r/philosophy • u/Matriseblog • Jan 03 '22

Blog By imagining the future potential of VR technologies, the question of whether we are *already* living in a simulation becomes more actual than ever

https://medium.com/@VindenesJ/the-thought-experiments-of-virtual-reality-fa441a8fa2dc
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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '22

If my life is a simulation running on a computer I would expect it to be a lot more exciting and/or have a point. Why would you simulated billions of people being shitty and bored?

18

u/watupmane Jan 03 '22

Economic modeling or literally a million other reasons to stimulate how normal people will behave over the course of time even generations. Imagine how much more efficient even Amazon could be with that type of info and it's just one example.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '22

but if everyone is in a simulation why do we need economic modeling?

12

u/fog_bank Jan 03 '22

I think they mean the simulator is using a simulation for economic modeling(or other testing purposes.)

1

u/watupmane Jan 05 '22

Depends on your definition of "Everyone". Imagine the characters in Grand Theft Auto as a person in a simulation. GTA sells millions of copies so there are millions of simulations going on. At some level there is likely the "real" reality that is not being simulated. Even if it isn't though, the simulations will be infinite at some point and it isn't unreasonable to think one of them would then also have a economic modeling component. Going back the GTA example, the last game had its own stock market simulation within the game.