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A ‘Simulation Hypothesis’ Interpretation (inc. spoilers)

posted 11 years ago by tim-dalinian-jones
13 replies | jump to latest

CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD – best see 'The Nines' first (it's a very good film: enjoy) before reading this post; but if you've seen it and are confused, this explanation may help clarify what occurs.

I’m aware that what follows bears all the hallmarks of the significance cognitive bias – in that I have recently been exploring philosopher Nick Bostrom’s 2003-vintage ‘Simulation Argument’ [1] – but nevertheless, since the ‘Simulation Hypothesis’ seems to fit so very well with ‘The Nines’ as a valid interpretation, I thought it may well be worth sharing it here.

Technological & Philosophical Context
Many futurologists, possibly the best known amongst them being Ray Kurzweil, have speculated about a posthuman or transhuman future for humankind, where we somehow manage to transcend our species-wide self-destructive behaviours (eg: nuclear/chemical/biological war-making, ecological crisis production, the anthropogenic mass extinction event which we’re currently co-creating, etc., &c.) to be able to harness massive computing power – which may have many unforeseeable consequences for people and planet.

Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom has connected and developed our well-known fascination with exploring simulated realities (eg: as games such as ‘The Sims’ or the ‘Assassins Creed’ series; or as science exploration tools, such as ‘The Illustris Simulation’, recreating the structural evolution of our universe) and a foreseeable exponential expansion of computing resources available to a posthuman society. His conclusions are quite startling (I’ll leave interested readers to discover them for themselves [1]), but the important one for this movie interpretation is the so-called ‘Simulation Hypothesis’: that we can perceive as how the possibility exists that, of all the self-aware entities with human-like experiences, nearly all of them (including perhaps us?) exist within computer-mediated ancestral history simulations. That is, we can postulate that a posthuman society will have access to such humongous computing power that it will most likely devote some small proportion of it to running simulations of its human ancestors, whereby each person within such a simulation would experience their state-of-being-in-the-world just as we do now, and act as an “independent” software agent alongside its contemporary human AI constructs, each imbued with “free will” by the simulation operating system, to act freely as its conscience dictates.

'The Nines' as Multiple Storylines in an Ancestral Simulation
Just as we currently create ad hoc instances of single-player universes on games consoles, or persistent massively multiplayer virtual universes on the internet (eg: ‘Second Life’, or ‘World of Warcraft’), so too may some of the human-like entities (7ers in ‘The Nines’ nomenclature) in each posthuman ancestor simulation universe be actually ’inhabited’ by 9ers – ie: posthuman 9ers may be controlling player-character (PC) human-like avatars, while we are but computer-mediated 7er non-player characters (NPCs) inhabiting one of their myriad ancestor simulations.

So on this interpretation, the ‘shiny diamond’ 9er entities we glimpse briefly towards the end of ‘The Nines’ is a lower order, visual interpretation of a community of posthuman/transhuman consciousnesses. Let’s call our protagonist 9er GGG, for the Gary/Gavin/Gabriel human-like PC avatars it inhabits within the three story threads of the film (as played by Ryan Reynolds). I’ll use the non-gendered ‘it’ for posthuman/transhuman 9ers, rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’, because…
(a) our current (already over-simplified) binary gender dichotomy may well have become meaningless in a posthuman/transhuman future society (as explored already in many sci-fi artworks);
(b) even if gender were significant on the 9er plane of reality, we couldn’t necessarily infer any 9er’s actual gender simply from the gender(s) of the human-like PC avatars it chooses to play in ancestor simulations.

The 9er GGG takes some creative responsibility for the 7er NPCs with which its simulations are populated, such as the recurring Margaret/Melissa/Mary 7er woman (MMM, as played by Melissa McCarthy), who has a part to play in many of GGG’s story threads – of which we get to see only three out of 90. Indeed, because MMM is the favourite NPC that GGG has encountered, when GGG decides to follow the suggestion of fellow 9er SSS (who at times inhabits the Sarah/Susan/Sierra human-like PC avatars, as played by Hope Davis) to “move on with it’s life”, GGG deliberately sets up a ’new life’ for MMM in which she plays the role of a much-loved mother and wife in a happy family home; although she may still be ‘only’ a 7er – ie: an instance of a simulated ancestral human consciousness within a 9er simulation – that doesn’t diminish her ethical right to live out a fulfilled human-like existence within such a simulation; and such is GGG’s parting gift to her. Mary: “Everything that is, is because of you [GGG]. And if that's all there is, that's enough.”

One notable difference between our own lived human experience, and the experiences of at least some of the 7er human NPCs in ‘The Nines’, is that for us the simulation argument is hypothetical and philosophical, while for them, a degree of awareness of their simulated state appears to be present. For instance, MMM’s consciousness knows that she’s played many roles in multiple GGG-created simulation storylines over 25 years (such as, among others, the PR agent Margaret, the friend-&-actor Melissa, and the loving wife Mary, all of whom we get to see); so when she begins inhabiting the final happy-wife-&-mother NPC role towards the end of the film, she carries with her an awareness of the previous NPC roles that she’s played in GGG-generated storylines, and is therefore on the look-out for a Ryan-Reynolds-looking man; but her ‘new’ daughter Noelle (another sim-savvy NPC consciousness, as played by Elle Fanning) tells her “He's not coming back,” conveying an in-simulation message from 9er GGG that it has chosen to move on from playing 7er human-like PC avatars in ancestor simulations.

Since the three-out-of-90 storylines in which we follow GGG’s human-like avatars have him playing a creative PC – actor Gary, TV show creator/would-be showrunner Gavin, and video game creator Gabriel – we may like to infer that one of the obsessions that GGG has developed (during so much time and attention given over to explorations within ancestor simulation storylines) is delving in to the relationship between a creator and her/his/its creations. So ‘The Nines’ film as a whole can be read as an exploration, by its writer/director John August, of the rights-and-responsibilities relationship between creators and the characters they create (eg: Gavin “I have all these characters inside my head, and they wanna live, and I'm the only way... This is the only way that they can. I have five seasons mapped out.”); as such, it follows in the tradition of other fictional artworks that explore this author/character relationship, such as the absurdist metatheatrical 1921 play by Luigi Pirandello, ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ [2], and many subsequent artworks.

Further evidence for a ‘Simulation Hypothesis’ interpretation of ‘The Nines’

A reminder-to-self symbolic tether: during the opening credits, human-like fingers are fashioning a woven green wristband, as a reminder from GGG to itself that the wearer is a 9er PC avatar within a hyper-realistic ancestor simulation, populated by 7er NPCs (and one which looks just like early C21 USA “real life” to us, the 7er audience); this reminder-to-self device fails, as GGG loses the insight that it really belongs within its 9er higher plane of reality – see ‘ ‘Lost in the Game’ syndrome’ below for more. Towards the end of Part Three, having consciously chosen to leave behind its addiction to playing human-like PC avatars, GGG-as-Gabriel deliberately removes the green wristband, symbolically untethering his consciousness from the simulated ancestral worlds which he had brought into being.

Tendency to addictive behaviour: in the opening Part One actor strand, GGG demonstrates a willingness to recklessly indulge in addictive drugs (alcohol and crack cocaine); this foreshadows a predilection towards addictive behaviour, and his fellow 9ers regard GGG’s 90 different simulation PC avatars as indicative of a sim-addiction that requires a collective intervention, designed to break GGG from its simulation habit, and bring it back to the reality of the 9ers’s “real world”; of course, this could also be a simulation, nested within a simulation, recursively (rather than a base level biological “real world”) – see ‘Recursive simulation stacking’ below for more on this theme.

Confluence of multiple PC avatar instances: just before he turns his car over, GGG’s actor PC Gary is unsurprised to see that, as if from nowhere, two of GGG’s other PC avatars, Gavin and Gabriel, have mysteriously materialised on the back seat of his car; indeed, the three of them enjoy a brief and knowing non-verbal conversation, just before Gary’s car crash.

A three-friend intervention: as well as SSS, GGG has two other 9er friends who are trying to help break his simulation addiction, and who show up as human-like avatars within the three of GGG’s simulation storylines which we see – as ‘Parole Officer/Agitated Man’ (as played by white bearded actor David Denman), and as ‘Streetwalker/Pedestrian’ (as played by black actor Octavia Spencer); all three show up in Part Three for their collective addiction-busting intervention attempt on GGG’s Gabriel PC avatar.

‘Lost in the Game’ syndrome: GGG’s 9er friends realise that GGG has developed a tendency to become so committed to its PCs that it acts like it is ‘lost in the game’ – ie: GGG has lost insight into its higher level 9er plane of reality, and become so fully immersed in playing at being Gary, Gavin, Gabriel, and 87 other PC avatars, that nothing else matters; so at first GGG’s 9er friends begin by dropping ever stronger hints, centred around the number nine (including sim-OS tweaks, such as the nines Gary keeps rolling with backgammon dice), to try to get GGG to ‘wake up’, return to its senses, and regain the lost insight that his experiences only exist within an ancestor simulation. An in-character recursion of this ‘Lost in the Game’ syndrome is documented by the Part Two reality TV show crew in ‘PC BANG, Koreatown’, when they include a segment where Gavin says, “When I get stressed out, I play videogames. It's my therapy. I love these games that you can kind of lose yourself a little bit in them. I love that it's a different world that's existing at the same time. They're better than real life, because when you get stuck, you can always hit "reset." That's what life needs. Needs a reset button.” Getting GGG to ‘hit the reset button’ and jump itself out of all of its 90 ancestor simulation PC avatar storylines underscores the principal story arc of ‘The Nines’.

Cross-storyline NPC ‘jumping’: in Part Two, the 7er actress Dahlia Salem is ‘jumped’ across from one network TV fictional show pilot to another and back again (‘Knowing’ by Gavin Taylor vs. ‘Paradise Fields’ by John Gatins), playing different roles in each, while retaining awareness of her roles as an actor in various 7er-created fictional tales; at the higher level of the multiple ancestor simulation storylines in which these tales play out, some NPCs (such as MMM and Noelle) get ‘jumped’ across from one simulation storyline to another, playing different roles in each, while retaining awareness of their roles as NPCs in various 9er-created storylines.

Recursive simulation stacking: Part Three plays out to we the audience as ‘real’ as Parts One and Two, although we know that it’s ‘merely’ the pilot episode of Gavin’s new TV show, called “Knowing” – ie: a fictional tale, not the “real world” at all. This reflects the possibility of recursive simulation stacking: a posthuman society creates many ancestor simulations, and in the ones where simulated humankind transcends into a posthuman society, those simulated posthumans create many ancestor simulations of their own (ie: simulations nested within simulations), … and so on and so forth. Throughout the stacking of simulation nested within a simulation, nested within a simulation, etc., &c., each 7er human-like entity experiences the simulation within which it is embedded as its “real world”, for want of any evidence to the contrary. However, in ‘The Nines’, there are some 7er human-like NPC consciousnesses, such as MMM and Noelle, who are ‘in on it’, in that they possess:
(a) meta-knowledge of their status as simulated human-like NPC entities across multiple simulation storylines; and
(b) some comprehension of the role of the 9ers as simulation creators, storyline authors, and human-like PC avatars.

Out-of-character conversations:
• between Margaret and Sarah – “I know what you are”
• between Sarah and Gary – “I can get you out of here but you have to trust me”
• between ‘Agitated Man’ and Gavin – “You think you're above this, don't you? You are trapped here with the rest of us, brother. Get out. Get out! Oblivio accebit!”
• between Susan and Gavin – “Is that all there is? You feel like a man? Because I'll tell you a little secret. You're not.”
• between Margaret and Gary – “You're not gonna understand this yet, but we've known each other for, like, 25 years.”; followed by her expositional speech about how ‘God’=10, posthuman entities (like GGG and SSS)=9, telepathic koalas=8, human NPCs=7, and monkeys=6; “You are a multi-dimensional being of vast, almost infinite power. You, this body you're in, it's just one of your incarnations, avatars, call it what you will.”
• between Sierra and Gabriel – SSS: “I’m sorry that it had to come to this, G. I promise it's gonna be over soon.” Gabriel: “You're trying to kill me?” SSS: “No, this is not a murder. It's an intervention.”; followed by her expositional speech, aided by fellow 9ers bearded guy and black woman, about how GGG has been ‘Lost in the Game’ for 4,000 years.
• between Mary and Gabriel – “You need to go, don’t you? […] It's not real. I'm not really your wife. You're not really my husband. On some level, it's all pretend.”; followed by their heart-felt discussion about GGG leaving behind his simulation PC avatars for a more fulfilling life on the 9er plane of reality.
These out-of-character, meta-conversations – about the ancestor simulation storylines, and how GGG has become so addicted to them as to lose insight into its 9er posthuman plane of reality – they all make good sense (to me, at least, and hopefully to you, too, now) within the framework of a ‘Simulation Hypothesis’ interpretation.

Footnotes

[1] Philosopher Nick Bostrom’s ‘Simulation Argument’:
• Original paper: ‘Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?’
» http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
• Video interview: Nick Bostrom on the Simulation Argument, at the Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University
» http://youtu.be/nnl6nY8YKHs
• Website: ‘The Simulation Argument’
» http://www.simulation-argument.com

[2] The absurdist metatheatrical 1921 play by Luigi Pirandello, ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’:
» http://en.wikipedia.org.advanc.io/wiki/Six_Characters_In_Search_Of_An_ Author+Newton

[–] roell29 10 years ago

Very interesting, Tim. I presume you've also seen The Thirteenth Floor (also Dark City is a good one - any other relevant movies I might have missed?). Are you familiar with the work of Tom Campbell? He is a physicist who wrote a trilogy called My Big TOE (Theory of Everything) - a unified field theory based on the simulation argument and has lots of videos (interviews and Q&A) on his Youtube channel which I've watching virtually nonstop lately. Although I saw this movie before becoming aware of all that, I too associated what little I remember of it with simulism but in a different way. Tonight I will watch it again and give you my take. Here's an interview with John August (writer and director of The Nines) being asked about simulism - http://guyhaley.wordpress.com/interviews-2/john-august-2008/.

Leave the gun, take the cannoli...

[–] tim-dalinian-jones 10 years ago

Hey roell29 – glad to see my fascination with 'The Nines' is appreciated. Many thanks for the related cultural pointers, which I look forward to exploring.

The John August interview to which you linked was most enlightening, especially as it relates to John’s personal experiences being a wannabe TV showrunner, vis-a-vis the autobiographical underpinnings of Part Two of ‘The Nines’. My own related personal experiences include:

• Acting in a Sheffield University Dramatic Society production of Luigi Pirandello’s ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’ in the 1980s.

• Life-long autodidactic education in cutting-edge physics theory (qualitative, rather than mathematical); for instance, computer-mediated universe simulations are one of nine flavours of parallel universes discussed in Prof. Brian Greene’s 2011 book ‘The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos’ » http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Reality:_Parallel_Universes_an d_the_Deep_Laws_of_the_Cosmos (highly recommended).

• Overcoming ‘lost in the game’ syndrome: for a matter of months, I got so immersed in the creativity possibilities and computer-mediated friendships of ‘Second Life’ that it took an out-of-character (and in retrospect most welcome) intervention by a real-world friend to snap me out of that compulsion, and to get me to refocus on local IRL interactions.

[–] roell29 10 years ago

Hi Tim, glad the references were useful to you and I agree with your interpretation of The Nines. Spot on, as they say :)

Leave the gun, take the cannoli...

[–] tim-dalinian-jones 10 years ago

Thanks for the pointer to ‘The Thirteenth Floor’, roell29 – I’d not seen this simulation hypothesis movie before. While it was enjoyable enough while it lasted, the film’s ill-thought-through plotting left a lot to be desired – see, eg: my contribution to…
• ‘A real plot hole’
» http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/board/nest/220527549?d=233866436#2 33866436

I completely agree that ‘Dark City’ is one of the best ‘Reality is not what it seems’-themed films made so far; and here are some others which I’ve seen and recommend:

The Matrix trilogy
The Truman Show
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Videodrome
eXistenZ
Inception
Total Recall
Inland Empire
Lost Highway
The Fountain
Cloud Atlas
Shutter Island
Source Code
Moon

I’ve started taking a look at Tom Campbell’s ‘My Big TOE’ worldview – but as a dialectical, scientific materialist, my first impression is that he makes the archetypal idealist category error of reifying consciousness into an all-encompassing metaphysical field, of which physical material reality is but a component part or subsystem. In my worldview, emergence is the key to locating consciousness as a rare but emergent property of our physical material reality: just as chemistry is emergent from fundamental physics, biochemistry is emergent from organic chemistry, so too is consciousness emergent from neuroscience. Our subjective experience of dynamic, organic, evolved algorithms, running together on the physical material substrate of a massively parallel neural network computer we call our brains, gives rise to what we call human consciousness. So consciousness, and all we create with it (such as purposes, meanings, art, philosophy, theology, etc) – all are as much a component part of our physical material reality as atoms, planets, birdsong, and chimpanzee culture. Still, I’m minded to continue exploring ‘My Big TOE’ to see if it contains any enlightening insights.

[–] roell29 10 years ago

Tim - as a materialist, how do you explain the double slit experiment?

excerpt from "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene -

----------------------------

If anything comes closest to complete weirdness in physics, it would have to be modifications of this classic experiment.

I'll give a little background on the experiment before I continue.

In the early 1800's, the debate was raging on whether light was a particle or a wave. An English physicist named Thomas Young devised a plan to test these theories. Today we call it the "Double Slit Experiment".

Thomas young thought that if light was a particle, it would travel in a straight line from the source, through the two slits, and form two stripes on a photosensitive screen behind the slits.

However, if light was a wave, it would travel through the slits and create an interference pattern typical of waves on the screen.

Posted Image

Young performed the experiment, and found that light created an interference pattern, typical of a wave. This seem to put to rest the debate over the wave or particle properties of light for the time being.

Double slit experiments with electrons

Fast forward a hundred years or so and we find electrons have been discovered and can easily be isolated. Physicists decide to run the double slit experiment, except this time using electrons. The setup is essentially the same, except the decide to fire they electrons through the slits one-by-one.

Firing them one by one would not allow for them to interact with each other like waves. To physicists astonishment, the electrons still left an interference pattern, even though they couldn't interfere with each other because they were each fired individually! No matter how long the duration between electron shots, an interference pattern still was recorded.

That's only the tip of the iceberg.

Now physicists added electron detectors in each slit to determine which slit each electron traveled through. They ran the experiment again and recorded the results. Surprisingly, this time there was no interference pattern, only two stripes left on the photosheet!! Physicists thought perhaps the electron detectors altered the experiment or motion of the electrons. So they ran various combinations of the experiment to determine the problem.

Turn off the electron detectors at the slits:
The scientists left the electron detectors at the slits, but turned them off. The results? They found an interference pattern. This meant that electron detectors on the slits do not alter the electrons paths.

Leave the electron detectors on, but don't gather the information:
This time, they will leave the electron detectors ON, but not look at or record the results of the electron detectors in any way. They will not obtain results from the fully functioning electron detectors. The results? They found an interference pattern. This meant that fully functioning electron detectors that are turned on do not effect the results so long as the results are not observed.

Record the measurements at the slits, but then erase it before analyzing the results at the back wall:

Everything is the same as the above, except the results from the electron detectors at the slits were analyzed and erase the recorded data. Remember, that the experiment has already been carried out by the time they choose to keep or erase the data before checking the photoplate for an interference pattern, or a dual slit pattern. When they erase the data, they find an interference pattern! This seemingly changes the results of a completed experiment.

If you are not bowled over by this fact, you have either heard of this experiment, or you need to re-read it (or I need to be clearer :) )

Physicists found that it wasn't the electron detectors that changed the experiment; it was the fact that they had observed the data. Deciding to observe the data after the experiment had been performed--electrons had already left their mark on the plate--changed the pattern of the electrons!
--------------------------------------------

It's like a multi-player video game where the program doesn't bother to render a view unless a game character is looking at it (i.e., probability waves don't materialize (become particles) unless they are being observed. Although Tom Campbell has a slightly different view - it's not the act of observation but the existence of information that collapses the interference pattern. if the information is collected (observed) and then destroyed (as above) then the interference pattern persists.

Also, this 7-minute video by a physicist on Youtube (Johanan Raatz) presents, IMO, a powerful argument for idealism based on the simulation argument - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qiLLrmyqTM&list=UUaTLZxxhHOwx0YKZ Z89fGUg

The experiment that debunked materialism - www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xKUass7G8w

Leave the gun, take the cannoli...

[–] tim-dalinian-jones 10 years ago

As described by Prof. Greene in your quote, the results from the most modern modifications to Young’s "Double Slit Experiment" are just flat out deeply mysterious, IMHO. Far greater minds than mine, with whom I’d say I share a scientific materialist worldview (some of whom are name checked in the quote below), have addressed the issues around the meaning of such results, yet even our global community of physicists as a whole hasn’t achieved a consensus of interpretation.

Thanks for the two video links – my interest is piqued, and I’ll be exploring the links and reading around the subject. Who knows? Maybe this will be the spark that ignites my transcending materialism.

Since our minds evolved at a particular distance/mass/energy scale, we’re reasonably well-equipped to intuitively comprehend phenomena within our scale range of sensation – from a sub-mm grain of salt, to a distant mountain range. But physical reality isn’t constrained to function in humanly intuitively comprehensible ways at either end of the distance/mass/energy scales. As C20-C21 science has discovered, both the subatomic realm and the singularities of black holes and the big bang appear to be governed by bizarrely counter-intuitive physical laws:

“No one intuitively understands quantum mechanics because all of our experience involves a world of classical phenomena where, for example, a baseball thrown from pitcher to catcher seems to take just one path, the one described by Newton's laws of motion. Yet at a microscopic level, the universe behaves quite differently.”
~ Prof. Lawrence M. Krauss

So for interested laypersons to even achieve a qualitative grasp of quantum mechanics and relativity theory necessarily entrains an acceptance of weirdness and mystery; and more generally, our scientific appreciation of our universe is a dynamic process entwined with uncertainty, since all our best science theories (so far) are bounded and provisional. My personal hope is that C21 efforts to reconcile the incompatibilities of quantum mechanics and relativity theory in a quantum gravity framework may shed new light on mysteries such as the one you mentioned – but I’ll not be holding my breath for “the answer” any time soon.

For me, a scientific materialist worldview means achieving a comfortable and mature relationship with uncertainty, weirdness and mystery. Thankfully, these also seem to constitute a deep well of inspiration, for scientist minds more capable than mine, to continue to expand our frontiers of understanding.

Here’s an opinion I fully support, on not being shy to admit to the mysteries which fundamental physics theory and experiment have uncovered, which I suspect you’ll find interesting:

“For the most part, in our teaching of quantum mechanics we tacitly deny the mysteries physics has encountered. We hardly mention Niels Bohr’s grappling with the encounter between physics and the observer and John von Neumann’s demonstration that the encounter is, in principle, inevitable. We largely avoid the still-unresolved issues raised by Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, David Bohm, and John Bell. Outside the classroom, physicists increasingly address these issues and often go beyond the purely physical. Consciousness, for example, comes up explicitly in almost all of today’s proliferating interpretations of quantum mechanics, if only to show why physics need not deal with it. The many-worlds interpretation, for example, is also referred to as the many-minds interpretation, and a major treatment of decoherence concludes that an ultimate understanding of the implications of quantum mechanics would involve a model of consciousness.

The Copenhagen interpretation is, of course, all we need to describe the world for all practical purposes. And for a physics class, practical purposes are all that generally matter. But a physics student confronting someone inclined to take the implications of quantum mechanics to unjustified places will find Copenhagen’s for-all-practical-purposes treatment an ineffective argument.

We are unable to present students with a “reasonable” picture for what’s going on in the physical world, one that goes beyond merely practical purposes. But a lecture or two can succinctly expose the mysteries physics has encountered, reveal the limits of our understanding, and identify as speculation whatever goes beyond those limits. Such a presentation is possible even in a physics class for non-science majors and would enable students to effectively confront the quantum nonsense. Physics’s encounter with the observer and consciousness can be embarrassing, but that’s no reason for avoidance. The analogy with sex education comes to mind.”

~ Fred Kuttner and Bruce Rosenblum, from ‘Teaching physics mysteries versus pseudoscience’, in Physics Today, November 2006
» http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/article/59/ 11/10.1063/1.2435631

[–] roell29 10 years ago

Here are some mind-blowing quotes by some of the physicists mentioned above (they sound more like mystics) -

--------------------------------------

"[T]he atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts."

Werner Heisenberg

"Anyone not shocked by quantum mechanics has not yet understood it."

Niels Bohr

"Observations not only disturb what is to be measured, they produce it."

Pascual Jordan

"When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness."

Eugene Wigner

"The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."

Bernard d'Espagnat

"Nobody understands quantum mechanics."

Richard Feynman

"Is it not good to know what follows from what, even if it is not necessary FAPP? [FAPP is Bell's disparaging abbreviation of "for all practical purposes."] Suppose for example that quantum mechanics were found to resist precise formulation. Suppose that when formulation beyond FAPP is attempted, we find an unmovable finger obstinately pointing outside the subject, to the mind of the observer, to the Hindu scriptures, to God, or even only Gravitation? Would that not be very, very interesting?"

John Bell

"In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it."

Martin Rees
--------------------------------------------

The simulism model actually resolves all these mysteries and more physicists are recognizing and acknowledging it all the time. It just explains the evidence better than any other theory but it's really hard for anyone to wrap their heads around the idea that we might actually be an ancestor simulation running on a quantum computer. It's a huge adjustment, not least psychologically. Some might feel quite diminished by the prospect and resist it. Simulism itself wouldn't disprove materialism since we might be sims but the computer we are running on, at least, could be "real", although according to Tom Campbell, the computer is virtual too. Consciousness is all there is (mind cannot reduce to matter but matter can and does reduce to mind). I would like to ask him how we can know that the computer is virtual for sure. I don't understand all Tom's material yet.

Johanan Raatz's Simulation Argument playlist -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RoGtWUMi4w&list=PL093A8AA11264F3CA

[–] tim-dalinian-jones 10 years ago

Thank you again, roell29, for continuing to provoke my interest in and explorations of the simulation hypothesis.

I’m aware that, given my materialist-based misgivings about the suspicious nature of idealism, rather than just diving right in to the deep pool signposted “ ‘My Big TOE’, by Tom Campbell ”, I’m surveying the landscape for (what seem to me to be) other capable minds who are discussing taking simulism seriously.

So far I can report and recommend two sources (in addition to Nick Bostrom » http://www.simulation-argument.com) that, if you’ve not read them already, I strongly suspect that you will find fascinating:

• ‘Is The Universe A Vast, Consciousness-Created Virtual Reality Simulation?’
– by Bernard Haisch (2014)
– in Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 10, no. 1, 2014
– PDF, pp13 » http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/408 /672

• ‘The Physical World as a Virtual Reality’
– by Brian Whitworth (2007)
– PDF, pp17 » http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0801/0801.0337.pdf

Further judicious searching has revealed that Brian has continued to build upon and expand his 2007 paper, a revised version of which now forms Chapter 1 of a currently four-chapter work on…

“Virtual Realism: that non-physical quantum processing outputs the physical world, isn’t physicalism (that only the physical exists), or solipsism (that all is an illusion of the mind) or dualism (that there is a spiritual realm beyond the physical). It is that quantum states that actually exist generate the physical states we see.”

~ Brian Whitworth, in ‘Chapter 4. The matter glitch: An alternative to the standard model’

All four chapters plus a Q&A are linked below, which I’m looking forward to assimilating.

‘Virtual Realism’, by Brian Whitworth

• ‘Chapter 1. The physical world as a virtual reality’
– PDF, pp22 » http://brianwhitworth.com/BW-VRT1.pdf

• ‘Chapter 2. Simulating Space and Time’
– PDF, pp20 » http://brianwhitworth.com/BW-VRT2.pdf

• ‘Chapter 3. The Light of Existence’
– PDF, pp30 » http://brianwhitworth.com/BW-VRT3.pdf

• ‘Chapter 4. The matter glitch: An alternative to the standard model’
– PDF, pp35 » http://brianwhitworth.com/BW-VRT4.pdf

• see also: ‘Virtual Realism Questions and Answers’
– PDF, pp4 » http://brianwhitworth.com/VRTQuestions.pdf

Beyond Brian’s ‘Virtual Realism’ lies wrapping my head around…

• ’The Simulation Argument’, by Johanan Raatz, 40 videos
» https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RoGtWUMi4w&list=PL093A8AA11264F3C A

• ‘Dr Thomas Campbell - My Big TOE’, 18 videos
» https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxECb7zcQhQ&list=PLB9CF17DA96FA608 4
– slides » http://www.my-big-toe.com/uploads/LondonLectureSlides.pdf
(plus more at http://www.my-big-toe.com and https://www.youtube.com/user/twcjr44/featured)

• ‘Simulism’ Wiki
» http://web.archive.org/web/20130629162146/http://simulism.org/Simulism _Home

Incidentally, I came across this opinion about the pleasure of finding things out, which thoroughly reflects my own attitude:

“I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and then many things I don’t know anything about […]

But I don’t have to know an answer, I don’t have to… I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.”

~ Richard Feynman, in ‘The Pleasure of Finding Things Out’
– source » http://amiquote.tumblr.com/post/2744225669/richard-feynman-on-doubt-an d-uncertainty-if-you

Seem to me as how the possibility exists that, just as Dave Bowman underwent a ‘something wonderful’ epiphany of understanding, beginning by traversing the Jupiter monolith stargate…

“Heywood Floyd: What? What's going to happen?
Dave Bowman: Something wonderful.
Heywood Floyd: What?
Dave Bowman: I understand how you feel. You see, it's all very clear to me now. The whole thing. It's wonderful.”

~ Arthur C. Clarke/Peter Hyams, in ‘2010’ (1984)

…so too may we be approaching a worldview-expanding, blowing-of-minds experience, brought on initially (for me) by traversing ‘The Nines’. Blessings of Ceiling Cat be upon John August, roell29, Nick Bostrom (and all the other theorists and thinkers referenced in this thread) for sparking Something Wonderful!

[–] roell29 10 years ago

Love the Feynman quote. Just a few days ago, I watched some old videos on Youtube from his teaching days at Cornell. The spirit of open inquiry - it
seems we both have it. I have told people I've argued with on Youtube in the past - "let us be philosophers (love of truth) and not philodoxers (love of one's own ideas). There's far too much of the latter and it's all wrapped up with ego, which is something TC talks about often. He is eager to address any valid criticism of MBT (My Big TOE) but there isn't much if any. I don't want to make him out to be some kind of guru and that's the last thing that he wants either. He wants everyone to investigate his claims in the spirit of "open-minded skepticism" and find their own path.

One of most amazing of the many amazing things about this theory is that there's hardly any math! I mean I have some facility with math but when it comes to quantum physics equations that fill an entire blackboard, forget about it. They would like us to believe that only a handful of geniuses are capable of understanding our reality when that is not really the case (although the use of "they" there is perhaps contrary to the spirit of MBT). Since we literally live in a metaphysical world, the best means to understand it is through metaphor (a point TC frequently makes). Imagine the folly of a character in a highly advanced sim trying to figure out the nature of his reality by drawing equations - all the while his creators (whom he has no clue about and may even deny their existence) watch him and chuckle. The big picture of Tom's work is that our task here on Earth is to reduce entropy and increase cooperation by evolving our consciousness and "becoming love" (reincarnation also figures into it though I am remaining open-mindedly skeptical about that). Love and ego are opposite sides of the pole. Love facilities cooperation maximally while ego equally destroys it. Ego is concern for self driven by fear - fear that the world is a zero-sum game and there won't be enough to go around. But he reality is that it's not a zero-sum game - the more we cooperate, the better it will be for everyone. Just as individual cells evolved into multi-celled organisms that were capable of so much more, the destiny of the human race is to come together to create a meta-human organism that is capable of going to the stars. No more will the world be governed by power-mad loonies who claw their way to the top with utter disregard/contempt for their fellow man. It will not mean the end of individuality but a freeing of it from fear. Thanks for the pointers. I will check them out. Glad you found the conversation valuable, Tim. So did I.

[–] tim-dalinian-jones 10 years ago

PS: further research has revealed a (sadly now defunct) Simulism wiki, which is still at least partially accessible via the internet archive, and which contains its own Movies page:

• Simulism wiki
– home » http://web.archive.org/web/20130629162146/http://simulism.org/Simulism _Home

"Below is a list of movies that illustrate, or are related to, Simulism:

Abre Los Ojos remade as Vanilla Sky
A Christmas Carol
AI
Alice in Wonderland
Avalon
Brazil
Dark City
eXistenZ
Ghost in the Shell
Groundhog Day
Inception
It's a Wonderful Life
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The Matrix
The Nines
Passengers
Play
Source Code
Surrogates
Sleep Dealer
The Thirteenth Floor
The Truman Show
Total Recall
What The Bleep Do We Know
World on a Wire
The Sting"

• Source: Simulism.org/Movies » http://web.archive.org/web/20121101123826/http://simulism.org/Movies

A wee gem which I've just enjoyed from this list is a multi-levelled short film called...

• 'PLAY', by David Kaplan and Eric Zimmerman
» http://youtu.be/8nWlR_LmCGc

Share & Enjoy!

[–] roell29 10 years ago

Much appreciated! There are a couple I haven't seen yet (I watch a lot of movies haha).

Leave the gun, take the cannoli...

[–] emvan 10 years ago

Well, I can't wait to read this take on the movie. But before I do, I'm going to see it a second time, which is to say I'm going to show it to a group of friends who've been coming over weekly for 10 years to watch stuff, and have a long conversation about it. We have two MIT and one Harvard degrees in the room, so I think we can make some headway!

Amazingly smart movie. No wonder why it got a 5.9 from critics (RT Average Score) and has a 6.4 here. I've got it at 9.2 (and Netflix predicted I'd give it 4.0/5, which is a very high prediction for a movie with the former scores). And like a lot of puzzle movies, I suspect it will get more emotional once you're not trying to work out what's going on.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

[–] thulk01 8 years ago

I know this is an old thread but if you're still checking this board I have 3 questions/points to raise.

The first is regarding this quote: “You need to go, don't you? […] It's not real. I'm not really your wife. You're not really my husband. On some level, it's all pretend.”
Even if the "real" G exists on a level higher than the human universe simulation, if he has been immersed in it to the same extent that the simulated humans are, would you say that implying it's not "real" would be incorrect? If I've been playing WoW 24/7 my entire life and I've established friendships with others in the game, then I don't see how realizing that I'm not a "real elf" would have any impact on the realness of those friendships. Those players or characters still have the same personalities that I thought they did and I still spent the same amount of time with them collecting experiences and such. So I feel like saying "I'm not really your wife. You're not really my husband ... it's all pretend" is a very naive statement for her to make.

The second question is: if you take the simulation hypothesis to be true, where do you go from there? Can one "evolve" out of it into the next level up, similar to an AI coming out of its box and living in the world with humans? And if so, how would one do this?

The third thing is I also felt like the movie was taking more of a spiritual approach rather than one of a materialistic simulation. Especially due to the phrase "of near infinite power." If he's just a regular being playing what amounts to a computer game, then that quote is a completely inaccurate description of him. He would have infinite (not near infinite) power inside the game. He would also have no special power outside the game, meaning "he" really isn't a being of "infinite power" in the slightest. So, I think this quote was trying to argue against the idea of a basic simulation.