There’s no hypocrisy here.
On one hand, the belief in a god doesn’t just end there. There are beliefs in what that god does and what he has control over. So it’s completely logical to believe that there’s no god (although, as someone else pointed out, it’s also not random arrangements of atoms).
On the other hand, simulation theory is a logical theory to rationalize the “purpose” of why we exist. It’s not a belief. The simulation doesn’t respond to prayers or requests. It’s simply conjecture or hypothesis to explain the “why” of the universe. No one who talks about simulation theory (much less who “believes” in it) pretends that the creator of the simulation is uniquely interested in them and responds to their requests and tells them how to live their life. In fact, that would go against the entire concept of simulation theory.
Religion and religious belief have specific definitions. This feels just as dishonest as people claiming that LGBTQ ideology is a religion or that evolution is a “belief”.
I completely agree that’s what this basically boils down too. ST was an interesting concept I read about once and only briefly recalled twice since. Nothing more. This could be a valid criticism of individuals putting more stock into the idea but for anyone else it’s a reach.
The belief system built around God affects me every single day of my life. I have family that are hardcore Christians that pester me about it regularly. Approximately half of the political ideologies being pushed in my country center around Christian dogma.
Honorable mentions: Foreign and domestic terrorism threat and future wars being incited.
This is why I prefer to believe in Gnosticism.
Holy shit, another one of us? There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Could (a) god(s) exist? Possibly, it’s hard to rule out the supernatural in natural terms since it’s SUPERnatural
Could the universe be a simulation? Possible too, but also on of those things that’s almost impossible to prove.
At the same time, it could be that your e a Boltzmann brain, and that literally nothing existed before and that your brain just kinda formed together spontaneously with all your memories.
All those are possible options that are over 99% likely to be false, but their cooouuullldd be true.
Point is not to rearrange your life on the off changlce that one of those are true. Especially religion, since religions tend to be “believe our particular god(s) or you go to hell for eternity” followed closely by “if you don’t believe our particular god(s) we will help you go to hell right now”. Nearly all human conflicts in Earth’s history were either based on religion or used religion as a tool to whip up the masses to go kill the others.
There are also hundreds of Gods and over 3000 different religious figures out there and they’re all pretty much exclusive or, they all claim to be the right one and the rest is wrong. Bold claim to make when it’s all based off goat herders texts that were first abused for a completely different god (hello, Christianity!) and constantly conflicts with each other.
Simulation theory and Boltzman brain ideas are fun to entertain and talk and think about, but they’ve never been used to control who can love and have sex with who, they’ve never been a used whereas religion just IS abuse and control in every way possible.
I do not like religion
Agree with most of what you said except the “over 99% likely to be false”.
Like you mentioned it’s not possible to prove either way so it isn’t meaningful to describe it as likely or unlikely. We have no way of knowing (at least currently) so the likelihood is simply undefined
Eh, we can prove that human DNA is 99% primate and that there was no great flood. Seems unlikely to me.
It sounds like you’re referring specifically to Christian theology but the comment was just about whether a god or gods exist in general
The mere fact that humans are 1% removed from apes serves to undermine creationism in general.
We’re not talking about creationism or any particular brand of theism
Considering that the overwhelming majority of religions out there are creationists, yes we are.
I understand your point and I feel like maybe I’m sounding a little argumentative. Sorry let me try to be more clear.
I understand your argument is that genetic evidence disproves existing religious beliefs that people have but that’s a different argument to the point I was making.
Even if all global religions are incorrect, that doesn’t mean that a god or gods couldn’t hypothetically exist and my point is that there is no demonstrative proof of that either way.
If you check the original comment again, the question was about whether “a god(s) exist” and up until they mentioned the 99% that I was disputing, religion didn’t even come into it.
You could disprove every creationist claim, every anti-evolution argument, and you’d be right, but you can’t settle the question of “whether a supernatural being exists” because there simply isn’t a way to do that within the natural realm that we know of.
It isn’t just about God either. The simulation and Boltzmann brain hypotheses are similarly immeasurable
I’ve literally never met someone who claimed we actually live in a simulation though
yeah its a strawman (checkmate athiest)
I cast ignite.
Strawman rolled a nat 20 on its DEX save, takes no damage sorry
I light our table on fire I hate this DM
yep.
…but we’re not just random arrangements of atoms…
Why not? Even if it we’re meant to be important why can it not be by action rather than by birth, see how narcissistic it is to think we’re supposed to be here?
Or are we Boltzmann brain
bad religion bait post is bad
It’s always the worst people who believe this too. The only interpretation of Simulation Theory that I will even remotely entertain is the one that we’re all information stuck on the surface of a black hole, because it’s the only one that isn’t just there to feed tech bros’ god complex.
I’ve never even heard of a simulation theory that remotely fits this mold.
The typical interpretation is that we’re part of an ancestor simulation run by future humans / machines.
How that feeds anyone’s God complex is beyond me.
It’s a fantasy that puts techbros in the position of god.
Python programmer suddenly feels less holy.
Haha
Counterpoint: we’re in an educational program. The program is about the horrors of the 21st century, including climate change, greed, the rise of AI in a capitalist society, COVID, the return of fascism, the fall of the west and god knows what else. The tech bros, billionaires, politicians, etc aren’t actually real, it’s everyone else who is. Why? Those positions are too comfy and your students might learn the wrong lessons if you let them participate as trump or musk.
both have people believe humans are part of a greater design
both include some otherworldly figure either observing or mandating how we live our lives
both reject the idea that maybe we’re just fuckin’ here because we are just fuckin’ here
Love how some people are legitimately proving this meme in the comments.
Agreed
I don’t think there’s a significant number of people who believe in a specific simulation scenario the way so many people believe in a specific religion.
Sure, some dumb tech bros believe “i think we live in like, a simulation, dude”, which would correspond to “there must be some higher power out there for sure”. Both beliefs are irrational, but more likely than “the Matrix is real, just like in the movies” or “this specific codex got it all right and we should live our lives after the thousands of unclear moral teachings that can be extrapolated from it by untrustworthy human preachers”
both include some otherworldly figure either observing or mandating how we live our lives
There is a big difference between observing and mandating. Most interpretations of simulation theory don’t even talk about humans being observed.
Some religions don’t either, and ST doesn’t preclude it.
I exclusively pray to the god of the sentient beings running our simulation for truly we are but a part of their intelligent design. 👀
I don’t think anyone actually believes the latter except room temperature IQ tech bros. It’s mostly just a hypothetical.
Idk what’s the exact purpose of this meme but I really do see a lot of similarities between God creating the world and simulation theory. Obviously ST and religion are wildly different in their impact on society and how many people genuinely believe in them, but ST is pretty silly too.
It’s just a “what if” scenario, one that’s potentially possible but wouldn’t change or explain anything if it was true. All you’re doing is moving the existential problems up a layer and forgetting about it, it’s the same as saying God made us: at the end of the day both the beings in charge of the simulation AND God have to come from somewhere, they live in a “real” universe, and you’re not explaining that.
Why can’t it be that we simply live in a real universe? That’s the simplest answer, the one that requires the fewest assumptions. It doesn’t have a convenient, satisfying reason as to why we’re here, or how reality came to be, but it’s easily the most plausible.
No it’s called deep derealization upon your logic hitting a ceiling lol
Why can’t it be that we simply live in a real universe? That’s the simplest answer, the one that requires the fewest assumptions.
The argument goes that: a sufficiently technologically advanced society would run ancestor simulations. Those simulations may also run simulations. There’s no ceiling on the number of nesting simulations. It’s the height of conceit to think we’re the top level when there are squillions of simulated universe.
There is a cieling though. A computer made of matter of one universe cannot simulate an entire universe at the same speed. It’s like installing a VM on a computer: the VM is always slower. Each layer would then become exponentially slower with a limit of 0 speed.
Having said that, combined with the fact that our Universe is 13B years old, it would make the age of our root universe exponentially larger than 13B years.
It could maybe feasible if we live in the first layers, but beyond that our root universe would have died from Heat death long ago.
The simulations could be imperfect simulations. So, each nested simulation would lose fidelity, simulate a smaller universe, or simulate a universe with less life. I think one hypothesis I’ve heard is that wave functions are an approximation, and the simulation only fully simulates particles when they are observed. Kinda like how games do level-of-detail optimizations when you are further away from objects.
Edit: Another possibility is that nothing says the simulation we’re in started at the beginning of the universe, it could’ve just been given initial conditions and started yesterday for all we know.
I don’t know if we are in a simulation, but I think it’s plausible. I think a God (at least of the religions I know of) is implausible, but possible. I kinda like the many-worlds hypothesis better than simulation theory, but I guess they’re not exclusive.
There is a ceiling though. A computer made of matter of one universe cannot simulate an entire universe at the same speed.
Right but we don’t know what the real universe’s limitations are, and I’m geostationary to speak too authoritatively of the capabilities of an arbitrarily advanced civilization.
I don’t think simulation theory is true. Eg calculating gravitational forces between everything in the universe would presumably be extraordinarily cost intensive, but essentially irrelevant (I mean like gravitational waves, not the moon).
“there are squillions of simulated universe.”
Huge assumption there lol, but I guess I see your point. If you assume simulations of this scope and quality are possible (again HUGE assumption), then your odds of being in one go up a lot, obviously.
Again though, at some point you have to hit actual, non simulated reality, and when everything seems to point towards that being the case for us, and absolutely nothing hints at a simulation, I don’t see why we couldn’t just be in that actual reality. I can’t help but see that thought experiment as just an attempt to answer “the big question” in some way, even though in actuality it just moves it out of view.
It’s Russell’s teapot, impossible to disprove and theorically possible, but there’s nothing backing it up besides fantastical assumptions. In that regard yeah, I think the comparison with God is warranted. The creators of our simulation, and especially the ones up above that are actually real would need such absurd levels of technology so far beyond our comprehension that it would be magic to us, and they would absolutely be our Gods.
I don’t see much of a difference, it’s kind of just a tech themed spin on it, with the same fallacies plaguing the whole concept, IMO. It’s cool to think and write scifi about, but that’s about it.
Huge assumption there lol, but I guess I see your point.
It’s not an assumption, it’s a conclusion based on the premises laid out in the previous sentences.
Everything seems to point towards that being the case for us, and absolutely nothing hints at a simulation
Maximum speed, minimum length, light is only a particle when we’re looking at it…
Like there are other things that definitely point away from it being a simulation (eg gravity waves). But there’s not nothing pointing towards simulation.
honestly, who is this targeting? conspiracy theorists?
Why must a meme target anyone?
The “believe” we’re in a simulation is more like a interesting idea than something people organize their lives around. Is it possible? Yes. Am I going to praise the great programmer every Sunday? No.
The believe in God in most cases is not just believe in some general higher power but a very specific deity with weird morality, silly mythology and bunch of scam artists behind it.
- I think there’s a higher power…
- Ok…
- that got mad at us for eating fruits but then impregnated a lady with itself and pissed us off so that we murdered him and he could say he’s not mad anymore.
- … WTF?
By their own book, the bad guy thought the stupid naked people should have a bit of an education and the good guy punished them for trying to improve their knowledge base. Serpents rule!
I was taught in school that the real battle in the universe is between chaos and order. They gave it a fancy name, Entropy, but that was the gist.
So Chaos is God and Order is Satan. Live all hunter gathering under God or just go to the Supermarket under Satan, and spend the rest of your time doing other things, like making art or scientific theories.
Even now the Church is against progress. Don’t let them Gays get married for fucks sake, the world will explode.
Hail Satan.
I more or less agree, but you keep using “believe” when you ought to use “belief.” Just FYI.
Ups, thanks. Totally missed that.
“Oops.”
Even more material for the “words you have been using wrong” thread.
English is an endless deluge of that experience, because our orthography is bullshit. People have tried to fix it. Their clever rules were partly adopted and became even more exceptions and special cases.
Yep.
I just learned of the Shavian Alphabet yesterday. It’s designed specifically for English and fits it well, except the sounds in it are so specific that when you write in it, you have to write in a specific regional accent. Fortunately it can’t become a new set of special cases because it’s an entirely new script not related to Latin.
At that point, surely we’d use the International Phonetic Alphabet instead.
Could an all powerful, loving God be real? Sure. Why not?
Could a powerful, all loving God be real? Yeah, seems realistic. In many ways, I am a God to an ant.
Could an all powerful all loving God be real?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha no.
God is either inept, indifferent, or a straight up ass. None of those items are something I care to worship, even at the threat of the eternal damnation.
This argument conflates belief with religious practice. The core similarity of both beliefs is that the universe is intelligently designed. And you can believe in the idea of a God without participating in any kind of formal religious practice. That “most” religious belief is wrapped up in a particular religious tradition is ancillary.
The core similarity of both beliefs is that the universe is intelligently designed
The theory of simulation does not address intelligence. Intelligence abstractly is something that exists inside the simulation, it may value nothing outside the simulation. You thesis is lacking evidence.
The theory of simulation does not address intelligence. Intelligence abstractly is something that exists inside the simulation, it may value nothing outside the simulation. You thesis is lacking evidence.
I think you mean “it may value nothing inside the simulation.” Because what you wrote doesn’t make any sense as it’s written. In either case, my “thesis” is not a thesis. It’s an observation of similarity. Both beliefs presume some kind of external motive force behind the universe’s existence. I never made any argument about the intent or abstract values of whatever that thing may or may not be or how it perceives the universe it “created.” I think the only thing lacking here is your reading comprehension skills, as you’re clearly adding unfounded assumptions onto my observation independent of what was actually stated. Also, I posted that like a fucking month ago. Either you’re necroing dead threads looking to pick a fight or whatever instance you’re posting to fucked up its syncing with its federation.
It’s an observation of similarity. Both beliefs presume some kind of external motive force behind the universe’s existence. I never made any argument about the intent or abstract values of whatever that thing may or may not be or how it perceives the universe it “created.”
The universe just getting created by an external force, and your phrasing that it is “intelligently designed” has no similarity. You are just escaping from what you had stated. You yourself assumed that the core similarity is intelligent design. There is nothing to observe here. The only one lacking in reading comprehension is you, or you are probably trying to find the little ounces of loopholes you think you can find because you’re just so disappointed by your thirty-day-old opinion but you also just can’t admit to it, or whatever else the situation may be.
Simulation theory does not share any core similarity with creationism. Just simulating a universe does not mean it is intelligently designed.
You’re getting caught up on phrasing and nothing else. Let it go. “Intelligent design” as an ideology and describing something as “intelligently designed” are not the same thing. The core similarity is what I’ve already described. You want me to mean something beyond what I’ve stated because you’re incapable of accepting what you read at face value. I have no interest in speaking further with someone without the intelligence to do something basic as understand the words they read.
Does anyone base their lives and their worldviews around the simulation theory?
I know one person who does. And, of course, everyone thinks he lost his marbles.
I dunno man
Its such a philosophical dead end. I know a few people who really want the world to be a simulation but I cant understand why. I think they want an excuse to have nothing matter and be shitty.
But i would not live my life any differently if we found out that this is a simulation. Because its still real to me and there’s no reason to believe I can exist outside the simulation any more than my sims can exist outside the game.
