From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Sep 05 1999 - 12:57:54 MDT
> spike wrote: How do we *know* we are not *currently*
> > uploaded simulations, running on some unimaginably advanced supercomputer?
> > Is there any way to know?
>
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:.. there's.. at least a 50% chance of this being...
> a 100% probability. My intuitions, though, tell me that this Universe
> is real down to the quark level, which I don't think would be necessary
> if this were a simulation. Then again, in this sort of situation it's
> kind of hard to trust one's intuitions - but I still do.
Now that you mention quarks, my friend offered two lines of evidence
that we are living in a very well done virtual universe: 1) the fact that
matter is so strange at the quantum level defies logical explanation
and 2) the universal speed limit, c, which also begs for a fundamental
explanation.
Why *should* physics as we understand it on our scale break down
at the quantum level, unless this represents the resolution limit of the
machine on which we are being run? Quanta are the meta-bits?
And why *should* there be a speed of light, unless this speed somehow
describes the maximum rate at which the metacomputer calculates
subsequent states of all the existing quanta? And why should black
holes exist, unless it somehow describes the capacity of the metamemory?
And would not the big bang represent the meta-start command?
And wont we athiests be embarrassed if there *really is* a meta-
programmer? [I didnt mean it god, really i didnt! All those wisecracks,
that was all just, uh, a bug in my sim! {8^D My skepticism module
was overactive!] spike
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