The Simulation Theory

[Mr.Nobody]

Just finished the game Prince of persia (Genesis version), a hell of ordeal for the Prince to go through just for saving the ass of the princess...I was never able to finish it when I was a kid...life is always cruel for an avatar in a game I guess.

[Ray]

The asshole who invented child brain cancer.

Funny, I thought that nuclear testing and power production, plasticisers, pesticides and such like had more to do with it.

If you want to say that mankind has made a lot of its problems by itsself, I am with you.
If you want to say there might be a creator-god and it isn't his fault, I am with webwit. He made a world where your claims lead to child brain cancer, where the child (or its direct line of ancesters, if you want) didn't do anything that would cause it.

[matt3o]

I do like this part of throw-something-at-a-wall science though. Sometimes truly interesting, sometimes just sci-fi good for an entertaining Rick&Morty episode.

on that we totally agree. To me it's just pub-talk.

[kbdfr]

Descartes' out-dated philosophy […]

Published 1637.
Belief in a God or gods or anything similar: a few thousands years older than that,
not less "out-dated" just because it appears in a new look every once in a while.

Alleging there must be some sort of higher form of existence
because of the mere fact that we don't know nor understand everything
is just childish - in the true sense of the word.

[Mr.Nobody]

Descartes' out-dated philosophy […]

Published 1637.
Belief in a God or gods or anything similar: a few thousands years older than that,
not less "out-dated" just because it appears in a new look every once in a while.

Alleging there must be some sort of higher form of existence
because of the mere fact that we don't know nor understand everything
is just childish - in the true sense of the word.

Look who am I talking to? A guy who believes there should be no secrecy whatsoever, if there is any then there must be some sort of selfish shady evil shit going on, while next time when you type in your passwords to log in DT or your Email or bank account, try to understand why secrecy is necessary, if still you can't understand, then think harder you might still stand a chance...but this topic which entails quantum physics philosophy and a little religion is apparently too big for you...no offence.

@matt3o

Yes, chitchat, that's why it's posted in Off-topic section,BTW, is there a limit for Inbox?

[Ray]

If you think quantum physics has anything to do with a higher entity, you don't understand the difference between science and religion. There is as much room for a god in quantum physics as it was in Newtonian Physics.

Science thrives when it gets disproven, religion just ignore the disproves since you cannot disprove ignorance and hope.

Edit: nor fear - no offence.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

If you want to say that mankind has made a lot of its problems by itsself, I am with you.
If you want to say there might be a creator-god and it isn't his fault, I am with webwit. He made a world where your claims lead to child brain cancer, where the child (or its direct line of ancesters, if you want) didn't do anything that would cause it.

Where do you draw the line? Which human actions should be allowed to occur, and which human actions should be supernaturally prevented to avoid anyone suffering from the consequences?

Shoplifting?

One thing that never seems to get mentioned in the news is that the NHS in Britain would be far less overstretched if you factored out the results of binge drinking, smoking, overeating, dangerous driving. People will, through no fault of anyone, get sick or become injured, but so much of what has to be dealt with was entirely avoidable.

How about rape? Or financial fraud?

Should humans have free will, or should they all be robotically controlled so that no harm ever comes to anyone?

Cancer in children is far from the only consequence of human behaviour.

Nuclear power is a strange thing. Building nuclear power plants in Japan is insane. Building them in France seems more reasonable, as they're not prone to earthquakes or tsunamis. It's clear that we embarked on putting this technology into production long before it was safe, but is it really safe now? Considering the spectrum of human fallibility and greed, can we ever be confident that we've reached a point that we are ready as a species to utilise a technology that is so dangerous?

I also don't think that we can single out one consequence as an example all by itself, as an argument for anything.

[Mr.Nobody]

When the word "GOD" is mentioned people naturally think we are talking about something religious, in fact in the book "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking, the most frequent word is "God", but we don't use it in a traditional religious sense, we use it for the sake of convenience...refering to the unknown power or existence, in fact, Einstein and other physicists use this word frequently, it's inevitable when discussing modern science, especially physics.

[Khers]

it's inevitable when discussing modern science, especially physics.

Is it really? I recently successfully defended my PhD in physics without mentioning the word god even once. That's such a miseducated statement it beggars belief.

[Ray]

Einstein was a philosopher in his spare time, but that doesn't make his philosophical ramblings science.

If you would look at scientific papers, you won't find a place for god. If you are only looking at popular-science books and take them for science, you don't grasp the concept of science - no offense.

I also don't think that we can single out one consequence as an example all by itself, as an argument for anything.

Long story short: oh yes I can. When I say that an allmighty god that tolerates brain cancer on children has to be an asshole and you come up with arguments that don't have to do anything with mine/webwit's in the first place, then these are not good arguments of yours.

I can come with many more arguments about why I don't like regligion, roman/catholic in particular even more.
Let's agree on mankind has made a lot of its problems by itsself.

[fohat]

I always liked the saying that "philosophy begins where religion leaves off"

Science is something "real" that mostly exists outside of the religion/philosophy debate, although it can inform it.

[n__dles]

The Hebrew God is absurd

Is there any reason you chose Hebrew instead of Abrahamic?

[fohat]

All gods are equally absurd. Bravo to you for being more politically correct than me.

[n__dles]

Bravo to you for being more politically correct than me.

I thought it might be the other way around. A la progressives that are militant atheists but bend over backwards not to offend Muslims.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I also don't think that we can single out one consequence as an example all by itself, as an argument for anything.

Long story short: oh yes I can. When I say that an allmighty god that tolerates brain cancer on children has to be an asshole and you come up with arguments that don't have to do anything with mine/webwit's in the first place, then these are not good arguments of yours.

Well, the argument has changed twice. Webwit said "invented child brain cancer". You changed that to "a world where your claims lead to child brain cancer", and now you've changed it to "tolerates brain cancer".

So which is it?

Of course my arguments are relevant.

The actions of humans have consequences. We have, uniquely as a species, the intellect required to take control of the world in way not granted to any other animal. We can use this intellect for good, for example inventing immunisation to gain ground over illnesses. We can also do great evil. While any animal can kill, we have the ability to damage the entire planet.

Do you accept that humans have free will? Do you believe that humans should have free will? How is free will compatible with divine intervention?

Singling out child brain cancer makes no sense. If that were wiped out, then what? If a baby left orphaned because its mother was killed by a reckless driver, is that OK? How about a baby in an impoverished country that is dying of a disease that is perfectly treatable if humans would stop fighting and squandering long enough for said country to grow and develop?

It does not make sense to single out one single problem, caused by humans. Whichever one problem you solve, you've got another, and another, and another.

Eradicating such problems means that humans lose their responsibility for their own actions, or their free will.

[webwit]

Sure, but how's that related to an atheist cynical remark that if the god of creation exists, this god must be an asshole?

[fohat]

if the god of creation exists, this god must be an asshole?

Because he would have allowed Trump to be elected president of the US in 2016.

[fohat]

if the god of creation exists, this god must be an asshole?

Because he would have allowed Trump to be elected president of the US in 2016.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

It's our choice, as human beings, to make this world a good place or a bad place. We wouldn't be able to make such a choice if we are not given any such choice. How would we truly be meaningful individuals without free will?

Singling out one specific consequence sidesteps the greater issue that a great many woes that befall people were not of their own making, but are caused by other individuals. There are far more ways for a child to suffer than brain cancer. Simply eradicating one such problem doesn't make the world a perfect place for children.

The atheist remark in question carries with it the underlying notion that humans should not be responsible for their own actions. If you accept that humans are indeed responsible for their own actions (i.e. you can't shift the blame for cancer away from the humans responsible for ruining their own planet), then this argument is undermined. Problem such as child cancer aren't "inventions", but just one of an almost endless list of ways that humans have caused other humans to suffer over the millennia. It's certainly "action at a distance" — the perpetrators have the benefit of being much harder to hold to account. A paedophile for example can be tracked down and held to account, but you will never know exactly who was responsible for an instance of cancer. However, we as humans figured out that radiation is very dangerous, and yet we chose to do insanely stupid things with it like blow up cities with it (maybe it was necessary to win a war, but then how could we be so foolish that the whole planet ended up at war with itself in the first place, to the extent that harnessing nuclear energy was necessary to help put a stop to it — how did we go so badly wrong?)

There are lots of interesting technicalities about the human mind and body (menstruation and childbirth for example) and the effects of ionising radiation on genetics is on that list. There are a great many more technicalities about the construction of the universe itself. For example, should anything rust? Rust as you know is cold burning — should the universe have been reconfigured to allow fast burning (oxidisation at high temperature), but disallow oxidisation at cold temperatures? There's a huge long list of things that we might feel could be implemented differently in physics and biology, but as we're learning slowly as a species, everything is interrelated in complex ways, with lots of trade-offs. What trade-offs were involved in the situations that permit cancer to exist?

Basically, before attributing human emotional characteristics to God (especially as a scapegoat for human foolishness), it would seem only fair to study the specifics of the larger picture first and draw conclusions based on information. The atheist remark in question strikes me as a huge leap, and I would always expect any such claim to be supported by all the intermediate reasoning, such as why the anyone making said claim believes that it's not possible for God to be sad that humans have failed, rather than being apathetic or cruel.

[Mr.Nobody]

Leprosy ailed human for centuries, now eliminated, but we have HIV now, one day HIV will be eliminated but by then who knows whatelse will come to us. If God gave these diseases to human on purpose then he must have given cure deliberately as well, or maybe, he just set up the algorithm at the beginning and won't intervene any more, just like we do in our simulation programs.

[kbdfr]

[…]

Look who am I talking to? A guy who believes there should be no secrecy whatsoever, if there is any then […]

Oh, that's obviously Mr.Nobody's own brand of "alternative facts". The only secrecy we talked about was:

[…] The secrecy about wages […]

By the way:

[…] this topic which entails quantum physics philosophy and a little religion is apparently too big for you...no offence. […]

Reminds me of those idiotic movie plots where just before killing someone murderers tell them "don't take it personally".
Of course the intention is to offend me, what else?

It would be nice if you could get back to arguments instead of ad hominem attacks.

[kbdfr]

Talking about "alternative facts",

[…] in fact in the book "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking, the most frequent word is "God" […]

That made me curious, because (sorry to disappoint Mr.Nobody, but I have in fact read the book long ago) I could not remember God being mentioned that often.
So I downloaded a PDF copy:
http://www.fisica.net/relatividade/step ... f_time.pdf
and used the PDF advanced search function, which specifies how many times a given string appears in the text.
A search for "god" and a few other (randomly chosen) expressions retrieved the following results:

• universe: 554
• black hole: 234
• newton: 70
• big bang: 63
• einstein: 62
• atom: 60
• god: 41
  were it often is a simple quote of or reference to others (St. Augustine: 3x, Newton: 3x, Einstein: 1x, Penrose: 1x, Pope John Paul II: 1x, Laplace: 3x, Galileo: 2x), leaving it not more than 27 times as an own contribution by Hawking himself.

So Mr.Nobody's assertion that "in fact in the book "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking, the most frequent word is "God"" proves to be a plain lie.
No offence, of course

[fohat]

proves to be a plain lie.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... 8fc378297d

[Ray]

@Daniel, regarding god discussion:
I softened up the initial argument "invented child brain cancer" to "a world where your claims lead to child brain cancer" referring to your counter-argument. The second still implies the first, since when god created a world where your claims lead to child brain cancer, he created a world where child brain cancer (possibly) exists, so he invented it (mankind didn't choose the rules).
"tolerates brain cancer" is indeed a different argument, and your arguments regarding free will do adress that one. We both took the initial argument in that direction while discussing.

Singling out one problem as an example for the sake of discussion still makes sense to me. Please remember, this was not a constructed example but it just popped up in the other discussion.

Singling out one problem to see if an intervening god would restrict free will, in this case. Actually I don't see that much a problem here with free will. If god would make a "miracle" for each child with brain tumor, in over 99% no free will will be broken. Then comes your argument ("How about a baby in an impoverished country that is dying of a disease that is perfectly treatable if humans would stop fighting and squandering long enough for said country to grow and develop?") and I totally agree with you, god probably shouldn't do that, even if he could. Not because of free will, but because of how this world runs and responsibility and such.

Okay, let's agree that divine intervention isn't compatible with free will and/or human responsibility.

Regarding your last post: I don't argue that brain cancer isn't manmade (at least I don't want to make it part of my arguments), but the invention still would have to be credited to the creator-god. Why not create a world where perpetrators can be hold to account easily (simpler world, but quite a challenge still - we would still mess up).
I mean, even with only good-minded people in the world (ignore the fact it isn't true and not intended), it would be super easy to screw research on nuclear material up in a way that you harm lots and lots of people and figure out only a generation later. Maybe after telling mankind what to eat and what not, a warning like "You shall not mess with radioactivity." would have been apropriate?

So do you believe in a god that is only spectating this world and not intervening at all?
He created this world and threw man into it with their free will and is now only observing it?
The interventions told in the old testament are then either stories that were made up or an inexperienced god?
Why was the exception made when he sent Jesus to earth? (I am assuming here, that you are christian.) This seems like a good god, not like a neutral, observing god. (If he made that big of an exception, why not many small ones for little children? This one is a rhetorical question, I would be astonished if you can answer it.)
Do you believe god can give advice to individuals who are looking for it? Wouldn't this be incompatible with responsibility as well (you could figure it out yourself, or try and learn)?
Or do you believe in a purely observing god, that will judge us after this life (and probably not only observing in the afterlife).

Why am I asking? Because a god, that made this world and is now only observing, might arguably be an asshole just for that. (I guess if I were jewish, that would be my personal opinion of the creator.)

Spoiler:

To be fair, I will answer them first with my personal opinion:
I don't believe in an intervening god. There might be a creator (not biblical creation though, no specialties for mankind - luck if you want, but something has to be on top of the others if you give enough time), if so he probably lost interest.
The bible is a collection of stories, a good part of them written from a true story.
Jesus was probably a revolutionary. A really good one if you ask me.

PS: after my last post, I didn't want to go on with the discussion, but I think it is a good one (definately one of the better ones I had about religion). I certainly read your last two posts with great interest.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I don't pretend to have all the answers — this universe is far more complicated than any human being is capable of understanding, regardless of how it came to be here. (Even if you assume that humanity arrived via evolution, that says nothing about how a universe with such complexity showed up beforehand, and how this planet came to receive maybe the most complex computer program ever created: a self-replication system capable of creating life out of all but nothingness. After all, if evolution is based on the genetic replication mechanism, then where did that come from before there were the living beings needed to reproduce and execute this program? It's something of a chicken-and-egg problem.)

When I get dental x-rays taken, I'm dealing with ionising radiation. Radiation has its uses — there's a (supposedly) new brand of watch out (Nite) that claims to harness beta radiation safely to provide dial illumination, but this idea goes back decades. Smoke alarms are also radiation based.

The extent to which the world should be documented is a confusing one. How would you explain in detail the acceptable and unacceptable uses of radiation in the context of human society that didn't even know that science existed?

As a nerd, I like documentation. I expect everything to be properly documented: why is it here, how does it work, what are the caveats etc? I recall reading something somewhere about the unexpected order of precedence of the shift operators, that that came back to me while pondering on why code I wrote this morning that said "… / 2<<10 …" was multiplying instead of dividing. Of course, << is low precedence, so it needs parenthesising! The fact that I read something relating to that recently was really useful! (I seldom have any use for these operators, which is why I wrote 2<<10 instead of 1<<10! Muppet.)

Human society is far more complex, and I need a comprehensive man page for it for it to make any sense to me at all (or one impossibly large XKCD finite state machine). I don't think the way most people do — as a nerd, if it's not technology, it stands to mean very little to me — which means that reading this man page for society would come across to me as a guide to a visitor handbook to an alien civilisation.

Religion can fall into the prescriptive camp, in which you're controlled by an elaborate set of rules that are never explained, and human society is simply too complex to be controlled by rules (no two circumstances are ever truly the same). Alternatively, religion may guide to you (with or without divine help) to use your own judgement. This is a huge rabbit warren for my poor old nerd brain. There's clearly some reason why it's me who writes most of the wiki — concrete facts and measured figures suit me, but this doesn't do any good for interoperating with society. I don't even know if friendship actually exists in my mental model. So much of human existence comes across as superficial. (Then there's my infinite purpose chain.)

I don't know that I've answered any actual questions — rather, I've just polluted your mind with some of the oozing madness that leaks out of mine. I keep most things locked away inside my head or for private discussions — sometimes because I'm shy, sometimes because I limit what I actually permit to be attached publicly to my real name, and sometimes because it's just too much of a blinding mess. I stick to keyboards for a reason …

And the Christian God is an intervening god, yes.

[fohat]

a chicken-and-egg problem

A perfect scenario in which to discuss the conundrum.

For a person who subscribes to creationism, the chicken clearly came first, otherwise, who/what laid the egg? And the fully-formed chicken obviously had to be created intact.

For a person who perceives evolution, (and assuming that there is a specific characteristic that defines "chicken-ness") then there were were 2 proto-chicken parents - who were not yet themselves chickens - but nevertheless the female laid an egg with a mutation possessing that singular new component that made the embryo truly a chicken, by definition. That creature emerged from that egg as the first chicken.

This vignette encapsulates the creation/evolution debate - on the one hand, there was obviously a "creator" otherwise our existence would be impossible, and on the other, all that we know is the culmination of an eons-long process of trial and error.

[Mr.Nobody]

Talking about "alternative facts",

[…] in fact in the book "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking, the most frequent word is "God" […]

That made me curious, because (sorry to disappoint Mr.Nobody, but I have in fact read the book long ago) I could not remember God being mentioned that often.
So I downloaded a PDF copy:
http://www.fisica.net/relatividade/step ... f_time.pdf
and used the PDF advanced search function, which specifies how many times a given string appears in the text.
A search for "god" and a few other (randomly chosen) expressions retrieved the following results:

• universe: 554
• black hole: 234
• newton: 70
• big bang: 63
• einstein: 62
• atom: 60
• god: 41
  were it often is a simple quote of or reference to others (St. Augustine: 3x, Newton: 3x, Einstein: 1x, Penrose: 1x, Pope John Paul II: 1x, Laplace: 3x, Galileo: 2x), leaving it not more than 27 times as an own contribution by Hawking himself.

So Mr.Nobody's assertion that "in fact in the book "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking, the most frequent word is "God"" proves to be a plain lie.
No offence, of course

Well it's a plain lie,the most frequent word might be "a" "the" or "of" sort of words, if that's what you want to say...and thank you for spending time get the accurate data for us, maybe you should spend more time digging why there are 41 times of GOD in a book on physics and science.

BTW,you believe wages should not be kept secret, okay, then tell us how much do you make, if you don't mind, and how do you feel about it comparing to others around you?

[Khers]

Yes, what you posted was a plain lie. Kbdfr stated very clearly exactly what he had been doing when fact checking your post. In contrast to you, he never claimed that Universe was the most frequent word in the book, just that it was more then ten times as frequent as the word you claimed was the most frequent. Moreover, you obviously have a problem reading posts as Ray has already given you the explanation of why the word god exists in this popular science book.

If you would look at scientific papers, you won't find a place for god. If you are only looking at popular-science books and take them for science, you don't grasp the concept of science - no offense.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

For a person who perceives evolution, (and assuming that there is a specific characteristic that defines "chicken-ness") then there were were 2 proto-chicken parents - who were not yet themselves chickens - but nevertheless the female laid an egg with a mutation possessing that singular new component that made the embryo truly a chicken, by definition.

I don't mean chickens literally.

Imagine you've invented C, and want to write the first C compiler. You can't write it in C, because there's no C compiler! To achieve self-hosting, the first C compiler has to be written in some other language.

Evolution depends on the amazingly complex system of DNA (executing the instructions to create life, reproducing etc) and is currently a self-hosted system where it contains the instructions to build the machinery needed to execute and replicate it. In this state, changes to DNA can occur over time. It does also require a bootstrapping phase, to establish the initial living beings that have functional DNA processing and the DNA containing the instructions to be executed. That's the chicken and egg: you need a self-hosting DNA environment to host the biological processes required to build the DNA environment.

[Kurplop]

I've often wondered why many philosophers today reject substance dualism. The strongest argument they point to is the question of how there can be interaction between the material and non-material. I have a somewhat limited understanding in the field of philosophy and therefore am not well equipped to make much of an argument against it but I've tried to understand the force of their position and I don't see it. I think that Daniel Dennett's position is characteristic of many philosophers:

”It is not that I think I can give a knock-down proof that dualism, in all its forms, is false or incoherent, but that, given the way dualism wallows in mystery, accepting dualism is giving up" (Dennett, Consciousness Explained, p.37).


If you were to substitute "God" in place of "dualism", his sentences would likely represent position held by many who call themselves atheists or agnostics. In thinking this way about either the existence of the soul or of God, a huge amount of weight is given to our ability to have access to understanding all things; not to mention actually comprehending that which we have access to.

Earlier, somebody dismissed Descartes' body soul position because it's old. So is the wheel, and while it has changed to better meet present conditions, it is still round. Ideas aren't necessarily flawed because of their age; in fact, the ones that stand the test of time can be quite strong. As knowledge of the physical world and advances in technology come about, it follows that new questions will arise that will either challenge, support or possibly disprove former assumptions. To limit our field of inquiry to only that which can be supported on purely empirical grounds or by what we can fully understand seems to me to be, to use Dennett's words, "giving up".

It may surprise those who know me to hear me state that I think that we could possibly be part of either a simulation (though probably not like what's described above), or a non-physical universe. Both seem unlikely to me but I don't think we can completely dismiss them either. I think a stronger case can be make for either position than consciousness being purely physical.