory might be true. In the sense that we live in a world that is not physical. Parmenides stated that space is a void, void is nothingness, and thus cannot exist. That would mean physical objects cannot exist, and so it would mean we live in a simulation.