Did the Oscars Just Prove That We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?(newyorker.com)
newyorker.com
Did the Oscars Just Prove That We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/did-the-oscars-just-prove-that-we-are-living-in-a-computer-simulation
9 comments
Just as you were writing this, my WinBook Pro [1] locked up solid, for the first time ever. And it happened while I was cropping a photo of myself and blew it up on the second display. I think the self-referentiality of this was too much for the poor thing to bear.
After a hard reset, Windows 10 gave its very first BSOD. I knew it must be bad memory, a failing SSD, or corrupted software.
But one more boot and the machine is humming along as if nothing ever happened. A disk check shows no errors.
Truly, something strange is in the air.
I quickly made a backup, of course. I just hope the backup drive is in a different universe, because I'm not sure how much I trust this one any more.
[1] A WinBook Pro is a MacBook Pro running Windows 10 under Boot Camp, with one of these stickers on the back of the display to make it official:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014I1ICX8/
After a hard reset, Windows 10 gave its very first BSOD. I knew it must be bad memory, a failing SSD, or corrupted software.
But one more boot and the machine is humming along as if nothing ever happened. A disk check shows no errors.
Truly, something strange is in the air.
I quickly made a backup, of course. I just hope the backup drive is in a different universe, because I'm not sure how much I trust this one any more.
[1] A WinBook Pro is a MacBook Pro running Windows 10 under Boot Camp, with one of these stickers on the back of the display to make it official:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014I1ICX8/
If you're interested in simulation theories, I recommend reading "The Simulation Argument" by Nick Bostrom [0] or watching his interview on Youtube [1].
[0] http://www.simulation-argument.com/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs
[0] http://www.simulation-argument.com/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs
An interesting take on this is in the Culture series from Iain M. Banks. The AI minds, who for all intents run the Culture civilisation, constantly spawn virtual universes to test hypothesises.
Some shut them down after running the sim, some feel morally obliged to keep them running...
Also, if someone's suddenly jerking the strings in a game, it usually means they're bored and it's only a matter of time before they press one of the "godzilla invades", "aliens attack", "mass-tornados" buttons.
Some shut them down after running the sim, some feel morally obliged to keep them running...
Also, if someone's suddenly jerking the strings in a game, it usually means they're bored and it's only a matter of time before they press one of the "godzilla invades", "aliens attack", "mass-tornados" buttons.
it usually means they're bored
Just curious, you have experience with knowingly running in a virtual universe?
Just curious, you have experience with knowingly running in a virtual universe?
I was talking about games?
Urgh... There goes 5 minutes of my life that I'm never getting back. Seriously, don't bother reading this, as it's a whole lot of nonsense. To boil it down:
- Unexpected things are happening, like Trump being elected president and some long-odds movie winning an Oscar.
- If we are living in a simulation, this behaviour is easily explained as some kind of glitch.
- Therefore, we are living in a simulation.
Betteridge's law of headlines applies here: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
- Unexpected things are happening, like Trump being elected president and some long-odds movie winning an Oscar.
- If we are living in a simulation, this behaviour is easily explained as some kind of glitch.
- Therefore, we are living in a simulation.
Betteridge's law of headlines applies here: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
Thanks for saving us the click. Sounds like a whole lot of obliviousness if serious (did Borowitz write the article?), almost as if they could have unironically included 'our readership has declined' and/or 'our authorial quality has reached an all-time low' among their examples.
Is Betteridge's Law of Headlines always correct?
Probably not, but most 'laws' are generalisms drawn from repeated observation as opposed to iron-clad rules, anyway.
> Did the Oscars Just Prove That We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?
!!
Did you real the headline before reading it. It was exactly what it makes out to be :)
!!
Did you real the headline before reading it. It was exactly what it makes out to be :)
It's an interesting narrative. But isn't it more likely that normalcy and predictability that we are so used to for the past few decades is the actual illusion? World is inherently chaotic and unpredictable. On top of that, human history does go through tumultuous periods where established systems are uppended.
This is just a modern form of religion. Personally I don't get why people get so hyped about it.
Should the Amazon S3 downtime yesterday be considered a glitch in this simulation? It is, too, one of these things that should never happen.
tldr: what if we assume independent events are connected, then it must be computers, because they are connected too and bugs can explain low probabilistic events happening (seemingly more frequently). Betteridge's law applies.
EJTH(1)
Some want to eat the whole cake, others just want to be left alone. Some for integration, others for separation. The fact that all these "weird" things are all happening could well be linked at some systemic level that will maybe be obvious to future historians. Like how we theorize that ocean going vessels enabled the days of colonialism or the development of fossil fuels led to the industrial revolution. The discovery of semiconductor material made the IT revolution possible.
What we could very well be experiencing now is some kind of singular behaviour due to the development of these new globally linked consciences - that are elbowing for space, and resources - annoying each other and squabbling in the process. Of course to us it looks like bizarre behaviour but perhaps no more bizarre than the random bits and bytes flying through a link appear to something like a network switch (had it the sense to ponder itself).
When I run too many programs on my computer weird things start to happen. Ghosts appear on my screen, leaving a trailing residue. The screen blanks. Sometimes the mouse pointer won't respond and a strange chugging starts to come from the box under my monitor. It's not so far fetched to expect that a tightly integrated system such as the modern global economy might exhibit other equally frustrating and odd (though explainable) phenomena when put under stress.