Over-Seers of The Simulation: Disturbing?

[Eddi]

Imagine, that this reality is a computer simulation. I will refer to it simply as “The Simulation”.

Now imagine that The Simulation and the computers it is hosted on are controlled by a group of people I will refer to as “The Over-Seers”…

Question: Does the idea of there being such people disturb you?

I mean if they wanted to they could have you deleted forever just by pressing a couple of buttons on one of their input devices

They could just unplug their computers and our existence would cease until they are turned back on again

And they could do awful things to us, like torture us for millions of years

I must admit, I find the idea somewhat disturbing

But on the plus side, I believe they are academics who have a code of ethics which they are bound to abide by, and which means they have to treat Virtual Humans humanely - according to some codified standard.

And I think that the world’s evil originates from the human nature of the inhabitants of The Simulation, rather than from its Over-Seers

And maybe the purpose of The Simulation is to simulate evil?

 

[Nimos]

Imagine, that this reality is a computer simulation. I will refer to it simply as “The Simulation”.

Now imagine that The Simulation and the computers it is hosted on are controlled by a group of people I will refer to as “The Over-Seers”…

Question: Does the idea of there being such people disturb you?

I mean if they wanted to they could have you deleted forever just by pressing a couple of buttons on one of their input devices

They could just unplug their computers and our existence would cease until they are turned back on again

And they could do awful things to us, like torture us for millions of years

I must admit, I find the idea somewhat disturbing

But on the plus side, I believe they are academics who have a code of ethics which they are bound to abide by, and which means they have to treat Virtual Humans humanely - according to some codified standard.

And I think that the world’s evil originates from the human nature of the inhabitants of The Simulation, rather than from its Over-Seers

And maybe the purpose of The Simulation is to simulate evil?

Have a difficult time even imagining the simulation idea, as it would require an infinite amount of energy...

But if it were true, would it even matter? If they wanted to simulate evil and we were a product of that, what could we do about it anyway? So it quickly becomes meaningless to even bother with or care about what such being might do in such simulation. So personally I wouldn't care at all.

 

[Heyo]

Have a difficult time even imagining the simulation idea, as it would require an infinite amount of energy...

There is no infinite amount of anything in our universe. (Except human stupidity but that doesn't take an infinite amount of energy to simulate.)
The simulation would take up a big number of computing power but the universe in which our our universe is running could be of any finite size. So the the size of the universe is of no concern.

But if it were true, would it even matter? If they wanted to simulate evil and we were a product of that, what could we do about it anyway? So it quickly becomes meaningless to even bother with or care about what such being might do in such simulation. So personally I wouldn't care at all.

Neither would I. But it's fun to speculate.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

The "simulation" idea, while interesting to ponder, does not have much credence with what we, ourselves, have discovered about computing power and requirements for manipulating vast arrays of data. And that is that, at any point of software complexity, any computer devised ultimately relies on the physical laws within the reality it is bound to function. Which means (for us) that you can't get and react to signal any faster than the speed of the electrical signals (or even speed of light waves if your computer were instead based on optics), and with the size and scope of even our planet alone, and the number of ongoing, constant calculations for everything that is going on, you would quickly eat up the plausible speed and memory of even the most large/complex computing system you could imagine - because at a certain size of device, you simply can't get signals around the device fast enough to keep up with processing demands. Because let's face it, the processing would need to account for all entities down to the subatomic level - because we can view or interact with any given matter down to that level. That's just such a stretch when considering every action and interaction on that material by anything and everything else throughout the universe would all need to be constantly tracked and adjusted in order to maintain the facade.

 

[Nimos]

There is no infinite amount of anything in our universe. (Except human stupidity but that doesn't take an infinite amount of energy to simulate.)
The simulation would take up a big number of computing power but the universe in which our our universe is running could be of any finite size. So the the size of the universe is of no concern.

The issue as I see it is, that these aliens or overlords would have to run our simulation, but at some point we ourselves might start to run our own simulations and our simulations might run theirs. But all the calculations and energy required for running these would need to come from the original creators, as they are the ones not being part of a simulation. The issue is, that the overlords can't be sure if they themselves ain't also a simulation, since it is possible to do it. Which is one of the main reasons I don't think it makes a lot of sense.

 

[Polymath257]

Meh. I've been in programs like Second Life that I knew were simulations. It is still fun to interact with the other characters and learn about the world. That some moderator could potentially do whatever they want with my character isn't anything I worry about.

 

[Heyo]

Imagine, that this reality is a computer simulation. I will refer to it simply as “The Simulation”.

Now imagine that The Simulation and the computers it is hosted on are controlled by a group of people I will refer to as “The Over-Seers”…

Question: Does the idea of there being such people disturb you?

I mean if they wanted to they could have you deleted forever just by pressing a couple of buttons on one of their input devices

They could just unplug their computers and our existence would cease until they are turned back on again

And they could do awful things to us, like torture us for millions of years

I must admit, I find the idea somewhat disturbing

But on the plus side, I believe they are academics who have a code of ethics which they are bound to abide by, and which means they have to treat Virtual Humans humanely - according to some codified standard.

And I think that the world’s evil originates from the human nature of the inhabitants of The Simulation, rather than from its Over-Seers

And maybe the purpose of The Simulation is to simulate evil?

1. A simulation is set up to calculate a very complex system. Intervention while it's running ruins the outcome.
The moment you start fiddling with the parameters the simulation starts to become a game and stops to be a simulation.
2. You take yourself way too serious.
We are one species of primates on an insignificant planet orbiting an insignificant sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the absolutely average Milky Way Galaxy, one of trillions.
The over-seers wouldn't even notice us until we reach Kardashev 3.

 

[Heyo]

Meh. I've been in programs like Second Life that I knew were simulations. It is still fun to interact with the other characters and learn about the world. That some moderator could potentially do whatever they want with my character isn't anything I worry about.

Second Life is not a simulation, it's a game.

 

[Eddi]

We are one species of primates on an insignificant planet orbiting an insignificant sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the absolutely average Milky Way Galaxy, one of trillions.
The over-seers wouldn't even notice us until we reach Kardashev 3.

I disagree...

How do we know the Over-Seers aren't anthropologists? Or even biologists? Who happen to be interested in primitive primates?

In our world, anthropologists travel from developed countries to technologically primitive tribal people, who they study precisely because they are so comparatively primitive. And biologists study the behaviour and societies of animals, such as chimpanzees or gorillas. Running a simulation could satisfy the same curiosities.

I like the idea of it all being an "ancestor simulation", or a kind of zoo

 

[Heyo]

The "simulation" idea, while interesting to ponder, does not have much credence with what we, ourselves, have discovered about computing power and requirements for manipulating vast arrays of data. And that is that, at any point of software complexity, any computer devised ultimately relies on the physical laws within the reality it is bound to function. Which means (for us) that you can't get and react to signal any faster than the speed of the electrical signals (or even speed of light waves if your computer were instead based on optics), and with the size and scope of even our planet alone, and the number of ongoing, constant calculations for everything that is going on, you would quickly eat up the plausible speed and memory of even the most large/complex computing system you could imagine - because at a certain size of device, you simply can't get signals around the device fast enough to keep up with processing demands. Because let's face it, the processing would need to account for all entities down to the subatomic level - because we can view or interact with any given matter down to that level. That's just such a stretch when considering every action and interaction on that material by anything and everything else throughout the universe would all need to be constantly tracked and adjusted in order to maintain the facade.

Why is c 10⁸ m/s? Simple, that's the processing speed of the computer running the simulation. Remember that the universe running the simulation could have different natural constants than ours.

 

[Onoma]

Wouldn't a simulation require the prior existence of that something being simulated ?

 

[osgart]

What if our existence is a really real program and not an illusion?

Any and every computer is made of base reality stuff. So simulation is logically impossible. The environment of a simulation is still made of stuff.

How can you separate the programmer's reality from our own?

Can't!

Existential space would have to be created from scratch for us to be a simulation.

So you have to make the leap that existential space is created from nothing or our simulation is matter and energy from base reality.

Now if you take non locality as a literal phenomenon then position itself starts out irrelevant til the reality is constructed
around you. Only non locality turns into locality at some point. So we have an near infinite potential that is non locality, and perhaps omnipresent. This near infinite potential must have a special arrangement that actualizes itself into location energy. Once non locality localizes then we have space, matter and energy.

So the flow of time is omnipresent, and the making of space, matter, and energy, creates sequence of linear time. So we are a bubble of time in an omnipresent sea of non locality.

Once we go from non local to local, energy conserves itself so that everything we see around us exists.

 

[Onoma]

When I first started to think about the " simulation theory ", I was immediately tripped up by the lack of what was supposedly being simulated, ( The universe ?.... ) this lead me to consider recursion and the possibility of " nested simulation "

In the case of video games, we simulate a reality and it's nested in this reality, so this video game cyber world could be looked at as a subset of the reality we're in. One could produce another iteration of the nesting and create a game inside a game, and so on

By that reasoning, perhaps simulation theory requires recursion to make sense

 

[Onoma]

Also, amusingly, if you look up " recursion " on Google, it asks you if you meant " recursion " and if you click the word, it merely refreshes the page

Love the sense of humor from Google

 

[Polymath257]

Second Life is not a simulation, it's a game.

Not so much, actually. There are no winners or losers. No points are accumulated. You can create things and do stuff. But it isn't a game in the sense of other role playing games

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Why is c 10⁸ m/s? Simple, that's the processing speed of the computer running the simulation. Remember that the universe running the simulation could have different natural constants than ours.

Yes, and I made sure to caveat my response somewhat to that effect. But you would have to posit a universe in which there was no maximum speed, or that the medium used to facilitate computing somehow did so instantaneously. All of that is pure fiction as far as we can know. And if those are the requirements for the simulation to run in another universe, then that idea is also no better than fiction by our current understanding.

Something I actually came to after I posted though was a question to which I am sure the answer is "no." And that is: If the simulation simply took relatively massive amounts of time to run on their fastest computers, would we even "know" this? As part of the simulation, I don't believe we would. Things would appear seamless even if each processing cycle took 1,000 Earth years to process before executing.

 

[Eddi]

There are no winners or losers. No points are accumulated.

That we are aware of

 

[Heyo]

Not so much, actually. There are no winners or losers. No points are accumulated. You can create things and do stuff. But it isn't a game in the sense of other role playing games

It is a game in the sense that it allows interaction with an outside source.
The distinction is important when discussing the simulation hypothesis. As a pure simulation it only violates the reality axiom but the moment you allow outside influence, order and predictability go out the window, too. That kind of "simulation" becomes a magic place.

 

[Heyo]

Yes, and I made sure to caveat my response somewhat to that effect. But you would have to posit a universe in which there was no maximum speed, or that the medium used to facilitate computing somehow did so instantaneously.

Nope. As you allude to in the second part, the simulation could run at any finite speed. It only needs to be consistent with c in our universe. You could have a Matrioshka Brain simulating our universe with the signal time between processors not slower than c.

 

[OtherSheep]

Imagine, that this reality is a computer simulation. I will refer to it simply as “The Simulation”.

Now imagine that The Simulation and the computers it is hosted on are controlled by a group of people I will refer to as “The Over-Seers”…

Question: Does the idea of there being such people disturb you?

I mean if they wanted to they could have you deleted forever just by pressing a couple of buttons on one of their input devices

They could just unplug their computers and our existence would cease until they are turned back on again

And they could do awful things to us, like torture us for millions of years

I must admit, I find the idea somewhat disturbing

But on the plus side, I believe they are academics who have a code of ethics which they are bound to abide by, and which means they have to treat Virtual Humans humanely - according to some codified standard.

And I think that the world’s evil originates from the human nature of the inhabitants of The Simulation, rather than from its Over-Seers

And maybe the purpose of The Simulation is to simulate evil?

Kind of a Matrix meets Click event? If they have the ability to torture us for millions of years, why do you think they wouldn't? Would virtual humans have a human nature? Wouldn't the programmers of these virtual humans be the ones who input evil into their simulation? Doesn't that make the overseers evil in and of themselves? You sound like you're making a computer game.