Mixed Results on Living in a Simulation

What’s the takeaway here? That a quarter of our readers think we’re nuts for even asking this question? Or that almost half of our readers seriously think we probably are living in a simulation?

I noticed poll choices have been declining more and more in quality? How long does it take to formulate a poll that is more nuanced and more comprehensive?

Further research is necessary,
writes the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/simpoll20110603

So I’m posting a question
https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=question&id=1809793921383&qa_ref=qd

Following IEET invitation for further research
I post a facebook question:
Suppose you know for sure that “We are living in a Simulation”. Then….
https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=question&id=1809807161714&qa_ref=qd

You might notice, that your poll was missing a neutral option. Like “It is possible but not especially likely”.
If this was an option I doubt that likely, would have gotten so many votes.

The takeaway is that the choices for an answer could have been better (as apparently others have commented already).

I btw almost never answer IEET polls, for this exact reason that it’s hard to find an option that I’d be comfortable endorsing. This was the case with this poll too. I guess the “I suppose it’s possible” answer is closest to what I think, but I don’t have a “hard time accepting it” at all (instead, after all these years of being aware of the topic, the real *possibility* of being in a simulation seems rather mundane and normal to me), so I again decided not to partake in this poll.

I’m unclear as to how we would know and what it would mean, so I’m not terribly interested. You might as well worry about the Abrahamic God; any advanced civilization willing to cause so much suffering would likely rank similarly in terms of morality. Life stands difficult enough without imagining an intelligence behind all this madness.

I answered “I don’t know, don’t care”.  Only because whether the universe is based on computational bits or elemental quarks seems equally weird to me.  I wonder what I would do if I could re-create the universe in a simulation.  There’s this idea of simulation ‘players’ who seem to have suspiciously fortunate or adventurous lives.  But think about it.  How could an ethical being participate (by allowing it) in the recreation/simulation of the torture, sickness, rape, not to mention general existential suffering of countless sentient simulants?  These ‘players’ are the lowest lifeforms possible.  No serial killer holds in his hand as much suffering.  But might it be tempting?  In a simutation I could be anything I wanted.  And I might manage to chalk up the suffering of my fellows to ‘collateral damage’.  And after all, They are only a simulation right?

Zizek’s “third pill” idea claims that a human perception of reality requires a virtual reality, that in fact, some real things exist ONLY because they are virtual.      —————      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaHTY1SEraE       —————      So it seems like we are living in a virtual reality for certain.  It may be a virtual reality inside of a big computer or inside some other more “natural” substrate like space-time.  But in either case, if our brains perceive reality through the virtual, rather than creating virtual-reality on top of the real, then the brain is a kind of mini-matrix from within which real and virtual can’t ever be separated.  I know the real question might be, “is there an architect to the universe?”.  In this theory, there is an architect, us.

I sympathize a lot with what Andrew posted.

I’ve noticed that when people argue about simulation, the most often argued factor is whether or not there is a ‘simulator’ (i.e. God).

I try to point out, that there seems to be a ‘minimal’ description of simulated reality aside from whether or not there is an ontological ‘simulator’.

Fractal cosmology, the holographic principle, and the process by which the brain ‘represents’ reality are all highly suggestive that, even without an a priori “simulator”, that reality itself is essentially “virtual” anyway, and I take this as a ‘minimal description of simulated reality’. We can then build our way up and out from that starting point.

I’m just thinking that our ‘reality’ is brought into being not by the universe alone but by the virtual fiction we build in our minds, and that fiction might take place the same, whether it occurred in a simulation or in a natural-reality.  Its still really interesting whether the universe is a simulation.  Kind of like its interesting whether there is a God and a heaven.  But if virtual reality is the norm inside our brains, then it seems like studying the virtual-reality engine that is our consciousness is necessary before tackling the nature of ‘objective reality’.  Like a goldfish should first figure out that it is inside a bowl before trying to make sense of the room.

A better question might be whether the reader has formed an opinion on this issue without having ever read Nick Bostrom’s essay.

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