X-Message-Number: 17406
From: 
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 12:36:48 EDT
Subject: Re: Simulation

From: Scott Badger <>:

> Anyway, two counter-counter-points came to me
 >recently: 
> 
> (1) We really can't make any assumptions about how
> reasonable/unreasonable it might be for an unknown
> entity to go to that much trouble.  
 
I think we can guess some basic logic from any advanced "thinking system":
If the Universe is what we see, its laws are the same for all and so the 
basic logic is the same for all.
If we are in a simulation produced by someone else, our logic is the product 
of that simulation, and so of the logic of the simulation operator. In both 
cases our logic is the same as the one of a potential simulation operator or 
an alien logic thinking system.

 >(2) If this is a simulation, it may be the case that
 >the designer did not actually create the rest of the
 >universe. It may be that the designer only feeds us
 >(hubble, astronomers, etc) the information about the
 >universe.  

Not so simple. Think for example about the spherical shape of the Earth, If 
it is not real, then the gravitational field is strictly perpendicular to the 
ground, without 3rd order effects. So there is no tide and on long shoots, 
soccer balls must rotate along an axis parallel to the ground. We don't see 
that on TV pictures, so the Earth IS a sphere (or nearly so). There are many 
effect of that kind, most people don't bother at. Why then include that in a 
simulation?

 >IOW, when anyone looks at a point of light
 >we call a star, there's no proof the star is really
 >there.  We may examine the point of light with our
 >very best instruments and come to many conclusions
 >about the nature of that point of light, but for all
 >we know, it may just be information "about" the point
 >of light, not the point of light itself.  After all,
 >it wouldn't take nearly as much memory/resources to
 >provide us with information about the rest of the
 >universe as it would to actually try to simulate the
 >universe. 

Where come from the energy of the Sun? If it don't imply nuclear physics, how 
it shines continuously for 4.5 billion years? I have found myself some 
fossils at least 100 million years old, that is too much for anything else 
but nuclear fusion.

Well, I understand that "modern" life in the society could be run as well in 
a simulation. This is because the human society is closed on itself in a 
schizophrenic way. This is not the reality of the world. Get a lot of 
inhumanity, and you'll see that. :-)

Yvan Bozzonetti.

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