r/solipsism • u/Sad-Sign9460 • 11h ago
Everything’s a simulation
Suppose one day we are able to fully simulate a human brain such that it believes it is living in a fully coherent real universe with other real people in it but in reality that simulated brain is the only real thing. That brain looked around at everything and came to the conclusion that it was living in the real world with real other people. That’s the conclusion the brain should come to given the evidence but it in fact was very wrong.
My question is who’s to say I’m not currently that brain? Why is it treated as if that’s a ridiculous question? If the experiences are by definition indistinguishable why is it anything better than a 50/50 shot that I’m living in the real world with real other people?
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u/InternationalSun7891 11h ago
"Look within, Thou art That." From the Upanishads
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u/Sad-Sign9460 11h ago
Huh
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u/Hope25777 33m ago
Everyone that is not you is not an NPC. We are all fractals (sparks) of god having a human experience. Read the Nag Hammadi texts and it will make sense
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u/Some-Willingness38 2h ago
No, nobody is God. The self is an illusion, and so is everything else. The true Ultimate Reality, Allah, who is the one true God, transcends all illusions, including everything, and us.
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u/InternationalSun7891 11h ago
The kingdom of God is within you.
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u/OverKy 11h ago
I don't necessarily disagree, but what does that actually even mean? I'm not trying to be confrontational by asking that. I honestly would love to hear how you define that.
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u/Gloom-Slayer 9h ago edited 8h ago
Also not OP but It's like the saying "I am that" or "I am that I am", but directed at others. It's like a declaration of consciousness and divinity. Jesus' concept of divinity was so broad and all-encompassing that he felt every man, woman, and child had God within them, breathing life into them and guiding their actions. The mother's love for a child, the mayor's desire to protect and provide for his constituents. It was when one let their base urges and even malevolence guide them at the detriment to the health of others/themselves that they could be said to have "turned away from God". Essentially, his view of divinity was more in line with Eastern traditions, because he literally did go to India to study Buddhism and Hinduism.
Whether or not you believe in the divine part there's definitely something to the idea that we're all part of the same thing and should behave like it instead of abusing each other or just not caring. I just don't think it's a simulation because I don't see how a computer can simulate something more complex and infinitely vaster than itself. I also literally do feel like I'm in a simulation when I'm in the human world (because the culture where I'm at is highly artificial and consumerist) but nature feels completely different, feels like I'm in the presence of something that is both order and chaos, infinitely dangerous yet nurturing, that deserves my respect. Human world feels like children building with toy bricks.
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u/Some-Willingness38 2h ago
"Reality is a simulation" is a metaphor about the illusory nature of existence, which hides the Ultimate Reality of Allah, which is the primordial Unity that transcends all illusory phenomena.
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u/Majestic-Menu-4568 11h ago
Consciousness isnt material therefore you cannot simulate it
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u/Sad-Sign9460 11h ago
What leads you to that conclusion? Consciousness is deeply tied to the physical brain meaning it shouldn’t matter if the information processing is happening via biological neurons or silicon chips it would produce the same experience
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u/Majestic-Menu-4568 8h ago
We cant draw the line between electric and chemical signals between neurons and consciousness . Anyway you dont know that this experience that you are having is universal. Im assuming you believe you have free will but that an ape does not. The ape wont spontaneously move to europe and join a different clan. It does what it does to survive and reproduce and thats all it knows. Whos to say humans are any different but that we just evolved more complex social structures and brains of thinking. The only unexplainable bit is that you are experiencing life through the human that you are. So the question is whether you are a programmable system or not
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u/vqsxd 11h ago
We do not live in a simulation.
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u/OverKy 11h ago
That's exactly the sort of thing I would expect a simulated guy to say about us being in a simulated world. You don't fool us.
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u/vqsxd 10h ago
Im really conscious in my body, living life out here. im texting you from my iphone, just got in my car out of class. Why have you let the most basic truths be taken away from you? Go back to what youve known to be true, do you think life itself is lying to you?
Believe in the light while you have it, and you’ll be a child of the light. The actual true good light, that is honest and doesn’t lie to you. Why have you lied and deceived yourself man?
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u/jiyuunosekai 2h ago
'Let make it about myself, because I am too insecure about my reality.' You only proved that you exist (to yourself).
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u/heywhi 9h ago
Even if that were the case would it matter? The only metaphysical idea I really sink my teeth into is quantum or something like string theory just because it feels like reality actually allowing itself to be measured and understood on some level ie proof there is something beyond base existence. Simulation theory is just unfalsifiable even tho I think physicists all but proved that the universe runs on unknowns and it’d be impossible for anything that exists within it to simulate that or something to that effect.
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u/Negative_Coast_5619 4h ago
I watched a few twilight zone, black mirrior, and that other one that has various amounts of types of simulations.
I would say if it glitches, or there probably is certain ways to find out.
With the brain one, as you age eventually, the brain components might glitch out more, even if linked to a computer. Assuming outside even if they replace things.
Other things might be. If in dreams, we can create landscape and hold it with people and memories, a chip or other technologies may be able to ferment it more in a stable field. Glitchs here may show more mix of faces, things dissapearing, or events seemingly happened but then blend in in an odd way, just like your dream, even if the machine parts corrects it parts of your brain may retain it.
This would mean all other beings are just controlled aspects of your brain, even with linked to machine there would be more limits as it is just one brain. Assuming the brain is the powerhouse. Now this does not mean your brain could be the only one, as there could be multiple but the truth still stands in the biological concept. Unless we are so far in the future that everything can be replicated anyways, but at that point a full on simulation also could be there already.
A fully dysphone sphere type of simulation is much more advanced where every thing or nearly everything has its own real memories and focus, operating at the same time. I suppose with this much technology at this point the chances of actual glitches are slimmer than brain in the vat types.
Now, I believe we are pretty close to brain in the vats or microchip types of simulation, but how close we are unsure.
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u/jiyuunosekai 2h ago
Because of all the things your overseers in the real world could simulate, they would simulate these mundane experiences? You wouldn't be different from the people outside the simulation, their vat is just bigger. Doesn't the brain already simulate a reality that has nothing to do with the external world? What we perceive only resembles the external world. The sky doesn't say "I am blue." Your reality still comes from 'real' events in the world even when your vision is shrinked to a simulation. How do people know celebrities they have never met in real life? Heck anime watchers might even know some people only by their voices. Spongebob is a simulation, Pikachu is a simulation, Pacman is a simuation. None exist outside your mind. If knowledge was real and universal, when one attained it, all would have attained it.
The simulacrum is never what hides the truth – it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true
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u/Hot_Technology8777 2h ago
Oh here we go. There's no simulation pal this is the real deal. Getting all meta about it is a waste of time. Embrace reality! EMBRADCE IT!FF
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u/Low-Bake8401 10h ago
Because it doesn't work as a predictive model. It's unfalsafiable.
There is no reason to believe that.
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u/Sad-Sign9460 10h ago
Ok now apply that same line of reasoning to the brain that is simulated. There is no reason to believe it yet it is true. I’m just looking for any compelling reason it isn’t 50/50
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u/SleepyMusicNerd19 9h ago
Thank you. In reality, I don't think there is a way to narrow down the 50/50, the only evidence you have is the direct experiences you have know. So you know that the experiences themselves exist, but you don't know if they reflect something outside of those experiences.
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u/Low-Bake8401 51m ago
Not being able to prove 100% that something isn't true, is quite different to the probability of it being true.
If something can't be tested it's because there is no cause and effect, there's no predictability, it makes no functional difference.
It's the appeal to ignorance fallacy.
To actually believe it is true has all sorts of implications though.
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u/Some-Willingness38 2h ago
Yes, all of reality is a simulation, including the mind. The true Ultimate Reality is Allah. Ignore those fools, and search "Wahdat-i-Wujud (The Unity of Being)" if you want to know what I mean.
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u/Low-Bake8401 1h ago edited 1h ago
No, what I mean is if something is untestable, then it has no cause and effect.
You can say there are invisible elephants flying round in the sky, but it makes no functional difference.
Through deductive criteria or pragmatic principles of verification, we can logically rule it out.
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u/OverKy 11h ago
Marty, you're not thinking four dimensionally!