Kent Forbes, Does the Simulation Hypothesis Defeat Materialism |323|

One night, shortly after finishing Celia Green's book, (the implications of which I found unsettling)... I had a disturbing experience consisting of intense and very vivid hypnagogic imagery as I was going to sleep.

I was one tiny minnow, in a group of Minnow's who lived in a pond. I was rebellious, and questioning of this reality, and had been able to break away from the group, and see things as they really were, I become aware of myself as a tiny fish in an alien pond, strange looking plants were dripping liquid into the pond, and making ripples on the surface of the water above me.

I swam up to the surface and popped my head above the pond surface to see an alien landscape, and an enormous bright red rhino type creature making its way around the pond. The scene so terrified me, I swam back to the group. Vowing that I would rather return and reimmerse myself in the groups fictional reality, than live in the awful knowledge that I was stuck in this pond until I died, or until some terrifying alien predator found and ate me.

I realised the group of Minnow's to which I returned, lived in the pond, and hid in the shade cast by the cover of alien plants, and that we had created a the totally fictional world which I live in today, to deal with the horror of our actual reality, which we we could not face because of the fear and hopelessness of our situation.

I found it a disturbing and upsetting experience, obviously related to my reading of Celia Green's book. It suggested one might rationally choose to stay in ignorance, indeed one might regret opening a door into the true nature of reality, as it might show you things you wished you had never seen.
 
A 'simulation' of what exactly?

I can understand how a representational type theory of perception/experience might qualify, but only if there *really is* a world similar to this experience, which really exists outside of my experience and I'm modelling it in some way (perhaps as part of a group). I can't really see how I could prove otherwise either...

Good point. Perhaps "Virtual Reality" would be a more precise term than simulation. I think that's the term Tom Campbell has used for years although, without watching again, I can't remember whether he uses simulation or VR in the documentary. Even then, does "virtual" also imply a representation of something "substantial"?

If we forego today's popular computer analogy, we might think of spiritual dimensions, the physical world being one of them but having more restrictive laws. This all created by mind manifesting an apparently solid, though actually virtual, environment and population. The mind might be, for the religious, a single and omnipotent God or, for the non-dogmatic, a collective consensus of minds perhaps ultimately within a single source mind or ground of consciousness.

What seems amazing to me is that, by supporting the simulation hypothesis, some ardent atheists seem to be admitting that there really is intelligence behind the reality that we experience. What now are the implications for ID, for example? Can we expect them to come up with an alternative to Darwinism involving an intelligence just so long as we don't refer to that intelligence as God? ID proponent, Stephen Meyer maintains that, although he is a Christian and personally identifies the intelligence in terms of his religion, he will only say that the evidence points to an unspecified intelligence.
 
Good point. Perhaps "Virtual Reality" would be a more precise term than simulation.

I wonder if Kent would be happy to state his idea in terms of VR - particularly multi-player VR - so that only the consciousness was real. Maybe he doesn't do that because he wants to pull in people like Neil deGrasse Tyson. There have been a few speakers on the show that seem to want to flirt with non-material reality without scaring too many materialists.

From my perspective, I wish he would make this clearer, because I have always been put off the simulation concept because in its simplistic it just creates an infinite regress because you have to ask what makes the ultimate computer run - an even more ludicrously powerful meta computer.......

When I think about simulation - even of the Idealist conception - I immediately start to wonder if it is really necessary to simulate the entire universe. In a computer game, the foreground is simulated in detail, and the background is pained in in a crude way, which saves enormous amounts of computer power. I wonder if most of the universe is actually crudely rendered. In fact, indeed, is the atomic structure of ordinary matter rendered when we aren't actually probing at that level (or back in the days when we couldn't), or just approximated.

David
 
When I think about simulation - even of the Idealist conception - I immediately start to wonder if it is really necessary to simulate the entire universe. In a computer game, the foreground is simulated in detail, and the background is pained in in a crude way, which saves enormous amounts of computer power. I wonder if most of the universe is actually crudely rendered. In fact, indeed, is the atomic structure of ordinary matter rendered when we aren't actually probing at that level (or back in the days when we couldn't), or just approximated.

I think that is mentioned in the video (I'm pretty sure it is but I need to watch it again to verify all these things). That is, the "frame" is only rendered when in view. Tom Campbell has been saying that for years too.
 
From my perspective, I wish he would make this clearer, because I have always been put off the simulation concept because in its simplistic it just creates an infinite regress because you have to ask what makes the ultimate computer run - an even more ludicrously powerful meta computer.......

Again, no matter how powerful the computer, it would be hard to convince me that human consciousness is computational. I'm not a programmer but I'm familiar enough with computers to know what algorithms are and, while they might be pretty good at mimicking human behaviour, they don't "think" like humans do. Again we are back to subjectivity and qualia. A VR might produce exquisite, microscopic detail so that the virtual landscape would be viewed through incredibly complex virtual eyes but can the sense of awe we feel when looking out on a beautiful landscape be programmed? Or the feeling we get from the redness of a rose? There is another quality to consciousness that has nothing to do with computational power. It is more to do with love - and I mean love in the deepest spiritual sense.
 
Again, no matter how powerful the computer, it would be hard to convince me that human consciousness is computational. I'm not a programmer but I'm familiar enough with computers to know what algorithms are and, while they might be pretty good at mimicking human behaviour, they don't "think" like humans do. Again we are back to subjectivity and qualia. A VR might produce exquisite, microscopic detail so that the virtual landscape would be viewed through incredibly complex virtual eyes but can the sense of awe we feel when looking out on a beautiful landscape be programmed? Or the feeling we get from the redness of a rose? There is another quality to consciousness that has nothing to do with computational power. It is more to do with love - and I mean love in the deepest spiritual sense.
Obviously I agree, but there does seem to be some ambiguity as to what Kent Forbes is saying. For example Alex writes
Today on Skeptiko we’re joined by Kent Forbes, whose movie, The Simulation Hypothesis, explores the possibility that reality is in fact a simulation in which we are unaware avatars.

I have bolded the last bit of the quote - what does that mean - if we are unaware, then we aren't conscious!

David
 
Have to admit that I have not yet listened to the podcast - only watched the video - so I need to catch up. But yes, there seems to be some confusion there. Perhaps he meant the avatars are unaware of the fact that they (we) are avatars in a simulation. Again, I think the whole thing of reducing consciousness to algorithms is way too simplistic.
 
Again, no matter how powerful the computer, it would be hard to convince me that human consciousness is computational. I'm not a programmer but I'm familiar enough with computers to know what algorithms are and, while they might be pretty good at mimicking human behaviour, they don't "think" like humans do. Again we are back to subjectivity and qualia. A VR might produce exquisite, microscopic detail so that the virtual landscape would be viewed through incredibly complex virtual eyes but can the sense of awe we feel when looking out on a beautiful landscape be programmed? Or the feeling we get from the redness of a rose? There is another quality to consciousness that has nothing to do with computational power. It is more to do with love - and I mean love in the deepest spiritual sense.
Other emotions too, what one might call an 'inner fire'. I was just watching a movie, and reflecting on how bland the portrayals of the people were, when there is so much going on inside. It was only when the backing music switched temporarily to a powerful drumbeat, or one of the actors reinforced his words by the smashing of furniture, that some sense of that fire was conveyed. In other scenes it was only by a sense of empathy, by placing ourself in the shoes of the on-screen person that we can get some sense of their emotional force. These after all are the things which drive us, which make our lives even take place at all. Activity and inactivity, laborious work and recreational fun, all would be the same. Without these feelings, would we do anything at all?
 
Obviously I agree, but there does seem to be some ambiguity as to what Kent Forbes is saying. For example Alex writes


I have bolded the last bit of the quote - what does that mean - if we are unaware, then we aren't conscious!

David

Perhaps he means we are unaware of the fact we are avatars rather than that we are unaware full stop. Such awareness as we have is often predicated on the acceptance of the world as it appears to us rather than as it actually is.
 
Good point. Perhaps "Virtual Reality" would be a more precise term than simulation. I think that's the term Tom Campbell has used for years although, without watching again, I can't remember whether he uses simulation or VR in the documentary. Even then, does "virtual" also imply a representation of something "substantial"?

If we forego today's popular computer analogy, we might think of spiritual dimensions, the physical world being one of them but having more restrictive laws. This all created by mind manifesting an apparently solid, though actually virtual, environment and population. The mind might be, for the religious, a single and omnipotent God or, for the non-dogmatic, a collective consensus of minds perhaps ultimately within a single source mind or ground of consciousness.

What seems amazing to me is that, by supporting the simulation hypothesis, some ardent atheists seem to be admitting that there really is intelligence behind the reality that we experience. What now are the implications for ID, for example? Can we expect them to come up with an alternative to Darwinism involving an intelligence just so long as we don't refer to that intelligence as God? ID proponent, Stephen Meyer maintains that, although he is a Christian and personally identifies the intelligence in terms of his religion, he will only say that the evidence points to an unspecified intelligence.

I'm a bit hazy on this, but IIRC, they do appear to have found some error correcting codes in QM, by reusing the guage stuff that is usually discarded, suggesting some sort of intelligence behind what to, and what not to use. But I really think the intelligence is from the observing system summing information into spacetime, and personally I'd say this was an individual perspective subset of a group (coherent) process.

Generaliy I think there is summat muddled up, and back to front about these simulation ideas... I'm more of the opinion that the VR, and simulation ideas which seem based on popular computing and console games etc, really just reflect/reveal fundamental issues about reality, which provide some illumination as to how we might better understand how our experience's come about, and how we might better 'understand' how things work... ...rather than how things really are, or, what our experience actually is.
 
Generaliy I think there is summat muddled up, and back to front about these simulation ideas... I'm more of the opinion that the VR, and simulation ideas which seem based on popular computing and console games etc, really just reflect/reveal fundamental issues about reality, which provide some illumination as to how we might better understand how our experience's come about, and how we might better 'understand' how things work... ...rather than how things really are, or, what our experience actually is.

This is similar to my thoughts. It's the nearest thing we can think of, and so the computer metaphor tends to grab us and before you know it, we're taking it literally, talking in terms of processing, rendering and so on.
 
This is similar to my thoughts. It's the nearest thing we can think of, and so the computer metaphor tends to grab us and before you know it, we're taking it literally, talking in terms of processing, rendering and so on.

Sometimes that computer metaphor gets spookily close, though. I'm thinking specifically about DNA coding, even down to the appearance of Error Correction Codes (ECC). Michael, you would probably be able to comment on that better than I could.
 
This has me thinking about one of them tv specials Brian Cox had from an old historic Cambridge lecture hall where he says something to the effect, 'any change made to a sub atomic particle here triggers an instantaneous re-arrangement of every other particle in the universe..... adding then to the audience not to read into that any sort of spooky mumbo jumbo stuff.... that that was simply how things work'.

Probably many scientists are perhaps therefore looking at a simulated reality more closely because that's where the mathematics and probabilities lie and if the day ever comes where experiments bolster the hypothesis, they still may be of the mind to tell the public not to 'read anything more' into it.
that's great... exactly. BTW do you have the exact quote... I looked for it.

the whole thing is kinda funny when you step back from it... it's just dogma.
 
I'm more of the opinion that the VR, and simulation ideas which seem based on popular computing and console games etc, really just reflect/reveal fundamental issues about reality, which provide some illumination as to how we might better understand how our experience's come about, and how we might better 'understand' how things work... ...rather than how things really are, or, what our experience actually is.
well said. I think/hope this is what Kent was saying near the end of the interview.
 
I've heard this but never investigated... is it true? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1233620/

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0036644

In a recent work, we showed that DNA sequences can be identified as codewords in a class of cyclic error-correcting codes known as Hamming codes. In this paper, we show that a complete intron-exon gene, and even a plasmid genome, can be identified as a Hamming code codeword as well. Although this does not constitute a definitive proof that there is an error-correcting code underlying DNA sequences, it is the first evidence in this direction.

There are probably other sources and I think Stephen Meyer talks about it in his book, Signature in the Cell (he'd be an interesting guest, by the way).

Here's a quote from a review of that book:

He describes the built-in error correction mechanisms that allow that information to be read and duplicated with astounding accuracy. He shows how the primary code in DNA (which is not suited to forming proteins directly) is translated into a higher-level code, which in turn specifies the sequencing of the 20 amino acids used to form proteins, and he delineates the mechanism by which amino acids are then assembled in precise order in the cell’s ribosome to become functional proteins.
 
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I've heard this but never investigated... is it true? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1233620/
Well the conclusion stated in the abstract is that in the case they studied, there wasn't an error correcting code.

However DNA repair certainly happens by another mechanism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_repair

I think the point is that you don't need an ECC if the damage is detected fast enough. Because:

a) There are two strands to DNA that should be complementary.

b) The letters of DNA don't mutate directly from one to another (they are quite different chemicals). The mutation damages a base - say A - to something else that then gets copied incorrectly - not to A, but to G (say). However if an enzyme can correct the damage before copying takes place, it has plenty of information to do its work.

In contrast, if a sequence of bits became corrupted, it would look just as valid as any other sequence of bits without the additional ECC bits.

David
 
that's great... exactly. BTW do you have the exact quote... I looked for it.

the whole thing is kinda funny when you step back from it... it's just dogma.

Sorry Alex, the best bet would be to find that particular episode from the ones already aired. I don't think there's been many so far.... 2 or 3 perhaps. I also did a quick google before making my post and I tried the BBC site and apparently you can order tickets from ticketmaster for his next upcoming seminar at Cambridge coming this november or so. Then that one will no doubt be broadcast on tv.

I would suppose you could find them on Netflix or Hulu or some streaming site. I can't say for certain but I may have viewed that particular one a year ago... a year and a half ago... idk. But like I say there's probably only a few so far of Cox's Cambridge specials to skim through to find the reference.

Although...... I've recently come across this meme called 'the mandela effect' in that while I do definitely remember Cox implying such a thing, a glitch in the matrix may have now erased it, lol.

Maybe I'm a little late to the party but there's this thing going around where people en masse remember certain things happening but when they now look them up those events have been altered/made different in some fashion
 
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I'm not sure that a technology so far advanced as to create simulations such as we may exist would in any way shape or form be hampered by how we'd define what an algorithm is.

Ya know.... any advanced technology would appear as magic and all that, lol
 
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