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matt kuykendall

Is the Universe a Simulation? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-universe-a-simulation.html

TOK universe cosmology

shared by matt kuykendall on 18 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • This may strike you as very unlikely. But the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom has argued that we are more likely to be in such a simulation than not. If such simulations are possible in theory, he reasons, then eventually humans will create them — presumably many of them. If this is so, in time there will be many more simulated worlds than nonsimulated ones. Statistically speaking, therefore, we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than the real one.
matt kuykendall

Is the Universe a Simulation? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-universe-a-simulation.html

tok cosmology

shared by matt kuykendall on 18 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Its truths are objective, necessary and timeless.
    • matt kuykendall
      matt kuykendall on 18 Aug 14
       
      True? Or No? 
  • Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom
  • nd yet there are many mathematical concepts — from esoteric numerical systems to infinite-dimensional spaces — that we don’t currently find in the world around us. In what sense do they exist?
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The great logician Kurt Gödel argued that mathematical concepts and ideas “form an objective reality of their own, which we cannot create or change, but only perceive and describe.”
  • According to this theory, some highly advanced computer programmer of the future has devised this simulation, and we are unknowingly part of it. Thus when we discover a mathematical truth, we are simply discovering aspects of the code that the programmer used.
  • Do they exist somewhere, a set of immaterial objects in the enchanted gardens of the Platonic world, waiting to be discovered? Or are they mere creations of the human mind?
  • tatistically speaking, therefore, we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than the real one.
  • In a recent paper, “Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation,” th
  • Are we prepared to take the “red pill,” as Neo did in “The Matrix,” to see the truth behind the illusion — to see “how deep the rabbit hole goes”? Perhaps not yet.
  • he possibility of the Platonic nature of mathematical ideas remains — and may hold the key to understanding our own reality.
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