Argument from possible simulation

[Elixir]

So, I have more than a little experience with the metaphysics and logic of "simulation".

Plainly put, there is no real difference between that which exists "as a simulation" or something that exists "on its own".

Really, "simulation" only has meaning when presented with a context, a set of things "around" the subject.

The universe is what it is, regardless of what context drives those relationships. It is simultaneously a simulation, and not-a-simulation, BECAUSE IT IS THE PRODUCT OF ALL EVENTUALITIES THAT PRODUCE IT!

Exactly.
IOW, vis a vis the OP,
SO WHAT?

 

[Jarhyn]

So, I have more than a little experience with the metaphysics and logic of "simulation".

Plainly put, there is no real difference between that which exists "as a simulation" or something that exists "on its own".

Really, "simulation" only has meaning when presented with a context, a set of things "around" the subject.

The universe is what it is, regardless of what context drives those relationships. It is simultaneously a simulation, and not-a-simulation, BECAUSE IT IS THE PRODUCT OF ALL EVENTUALITIES THAT PRODUCE IT!

Exactly.
IOW, vis a vis the OP,
SO WHAT?

So, it tells us that we are on our own WRT ethical game theory that does well for each other here.

 

[excreationist]

Yeah though the creator isn't eternal....

It is, from the perspective of the universe they created.

Our universe might only be able to support life for several dozen billion years longer. All we can say is that the creator is older than that (though from their point of view it might only be a few years - with parts sped up a lot more). Even if our universe will last a googol years all we could say is the creator is older than that (though from the creator's point of view it could be a much smaller duration). It doesn't follow that a simulation involving a googol years must imply a creator that lasts literally an infinite number of years. You could say the creator is "immortal" though (from the point of view of the simulation).

Just not themselves. It also opens a big can of worms that most theists try to escape from, but like the madness-inducing tentacles of an elder god, thus will invade one's thoughts with plagues of something far worse than doubt: understanding.

I'd say it is incompatible with theists who say that the creator is eternal - i.e. living infinitely longer than a googolplex years.... I think this non-eternal nature is good because it is being more specific about the nature of the creator.

Just not themselves.

Well when I am talking about an eternal creator I am talking about from their own point of view.....

 

[Jarhyn]

Yeah though the creator isn't eternal....

It is, from the perspective of the universe they created.

Our universe might only be able to support life for several dozen billion years longer. All we can say is that the creator is older than that (though from their point of view it might only be a few years - with parts sped up a lot more). Even if our universe will last a googol years all we could say is the creator is older than that (though from the creator's point of view it could be a much smaller duration). It doesn't follow that a simulation involving a googol years must imply a creator that lasts literally an infinite number of years. You could say the creator is "immortal" though (from the point of view of the simulation).

Just not themselves. It also opens a big can of worms that most theists try to escape from, but like the madness-inducing tentacles of an elder god, thus will invade one's thoughts with plagues of something far worse than doubt: understanding.

I'd say it is incompatible with theists who say that the creator is eternal - i.e. living infinitely longer than a googolplex years.... I think this non-eternal nature is good because it is being more specific about the nature of the creator.

Just not themselves.

Well when I am talking about an eternal creator I am talking about from their own point of view.....

So, here's the rub. A creator with finite years in their own existence can create an eternal universe in which they do not ever not exist.

It starts with establishing a "time loop symmetry" at "the start".

Time has "a point where things changed" but no real "beginning". The creator was there for that.

Then at "the end", you have a similar structure: all the particles rip apart but ostensibly keep doing that in a way where the measure of number just loops back around meaninglessly forever.

The creator was there in that moment too, and in all moments hereafter.

Essentially, just populate each bound of time with a "spin lock".

 

[George S]

The reality we experience could be a simulation. That is, this claim cannot be disproven, no more so than a random creator-god hypothesis. Both suppose that there is a containing reality in which an actor creates a sub-universe within that actor's reality. This does nothing at all to advance the state of knowledge about reality. Whence that containing reality we wonder. Does it have the status of "just is" or is it possibly a simulation or creation in a containing reality. The buck stops somewhere at "just is."

Let us suppose that it is "turtles all the way down." An infinite stack of realities. Whence, we must wonder, came that stack. "Just is?"

How about we go with simplicity: Our reality is known to exist. It could be the One that "just is." Some reality must be in that state; it could be ours.

If there ever was a state of nothing at all that state was (given our existence) unstable.

 

[excreationist]

Let us suppose that it is "turtles all the way down." An infinite stack of realities. Whence, we must wonder, came that stack. "Just is?"

I think that each simulation has less discrete events in time and spatial resolution than the universe it is running on. It also requires the simulations to contain simulations and I think most simulations wouldn't contain simulations that are indistinguishable from reality. So I don't think it makes any sense to have turtles all the way down. It is conceivable that there could be an outer universe that allows infinite computing resources but that wouldn't be the case for an infinite number of simulations inside it.

 

[Jarhyn]

The reality we experience could be a simulation. That is, this claim cannot be disproven, no more so than a random creator-god hypothesis. Both suppose that there is a containing reality in which an actor creates a sub-universe within that actor's reality. This does nothing at all to advance the state of knowledge about reality. Whence that containing reality we wonder. Does it have the status of "just is" or is it possibly a simulation or creation in a containing reality. The buck stops somewhere at "just is."

Let us suppose that it is "turtles all the way down." An infinite stack of realities. Whence, we must wonder, came that stack. "Just is?"

How about we go with simplicity: Our reality is known to exist. It could be the One that "just is." Some reality must be in that state; it could be ours.

If there ever was a state of nothing at all that state was (given our existence) unstable.

This is, ultimately, where I fall on the issue. A universe as an identity, once it hits a point of irreduciblity, is it's identity. It is simultaneously caused by all things that cause it and none of them.

These kinds of properties, and their consideration, is what I expect a lot of religious concepts came from, concepts such as "soul" and the like. It's easy to get sloppy and "want of reality" to be something else and so try to make thaumaturgy of that in any way but through "the hard way, slogging through this soup of reality and doing the work".

I admittedly occasionally walk the paths of ritual, song, and story, and this yields ritual, song, and story in return. It just doesn't yield bread*.

*Except when it does. Expect the cost to be commensurate with the cost of bargaining for bread in any narrative ever.

 

[excreationist]

So, here's the rub. A creator with finite years in their own existence can create an eternal universe in which they do not ever not exist.

It starts with establishing a "time loop symmetry" at "the start".

Time has "a point where things changed" but no real "beginning". The creator was there for that.

Then at "the end", you have a similar structure: all the particles rip apart but ostensibly keep doing that in a way where the measure of number just loops back around meaninglessly forever.

The creator was there in that moment too, and in all moments hereafter.

Essentially, just populate each bound of time with a "spin lock".

A quote from Elon Musk:

"...the games will become indistinguishable from reality. ...there would probably be billions of such computers and set-top boxes. ...it would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality (NOT a simulation) is one in billions"​

There is also the Roy game and Alan Watt's dream thought experiment.

The purpose could be for entertainment and personal growth. These simulations would mostly run forwards in time though often run faster than real time (like in the Roy and dream examples).

So I don't think they're compatible with your scenario of not having a beginning. Your scenario is possible but I think it is much more likely that it isn't the case assuming that there are billions of simulations. Those examples also do not involve an eternal universe. I think another problem with the kind of "block universe" you're proposing is that you've got to store data from every point in time which would involve huge amounts of memory.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, here's the rub. A creator with finite years in their own existence can create an eternal universe in which they do not ever not exist.

It starts with establishing a "time loop symmetry" at "the start".

Time has "a point where things changed" but no real "beginning". The creator was there for that.

Then at "the end", you have a similar structure: all the particles rip apart but ostensibly keep doing that in a way where the measure of number just loops back around meaninglessly forever.

The creator was there in that moment too, and in all moments hereafter.

Essentially, just populate each bound of time with a "spin lock".

A quote from Elon Musk:

"...the games will become indistinguishable from reality. ...there would probably be billions of such computers and set-top boxes. ...it would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality (NOT a simulation) is one in billions"​

There is also the Roy game and Alan Watt's dream thought experiment.

The purpose could be for entertainment and personal growth. These simulations would mostly run forwards in time though often run faster than real time (like in the Roy and dream examples).

So I don't think they're compatible with your scenario of not having a beginning. Your scenario is possible but I think it is much more likely that it isn't the case assuming that there are billions of simulations. Those examples also do not involve an eternal universe. I think another problem with the kind of "block universe" you're proposing is that you've got to store data from every point in time which would involve huge amounts of memory.

"Having a beginning" is a function of context. "A beginning relative to what?"

Imagine a system where you can "look up an image at a time". Just one person, in an infinite field, with a box. I could simulate this fairly easily, and with a little bit of imaginative massaging, just ignore the fact that our environment is composed of 'memories' being processed particularly by a single processor, and not spacetime units being processed by field interactors.

I, being the quantum entity defined by x86 mechanics that I am in this simulation turn the pad to "the day before Last Thursday"

I see a Wednesday before last Thursday, in which my egg that I hatched from is almost ready to hatch.

I turn it back further, and I see the egg getting smaller.

I turn it all the way back to the Thursday Before Last, and now it's just a barren field.

I turn it back to the Wednesday before that, and now it's just a barren field. I turn it back further...

You guessed it, barren field.

I, from the outside, have looped the barren field state and have a mechanism that no matter how far back you turn that little screen of yours, you see a barren field.

But not only that every frame of that "barren field" at any point in time is subtly unique! There are clouds overhead, and when you rewind the time infinitely, the clouds still fly backwards. Different clouds, always, same as the sky above now.

No matter how you play with your past viewer, if you go before "last Thursday" you will see infinite time.

In the mean time, the universe came to exist Last Thursday, and while the universe, extrapolated that you can view, has infinite time.

Let's even say that I being the clever asshole that I am, made it so you can use your pad to view the future, too. You watch yourself fiddling with the pad for a few moments, get confused, then agitated. You see yourself scrabble frantically with the pad for a few seconds, then walk on, then you see yourself get apprehensive again, then a rock falls on you.

You get confused, and then agitated, then scrabble with the pad frantically to look into the far future that is just passing clouds and you splattered messily under a rock, eventually soaking into the ground, and then just a rock sitting on a barren plain with flaking blood falling off to be sucked down under the bizzare earth where your body went. Then you sigh, walk on, get apprehensive again, and then the rock happens.

Time goes on forever in both directions observably. Even as the creator, I can arbitrarily set "time" and see how my universe looks at that time, to infinity forward, to infinity back, assuming my system is properly scalable.

I wouldn't. Large calculations get fucky. Thankfully "you" never do. You get hit by a rock before you crash the simulation with an unreasonable request.

Never mind that for me, this is all of about 120 seconds of watching an egg spawn, a dude pop out of it, a dance of their neural network activation as all this happens, they look at the screen, and then get hit with the rock.

It's not unlike a time crystal.

 

[excreationist]

Time goes on forever in both directions observably. Even as the creator, I can arbitrarily set "time" and see how my universe looks at that time, to infinity forward, to infinity back, assuming my system is properly scalable.

Infinite amounts of time require numbers that are infinite in length. That means a year value with more than a googolplex to the power of a googolplex zeroes. I think that simulations can not involve numbers that are infinite in length - or if it can it just involves a single value for "infinity".
I believe there can be virtual history and futures - so time travel is possible - but not to histories that are literally an infinite amount of time away.
Here is a related example:

I'd say the virtual history of the fossils isn't as "real" as the current events in the simulation....

 

[Jarhyn]

Time goes on forever in both directions observably. Even as the creator, I can arbitrarily set "time" and see how my universe looks at that time, to infinity forward, to infinity back, assuming my system is properly scalable.

Infinite amounts of time require numbers that are infinite in length. That means a year value with more than a googolplex to the power of a googolplex zeroes. I think that simulations can not involve numbers that are infinite in length - or if it can it just involves a single value for "infinity".
I believe there can be virtual history and futures - so time travel is possible - but not to histories that are literally an infinite amount of time away.
Here is a related example:

I'd say the virtual history of the fossils isn't as "real" as the current events in the simulation....

That's just the thing though. From inside my little world, all frames of the past are just a product of the infinite number line, and if they weren't, it would still take your dude so long to type in the number that the rock would be falling on them as they were trying to type it in, at any rate.

There is no point in the continuity of that universe that is not calculable for all infinite time, forwards and back.

I can put the data that describes this identity of an infinite functional continuity in a fairly small, finite place.

It helps that at the boundary points of our own theoretical cosmology exist inflationary periods that may well translate to the same inflation, or perhaps a differently seeded one of the same manner. Perhaps I tweak it such that the rock's reaction unfolds it into a new mind, an egg that hatches that will inevitably also get a rock dropped on it. Now time tesslates!

Still, this is infinite continuity, albeit spacetime is circular there rather than scroll shaped.

 

[excreationist]

Time goes on forever in both directions observably. Even as the creator, I can arbitrarily set "time" and see how my universe looks at that time, to infinity forward, to infinity back, assuming my system is properly scalable.

Infinite amounts of time require numbers that are infinite in length. That means a year value with more than a googolplex to the power of a googolplex zeroes. I think that simulations can not involve numbers that are infinite in length - or if it can it just involves a single value for "infinity".
I believe there can be virtual history and futures - so time travel is possible - but not to histories that are literally an infinite amount of time away.
Here is a related example:

I'd say the virtual history of the fossils isn't as "real" as the current events in the simulation....

That's just the thing though. From inside my little world, all frames of the past are just a product of the infinite number line, and if they weren't, it would still take your dude so long to type in the number that the rock would be falling on them as they were trying to type it in, at any rate.

There is no point in the continuity of that universe that is not calculable for all infinite time, forwards and back.

I can put the data that describes this identity of an infinite functional continuity in a fairly small, finite place.

It helps that at the boundary points of our own theoretical cosmology exist inflationary periods that may well translate to the same inflation, or perhaps a differently seeded one of the same manner. Perhaps I tweak it such that the rock's reaction unfolds it into a new mind, an egg that hatches that will inevitably also get a rock dropped on it. Now time tesslates!

Still, this is infinite continuity, albeit spacetime is circular there rather than scroll shaped.

It requires more than the ability to simulate infinity years forwards and backwards.... it also has to allow a googolplex to the power of a googolplex years and that number plus one and that number plus two, etc. It's not just about going to infinity but also every number in between. I think that in every universe, besides perhaps the outermost physical universe, there is a limited amount of resources so it would be impossible to represent near-infinite values (like a googolplex to the power of a googolplex to the power of a googolplex).

As far as time that is circular goes, there would be times that are being currently simulated rather than it all being continuously simulated. For it to be continuously simulated would imply "block time". But I think that would involve huge amounts of memory.... multiplying the amount of information by the number of time intervals (though with some optimisations). I don't see any reason to believe that the simulation I might be in has circular time.

BTW by infinite time I mean a literal infinity (with the ability to represent absolutely any near-infinite number in between). In the past mathematicians could use thought experiments which don't have any limitations on the possible numbers....

 

[George S]

We don't need the exact location of every particle to simulate air in a balloon.
To simulate the exact location and momentum of every particle would take a storage larger than the universe being simulated. Because of this simulations are simplifications. We see this all the time. Even General Relativity is a simplification. Special Relativity even moreso.

Simulation of time is problematic because there are two meanings. There is time as a coordinate in spacetime, and there is time as duration. Time's white hole is everywhere with time-as-duration being constant regardless of spacetime coordinate. Time-as-duration ('proper time') is as constant as the speed of light being constant everywhere.

How should we simulate the boundary of a black hole? To the external observer time stops at the event horizon, and yet to an astronaut passing through the event horizon time-as-duration still advances mercilessly at one second per second, and light still goes at c.

How should we simulate the random continuous quantum something-from-nothing in empty spacetime locations? Less duration, proper time, passes in walking around the house than not. You run around a track and a stationary mechanism times you. It will show more duration than an identical clock you carry with you.

 

[excreationist]

We don't need the exact location of every particle to simulate air in a balloon.

I am a fan of "level of detail".... I don't think every single one of the 10^57 particles in stars like our Sun need to be constantly simulated.... though if you observed them more closely it would involve extra detail....

To simulate the exact location and momentum of every particle would take a storage larger than the universe being simulated.

And there is pressure for simulations to be as optimised as possible - so the set top boxes and computers Elon Musk talks about would get the maximum bang for their buck by taking shortcuts....

Simulation of time is problematic because there are two meanings. There is time as a coordinate in spacetime, and there is time as duration.

I see time being related to the ability of things to change. If nothing is changing then I'd say it is timeless. Usually time in games can't be a coordinate because you can't properly go backwards in time - unless you are storing the information regarding everything quite regularly. Though you could take a single snapshot and go back to that. There is also a relationship between the amount of time that passes in a simulation vs outside... which would be faster or slower than "real-time".

How should we simulate the boundary of a black hole? To the external observer time stops at the event horizon, and yet to an astronaut passing through the event horizon time-as-duration still advances mercilessly at one second per second, and light still goes at c.

As far as black holes go, time slows down which makes things less CPU intensive - which would help compensate for the extra interactions of crowded matter within a dense space.

How should we simulate the random continuous quantum something-from-nothing in empty spacetime locations?

That could be approximated on a large scale using something like machine learning. It means that things aren't completely predictable by us on a close-up level. An intelligent force could take advantage of this and so intervene in a way that isn't detectable using statistic analysis - see these excerpts from "The Imitation Game"....

 

[Jarhyn]

We don't need the exact location of every particle to simulate air in a balloon.

I am a fan of "level of detail".... I don't think every single one of the 10^57 particles in stars like our Sun need to be constantly simulated.... though if you observed them more closely it would involve extra detail....

To simulate the exact location and momentum of every particle would take a storage larger than the universe being simulated.

And there is pressure for simulations to be as optimised as possible - so the set top boxes and computers Elon Musk talks about would get the maximum bang for their buck by taking shortcuts....

Simulation of time is problematic because there are two meanings. There is time as a coordinate in spacetime, and there is time as duration.

I see time being related to the ability of things to change. If nothing is changing then I'd say it is timeless. Usually time in games can't be a coordinate because you can't properly go backwards in time - unless you are storing the information regarding everything quite regularly. Though you could take a single snapshot and go back to that. There is also a relationship between the amount of time that passes in a simulation vs outside... which would be faster or slower than "real-time".

How should we simulate the boundary of a black hole? To the external observer time stops at the event horizon, and yet to an astronaut passing through the event horizon time-as-duration still advances mercilessly at one second per second, and light still goes at c.

As far as black holes go, time slows down which makes things less CPU intensive - which would help compensate for the extra interactions of crowded matter within a dense space.

How should we simulate the random continuous quantum something-from-nothing in empty spacetime locations?

That could be approximated on a large scale using something like machine learning. It means that things aren't completely predictable by us on a close-up level. An intelligent force could take advantage of this and so intervene in a way that isn't detectable using statistic analysis - see these excerpts from "The Imitation Game"....

Oftentimes, the ability to "undo" is more to the tune of a journal, and it doesn't really allow you to go "back", and even if it did let you jump extra-causally into another continuity, there is a continuity of your continuities and your adventure still exists across some form of time of your own reference frame.

I'm more than a little happy that our reality behaves in such a way as to make such silliness not obscure the nature of time more than it already is.

When speaking of universes, identity is singular.