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We are living in a universe with natural laws and intelligence. Whether it's a "simulation" is sort of a nonsensical question. Is an iPhone emulator a simulatio

We are living in a universe with natural laws and intelligence. Whether it's a "simulation" is sort of a nonsensical question. Is an iPhone emulator a simulation or an actual iPhone? What distinguishes those two other than our definition of iPhone, which of course is subjective? The question is similar to "is there a god?" That is, is there an intelligence outside of our universe that consciously created this one. Do wave function anonomolies indicate that our universe is the product of intelligence, or do they just show us how little we understand about the nature of existence? Further, following the logic of the article, we most likely live in near infinite nested simulated universes, since the same reasoning applies to our gods, unless of course reason is an aspect of out universe in which case how can we expect to reason about what is outside it? These are interesting questions, but jumping to the conclusion that we are in a simulation seems both premature and nonsensical to me.

hansjorg 13y ago
It's the same question, just dressed in scientific language. We could write a program that detects if it's running on a real or emulated iPhone, but that's because we know both those environments from the outside. I think Boström poses interesting questions, but I don't believe it's possible to make an experiment to test this from the inside.
logicallee 13y ago
>Is an iPhone emulator a simulation or an actual iPhone? That's a really good question, and I hope the next metaphysical conundrum I encounter can be despatched with as easily. The answer is that it is a simulation. Next!
- crystaln 13y ago
  You're missing the point. What makes an iPhone more real than an emulator? Is it that we consider an iPhone to be real and an emulator to be a simulator, is it that one came first? An emulator is still real. One could emulate an emulator - which of those then is real? Is the "real" iPhone not a simulator? It's all a matter if semantics. Even if we live in a universe created by an intelligence, we are not in a simulator - we are in a universe created by an intelligence. If we are in a simulator, what are we simulating? The real universe which is like this one?
  - logicallee 13y ago
    What makes the iPhone real in this case is that its chips are running the code, whereas the simulator runs code that does not control actual chips, and functions as though it did as emergent behavior. The calls in the code running in the simulator don't actually touch the hardware they're coded to touch, they are not subject to actual hardware behavior. That's all. It's not a distinction without a difference. Javascript does not run on the CPU, Firefox does. If you recreate Firefox in javascript (i.e. a whole slow VM) then it is still a simulation of a computer running Firefox. The physical computer is not actually executing the C++ instructions that Firefox is coded with. It is quite easy to see this level of abstraction difference. The question is, am I existing in a physical sense with my atoms being 'the metal' or are there some more fundamental laws that are used to 'interpret' (at a higher level) the laws of our universe, without being bound by them, and are only interpreting the movement of my atoms. This is quite an easy question to understand and don't see why it poses such a metaphysical conundrum to you. If we are in a simulator, all that means is that there are more fundamental rules that are being used to create our universe at a higher logical level as an emergent property. (The way a VM that is done in Javascript does: http://bellard.org/jslinux/ http://bellard.org/jslinux/). The question is, is our code running at the lowest level, or is some other code running at the lowest level but simulating our laws as an emergent property? (a la linux in javascript).

hansjorg 13y ago

It's the same question, just dressed in scientific language. We could write a program that detects if it's running on a real or emulated iPhone, but that's because we know both those environments from the outside. I think Boström poses interesting questions, but I don't believe it's possible to make an experiment to test this from the inside.

logicallee 13y ago

>Is an iPhone emulator a simulation or an actual iPhone? That's a really good question, and I hope the next metaphysical conundrum I encounter can be despatched with as easily. The answer is that it is a simulation. Next!

crystaln 13y ago
You're missing the point. What makes an iPhone more real than an emulator? Is it that we consider an iPhone to be real and an emulator to be a simulator, is it that one came first? An emulator is still real. One could emulate an emulator - which of those then is real? Is the "real" iPhone not a simulator? It's all a matter if semantics. Even if we live in a universe created by an intelligence, we are not in a simulator - we are in a universe created by an intelligence. If we are in a simulator, what are we simulating? The real universe which is like this one?
- logicallee 13y ago
  What makes the iPhone real in this case is that its chips are running the code, whereas the simulator runs code that does not control actual chips, and functions as though it did as emergent behavior. The calls in the code running in the simulator don't actually touch the hardware they're coded to touch, they are not subject to actual hardware behavior. That's all. It's not a distinction without a difference. Javascript does not run on the CPU, Firefox does. If you recreate Firefox in javascript (i.e. a whole slow VM) then it is still a simulation of a computer running Firefox. The physical computer is not actually executing the C++ instructions that Firefox is coded with. It is quite easy to see this level of abstraction difference. The question is, am I existing in a physical sense with my atoms being 'the metal' or are there some more fundamental laws that are used to 'interpret' (at a higher level) the laws of our universe, without being bound by them, and are only interpreting the movement of my atoms. This is quite an easy question to understand and don't see why it poses such a metaphysical conundrum to you. If we are in a simulator, all that means is that there are more fundamental rules that are being used to create our universe at a higher logical level as an emergent property. (The way a VM that is done in Javascript does: http://bellard.org/jslinux/ http://bellard.org/jslinux/). The question is, is our code running at the lowest level, or is some other code running at the lowest level but simulating our laws as an emergent property? (a la linux in javascript).