Idk what's the exact purpose of this meme but I really do see a lot of similarities between God creating the world and simulation theory. Obviously ST and religion are wildly different in their impact on society and how many people genuinely believe in them, but ST is pretty silly too.

It's just a "what if" scenario, one that's potentially possible but wouldn't change or explain anything if it was true. All you're doing is moving the existential problems up a layer and forgetting about it, it's the same as saying God made us: at the end of the day both the beings in charge of the simulation AND God have to come from somewhere, they live in a "real" universe, and you're not explaining that.

Why can't it be that we simply live in a real universe? That's the simplest answer, the one that requires the fewest assumptions. It doesn't have a convenient, satisfying reason as to why we're here, or how reality came to be, but it's easily the most plausible.

[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 months ago (12 children)

Why can't it be that we simply live in a real universe? That's the simplest answer, the one that requires the fewest assumptions.

The argument goes that: a sufficiently technologically advanced society would run ancestor simulations. Those simulations may also run simulations. There's no ceiling on the number of nesting simulations. It's the height of conceit to think we're the top level when there are squillions of simulated universe.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2535

[–] tiny_electron@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago (4 children)

There is a cieling though. A computer made of matter of one universe cannot simulate an entire universe at the same speed. It's like installing a VM on a computer: the VM is always slower. Each layer would then become exponentially slower with a limit of 0 speed.

Having said that, combined with the fact that our Universe is 13B years old, it would make the age of our root universe exponentially larger than 13B years.

It could maybe feasible if we live in the first layers, but beyond that our root universe would have died from Heat death long ago.

[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There is a ceiling though. A computer made of matter of one universe cannot simulate an entire universe at the same speed.

Right but we don't know what the real universe's limitations are, and I'm geostationary to speak too authoritatively of the capabilities of an arbitrarily advanced civilization.

I don't think simulation theory is true. Eg calculating gravitational forces between everything in the universe would presumably be extraordinarily cost intensive, but essentially irrelevant (I mean like gravitational waves, not the moon).

[–] tiny_electron@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

Even though our knowledge of physics is incomplete, a VM running a faster simulation of its container would be a paradox. You could stack successive layers of reality that would go faster and faster reaching eventually Infinite processing speed, allowing the computer from the root layer to perform an Infinite amount of computation in a finite time.

You may say that this could be possible as our understanding of physics is lacking. And that's fine! But I think this paradox shows that the VM can only run slower than reality

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