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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 30 2014, 06:39 AM (3,460 Views) | |
| The_Fry_Cook_of_Doom | May 27 2014, 09:10 AM Post #151 |
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:OOOOOOOOOOOOMAAANN
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I just don't get the 'almost certainly' part. |
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| gs | May 27 2014, 10:43 AM Post #152 |
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alright tell me where you disagree: first, remember time is just as slow as we perceive it. our universe's 15 billion year history could theoretically be calculated by a program within seconds, if that program's host is powerful enough. except we don't perceive this as a single second. time is not a constant, it's just an idea we invented to help measure the rate at which things change. now imagine developing such a program. obviously you're going to run more than one instance, maybe editing some variables in each instance to make it interesting. with each instance you run, within a short moment (in the simulation one might perceive this as billions of years) a civilisation has evolved and is making its own virtual universes. within a year you'll have millions such universes all running within each other and that's assuming you only run a couple of instances. so in the end, the odds of us being one of those (tr)(b)(m)illions are much higher than the odds of us being the first. i especially like how this theory fits so well with the big bang, since that is exactly how one would program the start of a universe: a bunch of stuff packed together with an energy to help it expand. |
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| The_Fry_Cook_of_Doom | May 27 2014, 12:58 PM Post #153 |
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:OOOOOOOOOOOOMAAANN
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Your argument is fine, I just don't see how it follows that we are 'almost certainly' part of a simulation. Yes, the odds that we will be the first civilization to produce a simulation are extremely low, but that wouldn't make the universe 'almost certainly' a simulation, unless the odds that any given civilization will develop the ability to simulate a universe like ours aren't negligibly low. |
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| gs | May 27 2014, 01:27 PM Post #154 |
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imagine our descendants creating such a simulation. facing the fact that this is almost certainly possible, there are only 2 possibilities: - we are the first universe that got this far - universes previously got that far and created us we could be the first but consider that if we aren't, a bajillion of simulations would be running right now (agree?). the odds that we're one of them are much higher, it's a simple 1:999999999 type of deal. |
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| The_Fry_Cook_of_Doom | May 27 2014, 01:35 PM Post #155 |
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:OOOOOOOOOOOOMAAANN
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There could be a bajillion simulations, but there could also be ten bajillion actual universes filled with civilizations that failed to develop the technology to create a simulated universe before becoming extinct. edit:
This is primarily what I'm taking issue with here. We have no examples of civilizations simulating a universe as complex as our own. Saying that our descendants will 'almost certainly' achieve this is just speculation. I'm not denying that it's possible; I'm pointing out that we have no grounds for assuming that it's even remotely likely to occur. |
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| gs | May 27 2014, 04:29 PM Post #156 |
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then I guess we disagree about the (in my opinion endless) possibilities of software, which ultimately comes back to our discussion earlier ITT etc |
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| The_Fry_Cook_of_Doom | May 27 2014, 05:15 PM Post #157 |
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:OOOOOOOOOOOOMAAANN
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Tbh I don't see any problem with using software to render complex simulations. I just don't think it's very likely that humans will be able to design this kind of software before being wiped out. |
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| Vondongo | May 27 2014, 05:46 PM Post #158 |
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Moo.
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Ultimately that's got a lot to do with why I believe in a higher power. There's just this endless cycle of "study this, study that" to find the answer to all things universal. If the universe began by something we have no way of measuring or some force not bound to our understanding of science...hey, sounds like a deity (by my broad definition) to me. Not the deity most people would think of, but functionally it's the same thing. I don't think it's lazy at all, I think it's a lot lazier to propose that the answer is a flat "nothing." I actually think the Simulation Theory is a lot more credible too. I'm not a proponent of it of course, since it posits that yes, there is some intelligence beyond our understanding that's involved in our existence. |
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| gs | May 27 2014, 05:53 PM Post #159 |
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what makes you think we will be wiped out? the odds of that happening anytime soon (as in, in the next million years) are actually pretty tiny. and i don't think humans will write this program, but rather AI or transhumans will, eventually. |
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| The_Fry_Cook_of_Doom | May 27 2014, 05:59 PM Post #160 |
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:OOOOOOOOOOOOMAAANN
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Well, if time is finite, then the universe has got to end at some point. I'm pretty sure we'll be wiped out eventually, even if it only happens billions of years into the future. |
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| gs | May 27 2014, 06:10 PM Post #161 |
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i think you misunderstand time. time is just the rate at which matter changes, as perceived by us. when things stop changing, time stops, but time itself is neither finite nor infinite. it's an abstract concept. anyway you're talking billions of years into the future. considering how fast technology has evolved (exponentially i might add) over the past years it's really a matter of thousands or even hundreds of years before software like this is available, not billions. |
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| Vondongo | May 27 2014, 06:24 PM Post #162 |
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Moo.
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Yeah, it's cool. I know you're not hating on me. The main purpose of this board is for debating and discussing stuff, isn't it? Oh yeah, the old "irresistible force versus immovable object" thingamajig. That's an interesting one and it really gets to the bare-bones of what exactly constitutes God, doesn't it? As far as the Trinity goes, He has multiple bodies, and the one Christians are most familiar with is the physically-oriented one. But we really don't know hardly anything about the Father. When you have the ability to manipulate all things that are conceivable and are the fabric of all existence, you can make an object too heavy to lift and easy to lift all at the same time. Paradoxical, I know, but trying to use a human logic puzzle to characterize God is like trying to measure time with a ruler. He can do whatever He wants whenever He wants. Attempting to understand the how and why is being the power of my own mind. I don't believe in human free will. Why are things the way they are? I don't know. I'm not omnipotent so I can't tell you why you're an atheist. I can't tell you if you're going to be an atheist for the rest of your life, or even if you'll be one tomorrow. I would love if I could see the future because I could use it for what I think is good, but I also know that I'm not all good, and that's not the plan so I'm not going to doubt it. How old the world is, old artifacts predating Judaic worship, etc. etc.? This might sound silly, but it doesn't really matter to me. Is it contradictory to my worship or my faith? Well I guess it is, if my belief is premised on an archaeological and paleontological record. And in a world where we've got unexplained flying monstrosities and interactions with 'ghosts' and other reality-bending insanity. I have to bear in mind that Earth is the domain of the ultimate evil. And that domain means the ability to place objects, and other religions, etc. It's all interesting, but also very tangential to the meat and drink of my religious belief, so I don't pay much mind to it. Why do I think my God is the right one? Personal experiences that I've had, and that my family has had. Way too many to list. It can't be a coincidence at this point. It's not much of evidence in being able to convince others but I guess that really isn't the point of a personal experience, is it? Oh, the "Amen" thing is...tenuous, at best. It's pure speculation that Amun is the origin of the word. Linguistic corruptions and parallels happen all the time (the etymology of "avocado" is a great example) and considering that several thousand years ago, the Levant and Fertile Crescent were the center of human population, as well as linguistic and cultural diversity? Some words carry over. Even if it is derived from the name of Amun, using it does not mean I'm chanting or supplicating to Amun. Just like how worshiping in a building designed like a pagan temple does not actually make you a pagan. Where did you get the "Amen" thing from? This sounds like the kind of thing one of those celebrity atheist hucksters threw out there, just like that "Jesus is modeled after Horus!" thing that was also debunked. |
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| The_Fry_Cook_of_Doom | May 27 2014, 06:32 PM Post #163 |
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:OOOOOOOOOOOOMAAANN
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Time is hardly limited to being something that we just perceive. Besides, your definition is circular; by calling it 'the rate at which matter changes', you're defining time by making reference to time, i.e. by stating that 'time is the number of changes of matter that occur per unit time'.
Considering how, for the vast majority of human history, technology has advanced at a comparatively sluggish pace, it seems more reasonable to assume that technological progress will slow down at some stage, instead of increasing exponentially for ever. It's risky to extrapolate so far into the future, when all the data we have on the exponential growth of technological development is confined to the very recent past. |
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| ryker | May 27 2014, 06:44 PM Post #164 |
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General
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I have done a lot of reading over it. IMO it is one of the more interesting theories out there. Do I necessarily believe it? I am not sure, but the key word is that it is plausible. It actually answers several questions such as the possibility of god (for this universe and all universes until the top one where laws may allow for such a being). "God" truly could have made man in his image much like we made the Sims in our image. All the research I have seen says in order for us to truly know if we are a computer simulation we have to find out via a glitch. In the matrix it was deejay-vu. None of them have pointed to a very obvious glitch, when there is a potential one that scientist have been spending YEARS trying to figure out, ever since the discovery of quantum physics. For years scientist have studied quantum physics where the general rules of physics such as gravity completely break down. conversely, large scale physics show no signs of being compatible or influenced by quantum physics. That could in itself be a glitch in the system, the fact that large scale and quantum level physics are incompatible (to our current knowledge). We may figure it out in the future and it is not a glitch, but then again we may never solve it because it is an unsolvable glitch of the system we are in. |
| my name is ryker | |
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| The_Fry_Cook_of_Doom | May 27 2014, 06:51 PM Post #165 |
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:OOOOOOOOOOOOMAAANN
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Isn't Schrodinger's Cat supposed to illustrate that large-scale physics can be influenced by events on a quantum level? |
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| ryker | May 27 2014, 07:01 PM Post #166 |
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General
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Ultra, I forgot to mention one thing. We will use your logic as your logic actually rationalizes it. There are three possibilities: -A civilization destroyed itself before it can reach this level of technology. -A civilization reaches this level of technology but has no need for it therefore does not run the simulation. -A civilization reaches this level of technology and curiosity compels them to create and run said simulation. Based off of the first two, the simulation is never ran. The third one however is the tricky one. If you reach that level of technology and run the simulation, then your program, once refined enough to do so, will replicate itself in the same way starting a chain reaction. This means that if you reach this level of technology and run the simulation, you are now part of the statistic that GS and I are talking about. Until you reach this level of technology however it is only speculation and probable. Once you reach the level of technology and run the simulation, statistically speaking you are almost certainly a computer simulation, but not until the civilization actually runs the program. until that point, the other two options are still an option, but once you reach option 3, there is no getting out of it. Even if you reach option 3, is there a chance we were the first civilization to start the chain reaction? yes. But the chance that we are that 1 in almost infinite situations, the odds are almost infinitely against us. |
| my name is ryker | |
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| ryker | May 27 2014, 07:15 PM Post #167 |
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General
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Sorry, what I was trying to say isn't how it came across. yes the can affect each other, but the physics are not compatible. obviously, if something happens at the quantum level it can affect the large scale level and vice verce, but you cant apply quantum physics to anything but the quantum level. Conversely, you cant apply general physics to the quantum level. they are incompatible at the moment until we find a bridge linking the two or find out we were close but off on both and develop a fathering idea of physics that describes both accurately. This is the holy grail of science right now, finding this out in my opinion would be one of the single biggest triumphs in science of all time... past, present, and future. That being said, it could also be a glitch in the computer program we are living it and the search is futile as there is no answer lol
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| my name is ryker | |
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| The_Fry_Cook_of_Doom | May 27 2014, 08:02 PM Post #168 |
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:OOOOOOOOOOOOMAAANN
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Hmm, I see. In that case, it's absolutely true that we're almost certainly part of a simulation given that, somewhere out there, a simulated universe already exists. But we can't be anywhere close to certain that such a universe has been, or ever will be, created, and I guess that's the reason why I'm so skeptical.
kk I see. Although I wouldn't be so sure that it's just a glitch. Hugely complex interactions can give rise to unexpected results. Just look at the apparent differences between the hardware of the brain and the software of thought, or between air particles and the macroscopic properties of a large body of gas. When you throw a large number of particles together, it can lead to unusual effects which the particles all by themselves would never have been able to produce. |
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| Jam | May 27 2014, 08:05 PM Post #169 |
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Fruit Based Jam
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That cat was meant to show the ridiculousness of some of the claims being made in quantum mechanics at the time. "One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks." -Erwin Schrödinger |
| Long live Carolus | |
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| gs | May 27 2014, 08:37 PM Post #170 |
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yeah i typed that too quickly, poor choice of words. anyway time is abstract, it's all in our heads. it doesn't interact with anything and it can't be influenced, which by the way is why travelling in it is and will always remain impossible. imagine the simulation we've been talking about. say the program that runs it calculates every single event from the start to the end of that universe in a single second. somewhere in that time period humans existed who are self aware. every conscious thought ever was calculated all within that second, but would the human in the simulation perceive it as such? that human lived a full life, felt emotions and thought about things. in its head, this human perceives time but at a slow rate because its brain cannot process changes and conscious thought as fast as the program running it can. anyway the same sluggish pace 1.01^x advances at in the beginning? we have made more technological progress in the last 100 years than in the 199900 (read somewhere that homo sapiens are 200k yrs old) before that. are you really going to argue this? virtual reality is already here, we're already at that point. simulating a universe really is a relatively small step, especially considering the insane amount of time we have to make it happen. risky? we have computers now, nothing other than a major climate catastrophe is going to slow us down and even that would only slow us down a couple 100 years which is quite irrelevant on the time scale we're talking about. if there is any argument against us ever creating such a simulation it would be that it is impossible, not that we can't get there in time. |
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| ryker | May 28 2014, 12:22 AM Post #171 |
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General
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GS is correct. Technological advances have increased exponentially since "technology" was invented. the more technology we got, the faster it progressed. it took thousands of years to use rocks, then spears, the wheel, etc. the more technology we have, the faster technology passes. as GS pointed out, the past 100 years have been crazy in advances. Sure, you could say that advancement has been shaky because of booms of technological growth followed by stagnant periods but the over all trend by fire is an upwards curve exponentially. Most of the stagnant periods is due to something that our society has also overcome. During those times, the speed at which information traveled was slow. even a hundred years ago it was slower. Now, an entire blueprint of some breakthrough can be instantly sent across the world at the speed of light. Communication is instantaneous. Technology has gotten past stagnant periods of growth and will continue its upward exponential trend until the society self destructs or moves on to a new species all together. |
| my name is ryker | |
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| ryker | May 28 2014, 12:32 AM Post #172 |
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General
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Cough* http://news.discovery.com/space/galaxies/mind-blowing-computer-simulation-recreates-our-universe-140507.htm?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=MythBusters Cough Cough* There, I feel better now. |
| my name is ryker | |
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| The_Fry_Cook_of_Doom | May 28 2014, 05:45 AM Post #173 |
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:OOOOOOOOOOOOMAAANN
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In one sense, you're absolutely right; time is perceptual, and how we experience the passage of time can be nothing other than subjective. But the perception of time isn't related to the reality of time, any more than the perception of the colour red is related to the reality of electromagnetic waves.
But saying that the current rate of development is guaranteed to continue increasing exponentially is hardly certain when we only have a couple of centuries of information to base our conclusions on. We have every right to estimate how quickly our technology will evolve, but no right to invest a high degree of confidence in these estimates when they extend hundreds of years into the future. When you extrapolate so ambitiously based on such a narrow range of data, your estimates are liable to become conjectures. Also, considering how we haven't even come remotely close to accurately simulating the Earth, I highly doubt that the step towards simulating a universe would be a small one.
That's far from a being a complete simulation. |
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| ryker | May 28 2014, 06:09 AM Post #174 |
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General
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Didn't say that it was. All I was saying in that post is that we are in pursuit of such a simulation already. That is a pretty crazy simulation and we will only refine it and do more with it. give us a couple hundred or thousand years, and we run a bigger, more in depth simulation with a network of several thousand computers each several thousand times more powerful than all 8000 computers combined that were used to create this simulation.... Guess it was a statement to show that in my above post to explain the three rules of whether we are in a simulation, this proves that number two is already out of the question being that we are actively working on running such a program. The only viable options are 1 and 3. According to the logic, of which you do agree with, unless we self destruct as a civilization first, we are getting dangerously close to the tipping point of statistically almost certainly being a computer simulation.... |
| my name is ryker | |
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| gs | May 30 2014, 11:33 AM Post #175 |
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but in the case of time there is no such reality. there are no "waves of time", there is no objective clock. anyway the point is that such a universe simulation from start to finish could be calculated in one second, but be perceived by the people in it as billions of years. i'm not saying i'm 100% certain, but considering the data i do consider them well above 50%. obviously predicting this is not a matter of adding up the numbers because scientific breakthroughs can't be predicted but considering the possibilities of software i'd say it's a safe bet. software is going to blow up (possibly in our faces) when it learns to rewrite itself, but something tells me you don't think it ever can? again we arrive upon a disagreement from earlier ITT. |
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| The_Fry_Cook_of_Doom | May 30 2014, 01:36 PM Post #176 |
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:OOOOOOOOOOOOMAAANN
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How does time dilation work then, if time really is just a perception?
I don't see any problem with the idea of software rewriting itself. Anyway, you've made it clear that you aren't completely certain about us being part of a simulation, so I'm comfortable. |
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| ryker | May 30 2014, 04:19 PM Post #177 |
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General
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Not sure but wasn't it incog that doesn't think technology will ever be able to program itself? Ultra, we weren't saying we actually believed we are a computer simulation, at least I wasn't. I just think that it is a possibility. That being said, it still doesn't answer the conundrum of what created the first one. I am however saying there is a point in which we are almost certainly a computer simulation. Even though we are on our way to it, we have still not reached that point. That point as I stated earlier,is if we create a simulation that in its own creates a being that creates a simulation. At that point, we enter a realm of statistics where we are almost certainly a computer simulation. |
| my name is ryker | |
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| gs | May 30 2014, 05:14 PM Post #178 |
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we've said from the beginning that we weren't certain so idk why you had to see me say those words literally time dilation exists because matter changes slower or faster depending on the situation it's in. it's still just matter changing, we can only know how fast it changes in comparison to other matter in other situations but we can't know how fast it really is changing. i'm saying time is not a constant, it's a variable based on the context of the matter you're measuring and based on who perceives it. in a vacuum, there is no time. anyway i'm only saying every event in this 14.2 year old universe could have been calculated by a theoretical program in a single second and we would still perceive it as 14.2 billion years. do you disagree because if not then what are we doing? |
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| ryker | May 30 2014, 05:18 PM Post #179 |
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I think he meant my post saying we are almost cirtianly a computer program statistically speaking. It was my fault I forgot to post the rules which stated the circumstances in which it was true.
Edited by ryker, May 30 2014, 05:20 PM.
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| my name is ryker | |
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| gs | May 30 2014, 05:20 PM Post #180 |
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almost certain is not certain though? |
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