GooberTheHat wrote:

nick_md wrote:

I don't think we're in a simulation either, but theoretically it will happen at some point. I enjoy the mindfuck of it. If it will happen at some point, we could be it.

The balance of probability would suggest we are.

Well yeah for sure, I just don't like to go totally loony! It wouldn't make a difference if we were, after all. But yeah, probability says we are.

There was even a 'bugfix code' discovered by someone, hold on let me find the vid...

nick_md wrote:

I'm always confused when people talk about planets that may have environment for life or whatever, like who are we to say there isn't a 5D lifeform that breathes spectrums that we don't know about with 7 ears and multiple genders. I get that we can only base our research on our knowledge and that makes sense, but surely we need to account for the unknown unknowns? Whenever I hear 'not suitable for life' or similar I just think yeah m8, not suitable for life as we know it.

But we can't look for unknown unknowns. We have limited resources dedicated to detecting life, and they need to be prioritised, so it makes sense to focus them on planets that have similar characteristics to the only place we know of where life exists.

1min 36secs into this - I don't fully get the concept tbh but I love the thought of this stuff. Like I said, if we are living in a simulation, it makes no difference, I'll still live my life how I'm living it, but... damn, what a mindfuck.

I linked this vid before btw, there's another one on AI by the same guy that I'll link also (recommend his channel btw, he's a sceptic who enjoys diving into unexplainable stuff, I find his approach very watchable and not loony).



...the AI one (includes the story about the two AI communicating with each other, plus other nightmarish glimpses into the future)




I definitely remember the cornucopia in the FotL logo, although maybe that's just because it's been mentioned...

I didn't even know what a cornucopia was so I definitely didn't think there was one in the FotL logo.

I'm still not sure what one is and what it would have to do with fruit.

Kow wrote:

I'm still not sure what one is and what it would have to do with fruit.

Nelson Mandela used it to store fruit.

nick_md wrote:

This website freaks me out:

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/


Artificially generated faces. It's what trolls use on Twitter etc for sockpuppets.

https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1350237648540069888?s=19

nick_md wrote:

What's GAN in this context?

(Also, yeah, nightmarish glimpse into the future, everything points to simulation at some point imo)

Again for a third time, just in case! I'm not (hopefully) going full loon, I just find the topic of AI and simulation fascinating and an engaging topic.

There is something oddly comforting in it for me.
If its all a sim then some unknown entity is driving, fuck all I can do about it.

I guess its a similar thing to a religious zen like state.

Is creationism a type of sim theory?
Or vice versa maybe?

LivDiv wrote:

Is creationism a type of sim theory?
Or vice versa maybe?

Definitely shares themes yeah.


I'm also somewhat soothed/ambivalent about it, because if it is a sim, we can't do owt about it. Like the vid says, best we can do is try to be interesting enough to continue the experiment/sim, so whoever is monitoring doesn't flick the off switch.

GurtTractor wrote:

Most of the well thought out commentary about whether we are 'living in a simulation' seems to suggest that it's not a particularly useful question to ask, like whether we have free will or asking if there's a god. It's a complicated thing to unpick, but the simulation hypothesis seems based on the weak anthropic principle - "conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist", we don't get to say anything about what lies outside of our universe so it seems flawed to assume that what is outside would bear any resemblance to what we observe inside.

I'll watch that vid now, but before I do let me drop a steaming reckon: for me it just makes sense that eventually, when we can produce virtual reality and AI indistinguishable from reality (which I think is only a matter of time, however long that may be), we will run millions/more simulations of our past/present/future to gather data to better ourselves. If you get on board with that, then you can't 100% discount that we aren't in one now.

I skimmed the article (will try to read fully later, sorry), but how does it explain that we as humans at the moment can make fairly realistic virtual worlds, and that it's not unreasonable to think in 100+ years time we could have them indistinguishable from reality? You can't disprove it I think, which is a shitty thing to say I know, but, you can't, can you? If I were a developer and I could program a lifetime experience into the NPCs of GTAXXXXVI then I would.

Ah I see, yeah fair enough. This is the weird thread tho, interesting discussion/thought experiments are par for the course!

Re the sim theory. Even if we aren't, we are in a kind of sim as we don't perceive everything. We see/hear/feel a very narrow band on all the spectra - and even at that our brain does all sorts of filtering and pattern matching.

One could argue that those on the autism spectrum actually see more of reality than we do.

If we are in one, what would be more worrying is why we are in a sim in the first place.

Sim theory is also aligned with Eastern philosophies that posit we are all in fact God who has split himself into every one of us at the point of our creation - each of us playing a role with ignorance of our true self - for the entertainment of God. Being an omnipotent God would be get a bit tedious after all.

If one were to believe in a God I would find that belief system to be more acceptable than the Western view of created life. Cases of kids with bone cancer etc... It's a case of God doing it to himself in order to experience it.