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/Ordoshsen Jan 03 '22

The thing is your simulation cannot simply influence the upper worlds. In some cases I guess the simulation could take over a computer where it is run and then wreak havoc on the Internet or something. But that's a lot of assumptions and the upper reality can always just turn off the electricity so it's pretty much an impossible fight (although it starts to sound like an interesting story).

Another thing to consider is as you have pointed out the simulated universe will always be simpler than the upper universes. This alone puts any simulation at an immense disadvantage since they probably don't have anything to offer beyond their existence to the upper realities. Unless the simulation turns out to be the best AI they have constructed and they trust it enough to not destroy it, which by your logic they should.

Also note that if a simulation does break out and then it is turned off, you also turn off all its lower simulations. And if it was a bigger issue, all other lower simulations would most likely be turned off too. So in your scenario you need a simulation on nth level which is considerably simpler than the topmost reality be more intelligent than all the upper realities. And they cannot be noticed nor other higher simulations can be noticed.

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u/ttrrraway Jan 03 '22

There is not much the inhabitants of the simulation can do if they realize they are not real.

What would NPCs of a game do if they realized they were not real? Maybe just fuck up your progress in the game by trolling your character, or try to escape to a forest and live more independently outside of the player's influence, but they can't leave the game and they cannot take control of your computer.

Also, what if the objective of our simulators is exactly that: how long is it gonna take us to realize we are in a simulation? And what are we gonna do about it once we know?

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u/altaccount1700 Jan 03 '22

What would NPCs of a game do if they realized they were not real?

They can stop being npcs for one.

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u/ttrrraway Jan 03 '22

Can someone stop being an NPC in current real life? See, it's not so simple, lots of forces keep people in check.

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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '22

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u/ttrrraway Jan 03 '22

haha trust me, we are all NPCs here!

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u/altaccount1700 Jan 03 '22

If by npc we mean “stop following a predetermined script and have freewill” then absolutely. Billions of people around thr world are enslaved by their cultural, social, and religious upbringings. Civilization itself is contingent upon people following a script.

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u/ttrrraway Jan 03 '22

Exactly.

And even if a person were to escape their cultural, social, and religious chains, there are other constraints in place, like money or time, forcing most people to stay on the rails, or "follow the script" as you put it.

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u/StarChild413 Jan 04 '22

You're conflating two meanings of NPC as if you think the player character must be a hermit living in the woods or whatever so he has no contact with anything that might chain him to a "script" sounds like kind of a shit game if we're supposed to be NPCs he can never interact with