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I was with you until here: > it's worth bearing in mind that simulation is really hard and computationally expensive This is like ants saying "building mounds

I was with you until here: > it's worth bearing in mind that simulation is really hard and computationally expensive This is like ants saying "building mounds is resource intensive. We need our entire civilization working together to build one. You can try to get around this detail but..." This carries the implicit assumption that if there is indeed a simulation then it is limited to human capability, which would almost certainly be wrong.

KineticLensman 5y ago
> the implicit assumption that if there is indeed a simulation then it is limited to human capability, which would almost certainly be wrong. Yes, totally. But the danger then is that if we say "it is more complicated than we can understand", then the simulation hypothesis essentially becomes a faith-based argument, where 'simulation' essentially means 'god', and then all the bets are off.
- colordrops 5y ago
  Ok, but we shouldn't artificially limit what would be likely if it were the case just because it results in outcomes undesirable to you. It's already faith based at this point anyway. Most religion is basically a simulation hypothesis.
rcxdude 5y ago
When it comes to quantum computations, the difficulty is exponential with a truely ridiculous exponent. You are very plausibly just better off manipulating the matter directly once you get to any reasonable size, and there's extremely likely no way around this.
- colordrops 5y ago
  You are still just arbitrarily limiting what is possible to current human understanding. I find it extremely unlikely that the understanding we have of nature at this arbitrary point billions of years into the universe's development and ~10k into our development just happens to be the exact point where we have a clear understanding of the fundamental nature of reality and what is possible. The other problem is that if this were a simulation, quantum mechanics might not be a fundamental mechanism of reality but rather arbitrary rules executed by the simulation.

KineticLensman 5y ago

> the implicit assumption that if there is indeed a simulation then it is limited to human capability, which would almost certainly be wrong. Yes, totally. But the danger then is that if we say "it is more complicated than we can understand", then the simulation hypothesis essentially becomes a faith-based argument, where 'simulation' essentially means 'god', and then all the bets are off.

colordrops 5y ago
Ok, but we shouldn't artificially limit what would be likely if it were the case just because it results in outcomes undesirable to you. It's already faith based at this point anyway. Most religion is basically a simulation hypothesis.

rcxdude 5y ago

When it comes to quantum computations, the difficulty is exponential with a truely ridiculous exponent. You are very plausibly just better off manipulating the matter directly once you get to any reasonable size, and there's extremely likely no way around this.

colordrops 5y ago
You are still just arbitrarily limiting what is possible to current human understanding. I find it extremely unlikely that the understanding we have of nature at this arbitrary point billions of years into the universe's development and ~10k into our development just happens to be the exact point where we have a clear understanding of the fundamental nature of reality and what is possible. The other problem is that if this were a simulation, quantum mechanics might not be a fundamental mechanism of reality but rather arbitrary rules executed by the simulation.