How do we know we’re not living in a simulation theory?

This is for encouragement, ideas, and support for people going through a faith transition no matter where you hope to end up. This is also the place to laugh, cry, and love together.
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Red Ryder
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How do we know we’re not living in a simulation theory?

Post by Red Ryder » Wed Nov 02, 2022 8:16 pm

I’m sitting on the patio (possibly drinking) and there’s a light rain drizzling from the sky. Occasional airplanes flying overhead, the clouds vibrant, and the skies radiating in the the dim moonlight. As I look up, I wonder if God really exists? Are you out there my dude? I stopped praying because it seems you’ve always been on vacation or perhaps the job requires too much attention to finding lost keys and ignoring the pleas of Ukrainians to stop the war.

Perhaps the alcohol may be interfering with my thoughts, but doesn’t it seem like we live in a simulation of sorts? Super computers running scenarios to provide life problems, challenges, and all sorts of WTF moments.

Here’s a few scenarios I can think of.

1. Pandemic mode. Let’s see what happens when we shut down the economic engines of the world. Give away free money, and watch as the world tries to make sense of the chaos. Add death to the weak! Misinformation to the mindless weak who refuse to consider reality.

2. Political polarization. Let’s see what happens when we let militia style groups baby sit ballot boxes?

3. Anti Semitism. Let’s see what happens when we let a mentally challenged musical genius loose. Will he loose billions of dollars that should have never been granted to him in the first place.

4. Kardashian Kulture - let’s see what happens when we let the children of prominent attorneys run amuck and create fake and fortune off the size of their backsides? Realty TV is like a simulation within the simulation. A simulation for the sims.

5. Let’s let the planet heat up? What will happen? Flooding, death, and destruction? Sure why not?

6. Billionaires? Add one here! Another over there? Hell, let’s let a few of them look and act like simulation robots? What could happen? Tweet tweet tweet. Meta universe? Another simulation within a simulation! Great ideas. Keep them coming.

7. Unaffordabilty? Let’s raise housing prices, the cost of living, and religious expectations to donate 10%. What could happen? How about we suppress wages, increase the cost of education, transportation energy, and food? What could happen? Healthcare? Who needs it?

8. Let’s see what happens when we turn the world upside down? Where athletes are worshipped, capitalism rules the world, and social media sucks up our attention.

9. God? He’s no help is he? Is he a she? Let’s see what happens when we increase secularism, increase distractions, and flood the internet with free thought?

This theory is pure speculative because my programmers haven’t updated my thought routines and I’m too intellectually lazy enough not to seek out answers on my own. I just sit here taking in the smell of infrequent rain wondering how this is any different than the plan of salvation? Thinking I know where I came from and where I’m going when I die? The reality is I don’t know shit and I’m perfectly fine with that.

Can someone tell me the difference between God making the universe and us being in a simulation? Seems like the same to me.

RR
“It always devolves to Pantaloons. Always.” ~ Fluffy

“I switched baristas” ~ Lady Gaga

“Those who do not move do not notice their chains.” ~Rosa Luxemburg

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Ghost
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Re: How do we know we’re not living in a simulation theory?

Post by Ghost » Fri Nov 04, 2022 7:20 am

I've had thoughts similar to what you said about the creation being the same as a simulation. Just because the creation was physical, does that make it any more "real?" It makes no difference to us, since we wouldn't even know better.

Also, some assume that we're more likely than not to be in a simulation right now. The logic is that when technology reaches a point that humans are able to run a comprehensive simulation of the universe, there will of course be more simulated universes than real ones (of which there is just one). And so, assuming that level of technology can be reached at all, we're likely to already be a part of a simulation rather than a part of the original.

To further explore this topic, see the 1973 movie World on a Wire.

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Angel
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Re: How do we know we’re not living in a simulation theory?

Post by Angel » Sat Nov 05, 2022 5:22 am

Watch/read a "new science" by s wolfram (Google search engine programmer and Mathematica creator).

Code of life - Conway's game of life... yes, it's a game.
“You have learned something...That always feels at first as if you have lost something.” George Bernard Shaw
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Hagoth
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Re: How do we know we’re not living in a simulation theory?

Post by Hagoth » Sat Nov 05, 2022 8:33 am

When my kids were around 8 and 10 and playing Sims, they did things like:

-put telephones on all of the trees so they wouldn't miss the radio DJ's money giveaway call
-place toilets on patios and in the middle of the front yard for convenience
-when they caught their neighbor in their hot tub they built a wall around it and left him there to starve to death
-had as many kids as possible to get some kind of financial benefit (tax related? I dunno) and then abandoned the babies in the "baby field."

Some of the real things happening right now are far more bizarre and cruel than those example. Not only are we living in a simulation, it's a simulation run by children. Probably some of those baby gods Joseph Smith talked about.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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Angel
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Re: How do we know we’re not living in a simulation theory?

Post by Angel » Sat Nov 05, 2022 12:23 pm

Hagoth wrote:
Sat Nov 05, 2022 8:33 am
Not only are we living in a simulation, it's a simulation run by children.
Laws of humans, and laws of nature.

"WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones" - unknown author, not a horrible future if you love the laws of nature ;)
“You have learned something...That always feels at first as if you have lost something.” George Bernard Shaw
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Hagoth
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Re: How do we know we’re not living in a simulation theory?

Post by Hagoth » Sat Nov 05, 2022 1:39 pm

Angel wrote:
Sat Nov 05, 2022 12:23 pm

"WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones"
"But words can never hurt me" - attributed to the child running the simulation
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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