Sim Theory

Zenaan Harkness zen at freedbms.net
Mon Nov 4 19:21:38 PST 2019


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 at 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...
> >
> 


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