Sort of like the idea that our world is really in the imagination of some higher being, only more plausible.Life as we know is simply a very advanced computer simulation (Matrix-like) developed by a far more advanced civilization than ourselves.
We would not be the wiser.
11 comments:
Wow. Not THAT far more advance than ourselves, by the sounds of things. We could be building such computers within 50 years.
I love this reduction of everything by the math-guy: “My gut feeling, and it’s nothing more than that,” he says, “is that there’s a 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation.”
This is kind of a big "poo pah" tossed in the direction of religion, isn't it?
In any event, we'll have to discuss such things over a party keg, during your visit.
It will possibly make many of the religious amongst us quite happy, once they get their head around it. GOD will be entirely evident, and seemingly this little simulation we inhabit was truly intended to create us, and nothing but us.
Or at least that's one possible rationalization.
"Whatever you’re touching now — a sheet of paper, a keyboard, a coffee mug — is real to you even if it’s created on a computer circuit rather than fashioned out of wood, plastic or clay."
It's real because I have nothing else to go on. I sort of like the life I have, so I ask only that the program not reboot until much, much later... like when the sun takes over the world several billion years from now, barring a meteor striking Earth. In which case change would be pretty immediate anyway. Of course, God could intervene, in which case I still may or not be fucked. So, really, I'm going to get a copy of National Geographic Explorer and drool over some pictures of hiking shoes now...
Rebooting would make the end quick...and indeed perception is often reality.
Pat: It would require a rationalization, but one that is of the type that the religiously inclined is not particularly adept at making. "God" would be laughing at the vestments, the papal hats, the Sunday Services, and all the assorted other pomp & circumstances.
Stephen: Agreed. It's real enough for me, and that's fine. I gotta say, while going out over lunch and noting the number of different "objects" that would require properties (umpteen trillion trillion blades of grass, variable winds, microbial life forms), I have concluded that the percentage chance that it could all be accounted for via software is WAY below 20%. There's just too much going on out there. I'm entitled to a gut feeling that's nothing more than that, too.
Agreed, that was my point on the rationalization.
As to the 'too many things' scenario:
You haven't watched any PIXAR movies lately, where each hair on a character's body is an individual object.
The law that states that computer power doubles every 18 months. In fifty years computer power would have doubled 33 times, yielding something like computers being 8,589,934,592 TIMES more powerful. Imagine if they were 100 years more advanced.
I'm thinking that 20% does sound plausible.
In the end, it hardly matters, and my in fact be EXACTLY the same thing as the reality that we seem to inhabit. Perhaps in a computer simulation heaven is something like a permanent existence in a holodeck.
Makes me feel a lot better about what the TNG crew did to Prof. Moriarty in "Ship in a Bottle"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_in_a_Bottle_%28TNG_episode%29
As powerful as computers get, I fet the feeling the uncanny valley widens with every step. We humans tend to underrate the experience laid out before us.
I have no idea what you meant by that, but it sounds cool.
Just that the phrase (uncanny valley) refers to that space where things get a little too close to "real". I've heard the phrase used to refer to the weird vibe you ge when you see photo-realistic animation and your senses pick up something weird that doesn't fit organically. I think what I'm trying to say is that as we try to use technology to replace or build real environments, we are doing so with the usual hubris that gets us in the end.
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