Simulated reality

[Kamiii]

Before you are born, the parts that are going to make you up are separated into various atoms and compounds that will eventually be used as fuel between your father generating sperm and your mother generating your fetus, and the concepts that build up your personality and will are built up from the stimulus received from when you start developing in the womb. It's not possible for you to not exist before you're born because all of the parts are already there that eventually build you up, the only difference is that you gain the ability to have the audacity to declair that you never existed before all the matter in the universe bent over to put you together. Saying you don't exist before you're born is like putting together a LEGO set and saying you built it from scratch.

If we go by "I think therefore I am", you "aren't" until you are born. The compounds that make you up exist but like you said it isn't considered you yet. So I would still think of that as being quite literally nothing.

 

[The Fool]

If we go by "I think therefore I am", you "aren't" until you are born. The compounds that make you up exist but like you said it isn't considered you yet. So I would still think of that as being quite literally nothing.

Any philosopher worth their salt knows the phrase "I think, therefor I am" is itself debatable. Basing your entire argument on it doesn't make much sense.
What is thought, anyway? It's just pushing around some concepts in your brain. The brain isn't much more than a fancy analogue calculator. You can sum up thought as adding numbers together. Does the number 4 not exist before I write the following? 2 + 2 = 4
Well, numbers don't exist in general. They do as concepts, though. Those concepts that are shared by other people besides yourself. Does it matter if you're the one specifically considering a concept when many others before you have done so?
Existence means as much as numbers do. It's a label for a specific state of the universe where suddenly you declare "look, that cluster of protein is me" based entirely off of one's own biased view of themselves.

 

[Webby's Boyfriend]

"In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhi show that constructing a computer simulation of a particular quantum phenomenon that occurs in metals is impossible – not just practically, but in principle."

That means it is impossible in our world. Yet, if our world is a computer simulation, physical laws would be, too, so that doesn't mean that the world that creates ours has the same physical laws.

 

[c-no]

While the OP is clearly a powerleveller and possibly one for the books, the conversation is somewhat genuine from some users. I had to clip a few replies to fit with the more genuine and tone of DT.

In reality I really think "who cares if this is a simulated reality" If our minds and our context is entirely based on chemicals and firing nodes in our brain what difference does it make if our lives are dictacted by a seed in a computer, the simulation is our reality so we should just treat it so.

While this is late on my part, the "who cares if this is a simulated reality" is one that holds truth. Granted I see it as this: even if we are simply a simulated reality, either as people hooked up to a machine or as an NPC built from millions of lines of code and all, that wouldn't really stop us from thinking, it wouldn't stop us from having mental states as the like. Even if we live in a simulated reality that is seeded from variables that leads to a clown world timeline, we still live our lives as they are regardless of whether or not we are real or just a shit ton of code that leaves us all to just be NPCs living in some sort of roguelike world or molecules clumped together to give us our form.

Any philosopher worth their salt knows the phrase "I think, therefor I am" is itself debatable. Basing your entire argument on it doesn't make much sense.
What is thought, anyway? It's just pushing around some concepts in your brain. The brain isn't much more than a fancy analogue calculator. You can sum up thought as adding numbers together. Does the number 4 not exist before I write the following? 2 + 2 = 4
Well, numbers don't exist in general. They do as concepts, though. Those concepts that are shared by other people besides yourself. Does it matter if you're the one specifically considering a concept when many others before you have done so?
Existence means as much as numbers do. It's a label for a specific state of the universe where suddenly you declare "look, that cluster of protein is me" based entirely off of one's own biased view of themselves.

And in regards to philosophy and the phrase "I think, therefore I am," I remember from philosophy professor noting Descartes, the guy behind the term, being an arm-chair philosopher. The phrase itself is debatable enough that it wouldn't be surprising for other philosophers to question or discard it entirely in favor of another system of ideas. As for existence itself, it all may as well be (or more or less) our own subjective views in a universe that operates on laws that are separate from our own subjective view and biases.

 

[Webby's Boyfriend]

If we live in a simulated reality, I would like to know why, and how it came to be. I mean, what could be the motivation to artificially create a world like ours?