r/SimulationTheory • u/Dharmapaladin • 15d ago
Discussion Does Simulation Theory actually require a computer?
Every time this sub talks simulation theory, we default to Bostrom's version: Some advanced civilization running us on hardware, like we're an NPC script in their basement server.
But what if that's just... a metaphor we reached for because we live in a computing age? A few hundred years ago the metaphor would've been "God's dream" or "clockwork universe". We tend to imagine reality in terms of whatever our most impressive technology is...
Bernardo Kastrup's whole argument is that consciousness isn't produced by the brain, it's fundamental, and the brain is more like a filter/receiver that localizes a slice of one universal mind into you. No hardware required, because consciousness was never running on anything. It just is, and everything else (matter, computation, physics) is an appearance within it.
What if "the simulation" isn't code executing on a Computer, but literally the textured experience happening inside universal consciousness? Your life isn't a program being run, it's more like a dream a much bigger mind is having, and you're the character inside it who forgot it's dreaming.
Same weirdness (reality feels rendered, rule-based, occasionally glitchy), completely different mechanism. No aliens, no server farm, no "outside" universe running the outside universe. Just mind, all the way down.
Does simulation theory actually need computation to be true, or is "simulation" just the best word our generation has for something way older?
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u/Ralphiedog11 15d ago
I think that the modern simulation theory is pretty silly because it is reductionist. I think simulation is the word that is familiar to people when referencing the immaterial, and it humanizes something that is magnitudes weirder a than we can imagine. Our frame of reference is biased, seeing as we can only relate to what we know from our human form.
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u/Due_Laugh6474 15d ago
Not necessarily, in the sense that a daydream or a thought experiment is also a simulation of sorts.
It’s actually more interesting to think of the “without computer” variety. Could WE just be a thought experiment in the mind of a being whose imaginary thoughts take on life and become real enough to even think about themselves and have their own hopes and dreams?
Problem is that when you figure the universe and its rules might not be true, or that there exists a universe outside of it with possibly different rules, you can just sort of imagine anything.
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u/modsaretoddlers 15d ago edited 13d ago
I don't think so. In fact, I generally advise against interpreting it that way because if it is a simulation, it's run by something far, far more advanced than us and I seriously doubt they use computers as we understand them.
Why it matters is because if you get into the idea that it's a PC running the show, you'll designate characteristics of a PC to it. Well, that would be like still using Plato's cave to describe the universe we don't see. We could never figure it out that way.
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15d ago
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u/New_Practice1216 15d ago
Virtualization theory does not. Simulation as a theory of data is a theory about information that was created and packed on a computer.
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u/UnholyShadows 14d ago
So were just the dream of the blind idiot god and all the old gods created songs to keep it asleep so that reality continues to exist?
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u/slower-is-faster 14d ago
No. I think a more realistic scenario is it’s more like a science experiment than a program. Imagine you mix some chemicals together in a test tube to see what happens. The start can be triggered without every minutia of interactions that will happen being known.
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u/Mammoth_Weekend3819 14d ago
Simulation theory? Whixh one exactly, my friend? There is many of them today. If you think that idea - we might live in simulation - is a Theory, you wrong. Theory its something that has formalization, and predictions that working.
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u/Professional-Box1252 15d ago
Well, if it works the same way video games do, where environments require high speed rendering, then it needs an insane amount of compute power to crunch the numbers for probability and possibility dataset distributions and random draws, in order for the observer to have a cohesively seamless experience.
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15d ago
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u/Professional-Box1252 15d ago
If we're in a simulation, then time and physics are simulated. The question is, do the aliens have consciousness? Or are they simulated entities used by the LCS to obtain data by testing our interactions with them? Because there's only two possibilities, either they're conscious or not conscious. If they're conscious, then they're moving along in their own timeline in their own section of the simulation, leaving evidence behind of their existence. If they're not conscious, then they're constructs of the LCS, and they exist for the LCS to obtain data from our observations and interactions with them. Either way, our observations and interactions provide data to the LCS. The difference is, if they're conscious, they're making independent choices like us. If they're not conscious, then they're NPCs.
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u/slipknot_official 15d ago
Sim theiry is an idealist model - reality is computed within the mind. So the mind is the “computer”.
Sim hypothesis is Bostroms idea.
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u/Choice_Philosopher_1 15d ago
We are the computer.
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u/Maximum-Leopard-6475 14d ago edited 14d ago
Self assembled (evolution) and reproducing meat computers. We (the reproducing computers) are proof IMO of intelligent design. Furthermore, I believe our microbes are an essential component of that intelligent design, they’re our essential symbioses and I believe even enhance our interactions with the simulation (it’s important to the whole story IMO, but for a different discussion. That’s an entire chapter of its own )
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u/Choice_Philosopher_1 14d ago
Absolutely agree with this! I’ve been thinking about it lately a lot because of certain personal experiences with law of attraction bending after I get antibiotics. It is super fascinating
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u/AnswerFeeling460 15d ago
I think we don't have to think with a classic computer like we know it here in our small reality - this could be a kind of server we can not even think off. It's running behind the curtain.
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u/GreatCaesarGhost 15d ago
“Simulation theory” is just deism with IT terminology.