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Comment by benlivengood | Hacker News Reader

The thought that sticks in my mind is mathematical realism; if we can prove the mathematical existence of the outcome of a simulation (nothing harder than inductively showing that the state of a simulation is well-defined at state S for the first and all successive S) then what's the difference between things in the simulation actually existing v.s. possibly existing? All of the relationships that matter between states of the simulation are already proven to exist if we looked at (calculated) them, so what necessary property can we imagine our Universe having that the possible simulation does not?

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> so what necessary property can we imagine our Universe having that the possible simulation does not?

It lacks the magical spark, the qualia, the spirit, the transcendent. Or what people like to imagine makes our own reality special. Our own reality cannot be understood because it's such a hard problem, and it "feels like something" (maybe like a bat?), while a simulation is just math on CPUs. Consciousness is a hard problem because it transcends physical sciences, it's so great that it can exist even outside the realm of verification. /s

Hope you forgive the rant, it's just amazing how much philosophy can come from the desire to fly above the mechanics of life. But what they missed is that the reality of what happens inside of us is even more amazing than their imaginary hard problem and special subjective experience. The should look at the whole system, the whole game, not just the neural correlates. What does it take to exist like us?

A simulated hurricane doesn't kill anyone.

But it may be possible that there's no such thing as "simulating" intelligence. If you do certain calculations, that is "intelligent." Same for consciousness, etc.

A simulated hurricane would kill simulated people.

Think of simulated children! Oh the simulated pain..

"We live inside a dream."

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