Brings a smile, xorcist :) "The great unknowable" experiencing itself, through itself, by imposing arbitrary restrictions upon spliters of itself." Which conception gives rise to a fundamental existential question: "To what extent am I puppeteered/ pre-ordained, and to what extent (if at all) am I able to exercise 'free will'?" On Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 03:02:34AM -0000, xorcist@sigaint.org wrote:

Too cerebral.

It's interesting to me that the simulation hypothesis has so much in common with Buddhist philosophy. In fact, Buddhism already answers this sort of thing.

Alan Watts, as a Zen Buddhist, presented the view that life is essentially a game played out at the cosmic level. All life is essentially the ultimate source of consciousness, God, the Atman.. whatever you want to call it. God desired to experience life as Alan Watts, and Richard Nixon, and dogs, and lions and gazelle in order to expand its experience, its awareness, of itself.

Put another way, intelligent life is the part of the universe that endeavors to understand itself. We're the Universe's subconscious. We are the dreams of the ultimate mind.

So, the equivalent Buddhist question would be - why would an incredibly advanced mind dream of us? Well, the answer to that is why do you dream the things you dream? It's a statement of desire, or of dread - because fundamentally life is a bit boring, and its much better if you're banging supermodels or running from zombies. So those things come up in dreams. Likewise, its incredibly boring being God. Imagine it. Never being surprised, needing nothing, all goals can be met without the slightest effort, and so on. It would be an incredible drag.

Casting this notion into the framework of a simulation, one might say that this advanced civilization is simply bored. Imagine Star-Trek type technology, where you just hit a button and get a perfect steak. The SAME steak, every time. There is no need to cook, because you'll never beat the machine, and yet in the end.. it all ends up tasting plastic.

Even with our meager technology, a great many people enjoy "roughing it" in the woods, camping and going low-tech. They enjoy getting away from TVs and phones and nonsense, and getting back to a more basic existence.

No need for existential crisis. Just a desire for life to be flavorful.

...

So many people have proposed we're simulated... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis

Now why would such an extremely advanced civilization / collective want to simulate us? Is this an unanswered question?

Certainly they have long since - solved biology, live forever, down/up load their brains against trauma - solved life and mobility throughout their universe - lost and forgotten their prehistory - etc

They could sim anything they want. So why sim us?

Because something happened to them, something very big, something serious and existentially threatening. And now they're *desperately* trying to learn about death, life, humanity, the individual... something they lost but is still encoded in them just enough to let them think of making the sim...

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 On September 18, 2016 8:36:52 AM EDT, Georgi Guninski wrote:

The main problem is this scales upwards till infinity via arguments of the form "who simulates the simulator?" and "who made what was before the big bang?".

It's turtles all the way down.... Actually, I like to think that the universe is infinite and forever, except current models predict heat death once entropy is reached in some enormous amount of time... But who fucking knows, really? John - -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQFBBAEBCgArJBxrZXliYXNlLmlvL25peGVuIDxuaXhlbkBrZXliYXNlLmlvPgUC V+GO+QAKCRDjJCC+1Hp4x9+rCADEP4G7gKjtKDUwk9AwjpWiawl9DTqxM7LXvRNg VVm0w1eJ6a5rb+JEqJO3j/BvnJRtehUfoAAnO2Ir+oF4HZ3IzU2VCcEbpQ85PE69 3RKSKKrpfl4L0ejMY0hcnLPZy1LO8nfa7kmZTDcfPf4vVsGRknDh7CEnbJDwDc5u nljdgCYabyU2sD82JkbeKWtEV6lx/mEOQIf1ETce1a8WtkFiNnXOvAIh+0Bn+z9S qxtt/8fLDB88anEXphIRD4KaxfcDFX6W0vKpss6bu+NDLnxC8lKfU06N4Nce2wJs JRcLdAgMmyjVZ1tKYQCrO0aVRYVUSgFIyM7Am5+a5ZD8pgdc =l6uD -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 3:48 PM, wrote:

I find it difficult to believe in the heat death of the universe. The Big Crunch makes sense to me. The universe expands for a time, and collapses. Like breathing. But continual expansion with the universe turning into some cold, undefinable soup.

Current model really fucking cold heat death will occur. Yet if gravity is true, yes, no matter infintismal amount, you cannot blow past to escape it. Thus collapse, or at least steady state in case of repulse forces, is the required result. It is sad that not even sci fi knows how to harvest from forcibly diminishing Kelvin, as to revert requires similar energy. But we will have fun till then, provided we get beyond Sol or the galaxy.

On 09/20/2016 09:22 PM, Tom wrote:

btw, I'd suggest reading Phil Plaits 'Death from the Skies!'. In this book he examines a couple of scenarios how the universe might end (among a couple other ways how we could die). Very fun read.

There's The Killing Star by Charles R. Pellegrino and George Zebrowski. Death by relativistic bombardment. https://www.reddit.com/r/Frisson/comments/1j08oq/text_excerpt_from_the_killi...

On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 06:07:56PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:

...

On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 3:48 PM, wrote:

...

I find it difficult to believe in the heat death of the universe. The Big Crunch makes sense to me. The universe expands for a time, and collapses. Like breathing. But continual expansion with the universe turning into some cold, undefinable soup.

Current model really fucking cold heat death will occur. Yet if gravity is true, yes, no matter infintismal amount, you cannot blow past to escape it. Thus collapse, or at least steady state in case of repulse forces, is the required result.

It is sad that not even sci fi knows how to harvest from forcibly diminishing Kelvin, as to revert requires similar energy. But we will have fun till then, provided we get beyond Sol or the galaxy.

On 09/21/2016 04:15 AM, John Newman wrote:

...

On Sep 20, 2016, at 11:39 PM, Mirimir wrote:

...

On 09/20/2016 09:22 PM, Tom wrote: btw, I'd suggest reading Phil Plaits 'Death from the Skies!'. In this book he examines a couple of scenarios how the universe might end (among a couple other ways how we could die). Very fun read.

There's The Killing Star by Charles R. Pellegrino and George Zebrowski. Death by relativistic bombardment.

I was trying to get a copy of this book a while back but it's out of print and used prices were high (like $30).... I don't suppose anyone has an ePub they could shoot me? Or is it worth $30 for a 1995 paperback, maybe so...

I just have old hard copy. Maybe you can get it through a library. Or find a torrent, maybe.

BTW Mirmir I've read and enjoyed Accelerando and Diaspora... I'll have to check out the Jean le Flambeur stuff....

'Quantum Thief' opens with prisoner's dilemma selection. Make numerous digital copies, select for copies that cooperate, repeat. "As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try to make smalltalk."

John

...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Frisson/comments/1j08oq/text_excerpt_from_the_killi...

...

...

On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 06:07:56PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:

...

On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 3:48 PM, wrote: I find it difficult to believe in the heat death of the universe. The Big Crunch makes sense to me. The universe expands for a time, and collapses. Like breathing. But continual expansion with the universe turning into some cold, undefinable soup.

Current model really fucking cold heat death will occur. Yet if gravity is true, yes, no matter infintismal amount, you cannot blow past to escape it. Thus collapse, or at least steady state in case of repulse forces, is the required result.

It is sad that not even sci fi knows how to harvest from forcibly diminishing Kelvin, as to revert requires similar energy. But we will have fun till then, provided we get beyond Sol or the galaxy.

On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 12:40:06AM -0400, grarpamp wrote:

On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 12:34 AM, Mirimir wrote:

...

Maybe you can get it through a library.

Interlibrary loan, works wonders.

Openlibrary took me to worldcat which did track the book down to a library thats about 15 miles from me. Which isn't too bad, maybe I can get my local library to get it yanked. Or metro my lazy ass down there. thanks! John

On 09/22/2016 06:23 AM, John Newman wrote:

...

On Sep 22, 2016, at 12:34 AM, Mirimir wrote: 'Quantum Thief' opens with prisoner's dilemma selection. Make numerous digital copies, select for copies that cooperate, repeat.

"As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try to make smalltalk."

I just grabbed a torrent of the trilogy (waiting on the paperbacks I ordered). Phoa! Cool fucking book, Im only about 50 pages into the Quantum Thief but the world building is fucking great.... I loved when Jean said he needed "root of this body!" to stop their escape ship getting destroyed.

Well, they're under attack by Archon-rootkit nanomissiles! "I am root, and the body is a world-tree, an Yggdrasil. There are diamond machines in its bones, proteonomic tech in its cells. And the brain, a true Sobornost raion-scale brain, able to run whole worlds." He throws many new words at readers, defined only in context. But they all make sense, if you've read Stephenson, Stross, etc. Raions are planet-scale computer clusters that Sobornost have created for running their sims.

Seems like will be great read.

thx ;)

John

On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 02:04:25PM +0300, Georgi Guninski wrote:

On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 03:33:24PM -0400, John wrote:

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On September 18, 2016 8:36:52 AM EDT, Georgi Guninski wrote:

...

The main problem is this scales upwards till infinity via arguments of the form "who simulates the simulator?" and "who made what was before the big bang?".

It's turtles all the way down.... Actually, I like to think that the universe is infinite and forever, except current models predict heat death once entropy is reached in some enormous amount of time...

But who fucking knows, really?

Didn't Terry Pratchett claim in Disc World that the world is run on top of giant turtle? And depicted the big bang as "In the beginning there was nothing, and it exploded"?

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

As for the "standard model" of "real reality", it changes often.

For me a plausible counter example appears a late Bulgarian phenomenon Baba Vanga (???????? ??????????), who allegedly could predict future with high accuracy and see in the past. She survived practicing in times of advanced socialism, not telling ill people they will die soon. I can't figure out how this doesn't break causality, neither care.

Call me a crazy nut for the above.

The wikipedia page about her, likely with a lot of disinformation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Vanga

Hmm... I am pretty (extremely) cynical about such things, but, really, who fucking knows.... There is no doubt the "standard model" changes, but I like to think these "advances" are based on slightly harder science than Baba Vanga :P John

On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 03:15:40PM -0400, Steve Kinney wrote:

None of this can or should persuade anyone but me that something damned strange is going on with this "reality" thing. But I was and remain so persuaded. Now the question is, what does it mean and what can I do with/to/about it? So far the only answer I get is "just be aware that you don't know what you think you know about how reality works." And worse - maybe Phil Dick was right.

Apologies for the offtopic noise, but this thread remotely reminds me of the old joke: Two unborn twins talk just before Birth: -- Is there life after Birth? -- Very unlikely. Nobody ever came back.