Lately I've been thinking about this, after an aya experience which consisted of visions of binary code.

http://en.m.wikipedia.or...ki/Simulation_hypothesis

The idea is basically:

"A technologically mature "posthuman" civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true:
The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero;
The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero;
The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.
If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).
Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation."

I'd like to hear others thoughts on this idea. How do you think this might relate to hyperspace?

I spend a lot of time thinking about these kinds of topics, but I don't personally buy the whole "brain-in-a-vat" thing.

I talked about that specifically in depth with a friend the other night. I argued that if we were all suspended in virtual reality, then why would there still be problems? Why would we have to work? Why would we feel sadness, anger, frustration, depression, etc.? If we, or some other race, or whoever, went through the trouble of creating a virtual simulation in which to exist, it might as well be perfect for all its inhabitants, no?

But then I realized that this depends on perception. Obviously things happen to us in our lives. But we have the power the interpret every single one of these things as perfect, and "exactly the way things were meant to be." So we have the power to create a perfect world for ourselves through altering our own perception. And my friend said that the creators of the program, if we could even conceive of them or their wishes, might just be experimenting with us or toying with us in a grand simulation.

The simulated reality hypothesis is like one of those hypotheses that isn't particularly falsifiable, so while it does bring up interesting questions, the answer doesn't matter so much right now. In my personal opinion we are not in a simulation as a movie like The Matrix depicts, but who knows?

Also I'll argue that the reality we exist in is almost completely subjective anyway, and it mimics a simulation even if not through a computer or mass simulator of any sort. What's real to you might not be real to me, and vice versa. It's almost like everyone lives in their own reality regardless of outside simulations or not.

I have a lot of theories about hyperspace (hence my username), and one of my favorite ones is that it is akin to a spiritual plane that is operated as a grand intergalactic computer network operated by extremely advanced extraterrestrial species and fueled by consciousness. The question of things existing outside of the perception of individual and even grand consciousness has so many implications, and I'm not sure a correct (if there even is such an idea) answer can be formulated at this time.

So in our realm of existence, I think it comes down to individual opinion and perception. What is real to you? The answer can range from Nothing to Something to Everything and Beyond.

I don't buy the brain in a vat idea either, and I agree about subjective reality.

But while the simulation argument may not be falsifiable, I don't think our current model of reality is either. I kind of like the idea that a super advanced species created a computer simulation of the evolution of the universe and we just happened to arise in it. This would mean that we're not brains in vats, we're completely simulated, down to the level of individual neurons.

I was talking to a freind about this recently as well. The idea really disturbed him. I told him it's just philosophy, that it doesn't really make much difference in the real world..unless they shut off the program

I sometimes think that if this all turns out to be quite true, not so much analogous to the woefully inefficient and bloated machines that we use today, but perhaps our understanding of computational complexity theory runs a true parallel in this "greater" computer we eventually find ourselves to be participants in.
That maybe we are an unintended consequential automata that emerged like a virus, at the behest of some unwitting and curious programmer tinkering with the proverbial cables lying just beneath our noses at the improbable perfect time.
But instead of dragging us into a multiversian recycle bin before the supervisor finds out about the blunder, we are partitioned off from the greater source code and isolated in our universe, forever evolving alone.
Our only doorway to the greater program being a curious phenomenon found in many plants that when plugged into the program of our consciousness, allows us a 14.4k dialup glimpse into the greater potentiate realms we have been unintentionally denied.

What I find validating in the Simulation Hypothesis is how it neatly overlays belief systems of the past, like the Hindu conception of Maya, or the Gnostic purgatories. It is a deep and ancient teaching, that all is illusion and we are incarcerated in a sense, incarnated here to work through our karma/offenses/addictions through many perspectives to transmute that core heart-chakra identity into a pure thing worthy of release.

The only explanation that makes sense to me concerning the fantastic complexity and information-density of hyperspace is that our reality must be a simplified shell that exists within it, isolated and apart from it. For the more perfect more complex more mathematical/higher-dimensional reality to be the false reality defies logic and common sense, so hyperspace must be the background reality. We aren't always allowed to breakthrough into either, so the entities in this scenario would be enforcing the quarantine. Hyperslaps would be a harsher deterrent for wrongheaded would-be tryptanauts.

(Has anyone ever wandered about hyperspace unaccompanied? I may be incorrect here but I think that all breakthroughs are guided tours of the higher dimensions, carefully supervised with a preset itinerary. This supports the quarantine argument. Only salvia seems to throw a trippers consciousness randomly and glitchily unaccompanied, seemingly sideways into the cogs of the simulation rather then up and out of it)

The fact that almost all breakthroughs and entity communication focus on channeling LOVE is also seemingly beyond coincidence. Everything is always about empathy and realizing unity between all living things when the dosage gets high enough. This is very clearly higher dimensional Therapy, and the "spirits" are Therapists, and we are the patients quarantined in a Newtonian shell in a quantum supercomputer. Earth in this sense is a prison for sociopaths (we don't usually feel the radiant Love Power here unlike seemingly all the hyperspace citizens, Buddhas aside, and I believe the hyperspace population far surpasses ours. If we have a patient/prisoner population of 7 billion, and each of us has a couple entities assigned to us, the future population that would engender our virtual prison complex would be in the hundreds of billions, so it would be a multiplanetary civilization hundreds of years in the future. Or hundreds of years in the present?

One theme I have noted in many trip reports and in my own journeys is the revelation that we are of the same culture of the tryptamine entities, but our own memories are edited and shaped to limit our understanding and recollection. In reference to the Virtual CBT therapy argument made above, I would say this is done so as to provide better results when observing patients for egoistic & sociopathic traits. If an incarnated/incarcerated patient knew they were under observation they would behave differently and it would skew the results. For this reason an all encompassing Life illusion pulled from historical record would prove valuable in making the patient believe they were unobserved so as to show their true character. Dreams are another level of this observational deception, another false reality shell to pull out the true inner hidden shadowself for therapeutic work.

Anyone into this line of speculation should really read everything by Greg Egan and Hannu Rajaniemi, the two best hard scifi authors exploring digitized consciousness and its ramifications centuries into the future. Diaspora and Permutation City by the former and the Quantum Thief trilogy for the latter are especially relevant and mindblowing. The Black Mirror xmas special is also worth watching, as is the german movie World on a Wire on youtube.

ALL OF THE ABOVE IS IMHO (listening for the trollstomps...)
food for thought, i will not debate

I agree with you, and I'll def read those 2 authors. When I drink the force and light or smoke changa, I get the feeling that the dmt state is a sort of digital version of reality, like before I did it I was in analog mode, while the more I ingest the molecule, the more digital I become.. Or something lol. I was into the simulation argument before I got into the magic, but now, more and more, I'm gravitating toward this idea.

Last night I drank 6 g harmal and 10 g acacia confusa and really thought about it. It make a lot of sense to me. Eastern mysticism does indeed tie in nicely as well. Reincarnation and all..

There's def a technological aspect to the aya / dmt state, ime. Not to mention that the universe itself can be described in a computational manner.

1. The purpose of a simulation is to imitate reality as it is, not as we would like it to be. If the purpose is to study humans to learn about consciousness as it exists in nature, then it has to contain suffering.
2. Maybe an advanced race decided that some degree of suffering is necessary to attain virtue or wisdom. Maybe conscious beings become mentally sick when never subjected to hardship.
3. Maybe the advanced race is harvesting our scientific and technological advancements, which we would have no necessity to produce if we lived in a "perfect" environment.
4. Maybe the work that we do in the simulation has some mapping onto work in the real world. For example: Animal clones in a real-world factory are simulated as cars in a Honda factory. A factory worker in the simulation assembles the car, and his motions and decisions are somehow uploaded to a robot that performs analogous operations on animal clones. In other words, solutions to problems in the simulation are also solutions to problems in the real world.

Regarding the OP

I have to disagree with all three of these statements. I think the first statement is false because we are already coming up on the era of computational ability necessary to do such simulations. I think the second statement is false because humans are already simulating lower life-forms (e.g. Openworm). I think the third statement is just a baseless assumption: We could never know what the experiences of simulated humans will be like, and thus we have no reason to believe that it will even remotely resemble our current experiences.

Thanks for offering great responses to my questions, hixidom.



These two answers are the most interesting to me. I never considered that we could be the embodiment of some kind of machine learning. Humans now have computer models that can learn from experience and offer useful results. It is very possible that we ourselves are an advanced form of this.

One could argue at the same time that we are at the mercy of higher dimensional beings anyway, just as 2D ("flatlander" beings would be at our 3D mercy. So there wouldn't be a need to worry about the powers above (whoever is running the simulation) as if they wanted something done, it would happen.

I am now starting to see the deeper implications of this question. Manipulation from "behind the conscious awareness" would be impossible, or very difficult, to find out about. I suppose this is why we are fascinated by so many mind control sci-fi movies, as well as films like Memento. They deal with this generally unconsidered/unconscious fear that "this could all be fake" or better yet "it was all a dream!!" (boo on you, Dallas).

This also brings up the question that if we succeed in creating a self-aware machine, which I'm pretty sure will be within the next 50 years, will it have the same "consciousness rating" as a human being? The movie I, Robot is applicable here. When we have functioning androids, will they deserve 'human' rights? Or will it expand to 'conscious being rights'?

I pose the above questions because if we are in fact creations of some higher beings, unbeknownst to us, then I'd think we would have some expectations to limits/rights in our universe. Who knows, maybe the laws of physics and so forth are more or less constraints put in by our so-called masters, a sort of agreement on certain laws and limits that won't change so we can live our lives?

You've cracked this open much wider for me, but I'll still say that it comes down to personal perception. People have the ability, on some level, to choose what is real for them or not. I personally take this all as a big hint that computing technology is definitely a step toward consciousness evolution.

Theres no chance of a self-aware robot that comes close to our level of conciousness being developed in the next 50 years. There are just too many variables to compute and too many that a silicon based computer wouuldnt be able to process simultaneously.
I will add more on this later once Ive dug out the reasons why, if youre interested there is a chapter in The Future of The Mind by Dr Michio Kaku that goes into this, very interesting book I recommend it.

EDIT: Attached are a couple of pages from book mentioned.

Given that computers basically didn't even exist 50 years ago, I think it is hard (if not impossible) to say what will be in 50 years from now.

Our level of technological prowess has increased enormously just since I was a kid 20 years ago. Things change so rapidly now days who's to say what a another half century will bring. Unfortunately high technology bring existential risks. Humanity should ponder assumption #2 in the simulation hypothisis, the "great filter." There are several ways we could off our civilization, bio weapons, nuclear exchange, catastrophic climate change, etc.

Somehow though I think we'll make it and go on to simulate universes of our own, in which case, we'll have no reason to assume our reality isn't being simulated.

One question I have is, if a super advanced race, or perhaps our future decendents were to simulate a universe for a reason other than to specifically create us, say to model the evolution of the universe, could we just arise by accident within the program? Because in this case both the theists and the atheists would be partially correct, as the programmers would be God for all practical purposes, yet we would still be a cosmic accident.
Perhaps if they didn't specifically look for us, the God(s) / programmer wouldn't even know we're here at all.

Also, it seems to me that the uncertainty principle from quantum physics would square nicely with a simulated universe. In principle, the entire universe doesn't need to be simulated in minute detail at all times, but only when someone observes something, for instance if one looks at the night sky with the naked eye, the stars only need to be so detailed, while if an astronomer points a powerful telescope at a distant galaxy, only then would finer detail be required. Maybe this could explain a lot of the wild aspects of physics, such as the double slit experiment and generally crazy behavior of sub atomic particals. It would also cut down the huge requirements of processing power dramatically. Of course if this is the case then it's unlikely we arose by accident.

That may well be true. Whilst the prowess and gusto of computational technology has increased in orders of magnitiude, it hasnt actually made a difference becuase of the increase in sophistication and complexity of the software running on it.
And the hardware has a very real limit, both with processes and power consumption (assuming the current trend of device innovation continues). But there is no theoretical limit to what can be computed (software).

I hope that makes sense

Yeah thats basically what Dr Michio Kaku is explaining in his book that I attached above.
I should have said little chance not no chance.
There is also the problem of integrating and replicating all the different functions of the brain into one coherent whole and one super-computer that is capable of handling all these processes without burning out or 'leaking electrons'.

There are however some very interesting studies and projects in A.I that have been completed..

IBM computer Watson
ASIMO
CYC
Huggable and Nexi - Dr Cynthia Breazeal
Nao - University of Hertfordshire - Dr Lola Canamero
The Theory of Mind

Some great threads recently feels like the dmt-nexus of old!

That's why I joined the nexus. This really is an awesome community.

That is a neat possibility that I didn't think of.


Regarding uncertainty, you sort of mix two concepts: Heisenberg uncertainty principle and wavefunction collapse. Regarding Heisenberg uncertainty principle, I'm not sure that Heisenberg uncertainty can be programmed with a computer that isn't a quantum computer, but scholars have already proven that a classical Turing machine cannot simulate a quantum Turing machine, so I think it is already a given that the computer doing the world simulation has to be a quantum computer (or something even better ).

Regarding wavefunction collapse, I don't think the simulation would benefit from treating observed events differently from non-observed events. There is no more information in the observation than there is in the original quantum system, and from an outsider who is analyzing the simulation the observers in the simulation are also part of the quantum system. So the experience of wavefunction collapse is purely subjective and the beings running the simulation probably wouldn't be able to distinguish between "classical" conscious observers and their quantum surroundings. Like you said, they probably wouldn't recognize that there are conscious beings in their simulation to begin with.

Thanks for clearing that up. I'm surely not a expert on quantum physics, although it does interest me greatly. Idk why this idea appeals to me so much. Some people I know are quite disturbed by it.

It's definitely a very thought-provoking idea, with many powerful implications. I'd say I prefer it to any currently-existing religion, and it would be really nice for physicists because it would mean that time and space must be quantized and finite.

Ray kurzweil predicts that computer will surpass humans by 2045. Other futurists believe it may happen sooner than that.

Imo, its hard to fathom a computer that would be capable of creating a reality such as this one. More so, that computer wont even be recognizable as what we know a computer to be.

I had the thought that what if we reached technological equilibrium. Where everything that could be created has been. It would make sense to me that the next logical thing to do would be to create a simulation allowing us to experience starting over from the beginning. Then i came up with the horrifying idea that what if we then reached technological equilibrium inside that simulation, and then created a simulation inside that simulation to experience starting over. Rinse, repeat, repeat... Inception.

I would like to add this: http://www.theguardian.c...d-boy-passes-turing-test to your list of recent AI breakthroughs. The article details a few computer programs that were able to pass the classic, albeit controversial, Turing Test. More than 30% of human judges had keyboard conversations with the main program discussed in the article and judged it as a real human being. Another one is detailed near the end of the article with a much higher percentage.

From before, I see the AI-as-in-movies happening in the next 50 years, but I should have said that I am rather biased, as I am an optimistic, and maybe a bit idealistic, college student partially studying Computer Science. My professors are very positive about the current and upcoming innovations in the field, but weren't we also supposed to have flying cars by this point too??

Going back to the original simulation hypothesis, I agree with you hixidom that it is preferable to religion. But this still isn't particularly falsifiable. We can't prove at this time that we are not in a simulation (or even a repeated simulation situation of anrchy proposed which blew my mind), just as we can't prove that there is or is not a god or godlike beings or what have you. While religion was really just made up to explain our origins and now is used in many cases to control people, pass on morals, tradition, etc., it's not feasible to scientifically prove it true or false.

I suppose this gets more into the evidence and perception end of it... The whole "what is real?" discussion. But the theories proposed above can really make one think. It's also interesting to insert our DMT experiences into this. How might DMT allow us to interact with "different objects in the program"?