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Avi Bar-Zeev (RealityPrime) Are we Living in a Simulation?
- 1. -or- Is this just Fantasy Caught in a Landslide No Escape from Reality? @avibarzeev Is This the Real Life?
- 2. Do Other Animals Question their Reality?
- 3. Hyper-Intelligent Pan-Dimensional Mice are Thought to be Seeking the Ultimate Question By studying us…
- 4. But even the Smartest Terrestrial Animals Say: “Why worry about all that? Have some tasty fish instead!”
- 5. Philosophers Ponder: What are we NOT Seeing?
- 6. Theists Believe: Our World is NOT the Most Real
- 7. Scientists Look for Evidence in Nature
- 8. Computer Scientists Look for Logic Errors xkcd
- 9. “Normal” People Follow “Experts” There is no Child • Gurus • Novelists • Movie Makers • Idiots Giving Speeches
- 10. Evidence Against Physical Reality Paradoxes of Relativistic Space-Time Virtual Particles Dark Energy & Matter Quantum Entanglement Probability of Civilizations Creating Ideal Simulators
- 11. What if, instead… Reality is a machine designed to explain its own existence, as far down the rabbit hole as we choose to go? Drawing by Anne Thouthip
- 12. Our Evolving Understanding of Reality Too Egocentric to be True Too Small or Distant to Test (Yet)
- 13. If Reality is just a Simulation… Wouldn’t it suck if we could prove it so easily?
- 14. A Better Question: What questions can’t we even imagine?
- 15. What if Time isn’t Real? “Time is an Illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” -Douglas Adams
- 16. We Don’t Understand Time “That's two hours of my life I'll never get back…" -Chuck Norris
- 17. Possibilities Transcendence (Outerverse) Perceived Universe is Real We are Real Universal Mind Simulated Reality Dualism We are Pinocchio We are Replicants Physical Reality Nihilism Quantum Reality
- 18. Giving up Yet? “Yummy Fish”
- 19. A Better Idea Let’s work on the assumption that our universe is a simulation and see what we might know…
- 20. Any Rational Simulation Must have some communication between simulation and simulator • Rules and initial conditions apply • “Reality” is mere data manipulated by the simulator • Results should ideally be collected Or else why bother?
- 21. Karl Sims Evolved Virtual Creatures Creatures generally evolve to better exploit their ‘physical environment’ Simple Finish Line => Tumblers Lazy Physics => Vibrating Cheaters Special thanks to Karl Sims for this rare video. More info at: http://www.karlsims.com/
- 22. Look for Creatures Exploiting Bugs and Loopholes
- 23. Found Instead
- 24. Look for Inexplicable Correlations Detroit Antarctica
- 26. In an Perfect Simulation • We can eventually build perfect simulators inside • We can jack in, walk in or send delegates
- 27. “A Brief History of Time Turtles” A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
- 28. Every time you enter a virtual world, you push one turtle onto the stack Every time you leave a virtual world, you pop one from the stack A Stack of Metaphorical Turtles
- 29. How can we Pop more Turtles? We need to “root” reality!
- 30. Say, does AR also add Turtles? At its worst, it re-paints the current turtle and distracts us from what is ostensibly real. (if so, this could actually help highlight whatever remains true)
- 31. At its best, it can help us be more genuine and understanding of who is casting these shadows we see... (if so, it actually helps deconstruct a turtle and ‘root’ reality.) Say, does AR also add Turtles?
- 33. Of Course, it’s a Spectrum
- 34. What is true in every reality What elicits child-like joy What inspires and drives us (what lies do we repeat) (what hurts and tricks us) (what addicts & traps us) How to Spot what is Most (and Least) Real? ?
- 35. Whether this is the Real Life or not… Design AR and VR in a way that is most Genuine and Transcendent “Help Root Reality, Today!” Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- Are we living in a simulation? Show of hands. How many people think we are definitely not living in a simulation?
- Philosophers, at least as far back as Plato, wondered if we exist in a richer environment than we can ordinarily perceive; where ‘people’ as we see them are merely shadows on a wall.
- George Carlin
- Even the wisest humans can’t tell us what is real. They can only talk in terms of faith or probabilities.
- It would be a sloppy simulator that allowed its simulants to prove they weren’t real And a really crappy one to allow some of us to alter its fundamental rules with some in-world hacking. I’d want my money back — assuming I could escape the simulator to get it.
- A better question would be: what questions can’t we ask?
- If we question the reality of ‘time’ itself (and some do, convincingly), then the entire history of the universe could be an artifact of the ‘present’ answer to that question. The history we learned (remember: from physical artifacts and from people whose memory is based in matter and energy) could be invented on the fly. And so we’d be stuck again, without an answer. Or so it would seem.
- I tend to think that the natural sciences can’t get us out of this one, any better than religion or philosophy. But rather than giving up and chowing down on tasty fish, I’d rather we start with the assumption that our universe is a simulation and then work backwards to see what we can learn.
- Several takeaways: virtual creature evolve to exploit their environment. In one case, integration errors in the simulation allowed for supernatural energy, so some creatures evolved to vibrate and then burst with speed. In another case, a too-simple fitness function rewarded creatures crossing a finish line. So instead of evolving limbs, some creatures evolved to simply be tall and rigid, falling or tumbling over the finish line.
- If information flowed in both directions, in and out of our universe, we might eventually discover a correlation that makes absolutely no sense within our reality. It would rely on some logic happening outside our universe. For example, flipping a power switch in Detroit inexplicably produces penguins in Antarctica. Alas, what we see is more industrial activity in Detroit probably means fewer penguins, by a very explicable interaction of purely natural rules.
- Of course, it’s a spectrum. There are or will be VR experiences that can help us understand our truer selves, as we might exist apart from this world. And there really bad AR experiences (think the HyperReality video) that can occlude the real world and help us forget what it means to be human.
- Are we living in a simulation? Show of hands. How many people think we are definitely not living in a simulation?