Is reality a simulation? | Hacker News Reader

Is reality a simulation?

nasca.org.uk

8 pointsohyes6 comments

"the idea of Ancestor Simulation has been around for quite some time. However it did not receive widespread publicity until 2001 when Nick Bostrom from the Department of Philosophy at Oxford University in England wrote a paper entitled 'Are you living in a computer simulation'?"

A slightly less well known version of the idea was written around 400 BC by some guy named Plato.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Allegory_of_t...

Of course Plato couldn't hold a candle to the likes of Nick Bostrom.

And we mustn't forget an even earlier version of the idea that's been around for thousands of years even before Plato. The Hindus believed the world was illusion. This was echoed later by the Buddha (around the same time as Plato).

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Maya_(illusio...

Of course Plato couldn't hold a candle to the likes of Nick Bostrom.

Is this kind of disparagement necessary?

The more technology we have, the less we resemble the creatures encoded in our DNA. Humans are made to be lazy but are only truly happy when striving to overcome obstacles. Once we have AI even work will have lost its meaning. I wouldn't be surprised if, at that point, we spend all of our time gaming. Living in a simulation of our ancestors can be considered the ultimate game. Some things are elegantly explained by such a theory. The weirdness of quantum mechanics? A computational shortcut.

One of my favourite parts of Accelerando was when the (post)humans observed some strange stellar activity far out in the galaxy, and speculated that it was a post-singularity civilization running a timing attack on the virtual machine that's hosting the universe.

Its not possible to argue against this idea in a comment because it takes a lot of work to disprove. Try reading "The fabric of reality" by quantum physicist/computationalist David Deutsch.

This is the exact same thing as believing in God and the afterlife.

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