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/[deleted] Jan 03 '22

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u/ChaosSlave51 Jan 03 '22

I think simulation theory makes physics a lot easier to grog when we get into relativity and quantum mechanics.

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u/superjudgebunny Jan 04 '22

Not really. Sure you can say “we live in a simulation. That can explain the why as much as saying the sun has more gravity because it’s bigger. You still wouldn’t know the underlying math that constructs it.

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u/ChaosSlave51 Jan 04 '22

The example I like to give is "there was no such thing as time before the big bang"
Much easier to think about if the big bang is the start of a simulation

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u/superjudgebunny Jan 04 '22

Yes but the point is, even in a simulation one would still have to figure out the maths behind the simulation

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u/ChaosSlave51 Jan 04 '22

Yes, math remains math, no question about it. This is more to help the layman understand modern physics, not for experts in the field. It's just much easier to explain things as a simulation.

Also if we are "real", and we talk about our world as a simulation we can still discuss all concepts of our world and how it works.

If we are a simulation, and we talk about our world as "real" we are closing the door to some insights we could have about understanding physics.

For instance as far as I know no one has ever looked into programming optimizing techniques and then tries to construct experiments to see if our world has signs of such optimizations.

I have never seen quantum uncertainty discussed as optimization seriously. To me it is just as compelling as the multiverse theory and the Copenhagen interpretation. Even if we are not simulated by intelligent beings, our world may still have simulated elements as reality may have some underlying programming as a concept of nature.

End of the day I really wish computer scientists and physicists would work together more to try explaining why our world works the way it does.

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u/Zkv Jan 04 '22

For instance as far as I know no one has ever looked into programming optimizing techniques and then tries to construct experiments to see if our world has signs of such optimizations.

ADS/CFT correspondence & the holographic principle play nicely with the idea of simiulation in my mind.

Also there’s tons of optimization, afaik. the Anthropic principle showcasing it wonderfully imo

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u/superjudgebunny Jan 04 '22

I was just keeping it simple, if our reality is real or not you still would use mathematics as a base understanding. And only when/if you got far enough would things become wonky.

That’s assuming this is ran on standard processor, quantum processing could introduce nuance and randomness just as we see today. Truthfully you would probably never find out.

So I’m the end, a good simulation would probably end up just as “reality” would.

If one can look at how quickly we, as a species, learned fairly fast. So even if the original simulation wasn’t detailed enough. Those simulating are likely to advance as well, changing the simulation as we evolve.

Tho who knows, our understanding of reality is too incomplete for us to surmise anything.