Why would the simulation be entirely deterministic? The simulations humans run often are not, see e.g. Monte Carlo simulations [1]. Also, the laws of physics as we presently know them are not completely deterministic either [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_in_quantum_mechani...
For Monte Carlo simulations, we want to be sure that we're not imparting the biases we have on the model into the execution of the process itself.
As for quantum mechanics, it is only with out current understanding that we believe the process is non-deterministic. We'll see if that holds in a century.
Would simulation gods really be interested in us following good and bad rules, or more interested to see what happens if people do as they want?
If this is a simulation, my assumption is that it is to test if any highly intelligent and successful species is destined to destroy itself...
“What?”
“Over there, third planet out.”
“Oh, those. Yeah, some kind of bug. It usually fixes itself, often in quite the fireworks at the end! Anyway, supposed to be fixed next version.”
You're assuming they care that the humans don't see any inconsistencies.
Why would you assume that humans be considered highly intelligent? The experiment might not be as flattering as you’d like to think.
Well, I for one would be curious to find out more about these gods.
This doesn't mean they have to be worshiped or the center of any religion, it would just mean omnipotent beings do exist.
but ultimately the point for me is that I just don't believe in "gods". it's not that I don't believe that the archetypes and characters introduced by mythology could never possibly exist, it's more that I don't personally believe that there is any intrinsic difference between us and them other than just the order of complexity upon which our experience of life and reality is founded. i believe more that the idea of "God" is more akin to the sum total of all information within a given "system" (be that system a universe, multiverse/omniverse, or some even further abstract concept); not so much a demiurge or some active participant, but rather an emergent phenomena that manifests as a synthesis of all of lower orders of complexity beneath it. this does not imbue the Godhead concept with any sort of special or separate nature, in my opinion, and in fact if anything, implies that divinity in and of itself is more just a specific modality of consciousness detached from the ego and the perspective of I-ness
There's a great short story by Greg Egan about this kind of thing, and even with this "spoiler" context it's still very much worth reading: http://ttapress.com/CrystalNights.pdf
At least that would mean the state of the universe isn't stored in a JSON object. That'd be nice to know.
Sure, if not directly circular then consider that our simulations today are used to explore choices/behavior before doing something, so it stands to reason that as each universe sim gets to some interesting data, the sim operators learn something, then change their behavior accordingly and tweak the sim and re-run, learning something new in turn, followed by more sim tweaks, ... etc.
We today learn new insights from AI and then change our behavior, pour $billions and dev time into designing better AI, etc...so there's definitely a symbiosis relationship.
And I expect that we will eventually want to design AI that designs better AI than we can ourselves, which will teach us how to design better AI-designing-AI...etc. :)
You can fine tune those like artists do with fractal renderer programs. Maybe the Universe is an art project exhibited in some kind of museum.
We could prove the existence of the simulation runners.
That does not suddenly mean theists were right. They would still be just as wrong as ever, making random assumptions without any evidence or scientific method at all.
Lets say we were able to find out that the simulation runner looked and acted exactly like Zeus; that still wouldn't make Zeus worshipers right, just incredibly incredibly lucky in one of their random guesses.
Someone can have a starting point of life with the genetics & environment conditions needed for all the events to happen for making the "right" theory.
Another person can have a starting point (different than the other person) and where all the events to prove with the scientific method of what is the "right" theory; matching the other person.
Realistically each person would be effected by forces from previous lives that made them come to the conclusion at the end.
There seem to be a number of other potentially important differences between living in a simulation and some other kind of "baseline" reality. One of those might be that a simulation sits inside of some kind of outer reality. It could therefore potentially be effected by that outer reality.
Andrei
It would not have any sort of bearing on our lives, we couldn't break it or transcend it. Our feelings and our lives would feel just as real as before.
It would be the same with proving that we live in a simulation, or that there is a god or gods, except as others have pointed out, we'd probably seek sandbox escapes.
Also, not every proof of being a simulation would necessarily be that. Any proof that our universe is a 4D projection of another with different dimensions might not include a proof of the direction of projection -- ours might be the true reality, and the other a projection of ours.
“we couldn’t break it or trancend it”
The same thing has been said about many man-made electronic systems, and we know how that’s gone so far ;) So I think for 95% of people, nothing would change, but for the folks on the forefront of experimental / particle physics, quite a bit would change because we’d be looking for a whole new class of exploits/vulnerabilities/ways to affect change in the simulation.
Regardless, we're looking for glitches plenty, that is in my view, what modern physics is about. The study of glitches in our model and the adjusting of our model accordingly.
If we were in a simulation the "glitches" would probably be something small and subtle, at sub-atomic level, not something that teleports you or gives you superpowers.
At the very least, knowing that violations of the model might not mean the model is wrong, but that there are glitches in the simulation would have a big impact on the search and interpretation of such glitches.
No longer could you say, "Well, our model is wrong." Now you would have to say, "Well, our model might be wrong, but also this could be a flaw in implementation." And the latter may be more exploitable than the former; at least for awhile.
> If we were in a simulation the "glitches" would probably be something small and subtle, at sub-atomic level, not something that teleports you or gives you superpowers.
There's no guarantee of that at all. A bigger problem is that if we find a glitch, the simulators might just shut down the simulation, patch the glitch, roll back time a bit, and then restart it and we'd be none-the-wiser.
For the same reason I don't think the creators would roll us back: memory of finding previous bugs would make us better at finding new bugs in the future.
It's human nature to seek meaning. Knowing that we exist "merely" as simulacrums will greatly affect how we perceive our existence.
I would hope that most would react to this with indifference and continue life as usual, but who can say.
A simulation, at least as we'd understand it, would mean some kind of set variables and set rules. It would be entirely deterministic, but you have to run it to see what happens.
That kind of sounds like…physics?
You have some basic elements like atoms and energy plus some set rules like conservation of mass, laws of thermodynamics, and the rest. Sure, we don't know what's going to happen next, but it does seem entirely determined.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding physics or the simulation hypothesis here. It's always seemed to me that we talk about a simulation as if it would be different than what we have now.