Very much so. Process philosophy is really hard to wrap one’s mind around, but weirdly, other philosophers describe the same thing more simply lol.
Thank you very much for the link!
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Which other philosophers do you have in mind?
If I’m in a simulator, we seem to simply be talking about being a subject in an otherwise objective world.
So why get hung up on “simulator” as if it’s a machine that fakes organic life? Why can’t the simulator machine be made of atoms and planets and chemistry, all fashioned into a biology, and then you stick me in it and boom, I live in a “simulation”.
The matrix is the same thing as the universe. We wear our own bodies like a virtual reality suit.
I thought Plato figured this out in a cave.
Bergson, Watts (insofar as a Philosopher), Bohm(ditto), William James
How do you know this. How do you know any of this. Sure it sounds nice to say, it rolls of the tongue right and proper, it makes a person think (I guess). But you’re just talking. You’re claiming to have understanding of a world and universe that humanity currently is not able to understand. You’re going to have to cite a source.
Sure, believing you “have it all figured out” is quite popular, surprisingly outside of religious belief, though equally shared within as well. But unless this is a pure faith argument where you are to be revered as some sort of messianic arbiter, this argument seems incomplete as-is.
Again, more unsubstantiated dogma. I am fairly certain you do not, and I am rather certain you yourself acknowledge, you do not know all there is to know. These are assumptions. Semi-reasonable at best.
That’s the thing about science. The first guy thousands of years ago who “scienced” and discovered something revolutionary didn’t solve every single problem and uncover every single discovery in existence on the spot. Neither did the first guy who “mathed.” There remains many deep unsolved problems in both science and mathematics, problems whose solutions may very well turn everything we think we know on its head. As discoveries often do.
If nothing else, answer me a simple question. What is a non-simulation? What requirements, no matter how impossible, would need to be met for an existence, realm, or reality that is a non-simulation? Is such a thing possible? If not, I’d question your usage and understanding of the language itself and not something deeper or profound.
Consider a simple example of a ball moving with constant speed on the ground. If different stances of the ball in different positions and at different time are just created and not annihilated, then we would have a set of stances of the ball on the ground. This is not something that we call a motion of the ball; therefore, the annihilation of the ball in the former time is needed after the ball is created at a later point in time.
This is my intellectual property that I am publishing here! So I cannot provide any citation as there is none.
Let’s stick to the problem of the ball that is moving on the ground at a constant speed. This ball has a definitive property of position at any given moment; let’s call the position at time t P(t). Let’s also call the speed of the ball S, which is a constant. Now, I ask this question: What is the position of the ball at time t’=t+dt? The position of the ball at the later time is P(t+dt)=S*dt+P(t). You could not possibly tell what would be the position of the ball without this simple computation, so the computation is needed for the creation of this simple ball at the later time.
By this logic, it would be impossible to add a 2D sheet of paper to the top of a short stack without annihilating the bottom sheet, due to ‘lack of space’ for more than some small (2? 3?) sheets at once. By this logic, growing block interpretation is impossible. Just pointing out that none of your assertions follow. Not one.
Don’t see what this has to do with simulations.
How about the universe expanding? If ‘more room’ is needed for subsequent states, where’s it coming from? We’re talking infinite more space every second.
Now, let’s consider a lawful change in a physical entity.
Sort of like Schrodinger’s equation? That the one ‘law’ that determines how a physical ‘state’ changes over time.
Mind you that you’re kind of assuming a classical universe here, that 1) has a state, and 2) subsequent states are determined by prior states. This has been not only questioned, but disproven (2022 Nobel Prize). It’s one, the other, neither, but not both. It’s not really possible for a computer in our universe to simulate a system that acts like that. Shortcuts and law-breaking simplification are necessary.
A computation is, however, needed to create the physical entity in the immediate future.
This has not been demonstrated, and your conclusion falls into infinite regress since the level supposedly doing the computation also needs time to simulate anything, and by your fallacious logic, must itself be a simulation. That can’t end, ever. Either infinite regress, or your reasoning is faulty.
You see it as well.
A changeless entity is incapable of doing anything, notably running a simulation, which involves change.
Yes, the theologians attempt the same sort of hand-waving, which, if allowed, also allows the much simpler model of our universe being a changeless entity. Wait, that’s the consensus view. That can’t be right.
Indeed. We simulate the weather to predict it. While that implies that the weather is ‘in a simulation’, it doesn’t imply that the weather itself is a simulation. Likewise, I could indeed be simulated, but in no way would that be me in the simulation, even if the simulated being couldn’t tell the difference.
Most people that assert a simulation miss that point.
Matrix is a VR, not a simulation. The difference is dualism vs physicalism, respectively. Given Mok’s OP, I think he’s envisioning a simulation, but I doubt he could articulate the difference.
Change is the new state. Annihilation is kind of what the Langoliers do. If you’re going to take seriously the OP, that’s the only reference I know about. The ‘present’ is indeed not just one moment, but a finite duration of apparently 6-ish hours of past and maybe 30 minute of future getting ready to be ‘now’.
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Yes I think Bergson gets short shrift. James is fascinating. Bohm I’m in two minds about because of his life-long commitment to a hidden variables interpretation of quantum mechanics. Watts just seems to be a guru-type. One more I’d add is John Wheeler with his Participatory Anthropic Principle.
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If you annihilate x then isn’t that it for x? You’ve also supplied a description of x in time (and space) but that in itself doesn’t imply a simulation. In short you haven’t addressed the last point in my previous post, how do we know we’re in a sim?
I prefer the probabilistic answer. Given: n worlds and r real worlds, sim worlds = n - r. P(sim) = \frac{n - r}{n} = 1 - \frac{r}{n}. As you can see, \displaystyle \lim_{\frac{r}{n} \to 0} P(sim) = 1
I think there is a false dichotomy here – it assumes that there are only two kinds of world, a ‘real’ world and a simulation of a ‘real’ world. We humans have a sophisticated idea of what ‘reality’ consists of, but quantum mechanics has put a hammer through it.
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Well, you said in another post that there are lots of magical particles doing magical things in this world (the simulation). I agree, the only way I see it as being able to happen and hold together with the passage of time and change is if the passage of time and change are artificially produced and maintained. This would necessarily include some sort of computation. But I don’t think we can say much about the reality producing the simulation from our position inside. Without it being revealed to us by someone who knows how it is done. Here we can look to religious doctrine to get some idea. Which is why I said the creator of the simulation is outside of our space and time. That it’s a kind of eternity, or heaven. In which our world is like a kindergarten, or model for conducting experiments. There might be millions of angelic beings maintaining and holding up every atom. That some angels might actually go into the simulation and experience that world from inside.
I have had at least two mystical experiences in which it was like this.
Some mistakes in the OP:
- Time is not a thing. You’re imagining it as if its a conveyor belt with things happening on it as the belt moves but time is a relation between one moment to the next. Like dominoes knocking each other over instead.
- there’s an unnecessary assumption there’s a limit to “existence space”. In a block universe few, the past, present and future all exist simultaneously. In such a view “now” is just a point next to other points in time. Even when rejecting such a description, the assumption that the past must be annihilated is unnecessary.
- You’re conflating causality with computation. In physics the “work” you’re trying to attribute to computation is done by fields and forces. Where water flows, gravity and terrain determine its path, no computer needed.
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It doesn’t matter. Also you haven’t clarified your position very well i.e. what makes it a false dichotomy?
What do you mean by a simulation? Could you define and explain what the simulation is we are living in?
I argued in that thread that future doesn’t exist. It is in your imagination.
Also time exists in your perception not in the real world. You exist in your immediate past, not now and not in the immediate future.
The claim that either the world is ‘real’ (presumably you mean in the way we think it is) or it is a simulation (presumably you mean a program running on a machine created by an advanced form of intelligence with vastly superior technological capabilities) is a false dichotomy.
Why not?
Here, I am talking about a version of time in which only two points of it exist, now and the immediate future. I don’t think the growing block universe is a valid model of time, since all past events exist. You have to restrict the observable events to those that exist only at the current time, and I don’t see how that is possible.
The simulation is argued later, after we discussed the necessity of computation for creating physical entities in the immediate future.
I don’t see how that could be relevant here. I don’t think that the universe is expanding at all. I think the red shift can be explained in terms of changes in the physical parameters.
I already defined what I meant by a lawful change. Please read the OP.
Do you mind giving a link? Here, two states of a system exist, namely now and the immediate future. So, it is not like that we go from one state to another.
Just think of a moving particle with constant speed. You need a simple computation to tell what the position of the particle is at a later time, given its speed and its position at the present.
The entity that computes is changeless, and it computes things immediately without any disruption.
A changeless entity is metaphysically necessary. You have to show that it is contradictory if you believe it is not acceptable.
Cool. So you get my point. I have to say that there is no simulation within the physicalism. Things just move.
Cool.
I have to say that we cannot say much about the real nature of reality by doing physics. Physics is a useful tool for calculation only. But we can do metaphysics, and we can say much more about the real nature of reality this way.
Yes I hear you. It’s a false dichotomy. Why?
The OP hasn’t answered the question, how do we know it’s a sim? Can you?