If the simulation within a simulation theory were correct wouldnt that make it a fractal?

What if dmt were like a backdoor hack and there are millions of different simulators running many within others and multiples along side them. When you dose dmt you are inbetween simulators and able to see entities that are awaiting being jacked back into a simulation between death and birth.

If this is a simulation, who knows how many levels one would have to peel back to get to get to the original "real" universe. Not that we could peel it back. I wonder how many levels of simulations the computer in the "real" universe could accommodate before it crashed.

I've read that one way to test the idea is to look for glitches. Maybe we can figure out some cheats lol. Maybe dmt is a glitch

Problem is we cant necassarily trust our senses. I have seen slight visual abnormalities that could easily be chalked up as a glitch. Then we run the risk of looking like a crazy person filming the sky pointing out the glitches and posting it on youtube...

The world does seem to be composed of fractal geometry. Are you familiar with Benoit Mandelbrot?

There is something like computer involved. A higly complex organic one. It's the most complex signal processing device known to men. And we still haven't figured out how this device works which creates this...our...magnificant reality. ...this device which we call our brain.

It takes simple analog input of certain frequencies, from certain spectrums and from those ...it...synthesizes...what we percieve as reality. And like on a synthesizer there are knobs that can be turned and buttons that can be pressed.

Turning a certain knob in a certain direction...modulates...the resulting signal (which we call reality) in a certain way.

Different synthesizers...even from the same batch...generate a slighly different signal because of slight variables in their building blocks.

I really like this analogy.

This analogy can go much deeper then it goes above...it involves feedback, feedbackloops, distortion, synced signals, oscillators etc. etc.

...maybe I'm wrong with my first words in this post and there really isn't any computer involved...but the greatest synthesizer one can imagine....which creates this amazing symphony aka reality which we are dancing to.

Think about it.

very true

I thought about it and i like it. Realities in realities, simulations in simulations.
I think that if my reality was a synthesizer it would have to be a virtual analogue synth contained in digital audio workstation software (which could be the ultraverse). God is the operator of said software and he happens to be a teenaged, cackhanded EDM producer with a David guetta hairstyle who downloaded a cracked version of cubase off of Utorrent.

I do get a sense at times that it's all a big cosmic joke.

Making computer simulations is my number one hobby and some of the things I've seen have lead me to believe that reality can't really be distinguished from a simulation.
If it were a "computer" simulation, it would have to be far different than the computers we use though.
I have had a go at simulating evolution, the big bang, the formation of a planet and a galaxy, and I've tried to make programs that can "learn", but the limiting factor is the same thing every time -
Computers aren't infinite. They can only use numbers that are so high and can only store so much data at a time.
All of these things I have tried to simulate are based on a starting point and then some set of rules that is iterated over and over to get to an outcome. In reality the rules could be thought of as all the laws we know of such as physics, gravity, electromagnetism, etc, and they are applied to everything in the universe, which gives a result, then the rules are applied to that result again and again infinitely.
The problem with a computer is it needs a "step" factor (such as time. see the three body problem). In the real world there isn't a number of times that the rules are applied per second. But with a computer there must be. Also the end result is what you get after an infinite number of iterations. Computers can only apply a rule a finite number of times. So everything you try to simulate in the real world is an approximation at best. Your results might be accurate on a small scale, but multiply that small error by billions of years and you end up with a stagnant simulation.
If you had a computer that could work with infinity, I feel like you could definitely create a universe. And it might not even be as hard as it sounds! You don't have to design animals and plants and planets one by one. You just need a set of rules that can be iterated infinitely. If the results from your rules don't ever create a state that was reached at a previous time, your simulation will have infinite complexity. Even in the most complex computer simulation, it will always reach a state that was reached previously if enough time passes, because there are a finite number of states it can be in.

"You just need a set of rules which can be iterated to infinity"

The laws of physics?

Yes

This reminds me of Conway's Game of Life: http://en.wikipedia.org/.../Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

You just set a couple rules and let the program evolve. I was recently in a Intro Programming class and one of the final project options was to implement this, so clearly it isn't really that difficult. Computer modeling is used for all sorts of things, but I'm assuming you'd need quite the computer to be able have conscious organisms within programs. But I guess who's to say that we're conscious in a sense of free choice? One could argue that all of our decisions are based on some deep level on a strict set of rules that could be predicted and/or modeled if you knew enough about the rules governing our actions and existence.

Also I feel like there would be an information storage problem, as only so much information can be stored in a given space (I think we have figured out what this constant appears to be, but I may be mistaken). Maybe if all of this info is even stored at all, it is in another dimension, but I don't really think anyone knows enough about hyperdimensional information storage and retrieval just yet to put this in exact scientific terms.

The implication of Conway's Game of Life is that the universe/physics is computational, which is to say that reality is digital on it's most fundamental level. However, this is not to say that reality as we know it is being simulated by "outside" entities. Rather, reality is a self-sustained, self-originating, digital computation. There could be people using this universal computer, but it could just as well have popped into existence in a Big Bang.

I could imagine the scenario where everything is determined through a very complex set of yes and no's.

There are only so many possibilities with anything in a reality like this one where there are rules. I have often tried to visualize the mechanics but they seem so complex that its very difficult to see much. I picture each person is likely to make certain decisions over others and everything you do is based on what you have done.

I dont know if i explained that correctly...

Basically everything time there are multiple outcomes to something there are reasons why there is a more likely path, which is based on everything that has happened. The longer you are alive the more predictable your next choice will be.

Conway's game of life is cool to mess with. You can change the rules in all sorts of ways and get all sorts of different results.
Conway said he is actually somewhat upset that he has done much more important things for mathematics but people know him for the game the he doesn't even find very important.
For me the only implication of the game is that very simple rules when repeated over and over can create complex and unpredictable outcomes.

What about the Planck Time?

Perhaps the time that we perceive is a meek shadow of the potentiate time of our hypothetical architects. And the problem you put forth @frobot is easily resolved by this thought.

Last night I drank the brew, and read terrence mckenna's "new maps of hyperspace" while I was peaking.
He says,

"I suggest that it is much more useful to try to make a geometric model of conscious- ness, to take seriously the idea of a parallel continuum, and to say that the mind and the body are embedded in the dream and the dream is a higher-order spatial dimension. In sleep, one is released into the real world, of which the world of waking is only the surface in a very literal geometric sense. There is a plenum—recent experiments in quantum physics tend to back this up—a holographic plenum of information. All information is everywhere. Information that is not here is nowhere. Information stands outside of time in a kind of eternity—an eternity that does not have a temporal existence about which one may say, “It always existed.” It does not have temporal duration of any sort. It is eternity. We are not primarily biological, with mind emerging as a kind of iridescence, a kind of epiphenomenon at the higher levels of organization of biology. We are hyperspatial objects of some sort that cast a shadow into matter. The shadow in matter is our physical organism."

I was easily able to visualize this while in the aya state. So then I googled this "plenum" he talks about, and found this:

http://www.bizcharts.com...sol/plenum/plenum_3.html

Is anyone familiar with David Bohm? This theory of his may explain hyperspace and seems to tie into this simulation idea as well.

The Holographic Universe is a book that provides a good non-technical introduction to Bohm's theory, though the rest of the book is a bit...out there. Not that there isn't plenty of info online.

My understanding is that Hidden Variable Theory (Bhom interpretation) differs from Quantum Mechanics in that it is deterministic whereas the QM (the mainstream view) is local. Bell proved that a quantum theory cannot have both of these properties. Since then, Quantum Field Theory (the vastly successful successor of QM) was invented. I don't know where that leaves HVT since I don't think that there is a theory X such that QM:QFT::HVT: X. As far as I know, QM and HVT result in the same observable reality, so the mainstream choice of QM is completely arbitrary.

Personally, I prefer determinism to locality. In other words, I would rather accept that information can travel at infinite speed than accept that the future is not as certain as the past. I guess I hate the time asymmetry.

EDIT: Apparently the Theory X mentioned above does exist (or at least it has been considered):
http://en.wikipedia.org/...ory#Quantum_field_theory

I think planck units have some sort of significance and are interesting to me, but I do not at all think that time happens in units of any sort.
If you have a time, t, and a time that is a planck unit ahead, t2, I feel pretty positive that things are happening in between t and t2.
Maybe some things do happen at intervals of the planck unit, but I can't imagine a universe ever working if nothing at all is happening in between t and t2.
I could even accept that all observable phenomena happens at units of planck time, but I still feel certain there are underlying things happening in between.

The same goes with planck units of distance. I see it as if you have a particle at position a, and it moves a planck space unit to position b, it still passed through an infinite number of places to get from a to b.