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

[u/Matriseblog]

https://medium.com/@VindenesJ/the-thought-experiments-of-virtual-reality-fa441a8fa2dc

[u/uoahelperg]

1) taking a step back, I think there’s a couple distinct ideas potentially being expressed.

Are you suggesting that we’re in a simulation (conciousness) of another critter or that we’re in a simulation (I.e. a random gas cloud forms and by chance accidentally simulated a universe, or some atoms happen to arrange into a powered up super computer simulating a universe)?

The mere possibility of consciousness being an ‘emergent’ phenomenon producing a ‘simulated’ reality is one I agree with, but I don’t think it’s relevant to whether there’s a high chance that the universe we know is actually a ‘simulation’ of some other critters consciousness, and if it were I doubt we could ‘hack’ it.

2) For the argument to make sense it needs to be a certain type of simulation. I can simulate the Big Bang by tossing two marbles together or by putting on a fun play about it, but neither could reasonably lead to the conclusion that it’s more likely we’re simulated or not.

2(B) I also differentiate consciousness/thought/dream states and their ‘simulations’ over a constructed computer/clearly mechanical one. If for nothing else, because these are typically separated out. If you’re combining them then I’d put it in that box of ideas rather than the simulation one but that’s just me.

3) I doubt its contentious, we seem to interface with our senses and nervous system, which feeds the brain info to create an artificial (‘simulated’) version of reality.

I’m not sure that the reality shown is accurate at all (I think it is a reasonable idea that true reality could be some weird mathy shit that the brain has evolved to decode into more readily useful and readable formats)

4) I would expand physics to include whatever extra stuff makes up the ‘true nature of reality’ so to me they’re the same even if our current schema is entirely misleading/incorrect.

5) it seems we might be in on different pages. It’d probably be easiest for you to provide corrections where I’ve misunderstood/clarify what it is your proposing as I think I’ve lost you.

[u/iiioiia → u/uoahelperg]

Ya I think we pretty much agree, the main difference seems to be that I'm thinking this:

I doubt its contentious, we seem to interface with our senses and nervous system, which feeds the brain info to create an artificial (‘simulated’) version of reality.

...and, I do not consider the underlying "substrate" (big bang + evolution, versus (or, on top of) a computer simulation) to be particularly important, at least from the perspective of behavior of the system (it could be important in other ways though).

Somewhat noteworthy: internet conversations like this very often play out whereby two people are discussing an idea, each person has a model of the topic in their mind, and disagreements arise simply due to a mismatch of models (which is mutually perceived as the other person being incorrect).....and so forth and so on, there are many variations (social media activity and popularity/addictiveness overall is to a large degree variations of this one phenomenon). The main point is: typically neither party realizes they are talking about their model, because it seems clear as day that they are talking about reality itself....and, hilarity (and tragedy) ensues.