Probability of Earth and life being how it is

by ballistic 62 Replies latest jw friends

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  Anony Mous

  @ballistic: the simulation theory is interesting but no different than the god theory, there is a god out there that is simulating everything and pretending it’s all natural. The question is why and how.

  My primary reason to think we are not living in a simulation is because of what we do when we make simulations, eg video games. We put both conscious and unconscious signatures, culture, in-jokes and other features that would give it away. We also tend to be lazy and eg leave buildings empty shells if we don’t expect people to go looking in them or set arbitrary limits (render distance) to conserve energy both in creation and execution. We also have to patch it and break things on a regular basis and people find workarounds and break the rules.

  It is very possible that we are in a simulation; but I don’t see any jokes or signatures or any indication we can break the rules.
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  TonusOH

  The question is also, in part, a recognition of how our senses work. Our bodies send information to the brain, which interprets it. It can also interpolate data as needed, such as the way it compensates for our visual blind spot. We actually need to fool the brain in order to 'see' the blind spot, because otherwise it just fills that void with data and we don't notice the effect.

  We know the brain can present false data, such as pain signals (or lack thereof). If our perception of the world can be falsified by the very tool that allows us to percieve it... who knows what is possible? The behavior that leads to works like The Matrix is common enough that such ideas have been around for a very long time. There's one potential value to it: if I ever wake up in a vat of goo with a robot retracting some wires from my brain, I might actually know what is going on.
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  ballistic

  I'm glad I've got people thinking about it rather than the occasional god vs evolution. There's so much more down the rabbit hole of meditating on your senses and whether there is a real observer called "YOU" at the heart of it that exists at all.