Hacker News Reader

Comment by hdjjhhvvhga | Hacker News Reader

He was also seriously convinced Stanislaw Lem is a team of communist agents, he didn't believe one person could ever produce that kind of content. So I'd take everything he says with more than a grain of salt.

View on HN

That Stanislaw Lem was a pseudonym for a collective of authors seems to have been fairly common belief. My mother read his books in the 60s and 70s (in the US), and according to her it was 'well known' at the time that the books where written by several people writing under a single pseudonym.

He's also the godfather of the simulation hypothesis, make of that what you will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE

There are legitimate and recent experiments that have been done to test the simulation hypothesis.

In my opinion, it's really not that far-fetched and the potential fact that we could be living in a simulated universe has no significant effect or consequences for humanity.

I suppose that depends on if we are in a "hands off" simulation or one that is being actively modified. It would also depend on the purpose of the simulation, the duration, the ethical views of the being(s) running the simulation. It seems to me that there is a lot more that can go wrong, so to speak, with a simulation than there is with base level reality. There are more things that can go right as well though, technically a simulation could implement an after life or reincarnation or have some means of exiting the simulation.

If the Universe is cyclic and recreated again and again and has the same outcome(and appparently has no beginning and end), simulation hypothesis have problems to explain why things that follow exactly the same tracks again and again can't be part of Universe as natural mechanism observable by enough developed brains and why there is such necessity for someone to create something that is natural. It also concentrates on humans, but there is nothing that prevents animals - at least for mammals to "remember or guess future". Or even things to "remember" their place, that humans can observe. Anecdotally, but some of the issues, that are discussed in regards human behaviour, were already present in old folk tales, that discuss exactly the same issues, that simulation hypothesis have about human behavior, as in those old folk tales it was claimed that humans initially knew their fate and behaved accordingly without any regards for others when their end came, so they were robbed of that full understanding of what is their fate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com