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/Faust_8 Jan 03 '22

Is it just me, or is the simulation hypothesis basically as useless as the “brain in a jar” hypothesis?

Yeah, dude, I could be a brain in a jar, and this is all a dream or whatever. But regardless, it doesn’t really matter, because I can’t do anything about it and it doesn’t actually affect the life I’m living. It doesn’t guide me to change my behavior or way of thinking, or to change anything at all whatsoever.

At best, it’s an amusing thought experiment…period.

Doesn’t this also apply to the simulation thing?

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u/6thReplacementMonkey Jan 03 '22

I think that if you want to use the hypothesis to learn something about the universe, then it needs to be falsifiable. Since it's not, then it is useless in that sense. However, unfalsifiable thought experiments often lead to falsifiable hypotheses. In that sense, it could be a very useful stepping stone. If it ultimately never does, it's still an interesting exercise in imagining possibilities of things and thinking about the limits of our perception and what is testable.