X-Message-Number: 16644 From: Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 08:36:21 EDT Subject: Re: Is life a game? --part1_34.16e009f2.2865e745_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Well of course we're probably all living in a simulation. Every inhabited universe has zillions of simulations with only one "real" level, so the odds are huge that you're in a simulation. And the simulations have simulations in them, so you're probably ten levels down. (But then again we might be real and if we screw up we'll destroy not only ourselves but all the potential simulations we could build.) >I would speculate that in order to win, one would have to come to know things that count for points before the other contestants did. And the piece of knowledge that would count for the most points would be to fully realize that you are in a fantasy world. Given that your knowledge base consists of simulated facts, you might want to question your conclusions... but I agree it would be interesting to find out how far down in videogame land we are. I think that "realizing" that you're in a simulation is easy, "proving" it is what we're after. (Whether you would "win" anything then is a good question.) >So the question that puzzles me, as much as Descartes probably questions what would be a starting point for knowledge, is: "If you created a perfect fake world, how could you ever know if the world you were in was fake?" You give me a good idea for a new drug-approval category: "Anti-solipsism drug." (In the meantime, try not using caffeine for a while, Dave!) --part1_34.16e009f2.2865e745_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16644