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Simulation hypothesis is the new solipsism. And every time that topic came up in my philosophy readings I was bored to tears. In line with his point 1.
by ianai 3y ago
Simulation hypothesis is the new solipsism. And every time that topic came up in my philosophy readings I was bored to tears. In line with his point 1.
- bumby 3y agoBy extension, does that imply you also don’t care about subjective experience if they can’t be proven empirically? For those downvoting: The article says that the author does not care about any question that cannot be dis/proven empirically. The hard question of consciousness seems to fall in this category, so I'm asking the OP to elaborate if they fully agree with the article or have a different nuanced perspective.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
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- alienicecream 3y agoIt's so cool to be bored.
- vanderZwan 3y agoI find it more in line with "proofs" of the existence of God than solipsism, but otherwise am equally bored by it. Especially the argument that simulations are "more efficient" than reality itself and that therefore we are more likely to be in a simulation are uhm... in dire need of some basic understanding of thermodynamics. And statistics.
- hiddencost 3y agoAt some point I realized that I was a post-theist. Being unable to define the word "god", I was unable to respond to questions of existence.
- KMag 3y agoI'm not a simulationist, but both quantum and relativistic phenomena do look a lot like simulation optimizations to patch over increased granularity of a simulation and improve parallelism in a simulation. For instance, my understanding is that nuclear reactor simulations mesh the volume into volumes much much larger than atoms (cm-scale, in most cases, I guess) and then use bulk statistics for each element of the mesh. A finer mesh is much more expensive to compute, and gives diminishing returns in terms of accuracy. My fist job was discrete event network simulation. Some competitors used per-link bulk statistics instead of per-packet discrete events to run simulations much faster, but with lower accuracy. We had a reduced-accuracy hybrid simulation mode to use per-link bulk statistics to affect the per-packet event simulations for an epoch, and then use those results to update the link bulk statistics for the next epoch. I'm sure these sorts of optimizations are common across all kinds of simulation domains. Limiting information travel to the speed of light, and using true randomness instead of hidden state determinism would improve simulation parallelization. Someone might reasonably believe the "real" universe isn't quantitized and/or it's quanta are smaller than our universe's, and our observations of quantum phenomena are artifacts of the use of bulk statistics in simulating the mesh of our universe.
- jerf 3y agoThe simulation hypothesis on its own may be solipsism but it's philosophically useful as a limiting condition of someone's theory of the universe, especially when they're emphatic that it's not a simulation. Have you proved the universe is not a simulation? If so, where is your proof? What is the nature of your proof? How can you have proved this thing? It is a useful tool for showing someone has overstepped all evidence and logic. Unless someone really does manage to prove it, in which case hand them all the Nobel prizes and Fields medals for the year because they'll have earned them.
- notahacker 3y agoIt's no more useful a limiting condition of someone's theory of the universe than a divine being or facetious spaghetti monster though. Positing something else which oversteps all evidence and logic and demanding someone disprove it isn't a particularly good way of emphasising the deficits in their own evidence base or inferences
- jerf 3y agoI think you may misunderstand my point. I'm saying when "they" claim to have disproved the simulation hypothesis, it is useful to show that they have overstepped their bounds. You can't disprove the simulation hypothesis. You can be as pissed about that as you like, but it's true. That doesn't mean all hope is lost. You can still work in the space where you just sort of take it as an ambient background fact that you can't do much about, then work with what you have. Technically that's what we do all the time anyhow. But when someone rigidly excludes the hypothesis, you know they've gone too far.
- chasd00 3y agoI've never heard of solipsism and so read a paragraph on wikipedia. I've wondered myself about sorta the same concept. Everything you could possibly know and understand can only come from your senses. I guess simulation theory is like the probability of a MITM attack on your senses... /didn't read the article
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoNo it isn't. Only if you think simulation theory only applies to YOU. If you think you are the only one in the simulation, sure, it might be solipsism. But that is not generally what simulation theory is speculating about. Same with people miss-interpreting various ideas as Nihilism. Sure, if you take it from a vary narrow point of your own view, it might be. In both cases, the people are generally not looking at the subject correctly.
- xpl 3y ago> if you think simulation theory only applies to YOU Is there any reason to think otherwise (if one believes in simulation in the first place)? Why simulate the whole universe, when it is sufficient to simulate just one's internal state? Doesn't even require to simulate the high-definition sensory perception, only the mind's latent space — which surely is way more compact. Occam's razor. Ah, and it is totally not required to simulate your internal state at every moment at all times. It could be just one single moment that captures the feeling of continuity, and then you disappear to the void, but you never realize. See "Boltzmann brains" (again, it is not required to simulate the actual wetware on atomic level, just the compact internal state of the mind).
- ericmcer 3y agoI don’t really relate solipsism to simulation theory. Solipsism is boring and doesn’t have much depth beyond being a “whoa” moment when first encountered. Simulation theory raises actual questions about meaning and the afterlife, offers some hypothesis to debate, etc.
- hiddencost 3y agoNo it doesn't.
- ericmcer 3y agoYou doing ok? This entire thread is spawned from an article that is rebutting simulation theory, it clearly is a hypothesis that creates interest.