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Proving that the Universe is a simulation would be proving the existence of gods. Considering how much effort humans have dedicated to this question over the mi

Proving that the Universe is a simulation would be proving the existence of gods. Considering how much effort humans have dedicated to this question over the millennia, and the various consequences, and the continuing influence on the lives of the majority of people, I would say it matters.

rdlecler1 7y ago
In the spirit of Dan Dennett: then who simulated those gods? Super duper gods?
- incompatible 7y ago
  It's simulations all the way up?
  - spc476 7y ago
    Well, it's interpreters all the way down ...
- hhs 7y ago
  In philosophy, there's also the idea of cognitive closure where, at a certain point, humans are bounded off to these issues. It could be that we don't possess the vocabulary yet.
- bitL 7y ago
  Grad students in some lab, hastily finishing an assignment for a course in nested simulations.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Maybe we did. Maybe it's circular. At least that would mean the state of the universe isn't stored in a JSON object. That'd be nice to know.
  - tiborsaas 7y ago
    The initial parameters still could be stored in a small yaml file :) You can fine tune those like artists do with fractal renderer programs. Maybe the Universe is an art project exhibited in some kind of museum.
  - rficcaglia 7y ago
    > Maybe it's circular. Sure, if not directly circular then consider that our simulations today are used to explore choices/behavior before doing something, so it stands to reason that as each universe sim gets to some interesting data, the sim operators learn something, then change their behavior accordingly and tweak the sim and re-run, learning something new in turn, followed by more sim tweaks, ... etc. We today learn new insights from AI and then change our behavior, pour $billions and dev time into designing better AI, etc...so there's definitely a symbiosis relationship. And I expect that we will eventually want to design AI that designs better AI than we can ourselves, which will teach us how to design better AI-designing-AI...etc. :)
ako 7y ago
If simulations imply gods exist, humans must be gods, as we are doing plenty simulations.
- airocker 7y ago
  And that god could be an evil monopolist?
  - RealityVoid 7y ago
    Oh, plenty of them. Being a god doesn't imply being good nor interested too much in the entity you are a god to.
- virgilp 7y ago
  For the simulated entities? Yes you are - you have absolute power over the simulation.
- pixelpoet 7y ago
  I develop physically-based renderers, the output of which is easily mistaken for photographs. I don't presume myself to be a god of course, but it does make me think... what if you piece together enough specialists for this that and the other aspect of a simulation, and run them on a freakishly powerful computer, with a sort of genetic algorithm simulating virtual beings... There's a great short story by Greg Egan about this kind of thing, and even with this "spoiler" context it's still very much worth reading: http://ttapress.com/CrystalNights.pdf http://ttapress.com/CrystalNights.pdf
  - rapnie 7y ago
    Greg Egan - Permutation City. Very nice book.
    - chr1 7y ago
      I didn't like one aspect of the book, when he was trying to show that what simulated people feel doesn't depend on the way simulation runs, he was mainly focusing on computing later timeframes of the simulation before earlier ones, which is not possible.
everyone 7y ago
Gods always seems to pop up in discussions about this topic, which I find glib and annoying. We could prove the existence of the simulation runners. That does not suddenly mean theists were right. They would still be just as wrong as ever, making random assumptions without any evidence or scientific method at all. Lets say we were able to find out that the simulation runner looked and acted exactly like Zeus; that still wouldn't make Zeus worshipers right, just incredibly incredibly lucky in one of their random guesses.
- sysbinnnnn 7y ago
  Idk about your proposal of what makes one person right and another not. Someone can have a starting point of life with the genetics & environment conditions needed for all the events to happen for making the "right" theory. Another person can have a starting point (different than the other person) and where all the events to prove with the scientific method of what is the "right" theory; matching the other person. Realistically each person would be effected by forces from previous lives that made them come to the conclusion at the end.
  - thecupisblue 7y ago
    Exactly. If someone is physics PhD and makes the same conclusion as a random person, it's still the same abstraction, just that ones shows an implementation in physics while other in human words.
- bitL 7y ago
  It's more like the simulation authors can influence population of different places to have different religions, ideals and rules, to see which one would win. If you look at it, it could be some kind of optimization, you put different ideologies together and see how they interact (commerce, wars). This also allows avoiding cultural degeneracy, i.e. seeing some prosperous society turning into something horrible (e.g. sacrificing humans daily to make sun rise), that would be then killed off by a competing culture in an inevitable clash of cultures, leaving the stronger/more viable alive. I worry about globalization as a single unified culture because of human tendency to degenerate; having a cultural competition seems to be needed for humanity to progress.
ozzmotik 7y ago
i don't think that proving reality to be a simulation would necessitate the proof of any divine beings. all it would really prove is that we are within a simulation that was put into place by something capable of doing such. there is no reason to ascribe "divine" or "holy" traits to those potential creators. granted, i operate under the ideology that there is no distinction between "divinity" and mundane reality itself. i more or less believe that religions were created to establish a schism between those two ideals and to set the divine aside because most people just cannot handle the true power of the infinite potential that lies within their conscious awareness. arbitrary power structures put in place so humans can point to something else and say that that something else is separate from us and better than us, instead of seeing that that something else simply is us— or more appropriately, the sum of us altogether. the way I see it, even if you are just a single lonely gear within a machine, connected within countless others, in being part of the machine, you represent the machine as a whole itself just as much as you represent your perspective as an individual gear.
- ASalazarMX 7y ago
  From our point of view, any omnipotent being is a god. Even a near-omnipotent simulated being would fit the definition. This doesn't mean they have to be worshiped or the center of any religion, it would just mean omnipotent beings do exist.
  - ozzmotik 7y ago
    i suppose that's a fair assessment to make, but for me personally that isn't how I define a God, as there are several deities within older mythologies and religions that weren't exactly omnipotent (and even mortal ones such as the ones in Norse mythology). to me, the only real quality that endows one with the aspect of Godhead is the abstract concept we refer to as "divinity", or rather some intrinsic separation of the creator from the created, as it were. now, certainly, if some higher order lab tech created the simulation, you could argue that they are indeed separate from it, and in having the power to create it, they do have the power to modify any aspect of it, but I still don't believe that imbues them with any sort of divinity. as far as I can see it, they could likely just be the same as us: a simulated being under the purview of an even higher order of complexity. but ultimately the point for me is that I just don't believe in "gods". it's not that I don't believe that the archetypes and characters introduced by mythology could never possibly exist, it's more that I don't personally believe that there is any intrinsic difference between us and them other than just the order of complexity upon which our experience of life and reality is founded. i believe more that the idea of "God" is more akin to the sum total of all information within a given "system" (be that system a universe, multiverse/omniverse, or some even further abstract concept); not so much a demiurge or some active participant, but rather an emergent phenomena that manifests as a synthesis of all of lower orders of complexity beneath it. this does not imbue the Godhead concept with any sort of special or separate nature, in my opinion, and in fact if anything, implies that divinity in and of itself is more just a specific modality of consciousness detached from the ego and the perspective of I-ness
ako 7y ago
So what would it mean if there are gods of simulation? Most religions and gods purely exist as a way to implement law and order: define what is good and bad, and to manipulate people to behave accordingly (otherwise you will be punished in hell). Would simulation gods really be interested in us following good and bad rules, or more interested to see what happens if people do as they want? If this is a simulation, my assumption is that it is to test if any highly intelligent and successful species is destined to destroy itself...
- hansjorg 7y ago
  What if it's just a really detailed astrophysics simulation and any life is just coincidental and without interest to the ones running the simulation.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    “What’s that?” “What?” “Over there, third planet out.” “Oh, those. Yeah, some kind of bug. It usually fixes itself, often in quite the fireworks at the end! Anyway, supposed to be fixed next version.”
- Yetanfou 7y ago
  Simulation gods would most likely be gods of chaos as that is what simulations are generally used for: to test the behaviour of a system in diverse and often adverse conditions.
- jongomez 7y ago
  "So what would it mean if there are gods of simulation?" Well, I for one would be curious to find out more about these gods.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    Also, sandbox escapes. :)
    - 7y ago
mensetmanusman 7y ago
It would not be proving the existence of gods, because it would lead to the question of why is there a reality wherein a being could create a simulation (which requires ordered laws of physics etc.).
djmips 7y ago
Why Gods? Aren't Gods somehow directly involved and often omniscient? Our universe could be a side effect of a machine learning algorithm and quite incomprehensible to it's own creator who only care about the output. This is more akin to the computer in Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy.

rdlecler1 7y ago

In the spirit of Dan Dennett: then who simulated those gods? Super duper gods?

incompatible 7y ago
It's simulations all the way up?
- spc476 7y ago
  Well, it's interpreters all the way down ...
hhs 7y ago
In philosophy, there's also the idea of cognitive closure where, at a certain point, humans are bounded off to these issues. It could be that we don't possess the vocabulary yet.
bitL 7y ago
Grad students in some lab, hastily finishing an assignment for a course in nested simulations.
onion2k 7y ago
Maybe we did. Maybe it's circular. At least that would mean the state of the universe isn't stored in a JSON object. That'd be nice to know.
- tiborsaas 7y ago
  The initial parameters still could be stored in a small yaml file :) You can fine tune those like artists do with fractal renderer programs. Maybe the Universe is an art project exhibited in some kind of museum.
- rficcaglia 7y ago
  > Maybe it's circular. Sure, if not directly circular then consider that our simulations today are used to explore choices/behavior before doing something, so it stands to reason that as each universe sim gets to some interesting data, the sim operators learn something, then change their behavior accordingly and tweak the sim and re-run, learning something new in turn, followed by more sim tweaks, ... etc. We today learn new insights from AI and then change our behavior, pour $billions and dev time into designing better AI, etc...so there's definitely a symbiosis relationship. And I expect that we will eventually want to design AI that designs better AI than we can ourselves, which will teach us how to design better AI-designing-AI...etc. :)

ako 7y ago

If simulations imply gods exist, humans must be gods, as we are doing plenty simulations.

airocker 7y ago
And that god could be an evil monopolist?
- RealityVoid 7y ago
  Oh, plenty of them. Being a god doesn't imply being good nor interested too much in the entity you are a god to.
virgilp 7y ago
For the simulated entities? Yes you are - you have absolute power over the simulation.
pixelpoet 7y ago
I develop physically-based renderers, the output of which is easily mistaken for photographs. I don't presume myself to be a god of course, but it does make me think... what if you piece together enough specialists for this that and the other aspect of a simulation, and run them on a freakishly powerful computer, with a sort of genetic algorithm simulating virtual beings... There's a great short story by Greg Egan about this kind of thing, and even with this "spoiler" context it's still very much worth reading: http://ttapress.com/CrystalNights.pdf http://ttapress.com/CrystalNights.pdf
- rapnie 7y ago
  Greg Egan - Permutation City. Very nice book.
  - chr1 7y ago
    I didn't like one aspect of the book, when he was trying to show that what simulated people feel doesn't depend on the way simulation runs, he was mainly focusing on computing later timeframes of the simulation before earlier ones, which is not possible.

everyone 7y ago

Gods always seems to pop up in discussions about this topic, which I find glib and annoying. We could prove the existence of the simulation runners. That does not suddenly mean theists were right. They would still be just as wrong as ever, making random assumptions without any evidence or scientific method at all. Lets say we were able to find out that the simulation runner looked and acted exactly like Zeus; that still wouldn't make Zeus worshipers right, just incredibly incredibly lucky in one of their random guesses.

sysbinnnnn 7y ago
Idk about your proposal of what makes one person right and another not. Someone can have a starting point of life with the genetics & environment conditions needed for all the events to happen for making the "right" theory. Another person can have a starting point (different than the other person) and where all the events to prove with the scientific method of what is the "right" theory; matching the other person. Realistically each person would be effected by forces from previous lives that made them come to the conclusion at the end.
- thecupisblue 7y ago
  Exactly. If someone is physics PhD and makes the same conclusion as a random person, it's still the same abstraction, just that ones shows an implementation in physics while other in human words.
bitL 7y ago
It's more like the simulation authors can influence population of different places to have different religions, ideals and rules, to see which one would win. If you look at it, it could be some kind of optimization, you put different ideologies together and see how they interact (commerce, wars). This also allows avoiding cultural degeneracy, i.e. seeing some prosperous society turning into something horrible (e.g. sacrificing humans daily to make sun rise), that would be then killed off by a competing culture in an inevitable clash of cultures, leaving the stronger/more viable alive. I worry about globalization as a single unified culture because of human tendency to degenerate; having a cultural competition seems to be needed for humanity to progress.

ozzmotik 7y ago

i don't think that proving reality to be a simulation would necessitate the proof of any divine beings. all it would really prove is that we are within a simulation that was put into place by something capable of doing such. there is no reason to ascribe "divine" or "holy" traits to those potential creators. granted, i operate under the ideology that there is no distinction between "divinity" and mundane reality itself. i more or less believe that religions were created to establish a schism between those two ideals and to set the divine aside because most people just cannot handle the true power of the infinite potential that lies within their conscious awareness. arbitrary power structures put in place so humans can point to something else and say that that something else is separate from us and better than us, instead of seeing that that something else simply is us— or more appropriately, the sum of us altogether. the way I see it, even if you are just a single lonely gear within a machine, connected within countless others, in being part of the machine, you represent the machine as a whole itself just as much as you represent your perspective as an individual gear.

ASalazarMX 7y ago
From our point of view, any omnipotent being is a god. Even a near-omnipotent simulated being would fit the definition. This doesn't mean they have to be worshiped or the center of any religion, it would just mean omnipotent beings do exist.
- ozzmotik 7y ago
  i suppose that's a fair assessment to make, but for me personally that isn't how I define a God, as there are several deities within older mythologies and religions that weren't exactly omnipotent (and even mortal ones such as the ones in Norse mythology). to me, the only real quality that endows one with the aspect of Godhead is the abstract concept we refer to as "divinity", or rather some intrinsic separation of the creator from the created, as it were. now, certainly, if some higher order lab tech created the simulation, you could argue that they are indeed separate from it, and in having the power to create it, they do have the power to modify any aspect of it, but I still don't believe that imbues them with any sort of divinity. as far as I can see it, they could likely just be the same as us: a simulated being under the purview of an even higher order of complexity. but ultimately the point for me is that I just don't believe in "gods". it's not that I don't believe that the archetypes and characters introduced by mythology could never possibly exist, it's more that I don't personally believe that there is any intrinsic difference between us and them other than just the order of complexity upon which our experience of life and reality is founded. i believe more that the idea of "God" is more akin to the sum total of all information within a given "system" (be that system a universe, multiverse/omniverse, or some even further abstract concept); not so much a demiurge or some active participant, but rather an emergent phenomena that manifests as a synthesis of all of lower orders of complexity beneath it. this does not imbue the Godhead concept with any sort of special or separate nature, in my opinion, and in fact if anything, implies that divinity in and of itself is more just a specific modality of consciousness detached from the ego and the perspective of I-ness

ako 7y ago

So what would it mean if there are gods of simulation? Most religions and gods purely exist as a way to implement law and order: define what is good and bad, and to manipulate people to behave accordingly (otherwise you will be punished in hell). Would simulation gods really be interested in us following good and bad rules, or more interested to see what happens if people do as they want? If this is a simulation, my assumption is that it is to test if any highly intelligent and successful species is destined to destroy itself...

hansjorg 7y ago
What if it's just a really detailed astrophysics simulation and any life is just coincidental and without interest to the ones running the simulation.
- mikestew 7y ago
  “What’s that?” “What?” “Over there, third planet out.” “Oh, those. Yeah, some kind of bug. It usually fixes itself, often in quite the fireworks at the end! Anyway, supposed to be fixed next version.”
Yetanfou 7y ago
Simulation gods would most likely be gods of chaos as that is what simulations are generally used for: to test the behaviour of a system in diverse and often adverse conditions.
jongomez 7y ago
"So what would it mean if there are gods of simulation?" Well, I for one would be curious to find out more about these gods.
- justinclift 7y ago
  Also, sandbox escapes. :)
  - 7y ago

mensetmanusman 7y ago

It would not be proving the existence of gods, because it would lead to the question of why is there a reality wherein a being could create a simulation (which requires ordered laws of physics etc.).

djmips 7y ago

Why Gods? Aren't Gods somehow directly involved and often omniscient? Our universe could be a side effect of a machine learning algorithm and quite incomprehensible to it's own creator who only care about the output. This is more akin to the computer in Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy.