During a joint psychedelic experience a friend and I discussed videogames, especially the game No Man’s Sky by Hello Games (which is not released yet, and I suggest whoever reads this to check it out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLcjvIQJns0). No Man’s Sky is 64-bit seed sand-box universe of incomprehensible size. In other words it's fucking huge. An epiphany hit us square in the face about this game and not just this one but all other types of videogames. The human species has managed to program elaborate domains into our own universe. For No Man’s Sky let’s swap out a word here, we programmed a universe into our own universe. The psychedelic experience made it subjectively clear that we are embedding realms into our own universe and mental understanding. To interact with these domains all one needs to do is engage with an input module (controlling device), create an avatar, and then traverse upon digital landscapes (output). It’s so fascinating to me that a couple million years or so of evolution from our primal ancestry has implied intricate comprehension and creation of computers to where we can commit such astounding acts. If this doesn’t seem intriguing then attempt to peel away your prejudice of what a “game” is and entails (or engage with what we have come to know dissolves schemas and bias’s so very efficiently) then entertain what I have mentioned. You’ll see something else then a videogame.

I've listened to Terence Mckenna lecture briefly about his deep interest of Virtual Reality but haven't paid much attention until recently when I experienced the direct personal revelation. The man was onto something. Keep in mind that I understand this phenomena doesn't express precisely the organic reality of perceptual everyday life but it shouldn't be discredited as unworthy of examination.

Does anybody with an expertise in the field of computer science have any input? I feel like this is a great topic of discussion as I'm open to anyone's input.

Very interesting topic.
I am a network engineer by trade, but I do also have a lot of experience in programming.

What blows me away - it is claiming to have a truly intelligent sequence that can generate these worlds. Now anyone that knows about computer science knows that it is impossible to generate truly random numbers. Without random numbers this would be an impossible task to generate a truly random world.

So is that all that separates our reality from a virtual reality generated by artificial intelligence?

I had something of a revelation akin to that when I was younger and played video games very often. I would find myself completely immersed in these worlds while under the influence of a psychedelic or something else like cannabis, and my mind would start to go all kinds of strange places.

I was introduced to video games and computers very early on in my life. So much so that I now consider them virtually an extension of myself at times. It doesn't sound so far-fetched now, does it, with everyone walking around with cell phones playing candy crush and angry birds. We are now intimately linked to these devices and I think the newer generations are going to become so dependent on it that they will essentially merge with this technology.

Transhumanism anyone?

I would also love if someone with knowledge in computer science would chime in. Very fascinating topic

I'm working on a PhD in computer science, focused on physical simulations and virtual reality. After my time in hyperspace, I'm starting to think that we're part of the game:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis

An important aspect of a simulation is that the fidelity and size of the simulation are related to the size of the simulator (e.g. computer). In other words, to simulate a reality the size of the universe would require a computer at least as big as the universe (assuming there is boundary to the universe). For that reason we can never create a universe-sized simulation in this reality, though it doesn't preclude the idea that we are living in a simulation ourselves.

I think that hyperspace might be the root level of a hierarchy of simulations (we're in the middle somewhere). At the highest level, there is only information and consciousness (no mass-carrying objects or spacetime at all), otherwise one would ask the question, "who simulates the simulators?". The only answer that seems probable is that the highest level of reality cannot have anything resembling physical matter. Matter is a concept invented by a higher-level entity that is useful for running simulations, same for all of the physical laws.

It's around since at least 1967:

This thread reminded me of a book I read a few years ago that a fellow salvianaut sent me. He was big into the Simulation Theory and really got me interested in that whole idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacron-3
Originally published in 1964

There have also been two movie adaptations of the book, World on a Wire and The Thirteenth Floor.

It seems as though we are projecting ourselves as computers. The principles of the components are oddly in relation to the fundamentals of our own biological makeup. Memory, perception, output of sound/light, our instinctual behaviors in relation to programmed algorithms. For example drive down a road with ample pedestrians then honk your horn and observe the speedy reaction time of people's heads turning toward you in order to detect possible threats, it's like clockwork... this is comparable to a game in which when you tread certain distance from an antagonist it will become aware autonomously and attack your avatar based on the conditions coded. I'm sure I could go on.

Thanks for providing those! I'll have to look into them.

That's a good example and I do things like that all the time I often see things in real life in terms of video games, like coded responses as you've said. I'd sit and listen to you go on for hours as this subject fascinates me to no end.

And you're welcome for the book/movie. I enjoyed the book far more, but that is often the case with me. The Thirteenth Floor is a very entertaining movie, however. Fans of The Matrix seem to love it or hate it; I find both movies have their merits.

when i play video games i get really sucked in, to the point i get connected with the character and think like them, sometimes parts of the character of the game get stuck into me because i like the logic of how they do things and i let it form part of my real self, it is pretty weird, not that i am a geek or so.

Not only is it more than we may suppose, it is more than we CAN suppose!

Yes, there are old shamans and there are bold shamans, but there are no old bold shamans.

What if consciousness was actually electricity and there was no destinction between electricity in your CNS and everywhere else? What gives rise to consciousness in you brain is only certain chemicals that control the release of electricity....

See China Brain

tH3ref0r, the internet

(*plugs himself in to computer game, discovers characters are real and have self-consciousness. Develops a computer game in the computer game and discovers characters are real and have self consciousness. Develops a computer game in the computer game of the original computer game and on and on and on)

Why is it impossible? Are you infering that because nothing can be random that everything including the real world is dependant/predetermined/programmed etc?

I do not understand why size would have to be proportionate? How is the hardware of a computer that creates a virtual reality related to the size of the virtual reality?

What if it is being projected from higher dimensions? Would these size constraints still apply? What if those dimensions go beyond information & consciousness?

It absolutely does not have to be proportional.
Matter may be an illusion only perceived by those within.
Think of it like a projector.
We are inside the 2-dimensional image on the screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7K5KjOdLD8

A micro SD card the size of a fingernail can store entire synthetic universes. And that's our technology.
It's almost impossible to fathom what exists in other dimensions.
It could just be an endless loop of simulating.
Who knows?
Not you, not I.
We probably never will know.

To have simulation with high fidelity (e.g. at the level of subatomic particles/quantum interactions), would require storing the state of that system as it advanced from one state to the next over time. A mole of particles (e.g. 18ml of water) is 6.02x10^26 particles, each one would have to have things like its spin/momentum/charge stored, meaning you would need at least that many bits of information to store it (probably more, depending on the numerical representation). That assumes that bits can be stored with perfect efficiency, though our current technologies require many many atoms to create just 1 transistor, so the efficiency of our storage devices/computer representation is far from ideal. Scaling this concept up, you'd need a computer at least the size of the universe to even store the state of the universe, probably much larger.

This at least applies to simulations embedded within this universe, and maybe to higher realities as well. In higher realities there may not be the same constraints on matter, information, and number of dimensions so anything could be possible. The point is that our universe appears to obey rules like conservation of mass/energy/information, and those constraints preclude universe-sized simulations that we might try to create.

You might think that procedurally generated random worlds (as in OP) could break that constraint, but really there is only a limited amount of information in those simulations (the random seed, algorithms used to generate the world), and only a portion of the procedurally generated world is actually simulated at any given time.

That could be true but I think it is more likely this whole thing is all stored on a hyperdimensional floppy inserted in to a turtle that is hyperdimensionally connected on top of another turtle and so on

I have no high hopes for No mans land.
Simply because a trillion different star systems mean nothing if they look all too similar to each other.
The game will be fun, for a while, but random generated game universes have one limitating factor.
No matter how many random things the computer generates, without a human touch it will be/look boring. Our pattern recognition will make us realize sooner or later that all these worlds have much less diversity than a small garden here on earth.
Procedural detail generation is a big thing these days and it gets better and better, but unless we train AIs to have an asthetic feeling, you'll always need an artist who selects the good parts and throws away the bad parts.

I was pondering the other day about this and was wondering, could we explain the strangeness of particles not existing until we observe them with something like Simulation Theory?

Let us assume all of our perceived reality is a simulation. And what arcologist is saying (as I understand it) is that we would need to have an immense calculation/storage device to create a universe sized simulation. But what if only the pieces we are observing at any given time are the necessary simulated bits? Like the focus of a camera lens, the background blurred. So that this simulation device would only need to dole out bits of reality that we are currently focused on, making the constraints on size much more feasible.


This is essentially what I'm trying to say about our everyday reality. Perhaps only a small fraction of the world is ever simulated at one time.

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/measurement-rules-quantum-universe

I just love thinking about this stuff!

How to build a big computer?
1) you set a number of transistors next to each other. Drawback: the amount of transistors reflect it's abilities/limitations.
2) you have only 1 transistor but now you snip-jog time a bit and it performs the job for all the number of transistors you want, then glue/compress time a bit and all it's actions come together to simulate an endless huge computer. No limitations. Drawback: where is that darn recipe to snip and compress time again, I'm sure it was around here somewhere ...

...if "No man's sky" seems interesting there's a free universe sandbox called "Space Engine" with
more star systems than in the observable universe.
All the the stars you see in the video can be visited.
I think they are working on a game mode...I want that in VR...

http://en.spaceengine.org