MediumTex wrote:
So let me make sure I understand the simulation hypothesis:
There is some intelligent life form somewhere that may or may not be human, but which has decided that it would like to re-create an earlier period in human evolution for the purpose of studying it or observing it.
To accomplish this feat, the intelligent life form has created a computer simulation in which we are all currently trapped.
Here is the problem I have with this idea: If the life form is intelligent enough to model all of this, wouldn't it be intelligent enough to model it so that we don't become aware (or even suspect) that it is a simulation?
I mean, what is the value of a simulation if the simulated beings aren't able to experience the simulation without guessing at what is really happening? Doesn't that invalidate the premise behind the whole exercise?--i.e., that the intelligent life form wants to see what life was like at an earlier point in time.
If part of the design of the simulation is to make sure that the parties experiencing the simulation don't catch on to what is really happening, why would it be designed with a "glitch" in the form of these symmetrical eclipses and that sort of thing?
It seems to me that we all have this longing within us to commune with something greater than ourselves and to gain an understanding of reality that is universal, and this desire can lead to mental states in which we are willing to believe things we wouldn't believe in a more rational state of mind. In other words, how is the simulation hypothesis different from every religion in the history of the world in that it caters to something that people already want to believe, as opposed to being "truth" that is offered whether people find it comforting or not?
These papers describing the simulation hypothesis strike me as visual aids for a certain type of mental masturbation that no doubt has a high degree of intellectual eroticism for many people.
It's the same sort of thing that you encounter when someone trips acid or has some other drug experience and talks about "kissing God". When I hear these things I want to tell the person "It sounds like you had a great time and I'm glad you enjoyed it, but I don't think that you kissed God. I think that you had a mental experience in which you imagined how it might feel to kiss God based upon all of your past beliefs and experiences heading into the trip."
If we are talking about experiences that occur within us that help us understand the world around us more deeply then I'm willing to go along with almost anything, but when we start talking about alien races of supercomputer programmers who are actually what we conceive of as God in a non-supernatural context, I just think that's a bit of a stretch.
I could be wrong, of course.
Great questions, MT, and for each one of us this simulation hypothesis may trigger drastically different thoughts, interpretations and feelings including aversion and bliss It's good to be skeptical about believing any thing. At the same times it's very good to be open to possibilities existing that we can't rationally understand. Or, as in the words of the Bard:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I had a brief flash visualization of something like this existing. It happened years ago the evening after a 3 day meditation intensive ended. I could "see" that everything was an appearance coming from a computer like station in "deep space." The station was perfect and hard to describe. I was "informed" by my experience that I could observe, but it was perfect and well beyond anything I could monkey with even though I did have that urge...Then it passed from my experience and I was back in a living room in Santa Rosa and left with a sense of wonder. It was one of those things- an "experience"- and I didn't question it very much but it did give me some expanded sense of possibility. I never thought it was about aliens or anything scary, more a sense of the the intelligence of the universe at work.
My exploration of religion and myth led be to hold possible that kind of phenomena and path had been experienced and walked by others. Now I find that science is speculating about it as well. I certainly don't have the answer to the questions you raise. I'm just working with my own experience here. And I find it jibes with some of the studies of Buddhism and Hinduism. In Buddhism they talk about the alaya or storehouse consciousness where in all things are recorded and something we can experience. In Hinduism they speak of the creation myth of Brahma "dreaming" the universe into existence by dreaming multiple Brahmas emerging from his belly who are in turn dreaming of other multiple Brahmas creating universes...
Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.�
Sitting Bull
This is a stimulating article with nice visuals: 
