Existing in an un-simulated reality
iahwrites.substack.com
iahwrites.substack.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism
There isn't really much of a connection between this and Bostrom's simulation argument. The simulation argument is about calculating the probability that we live in a simulated universe based on certain assumptions about human behavior and technological development. Bostrom's argument doesn't make any metaphysical claims other than assuming that consciousness is substrate independent.
I don't buy into metaphysical theories that claim to deduce the existence of worlds outside our own based on armchair reasoning. We know that the physical universe exists and we can explain everything that we experience in terms of quantum field theory and general relativity. Any theory that wants to challenge this view of the world needs to modify those existing theories, or design an experiment that shows why they aren't adequate to explain reality.
Everything we experience, except experience itself. Conscious/qualia/whatever is still… well, none but God knows what it is, and I have no evidence for the existence of any god let alone that one.
If you want to disagree on the metaphysics or whatever go ahead, but this is already proving to be a huge waste of time and I'm not particularly interested.
Real, in the way I believe you are trying to express, is a complicated topic.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon
Versus matter arising from consciousness?
<digression>
> Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics...
These are assumptions. They're very plausible and useful ones. They may turn out to be absolutely correct, but it's still worth noting that they are theories.
"Every atom behaves..." so far, so good, yes it does.
"...according to the laws of particle physics"-- presumably yes, with this caveat: The existence of a complete set of inviolable "laws" that explain _all_ physical behavior is an article of faith. It's a plausible potential outcome of the extremely practical process of collective scientific inquiry that so far seems to hold up, but still-- the concept of a set of laws as programs and constraints for absolutely all physical phenomena is fundamentally a philosophy. It has proven to be extremely useful, but it's not a proven or even probable fact. It's a powerful axiom.
</digression>
> ...and somehow consciousness emerges out of that.
Back to the assumption that consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges from the physical activity of a brain:
Is a (functional) brain both necessary and sufficient for consciousness to "emerge"? I don't know, I'm just a person interested in this stuff, but I think it's an important question without a definite answer.
We tend to assume that having a brain is a necessary requirement for consciousness, but testing for consciousness (not to be confused with mere rationality) is difficult, as far as I know. I can't prove that a stone, plant, or region of spacetime has no consciousness.
Even if we came up with a test for "consciousness", and that this test _did_ prove that a brain (or a similarly complex network) is necessary for consciousness to appear, there is still the issue of whether the brain is sufficient. How would we know?
Whatever it is that we call consciousness may emerge from the complex physical phenomena of brain activity, as you said. Or the brain may be a catalyst for the phenomena we label consciousness. Or a brain (or human body) may only be a prerequisite for us, with our current capacities, to be able to observe the experience we have come to label "consciousness".
"Light" used to mean only the visible spectrum, until we understood there was more to it: Light went beyond the limits of what we had up til then used to recognize its existence, and indeed it occurred even in what we had called "darkness", and blue things didn't contain blueness in and of themselves, nor were blue things producing blue light.
I'm not advocating for any particular alternate theory, or proposing that consciousness operates outside of known physical constraints, I'm just a stickler for reminding ourselves what concepts are articles of faith, even in science itself
For example, I can hypothesize that a fifth fundamental force is needed to explain consciousness, but then I need to modify the standard model of particle physics to account for new interactions. I have a high confidence that the standard model is correct in the domains relevant to the evolution of life on Earth, namely chemistry and biology. So my default assumption is that we don't need to introduce new laws of physics to explain consciousness.
>Is a (functional) brain both necessary and sufficient for consciousness to "emerge"?
I think you misread my post as implying that a brain is required for consciousness. Our baseline for talking about consciousness is consciousness in humans, and all of the medical evidence suggests that human consciousness is associated with brain activity. But I see no reason to believe that something made out of silicon or other non-organic materials couldn't be conscious if it implemented the same kind of processes that we find in the brain.
Dark matter would like a word.
Of course, there is always the possibility that another revolution in physics happens, but even then our current theories will still be valid in most domains, in the same way that Newtonian mechanics is still valid in most domains.
https://philpapers.org/archive/SINPG
It's a fun read
The number states do not magically appear in the physical universe merely by thinking up the construction. The numbers could be configured as (temporary) patterns in physical objects, such as brains, books, or in ink molecules on paper. But the states are not physical objects themselves.
Also, if our universe happens to be universal, in the sense that it encompasses all of existence, then how could a calculation device exist outside of it? I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, but it's an option that many simulation-believers overlook. The calculation device might be part of the existence, but it seems rather unlikely that it can then predict reality faster than it unfolds.
... but that's different to what I've argued here. I'm not claiming the states are physical objects, but just the existing of the pattern, even if temporary or intangible, would feel real to the humans/actors inside it.
If you are trying to prove the existence of this universe by requiring the existence of another universe, then it's turtles all the way down.
How do you define "existing" of a pattern? Does it exist inside a physical thing? If so, then how does that physical container come into existence? And if it exists only conceptually, then how is it possible for concepts to exist? In the universe that I know, concepts only exist in the minds of human beings, and perhaps in some other animals. To me, it seems rather unlikely (and a bit anthropocentric or egocentric) that concepts are something truly universal.
For me, it helped to meditate a lot on what it'd be like to be a rock. The rock does not have memory, no sensory input, and therefore most likely no concept of time, space, logic, nor mathematics. It makes you wonder whether the rock exists at all. In any case, it probably doesn't care as much about it as we humans do. There might be a hint there.
And also
> Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones: But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.
-- Richard Wilbur, from ["Epistemology"](https://web.archive.org/web/20211109141828/https://www.poetr...)
Hmm... calculation device? I thought the premise here is that actually doing the calculation is not necessary - a tenet you invoke in order to say say elsewhere [1] that the computational complexity does not matter, as the notionally simulated universe exists anyway.
But if that were so, would it not do away with the distinction between simulating and simulated universes, creating the situation where every possible universe exists in every extant universe?
That's a lot of universes.
Think of it this way. Graham's number is an absolutely enormous number, right? Let's assume for the sake of argument that nobody has ever computed the Graham's-number-th digit of pi. We know for certain that there is a Graham's-number-th digit of pi. And we know that if two people calculated it independently, they'd get the same digit. But (at least in this hypothetical) nobody has actually ever done the calculation to see what the Graham's-number-th digit of pi is. Given all I've said so far, the act of finding out the Graham's-number-th digit of pi seems more like an act of discovery of something that already existed than an act of invention of something that didn't already exist. So, it seems quite reasonable to many to conclude that numbers "exist."
Also, Iah's view does imply that our universe does not encompass all of existence. It also implies that no calculation device need exist anywhere.
On another hand the opposite (requiring a mapping from that computation to real-world objects) is absurd too, because for any sequence of numbers you can always find a mapping to physical objects (notice that you can make the mapping arbitrarily complex). So why require the extra steps?
My opinion is that it follows that asking about existence without specifying the domain in which sth exists is meaningless.
You can say that the number 42 exists in the domain of integers. You cannot say whether the number 42 exists in general. It wouldn't mean anything.
Similarly you can say that Harrison Ford exists in our universe but Han Solo doesn't. But you cannot say whether one or the other exist in general.
It seems to take a highly reductionist pathway: reality/experience can be simulated -> simulation is computation -> computation is mathematics -> mathematical objects exist regardless of whether anybody has discovered them.
This implies that all conceivable universes (including the ones where a lot of really bad things happen on an eternal loop) are possessed of the exact same reality as ours.
For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...
I hadn't heard of it before, and will need to do some more reading, but at a high-level it does look to be the same line of thinking.
Note that quantum modelling those effects go as O(a^N). If you want to hand-wave away exponential computational cost, then I cry foul: the details matter, and I posit that you cannot build a computer that is more powerful than the universe itself.
What I'm suggesting is that the calculation never needs to be done, which means the complexity of it does not matter. Whether it's O(1) or O(a^N) they're both far smaller than the infinite number of potential states.
Well, that's your preference then. But personally I want to see the Mets play the Yankees because it's profoundly unsatisfying to believe that all possible outcomes are computable and therefore on an equal basis. I daresay that idea is so bad that if you took it seriously, it would die out with your genes/memes. (Not that that matters since you could travel to and impregnate every woman on Earth).
So, subjectively, it'd still feel as if you'd gone to the game without knowing what was going to happen and then exactly one outcome (and not all outcomes) happened. But from a more objective perspective, all outcomes are indeed on an even footing.
Furthermore, I think that anything existence (including mathematics, physics, etc) are by relation to everything else that is existence; there is no such thing as an "existence" that is truly independently from everything else, including mathematics (and, the various possible mathematical structures, and physical universes), etc. (If it is truly independent, how can numbers be prime and composite, and how can objects collide with each other, and how can planets moving around the Sun by gravity, and how can people have ideas about the gods, etc?)
(However, there is then the consideration if such a simulation is being made which is then being interacted with by outside (e.g. as in Star Trek); in that case, it is I/O, so you can make "Mathematical Universe Hypothesis with I/O". This could be called as a kind of nondeterminism, I suppose; although, a constraint may be produced by their combination.)
https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/mathematica...
[0] Boltzmann brains are cognitively unstable, because the logic leading to them says you should expect to be one, but also that they have exponentially increasingly false "memories" the further back they "remember", including the beliefs leading to the conclusion that you probably are one. If all maths is real, this is worse to at least the degree that Aleph one is bigger than Aleph null, possibly more.
Similarly, our universe may be infinite but isn’t at all guaranteed to produce multiple Earths with identical evolutionary history such that another or even many “versions” of you exist somewhere/when.
Saying we won’t see any even numbers in an infinite set of odd numbers is obvious as the rules of that infinite set have been defined. There are no such rules in the universe.
Why are you assuming this to be true? Due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, it's impossible to perfectly know "one state of human existence". So the rest of the thought experiment seems moot.
No, they really don't. You might say that the energy requirement approaches Graham's Number, or TREE(3), and maybe that's somewhat plausible, but Graham's Number and TREE(3) are both minisculely insignificant compared to infinity. If you ever counted that high, you'd be no closer to reaching infinity than you were when you started.
But who says that Graham's Number or TREE(3) are large numbers in the universe doing the simulating? Why would the simulating universe be as incomprehensibly tiny and simple as ours is?
Oh sure, our universe looks big to us. But who are we to judge its size?
I really like Iain M. Banks moral argument against universe being simulated. No intelligence capable of simulating it would be immoral enough to create something so horrible. Unless they are a total bastard. So it's not a 100%.
Based on what just the human race has demonstrated across history, this claim is arguable at best.
What if the intelligence doesn't even know we're here? Or that we are (or believe ourselves to be) conscious?
Do you feel guilty playing The Sims?
Op’s conjecture can be thought of as the same conjecture as proposing that things in the past and future still / already exist, a conjecture that I find compelling based on dimensional reductionist thought experimentation.
Telling persuasive stories can achieve essentially the same outcome, is much easier, and is already an accepted convention.
The missing component in the thesis is that it argues that consciousness is just an abstract, immaterial object that consists of states. That's not true because to be conscious you need matters.
1.) It doesn't appear computationally feasible to simulate general relativity
2.) Quantum mechanics is described by probability distribution equations that don't have "states" but superpositions of states
The "simulation not required" hypothesis eliminates the inconvenience of infinite regress: what simulator runs the simulator, and what runs that one ...
I'm not sure, but I think it leads to infinite recursion instead:
In philosophy, theories of time are categorized in A- and B- theories [1].
In B-theoretic time, the difference between past, present and future is only subjective. Objectively, all points in time exist and are equally real. I view this to mean that there isn't any particular difference in the degree of reality between our reality and any mathematical model or imagined reality. Only with A-theoretic time are you objectively more real than Donald Duck.
We're building digital twins of much of the universe around ourselves at different scales. We're even building digital twins of ourselves.
We're improving the technology that enables that twinning quite rapidly.
We're improving the technology that allows for emulating a virtual environment.
And in fact, there's a remarkable overlap in how we are running those virtual environments and the fundamental building blocks we've experimentally validated in our own universe.
The part that I think people get caught up in is the assumption that we'd need to ourselves calculate a 1:1 copy for us to be in a calculated copy.
But at macro scales the universe behaves as if things are continuous, not discrete/quantized. And the mechanics of quantization remains incompatible with the mechanics of continuous theories like GR.
The nuances of that quantization map to how we fudge fidelity in our own virtual representations.
So we need not create a 1:1 copy for us to be in a copy any more than one would need to create Minecraft at a 1:1 scale within Minecraft for Minecraft to exist.
Additionally, looking at mechanics isn't the only way to investigate whether we are in a virtual copy. For example, in many copies we make, there's some acknowledgement of that state woven into the world lore.
Indeed, in our own world in antiquity was a set of beliefs attributed to one of the most well known figures in history that espoused that we were in a copy of an original world in which an original humanity came to exist spontaneously and then brought forth the creator of this copy within light with us in their archetype before they ultimately perished. The full text at the heart of these beliefs was lost for centuries before being found again the same month as ENIAC ran its first computer program.
This text claimed the proof for what it said about a creator of light would be found in motion and rest (the domain now called Physics), and the group following it claimed that the ability to find an indivisible point within bodies would only be possible in the non-physical.
That's quite the coincidence in an age when we are moving towards putting the AI emulating our digital twins literally into light with optoelectronics and are very focused on the discovery of indivisible points within the domain of study of motion and rest.
(The name of the text is literally translated as "the good news of the twin" and its main point is that if one understands its content they will not fear death or worry about the soul's dependence on a physical body.)