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Thursday, 24 October 2019


What is it that the simulation hypothesis is trying to say? Is it about the reality presumed to be behind appearances? It would amount to saying that this reality is in fact an appearance produced by another reality still further removed behind the reality behind what we know as appearances. Only at the very end of a chain of such constructions, presumably, would there be a classical reality where quantum type effects do not exists because the primary entities are fully real in their own right. Out of these a simulation has been created by classical 'architects' which veils its artificial nature behind a physics burdened with quantum effects, such a physics being what is discovered by the virtual minds inhabiting the simulation. When you try to put the picture together in this way it becomes nonsensical. The actual motive behind this notion goes the other way around - since unchecked technological development will, it is assumed, inevitably produce the capacity to simulate the universe, including the minds knowing it, we must assume that as a statistical fact that a vast preponderance of the 'worlds appearing for minds' are actually taking place inside such simulations, and hence that our reality is almost certainly such a one. Quantum weirdnesses which seem to somehow point to an anticipation of the observer is then taken to be circumstantial evidence backing up this claim. Either way it begging the question of a reality behind appearances - but what if such a notion is ruled out from the start? It is a very clever and slightly desperate attempt at answering the wrong question.

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