Re:The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment
by nitrogen on Friday July 18, 2014 @12:55AM
(#8051734)
The simulation argument is based on the supposition that, since we make simulations, there must be bigger simulations, and we must be in one of them. So if we can't actually make simulations, there's no reason to assume that something "bigger" than us is simulating us.
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Unless the simulator that we are inside is somehow designed such that it itself cannot be simulated from within. An analogy for this might be to imagine people being simulated inside a machine that is not theoretically Turing-complete.
Not that I believe in such a thing - at this point the argument would devolve into something unfalsifiable, since the way that logic works outside of our simulated universe would not be same way that logic works inside, and you'd just have to take my word for it that the simulation is being run by an infinitely stacked series of hyperintelligent turtles, since you cannot use "inside logic" to prove anything about anything that is "outside."