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

I heard on another video about the Simulation hypothesis a part that Gates says "the universe doesn't care whether I understand or don't understand" and that "it's not all about us", "the universe doesn't care whether I exist or not exist" but that would also mean a materialistic view, right? It's at 1: 31: 40 here. But lots of evidence we talk about on Skeptiko shows that something out there does care about us.
agreed... his metaphysics are not well thought out. I mean, the "meaningless universe" stuff and the simulation hypothesis stuff don't fit together well. some-one/thing must "care" or there would be no simulation :)

still trying to grock the error correcting code.
 
agreed... his metaphysics are not well thought out. I mean, the "meaningless universe" stuff and the simulation hypothesis stuff don't fit together well. some-one/thing must "care" or there would be no simulation :)

still trying to grock the error correcting code.
Sure, I like it that there cannot just be a heartless simulation, otherwise it would be God taunting us like lab rats. I mean, He would know if He was doing that.

Maybe physics can only "see" a facet of the simulation (like Gates' codes he's discovered) and there's much more deeper in. In that if you only question Nature a certain way, like physics questions, you only get one aspect?
 
Sure, I like it that there cannot just be a heartless simulation, otherwise it would be God taunting us like lab rats. I mean, He would know if He was doing that.
If the universe is some sort of "experiment" (which seems just as likely as any explanation) then there is an implied dispassion in the observer(s), rather than a taunting, surely?
 
If the universe is some sort of "experiment" (which seems just as likely as any explanation) then there is an implied dispassion in the observer(s), rather than a taunting, surely?
For me it's as if something is in there with us but has to be hidden mostly to give us freedom. So God hides but can be contacted. And to be strictly a simulation seems the wrong way of looking at it in the whole.
 
For me it's as if something is in there with us but has to be hidden mostly to give us freedom. So God hides but can be contacted. And to be strictly a simulation seems the wrong way of looking at it in the whole.
Something I read recently regarding negative near-death experiences. Some people do report going to a dark or terrifying place during an NDE, however a thought or a plea to a God (or their own concept of such) can bring immediate assistance and move the person into a place of light and love.

It occurs to me that this experience living on Earth can be much the same at times, where we can be trapped in a dark place but the same route out is available - if it is requested. The first step is to ask. There is the added dimension of material inertia here, it can take time for things to shift.

The concept of free will is key in this, the choices are ours to make.
 
still trying to grok the error correcting code.
Information science is getting a good look at how life works, beyond physical movement and the 5 senses. Error correction in DNA replication is a fascinating subject and it is still in its infancy. Without giving an inch to immaterialist ideas - biophysicist W. Loewenstein helped tell the story of the measurable processes science has discovered.

From Energy to Bonds to Molecular Information: The Information/Entropy Balancing Act
A full reading of the chapter is needed to understand error correction around DNA/RNA/Ribosome interaction in a bigger context.
In the case of the DNA, the copyediting is done by one of the DNA polymerases (Polymerase I) , which roves along a DNA template strand. The enzyme, in collaboration with the template strand, checks the correctness of each base pair formed before proceeding to ligate the next nucleotide. - Werner Loewenstein - The Touchstone of Life Page 122 softcover 1999


When modeling this process - the unit of measure for correctness is not derivable from those in the SI tables for Material Science. Correctness is a logical structure, which can be measured in binary digits.
 
Something I read recently regarding negative near-death experiences. Some people do report going to a dark or terrifying place during an NDE, however a thought or a plea to a God (or their own concept of such) can bring immediate assistance and move the person into a place of light and love.

It occurs to me that this experience living on Earth can be much the same at times, where we can be trapped in a dark place but the same route out is available - if it is requested. The first step is to ask. There is the added dimension of material inertia here, it can take time for things to shift.

The concept of free will is key in this, the choices are ours to make.
wow... that's great... never thought of that. I love how it captures the narrative/allegorical part of the NDE thing. I definitely think you're onto something.
 
Information science is getting a good look at how life works, beyond physical movement and the 5 senses. Error correction in DNA replication is a fascinating subject and it is still in its infancy. Without giving an inch to immaterialist ideas - biophysicist W. Loewenstein helped tell the story of the measurable processes science has discovered.

From Energy to Bonds to Molecular Information: The Information/Entropy Balancing Act
A full reading of the chapter is needed to understand error correction around DNA/RNA/Ribosome interaction in a bigger context.


When modeling this process - the unit of measure for correctness is not derivable from those in the SI tables for Material Science. Correctness is a logical structure, which can be measured in binary digits.
thx. I'm really interested in that last sentence. So, I get that we observe this error correction process in DNA (watched a couple of YT videos to help me thru that stuff I skipped in biology class) but can we really say that we we have error correcting CODE... as in computer code?
 
thx. I'm really interested in that last sentence. So, I get that we observe this error correction process in DNA (watched a couple of YT videos to help me thru that stuff I skipped in biology class) but can we really say that we we have error correcting CODE... as in computer code?
That is certainly a popular question. Computer code is made by self-aware thinkers who can step back and focus on themselves doing the work. The DNA code may have developed from life's striving for informational leverage from the ground-up.

My opinion is that living things evolve in all dimensions and environments that offer important objects, events and processes. Modern culture has a picture of evolution being blind, as an abstraction. If blind means: no 3rd person observation of a 1st-person self ----- then life evolved blindly using all possible logical advantages to be found in any environment. If blind is that purposeful behavior doesn't really exist - well that's not what Bayesian math analysis of living activity shows. Focus on target states drives life.

That DNA has error-correction mechanisms should be no more surprising; than the fact that legs evolved physically because leverage was a natural affordance in the environment.
 
Something I read recently regarding negative near-death experiences. Some people do report going to a dark or terrifying place during an NDE, however a thought or a plea to a God (or their own concept of such) can bring immediate assistance and move the person into a place of light and love.

It occurs to me that this experience living on Earth can be much the same at times, where we can be trapped in a dark place but the same route out is available - if it is requested. The first step is to ask. There is the added dimension of material inertia here, it can take time for things to shift.

The concept of free will is key in this, the choices are ours to make.
And praying? Reminds me also of one of the monks of Mount Athos who said if you align yourself to do always what God wants, and then ask, it gets given.
I didn't know of help from dark NDEs. Something to remember if it happens. :)
 
And praying? Reminds me also of one of the monks of Mount Athos who said if you align yourself to do always what God wants, and then ask, it gets given.
I didn't know of help from dark NDEs. Something to remember if it happens. :)
Yes, the concept of prayer is kind of what I was referring to - though I'm not comfortable with anything which sounds too much like any specific religion, but that's just me, my personal viewpoint.
 
That is certainly a popular question. Computer code is made by self-aware thinkers who can step back and focus on themselves doing the work. The DNA code may have developed from life's striving for informational leverage from the ground-up.

My opinion is that living things evolve in all dimensions and environments that offer important objects, events and processes. Modern culture has a picture of evolution being blind, as an abstraction. If blind means: no 3rd person observation of a 1st-person self ----- then life evolved blindly using all possible logical advantages to be found in any environment. If blind is that purposeful behavior doesn't really exist - well that's not what Bayesian math analysis of living activity shows. Focus on target states drives life.

That DNA has error-correction mechanisms should be no more surprising; than the fact that legs evolved physically because leverage was a natural affordance in the environment.
Isn't there some confusion here about what error correction means? In the computer case it means adding extra information to a block of code that checks if it has been corrupted. Depending on the number of bits corrupted, an error can cause the data to be corrected using the extra information, or it can call for the data to be re-sent because it is too corrupt.

However, GOOGLing the info on DNA repair, I see something different, and probably more appropriate for DNA. Thus if one of the letters (C say) gets damaged somehow, it will become a damaged version of C - C'. If C' is copied it will copy to a different letter, however enzymes can fix C' back to C, or they can check on the other strand and fix it using that information.

These repairs do not require an extra chunk of DNA for error correction.

The computer has a tougher problem, because there is no analogous 1' or 0' - computer bits are just bits - whether right or wrong.

David
.
 
Isn't there some confusion here about what error correction means?
These repairs do not require an extra chunk of DNA for error correction.
David
The means and methods are different - but error correction is - well, error correction, no matter how the algorithm correlates input and output mutual information. In a previous response, I used the expression DNA/RNA/Ribosome system of processes. There are many error correction events going on at many levels. From a overly simplistic view - maybe the extra-chunks you are looking for are the messages in Ribosomes and anti-codons.

In protein synthesis, the error rate is on the order of 1 in 10,000. This means that when a ribosome is matching anticodons of tRNA to the codons of mRNA, it matches complementary sequences correctly nearly all the time. Hopfield noted that because of how similar the substrates are (the difference between a wrong codon and a right codon can be as small as a difference in a single base), an error rate that small is unachievable with a one-step mechanism. Both wrong and right tRNA can bind to the ribosome, and if the ribosome can only discriminate between them by complementary matching of the anticodon, it must rely on the small free energy difference between binding three matched complementary bases or only two..................

DNA damage recognition and repair – a certain DNA repair mechanism utilizes kinetic proofreading to discriminate damaged DNA.[8] Some DNA polymerases can also detect when they have added an incorrect base and are able to hydrolyze it immediately; in this case, the irreversible (energy-requiring) step is addition of the base. Wiki article on Kinetic Proofreading.
Error correction is called proofreading in genetics speak.
 
Isn't there some confusion here about what error correction means? In the computer case it means adding extra information to a block of code that checks if it has been corrupted. Depending on the number of bits corrupted, an error can cause the data to be corrected using the extra information, or it can call for the data to be re-sent because it is too corrupt.

However, GOOGLing the info on DNA repair, I see something different, and probably more appropriate for DNA. Thus if one of the letters (C say) gets damaged somehow, it will become a damaged version of C - C'. If C' is copied it will copy to a different letter, however enzymes can fix C' back to C, or they can check on the other strand and fix it using that information.

These repairs do not require an extra chunk of DNA for error correction.

The computer has a tougher problem, because there is no analogous 1' or 0' - computer bits are just bits - whether right or wrong.

David
.

Awhile back I looked into this a bit during a discussion I was having with LoneShaman on DNA (incidentally, I do wish he'd come back, and that we continue that discussion).

I'll have to look back at my notes, and find those sources, but if IIRC from what I read at the time, the error correction took a pretty physical form. That is, it was based on the shape of the various items involved in the duplication mechanism. If things were copied incorrectly it wouldn't fit and the errors would sort of get lopped off. It wasn't akin to proof reading an essay, for example.

I'm not sure if the sources Stephen quoted from above though says something different.
 
agreed... his metaphysics are not well thought out. I mean, the "meaningless universe" stuff and the simulation hypothesis stuff don't fit together well. some-one/thing must "care" or there would be no simulation :)

still trying to grock the error correcting code.

Gates doesn't think we live in a simulation, or at the least in that Isaac Asimov debate he suggested there just isn't enough evidence to draw that conclusion.

AFAIK none of this stuff Gates talks about has been verified experimentally, it's just something that comes up in a particular string theory model if I'm understanding it right?

I think the mistake is to think a "simulation hypothesis" immediately implies a Matrix situation, anymore than explanations utilizing metaphors involving plumbing/computers/engines/etc imply a designer who made biological "machines".

Arvan, in the Peer to Peer Simulation Hypothesis, notes that a simulation functionally describes a situation where a higher frame interacts with a lower frame, similar to how gamers interact with games. He notes that thinking this way - when you think of Peer-to-Peer games - explains Wheeler's question, "Why the quantum?".

It's a great (IMO anyway) way to look at the world from the perspective of the "dualist" situation we find ourselves in, but we don't need to immediately assume there are programmers. This could simply be a great model for looking at reality, in the same way physics is a nice way of looking at reality but as the physicist N. David Mermin noted physics is an attempt to capture reality but is more a net than a discovery of Platonic laws. (He wasn't AFAIK, making any claims about the "supernatural" but rather the non-mechanistic nature of the Real.)

=-=-=

Closer to Truth: Is Our Universe a Fake?

I began bemused. The notion that humanity might be living in an artificial reality — a simulated universe — seemed sophomoric, at best science fiction.

But speaking with scientists and philosophers on "Closer to Truth," I realized that the notion that everything humans see and know is a gigantic computer game of sorts, the creation of supersmart hackers existing somewhere else, is not a joke. Exploring a "whole-world simulation," I discovered, is a deep probe of reality.
 
short answer -- it doesn't pass the sniff test when it comes to explaining the really hard stuff people encounter in the extended consciousness realms.

Gordon White does a beautiful job with this (albeit from a slightly different angle) in his new book:
https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-Eight-Chaos-Essays-Enchantments-ebook/dp/B01J9REBIQ#navbar

Secondly ‘All is Mind’ also increases the risk of falling into an intellectually lazy Monism. The reality is Idealism is probably ‘true’ in some kind of super-metaphysical, 10,000 foot view of the cosmos and we and everything else are just eddies or oscillations in the one consciousness field. But this is sort of like saying the universe explains the universe, and the proposed unity of this consciousness field struggles to model lived personal experience on a daily basis. It is very useful when thinking about the entire universe or the individual human but it lacks the nuance required for a magical engagement with anything in between. The famous ‘nitrous oxide philosopher’, William James, wrote of the ‘indfferentism’ that accompanied his drug-induced feelings of universal unity.

Gordon White. Pieces Of Eight: Chaos Magic Essays and Enchantments (Kindle Locations 281-286).

I liked this as well - Pieces of Eight is a really enjoyable work!

On reconciling the Transcendental Idealism with the ground level reality where one assumes subtle worlds and spirits (I still waver on this to be honest) I thought Johnathan Black had a nice video done:


One thing I wonder about is the idea of consciousness being "non-spatial" and "non-temporal", since space is known directly through experience. And our experience of the Now lies outside of physics to explain. It seems odd to go from this primacy of subjective experience to Transcendental Idealism where consciousness is Real but my consciousness is, in some if not complete sense, illusory.
 
That is certainly a popular question. Computer code is made by self-aware thinkers who can step back and focus on themselves doing the work. The DNA code may have developed from life's striving for informational leverage from the ground-up.

My opinion is that living things evolve in all dimensions and environments that offer important objects, events and processes. Modern culture has a picture of evolution being blind, as an abstraction. If blind means: no 3rd person observation of a 1st-person self ----- then life evolved blindly using all possible logical advantages to be found in any environment. If blind is that purposeful behavior doesn't really exist - well that's not what Bayesian math analysis of living activity shows. Focus on target states drives life.

That DNA has error-correction mechanisms should be no more surprising; than the fact that legs evolved physically because leverage was a natural affordance in the environment.
I guess I'm trying to make this fit with Rupart Sheldrake's observation re the failings of genetics and how we've gone from this idea of DNA being a complete master computer code book to one that sees DNA as a small piece in a mystery we haven't unraveled (along with morphic resonance, precognition, etc.).

So, when I hear these guys say "we found this error correction code in DNA and it's exactly like the computer code in my browser and this means we're living in a simulation" I want to know what they're talking about... and/or if they know what they're talking about :)
 
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