Quote: (06-01-2018 05:35 PM)dtpilgrim Wrote:
My problem with the universe as a simulation theory is mostly with the logic behind it. Sure, I believe it's 100% possible we might end up making a VR Universe Life Sim. But I have never gotten the sense that that was every a real human priority in this physical reality; to make a role playing game. Sure, it's a nice hobby, but not the main thing we have always ever wanted to create. And that same logic should apply to those "simulation" creators who are one fractal level above us. Then everything we have experienced here so far is just a silly hobby game. Sure, but why would our sim-runners want to do this as their highest aspiration. Go up as many fractal levels you want and the same question remains.
Secondly, it just seems very unlikely that this creation would just be a big fractal spiral of sims within sims within sims within a sim. Logic would dictate that there is a beginning, somewhere, along this chain of simulations. The un-simmed simulator so to speak. Funnily enough, the uncaused creator of creation, i.e. "prime mover", is the exact theological definition that Catholics (monotheists) have of God. In a sense, if the simulation within a simulation theory is true, it would seem to affirm Thomas of Aquinas' definition of God.
What's interesting to consider is that if we ARE in a simulation, then we have no clue as to the "real" nature of the universe - it's size, scope, timelines, spatial dimensions, origin etc. The "real" universe could be vastly different than our perceived one. As in utterly unrecognizable.
Perhaps this universe, its history, and its physical laws, are the whole point of the sim. To see how things would turn out with a universe tuned to our settings. We do this sort of thing all the time with monte carlo simulations, weather and climate sims etc. We may be one of trillions running simultaneously to gain better insight into some esoteric aspect of reality way beyond our ability to even comprehend. What seems like billions of years to us is only an illusion. Who know how fast the sim is really running? It's freaky to consider.
And, for all practical purposes, whatever is running the sim is quite literally God - Omnipotent. What if the whole notion of an all powerful monotheistic deity was actually much closer to the truth than we ever thought? Religions explain away these dieties as being supernatural, and in a way, they are - they exist outside the laws of our universe (ie simulation), and they created this universe out of whole cloth. What is the functional difference between an entity that exists independently of our universe and its laws vs an authentic religious God?
Right now there's some Godlike entity starting ten thousand new string phenomenology simulations, but this time with slight tweaks to the Kähler manifold Dolbeault operators. Should take about an hour in actual times, but to those poor bastards in the sims, it will seem to last 100 billion years, and life will be tough...