We can't possibly "live in a simulation!!!111!!!!" because it takes more resources (either in the form of space, time, energy, or matter) to 100% accurately simulate a given real phenomenon than is contained within the phenomenon itself, and since phenomena are interconnected with other phenomena in the universe, even 100% accurately simulating a single phenomenon requires the metaphysical leap of isolating that phenomenon from other other phenomena in order to avoid having to simulate literally everything in existence. The computational power alone required to simulate an entire universe at real time speeds would require more energy than is contained in several universes. And even then there still might be a tradeoff between accuracy and latency, resulting in a simulation which does not produce results which are very predictive of reality. All simulations which are economically viable are inherently lossy, and all information, even information written in cuneiform on clay tablets 5000 years ago, is essentially highly compressed and lossy data which is meant to imperfectly reflect reality for some specialized purposed and nothing more. You cannot simulate all of reality. This is religious fantasy made to sound scientific.
31 posts and 3 image replies omitted.>>811357Regardless, they can still be affected
If they’re incomparable to our own, why assume that the universe is a simulation then?
I don't fully grasp Cockshott's take in the image. Is he arguing that pontificating about consciousness and qualia is a waste of time since they are so nebulous?
Whether we live in a simulation or not is an entirely fruitless discussion, but yall don't seem to understand how an actual simulation works. Time would be part of any computation, so given your consciousness is also part of it, you could never perceive how time passes outside of the simulation; one second of simulated time could be equal to years of "real time" and you wouldn't know! There is actually a fun hypothesis by permutation city, which says once the rules of an internally consistent simulation have been computed once, its conscious inhabitants perceive it in perpetuity.
>OP Image
The absolute state of analytic philosophy!