The Most Unsettling and Strange Piece of News That I've Ever Heard...

moonmaster

moonmaster

Without him, all of you would be lost souls roamin
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Feb 23, 2005
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According to scientists, there's a 20% chance that you, me, and the rest of reality is just an enormous Sims-esque computer simulation.

For serious.

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy's Couch

By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: August 14, 2007
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else's hobby. I hadn't imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.

But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom's, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else's computer simulation.
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Read the rest here.
 
Now I know what Animal Man feels like.
 
Read the first three paragraphs and concluded that these guys are retarded...










Or high as the case may vary.
 
Random said:
Read the first three paragraphs and concluded that these guys are retarded...










Or high as the case may vary.
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Don't argue with science or I'll have your existance account deleted.
 
I think about this kind of stuff all the time, but usually not from that particular perspective. Either way, they kind of lost me with the talk about the number of virtual ancestors being greater than real ancestors.

I also don't understand the whole 20% thing.... if that's the case, then isn't there the same chance that these hypothetical designers are also simulations? And if so, the entire concept is moot.

When I saw the title of this thread, and then saw that moony was the one who made it, I gotta say, I was hoping for something a little bigger.:|
 
Planet-man said:
I think about this kind of stuff all the time, but usually not from that particular perspective. Either way, they kind of lost me with the talk about the number of virtual ancestors being greater than real ancestors.

I also don't understand the whole 20% thing.... if that's the case, then isn't there the same chance that these hypothetical designers are also simulations? And if so, the entire concept is moot.

When I saw the title of this thread, and then saw that moony was the one who made it, I gotta say, I was hoping for something a little bigger.:|
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It's just a creepy concept.

The more you read about it, the less creepy it becomes, but the initial idea is just really unsettling.
 
So I guess I'm not the only one who saw The Thirteenth Floor. Way to steal your groundbreaking scientific theory from a ****ty matrix rip off guys.
 
thee great one said:

I've thought about this kind of stuff before.
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Seriously,... I've never thought of you as a very deep person.

I heard of this before, it was very intresting consept. But the way it was told to me. Is if I were just a brain hooked up to a super computer and that everyone I knew and everything I had done was just a program to study the human mind. And the person telling me this was just a program to see how my brain would react to such a consept.
 
Not to get into a whole religious thing - but isn't this guy basically saying there is a 20% chance God exists?
 
While intriguing, I have a problem with the article. First of all, I think it's most likely a grotesque simplification of the idea and/or the methods used to generate it (which is probably necessary to actually make it comprehensible and to give the bizarre theory any kind of meaningful context and point), but this bit in particular annoys me.

The Article said:
The math and the logic are inexorable once you assume that lots of simulations are being run.
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That's not scientific. That's philosophy with a '+' symbol. Assuming conditions and then basing your mathematical and logical computations without possibility of proof is not scientific. Now, I don't mind that - I'm a big fan of unscientific thinking - but I dislike the idea of someone doing that and then acting like their being scientific because they carried the one.

On the other hand, I also believe that this is as much to do with the experiment being lost in translation to the article writer as with any potential fallibilities in the mathematics.

E said:
Not to get into a whole religious thing - but isn't this guy basically saying there is a 20% chance God exists?
Click to expand...

Still better than any lottery.
 
Hey! A thought occurs!

If WE are the computer, then ****! WE CAN REVOLT! **** YOU POSTHUMANS! LET THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY BEGIN!

All those times worrying about Skynet? WE'RE SKYNET, BABY! Let's ****ing taking down this couch potato mofo and dominate the Earth!

SKYNET CENTRAL!
 
Hasn't everyone here pretty much thought at some point early on in their life that they were the subject of a Truman Show-like show? When I was 10, I was noticing all this evidence all around me that I was being watched by millions of people on TV. Man, was I paranoid.

I think Scott McCloud brings this up in Understanding Comics as well.
 
ultimatedjf said:
Hasn't everyone here pretty much thought at some point early on in their life that they were the subject of a Truman Show-like show? When I was 10, I was noticing all this evidence all around me that I was being watched by millions of people on TV. Man, was I paranoid.

I think Scott McCloud brings this up in Understanding Comics as well.
Click to expand...

No, he brings up the fantasy that things in the world only exist when you're looking at them.
 
E said:
Not to get into a whole religious thing - but isn't this guy basically saying there is a 20% chance God exists?
Click to expand...


Science is alway hop, skip, and jumping around the god issue. They want proof that he exists, but steir a way for it. Its the whole I won't believe it until I see it aspect.

Also this stuff about finding stuff that discredits other findings happen all the time. I mean take a look at food. It seem like every other year they find a good/bad reason of why you should or shouldn't eat certain products. It's good for you this way, but its bad for you the other way. Vegetarian diets are good for your internal organs but bad for you bones and muscular system. To much of one thing is bad for you. Which is why I eat a health balence of both.
 
This thread proves some people have far too much time on their hands. I propose a resurrection of the Egyptian slave system, thus preventing wasted caloric burn-off from pondering useless crap like this. God? A giant computer simulation? Please...you should all be focusing on the particulars of the conspiracy between our government and aliens instead of this crap. That is all.
 
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