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If you can recurse infinitely, then there is no need to define reality as a simulation. A simulation implies some loss of fidelity relative to the layer hosting

If you can recurse infinitely, then there is no need to define reality as a simulation. A simulation implies some loss of fidelity relative to the layer hosting it. If you continue this infinitely eventually you end up with a completely entropic layer. Maybe there is a discontinuity and this entropic layer crystallizes into a highly ordered "base reality". I don't know how this innermost, entropic layer can contain the outermost, ordered layer. I think "simulation" is a bad term since it implies a monotonic loss of fidelity. A simulation only has meaning if there is a base reality. Otherwise there are only layers of reality.

3pt14159 10y ago
I disagree. A simulation has meaning even if there is not a base reality. A simulation is alterable in a way that a physicalists reality is not. For example by it's parent can slow it down, or alter physical constants.
- qubex 10y ago
  A “slowing down” of a simulation would only be perceptible to those observing from without, not those who are observing from within, whose perceptive processes would be slowed in synchrony with the processes they are perceiving. There's no reason to presume the simulation proceeds at a constant rate as measured from the outside world either: “render times” may vary with the complexity and fidelity required — for example when we innards fire up the LHC, a huge bump in resolution might be required. When we innards venture onto the moon, a whole new world has to be mapped in and professing speed might drop accordingly. What the original poster is saying is that insofar as we do not know what the base reality is, there is no reason to argue that our reality is a lower-fidelity instantiation of it: we might as well be a flawless emulation of something totally orthogonal to the base reality. Furthermore for obvious reasons computation cannot endlessly recurs endlessly and somehow forms into a loop: somewhere the arithmetic actually has to be performed.
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3pt14159 10y ago

I disagree. A simulation has meaning even if there is not a base reality. A simulation is alterable in a way that a physicalists reality is not. For example by it's parent can slow it down, or alter physical constants.

qubex 10y ago
A “slowing down” of a simulation would only be perceptible to those observing from without, not those who are observing from within, whose perceptive processes would be slowed in synchrony with the processes they are perceiving. There's no reason to presume the simulation proceeds at a constant rate as measured from the outside world either: “render times” may vary with the complexity and fidelity required — for example when we innards fire up the LHC, a huge bump in resolution might be required. When we innards venture onto the moon, a whole new world has to be mapped in and professing speed might drop accordingly. What the original poster is saying is that insofar as we do not know what the base reality is, there is no reason to argue that our reality is a lower-fidelity instantiation of it: we might as well be a flawless emulation of something totally orthogonal to the base reality. Furthermore for obvious reasons computation cannot endlessly recurs endlessly and somehow forms into a loop: somewhere the arithmetic actually has to be performed.
- deleted 10y ago
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