No. of Recommendations: 9
The new Atheist Shrewds board will hereafter be a meeting place to discuss philosophy and life
THE question about life for me since youth is "What is Reality?", with the related questions "Why are we are here?", "Who/what caused it?" and "If there is a purpose - which is it?".
"What is Reality?" in modern times leads to the Simulation Hypothesis whose answer is "This world/universe we think is the total and only Reality is just a (computer) Simulation".
The simulation hypothesis is far older than "Matrix", even in movies. In my youth I was hugely impressed by the German movie "Welt am Draht" ("World on a wire") from 1973 which is based on the novel "Siumulacron-3" by Daniel F.Galouye.
In the movie a group of scientists simulate an artificial world with humans in it. The new technical director and main protagonist Stiller discovers evidence that "Reality" is not what he thinks it is, that his world (and therefore he himself) is just a simulation too. Part of the evidence is that he founds memories of his fellow scientists are manipulated so that evidence pointing to that deeper reality vanishes, evidence which naturally is "critical" for the experimentators "one level higher", as they want their subjects to be unaware that they are "not real", but just bits and bytes in a computer.
The end of that movie is highly mysterious: Stiller (+the unavoidable female lover) manage to swap his consciousness with the technical director one level higher and therefore to "escape" the simulation, into the real world. That's the end of the movie, according to wikipedia and according to a friend who watched it a few days ago. I was stunned as it's not the end I saw but had to find out that wherever I look, youtube or elsewhere, nowadays it is the end of that movie.
I say "nowadays" as the "Welt am Draht" movie me and my partner saw decades ago was a few minutes longer, with a drastically different end: After Stiller escapes into the real world he and his lover leave the building. They are in a big city and then they start running out of the city, into the wilderness (maybe to avoid Stiller becoming unmasked as a simulation and captured?). They run and run. Suddenly the world around them becomes more and more grey and hazy until there is simply nothing. No objects, nothing. END.
For the viewer this end of course(?) means "This 'Reality' is nothing more than another simulation and they reached it's border".
I described to my friend who whereever he looks can't find this version my partner and me have seen decades ago, but only the a few minutes shorter movie with the completely different "happy" end.
And ended my email to him with a funny joke: Maybe WE are in a simulation and the experimentators one level up manipulated/shortened the movie and articles about it, so that not too many people can see that end which plants the seed of for them "critical" thoughts (awareness that they might be in a simulation) in their minds?
Which in turn led me to continue my email with: Wouldn't it be the greatest irony if my joke is not really a joke at all???
As you all know Elon Musk believes we are indeed in a simulation. The thought is not new. I always have to think on Plato and his "Cave Allegory" from nearly 2500 years ago, according to which we are prisoners in a cave, seeing only the shadows of the objects outside the cave, thrown onto a wall of the cave by the bright light outside, mistaking those shadows for Reality itself.
The simulation hypothesis is taken seriously not only by Musk, the engineer, but also by scientists. A few years ago I read about a proposed experiment of a group of physicists. It was about finding evidence for this hypothesis. Their assumption: If we are in a computer simulation that computer has limits. Limits of computing power and limits of storage capacity. The latter would result in the simulation having limits too. Because of the limited storage Space(time) cannot be infinitely fine, but must be simulated in this computer granular, discrete, in (very fine but nevertheless) chunks. This would have effects on the cosmic background radiation, would cause it to have specific attributes, a "fingerprint", which we should be able to measure.
Thesis: If we can find this specific attributes in the background radiation it would provide strong evidence (not: proof!) for the simulation hypothesis that we are indeed in a simulation. If we don't find that fingerprint we simply don't know more than before (maybe we are in a simulation, maybe not).
I don't know how far those physicists are in the meantime with their proposed experiment. But the main assumption "The simulation must have limits" reminds me very much on this "disappeared" last minutes of "Welt am Draht".
What I see as a weakness of their Thesis: Why must that computer have computing and storage limits? This is too anthropocentric for me, sinmply assuming that an alien computer must be based on the same principles as computer as we know them. Who says that?
One more thought (of not an atheist, but an agnostic and lifelong sceptic): Is there a difference between being in a computer simulation, with our "creators" being programmers --- or whatever "God" being the programmer?
In the hope this post might start a discussion :-)
