From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Jun 18 2002 - 19:33:38 MDT
At 03:36 PM 6/18/02 -0400, Harvey wrote:
>> But this is the whole point of the universe as simulation hypothesis. If
>> our universe is a simulation, then we are nothing but mathematical
>> formulae processing data.
>You just switched topics. We weren't debating whether simulations could
>contain real people. We were debating whether books or mathematical
>formulas contained abstract people existing without the need of any
>physical universe.
It's much worse than that. We started out debating whether there could
conceivably be nothing rather than something. Most people immediately
dodged this hard question, and galloped around explaining that one
something could really be another something in disguise, or that a more
fundamental something could switch off a derivative something.
Damien Broderick
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