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Questions tagged [simulated-universe]

It was Nick Bostrom who coined the "simulation hypothesis" but the concept of a simulated universe touches upon many related ideas: from Descartes' "evil genius" to Edgar Allan Poe's "Dream within a dream". Use this tag when manifest reality is contingent on the machination of a more "real" domain.

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What is the procentual probability that we live in the objective reality independent of our consciousness rather than in some virtual reality?

I am aware than it is impossible to prove anything in real life. Therefore we can't prove that the picture of the reality we are percieving through our senses is a subjective picture of an objective ...
TKN's user avatar
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15 votes
8 answers
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If a person claims to know anything could it be disproven by saying 'prove that we are not in a simulation'?

Everyone starts out at 0 and if anyone wants to say that they know something they have to prove that claim. Is the counter to this person claiming that they know something logically correct? Person 1:...
Rolf Haugaland's user avatar
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6 answers
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How does the 'Brain in a Vat Argument' differ from the 'Simulation Argument'?

The brain in a bad vat argument states that we may be a brain plugged up to a supercomputer that simulates the external world by sending signals to the brain, just like the brain normally receives ...
Oisin Spain's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
452 views

Does Bostrom's simulation argument make sense?

Bostrom has famously argued that we live in a simulation. One of his key assumptions is that other civilizations exist that can simulate us. Why do we make this assumption? Why assume that other ...
Josh's user avatar
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1 answer
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Occam's razor and the Multiverse Hypotesis

Occam's razor or the principle of ontological parsimony, tells us that, placed before two hypotheses, we should always consider the simpler of the two to be correct. Obviously this is not a universal ...
Yamar69's user avatar
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Why does Elon Musk say we almost certainly live in a simulated reality?

When Morpheus from the Matrix tells us about why the machines use human body heat together with some sort of fusion in order to derive energy, why didn't the machines simply use nuclear, fusion, ...
user40481's user avatar
2 votes
7 answers
722 views

Can we know anything about the "outside", if we are in a simulation?

Please note this question isn't about "simulation" as such. It is cast in this way to illustrate a particular sub-to-super ontology relationship: Given that all we see or seem, are the product of ...
christo183's user avatar
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Does the Kalam cosmological argument prove that the prime Creator created this universe directly

I was reading about the Kalam cosmological argument on wikipedia. The conclustion of which is: An uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, ...
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2 answers
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Did David Deutsch really disprove the Simulation Hypothesis?

In The Fabric of Reality (1997) by David Deutsch, he says: Imagine a computer built to render every possible Virtual Reality. Suppose all possible environments produced by this generator can be ...
christo183's user avatar
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5 votes
3 answers
507 views

Can it be shown that video games have in some way impacted philosophy or vice versa?

Video games are a quite recent invention and they became popular far after being invented, maybe by the 90s. However, I think video games somehow affected my worldview and produced some ideas. I will ...
rus9384's user avatar
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Understanding the simulation argument

I came across Nick Bostrom's paper called Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?. The paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: The human species is likely to go extinct ...
Mr. President's user avatar
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17 answers
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Are we living in a simulation? The evidence

I am not questioning whether the simulation topic is outside science. I am asking what evidence there is or could be to resolve whether we are or not. Living in a simulation has been a topic for ...
CriglCragl's user avatar
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16 votes
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If we live in a simulated world, doesn't there have to be a first world that's real?

There are people who believe we live in a world, simulated on a computer. That computer must have been built in either another computer-generated world or a real world (by which I mean a non-simulated ...
Deschele Schilder's user avatar
1 vote
4 answers
441 views

Can our universe be a simulation without simulator?

I have a deviating understanding of the simulation hypothesis. If I look at our universe as simulation, then it seems to me irrelevant whether this simulation is actually executed or not. In my ...
user3123061's user avatar
14 votes
2 answers
1k views

Does the Simulation Argument differ in essence from the Evil Genius puzzle?

I recently read an article that suggested we might be able to determine if we are part of a computer simulation run by our descendants. The idea seemed far-fetched, but after looking around, I see ...
Jon Ericson's user avatar
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3 answers
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What is the best scientific argumentation against the Dust Theory?

The "Dust Theory", by Greg Egan, states that... ... there is no difference, even in principle, between physics and mathematics, and that all mathematically possible structures exist, among ...
Hugo Sereno Ferreira's user avatar
15 votes
6 answers
1k views

Is the simulation hypothesis outside of science?

On the question of the simulation hypothesis (i.e. that reality is a simulation), a friend of mine once remarked he didn't accept it on the grounds of Ockham's razor. To me (with my admittedly ...
James Tauber's user avatar

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