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Synonyms for Simulated reality. (2016). Retrieved 2018, December 08, from https://thesaurus.plus/synonyms/simulated_reality
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Imagine being a brain. You are in a place closed from the external world and all you have is the flow of electrical impulses through neurons which are triggered by senses. You get to know the world only through the “interface” given to you. The basic idea is that you predict what is outside on the basis of the information you get. After all, you know nothing and you are not able to know more, because there is nothing inside a closed skull except darkness. But over time, the brain “studies” the outside world on the principle of a neural network. The brain guesses and predicts if this happens for the first time and expects if there was a previous experience of interaction with this entity.
An excellent example would be to show what it is about. Watch the video.
What color is a square?
You see two shades of gray, instead of one. Did you know that our “normal” perception of the external world is only a “conscious” illusion of our brain? This is an illusion built on your previous experience.
A short excerpt about “conscious” reality from Anil Seth (I recommend viewing it)
It’s the experience that gives you understanding of the world. That a monitor is a monitor, not a book. A house is a house, not a cat. In the course of time, you will store more and more of such info. So far nobody has presented the exact definition of what consciousness and reality are.
The main thing to understand is that our brain creates the world that we see, not the world our perception creates.
Let us turn to the main point: the theory of simulation. Imagine playing GTA 5 or Sims. We all know that in games, rendering occurs only where we look (imagine that you are watching through the eyes of a hero) at the current time. You run and talk to people, call, etc. For you, as a character, this is reality.
If you look at the game engines, they only display the area around to the hero, because spending computational ability to render everything doesn't make sense, we simply do not notice the difference! “There is” only what interacts with us. This means that there is nothing outside of “rendering”.
Take a closer look at the graphics of computer games now and 20 years ago. Amazing! Isn’t it? It is proven that the progress of computers will not stand still, we will be able to build in the near future simulations that will look like real ones. Soon, wearing virtual reality glasses you will not see any difference. We can now build worlds like in GTA. The characters of the game, as entities, do not realize that they are in a simulation. Nobody realizes that he is in a simulation. So if we are able to create simple life simulation games such as GTA or Sims, why couldn’t we live in a similar smarter world created by supercomputers?
Now join the two facts: the first, that all that we see, feel and remember is the “conscious” reality of our consciousness, and the second fact, the progress of creating a simulation in future. It’s not hard to believe in this theory of the universe.
But what will give us the fact that we live in a simulation? Answer: Nothing. Nothing would change in our life or the perception of the world.
With this I would like to finish, since this topic is very large and unproven, just like religion. But if you are interested in this topic, look at these videos below.
Source:
- Videos above
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality
Questions:
- Do you think we live in simulation? Why or why not?
- Have you ever heard of "conscious reality"? Do you agree that all this is an illusion?
- How long do you think we need to create a simulator of the universe, such as ours?
Comments
1. Do you think we live in simulation? Why or why not?
Who knows ! Maybe the world we know is just rendered by Sims 10 game engine, and we are being controlled by aliens ?
2. Have you ever heard of "conscious reality"? Do you agree that all this is an illusion?
I haven't heard of it.
3. How long do you think we need to create a simulator of the universe, such as ours?
As You wrote, there is a theory that only the part we are looking at is being rendered. Assuming this, each person would need some processing power to render environment around one "user", and a "master" unit would be requiered to generate weather/news etc. I think it might be possible in the next 20 years :D
My brother in law is a scientist and he told me that if you can't measure something, that doesn't exist.
I have not heard about Conscious Reality, maybe i should explore it more. It sounds fun to me.
I don't think we will be able to simulate a Universe. It must costs a lot of energy and calculating power. We can't even imagine how much, and i don't thing we will find that much on earth and even in ours Solar System.
As you’ve mentioned this topic is very large and unproven that’s why it’s actually pretty hard to give an unambiguous answer. I believe if we lived in simulation, it would be an optimal solution but I am afraid we don’t live. If we take in consideration all the winds coming from the places where there are no people(for example, Antarctica) and the fact that they do affect our lives. We may not even realize it but we do interact with these “unused” parts of our world. For example, because of overwhelming CO2 emission we are faced with global warming today.
Have you ever heard of "conscious reality"? Do you agree that all this is an illusion?
No, I’ve never heard but I am familiar with game engines and how they work. This theory mostly come from game engines implementation. I wouldn’t agree that it all is an illusion but who knows.
How long do you think we need to create a simulator of the universe, such as ours?
I’ve heard about Laplace’s demon and the idea behind of it and there is a proof of its impossibility.
Yes I have heard about "conscious reality". I partially agree with it, as I said before, we cannot know if something is real, but on the other hand world can be real. Therefore, I can’t agree that everything is an illusion.
I think, that we won’t be able in creating simulation as real as our universe in next few centuries. It would require enormous amount of work to make sure everything is fine, but in the end I think that it is just matter of time.
Do you think we live in simulation? Why or why not?
It doesn't matter. If we don't live in simulation, it means that nothing changes. If we do... then we don't have any choice in that matter anyway. We can only still be a part of this simulation, hoping that our creators are kind and merciful.
And we know, that would't be a case. Lest be honest, malaria instead of Pokomons?
Have you ever heard of "conscious reality"? Do you agree that all this is an illusion?
I agree that if I agree with that, you, reading this answer, would be just illusion of your brain.
How long do you think we need to create a simulator of the universe, such as ours?
No idea. It could be infinitely long or like 100-200 years. Maybe thousand. And that is pretty short in comparison to human history.
Maybe... The thing is I cannot say "no" even if I'm sure for 99,95 that's simulation is untruth. It's strange to me. But even if we live in simulation and I think I'm doing what I want I'm happy with that. I would be angry if I realized that every failure in my life was a funny joke of a programer who wrote code about me :D
Have you ever heard of "conscious reality"? Do you agree that all this is an illusion?
Never before I heard about that :/
How long do you think we need to create a simulator of the universe, such as ours?
Wow.. that's... strange. That depends if "creatures" who created "this simulation" are even more inteligent and how can we know what is their technology?
It can be 1 week of development on a super-mega-ultimate computer and biggest brain in the world and it could also take many many many years if it's work of less inteligent and less developed team. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No, I’ve never heard of conscious reality. It’s interesting pointe of view on our reality. Still, I think we live in the real world.
I don’t know probably about 10 to 30 years I think.
I think that's because, although I noticed something, I think so. In our world each simulation contains errors, so it would also contain some, but who knows.
I didn't hear "reality reality"
Rather, we need a mega super computer, I believe that in 200 years we will be able to do something like that.
No, unfortunately I've never heard about that.
You know, it's not the matter of time but more about technology we have. For now it's nearly impossible. But as I like to think, some times ago it was not possible to fly. Who knows, perhaps some day I would be real. But would it be ethical ?
On the other hand, though, this is such a wonderful idea to play with. There are some good science fiction authors - most notably Philip K. Dick, who created really great stories around this idea. For example "13th floor" is a story about 2 scientists creating a virtual reality game, so they can enter it and "live" someone else's life. And as the story progresses, one of them finds out, that his reality is just a game for some other, higher reality. And there might be yet another one above it. And so on and on. For a person who learns such a secret, or even to learns how to move between those realities, this might be an adventure. But it doesn't do much for the rest of us.
There was recently a discussion on this topic which I read. I don't really remember who was taking part in it, but there was an interesting conclusion. There is just one real universe (that we know of), but in this universe, each sufficiently advanced civilization can create a VR so realistic, that it can be considered a new reality. And as there is possibly an uncounted number of such civilizations in the universe (which is a really big place), there is much bigger chance for any sentient being to be in one of those uncountable VRs then in this one real universe.
No wonder there are people who try to prove if we are indeed in a simulation or a reality.
Simulating the world like hours would require huge amount of computation. Thus we need enormous amount of power. I would guess that something like double digit energy that our sun produces. Key technology that would mark that I imagine would be strong AI.