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Message: <blockquote data-quote="2old4this" data-source="post: 17843" data-attributes="member: 174998">CH - as a solopsist I am bound to point out that your cuts and bruises and your external reaction to them only need to be superficially convincing. There is no requirement for the simulation to generate an internal emotional state for you. It is sufficient that you just appear to me to be in pain.Wolsty - I agree. Actualy I am an atheist, and am acutely aware that the "simulation hypothesis" may amount to nothing more than religion - hence my call for some test that could prove or disprove it. If no such test exists even in principle then the theory is indistinguishable from religious belief inasmuch as it is intrinsically non-scientific - a matter of faith only. I'm also aware that ever were such a test to be found and we were to discover we are in a simulation, this simply pushes back the question of "what is the nature of reality" to the next level. Perhaps that level is "real" (whatever that means) or itself a simulation. Is there an infinite regression of such simulations? Is there any way in which a regression of two or more might actually form a loop in time and be causing themselves. Such a loop would not necessarily be paradoxical. Imagine a cosmic string -  the gravity well of which can - according to some theorists - cause objects in its vicinity to travel back in time. Imagine such an object appearing from the future having been flung back through straying too close to such a string. As it appears, it meets its younger self, and their gravitational interaction deflects the younger version towards the cosmic string... Such a scenario is perfectly self-consistent even though each event was the casue of the other. Perhaps our world is brought into being as a simulation of a world that is itself simulated directly or indirectly by ours. There may be no external reality. Whether such a hypothesis is at all useful (even if true) is a different matter. The reason I am an atheist, by the way, is that the god hypothesis imparts no information. God is conveniently defined such that it is ineffable. In that case, a much simpler hypothesis is that it does not exist (Occam's Razor).  That may well be true of the simulation hypothesis too.2oldPS: CH - Epsilon Eridani b is one of the growing number of stars known to have a planet, and is only 10 light years away. A conversational exchange with any beings there would only take 20 years, which is not very long at all in the scheme of things.Oh, and the Darwin Philosophy board is part of the highly entertaining Darwin Awards site. Here: <a href="http://www.darwinawards.com/" target="_blank">http://www.darwinawards.com/</a> (see forum link at bottom of its left frame).</blockquote>

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