

Is reality a simulation? - ohyes
http://www.nasca.org.uk/Ancestor/ancestor.html

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gnosis
_"the idea of Ancestor Simulation has been around for quite some time. However
it did not receive widespread publicity until 2001 when Nick Bostrom from the
Department of Philosophy at Oxford University in England wrote a paper
entitled 'Are you living in a computer simulation'?"_

A slightly less well known version of the idea was written around 400 BC by
some guy named Plato.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Allegory_of_t...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave)

Of course Plato couldn't hold a candle to the likes of Nick Bostrom.

And we mustn't forget an even earlier version of the idea that's been around
for thousands of years even before Plato. The Hindus believed the world was
illusion. This was echoed later by the Buddha (around the same time as Plato).

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Maya_(illusio...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Maya_\(illusion\))

~~~
carussell
_Of course Plato couldn't hold a candle to the likes of Nick Bostrom._

Is this kind of disparagement necessary?

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codex
The more technology we have, the less we resemble the creatures encoded in our
DNA. Humans are made to be lazy but are only truly happy when striving to
overcome obstacles. Once we have AI even work will have lost its meaning. I
wouldn't be surprised if, at that point, we spend all of our time gaming.
Living in a simulation of our ancestors can be considered the ultimate game.
Some things are elegantly explained by such a theory. The weirdness of quantum
mechanics? A computational shortcut.

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Tycho
One of my favourite parts of Accelerando was when the (post)humans observed
some strange stellar activity far out in the galaxy, and speculated that it
was a post-singularity civilization running a timing attack on the virtual
machine that's hosting the universe.

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discreteevent
Its not possible to argue against this idea in a comment because it takes a
lot of work to disprove. Try reading "The fabric of reality" by quantum
physicist/computationalist David Deutsch.

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dstein
This is the exact same thing as believing in God and the afterlife.

