Since you don't exist, could you turn your paycheck over to me?

The hypothesis of a simulated universe is another attempt to explain our existence by postulating a "higher power", and as such is not very different from primitive religious theories.

I've had this debate with others.. I feel I have to remind you , the majority of your evidence also can be used to say it is evidence of a higher power..

Well, if that turns out to be true then a heaven and God program becomes more valid. I hope the program doesn't have a hell. We need to find the cheat codes ASAP

You have been watching too many Keanau Reeve movies homie.

Huh. Someone please find me Ctrl-Alt-Delete. I am afraid that the simulation has been infected with viruses.

Blindly rejecting an idea because you see a resemblance to another idea which you despise is no better than blindly accepting an idea because it does so.

Your evidence is not well substantiated. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is just silly.

This is mental masturbation. Mind games for those privileged with education and time but alienated from their fellow humans. "Thought Experiments" for those with a lack of compassion to address real issues facing real people. It's this idle speculation that prompts the term "Educated Fools."

For the sake of argument, let's say it's true - Life is just a simulation. Perhaps a video game played by actual beings. What do you do?

1. Do you commit suicide and take as many of the other characters with you as possible?

2. Do you stop participating in the ruse? Focus on indulgences and instant gratification?

3. Or do you play the role you've been given? Try to enjoy the game you're in?

How about evidence that we are not in a simulation. All of the irrational numbers that cannot be computationally bound

If it is a simulation then who is to say we aren't a virus? Or other animals? Plants? Some are just worse viruses than others.

Does a virus know that it's a virus, or does it just act as if it has a purpose and tries to survive by "eating" and "spreading"? Sounds like humans to me as well as other "viruses" we know about that get into our own bodies. When we die in "natural disasters" is it the entity (Earth) that we are a virus on trying to save itself by killing the virus and cleansing itself?

What would that make the Earth then? Could every living thing be classified as a virus? Would the better classification be bacteria?

Any microbiologists or virologists in here?

What difference does it make? Our joys and sufferings are real. When climate change really hits, it won't feel like a simulation to us. Nor does it feel like a simulation when you lose a loved one now.
This is the sort of idle speculation that gives intellectuals a bad name. In "Gulliver's Travels," Johnathan Swift satirized the Great Minds pondering such abstruse idiocies in their Ivory Tower to display their supposedly superior intellects.
Come back down to earth and address our real problems here!

While I don't actually believe this is the case, because there's really no good evidence for it, I find it just as likely as a magical sky daddy that created everything.

I also don't think any of this constitutes good evidence. Some might be considered interesting arguments, but that's about it.

The best argument that I've heard for this idea is much simpler.

"Do you think that human technology will ever be powerful enough to create a simulation where the characters within think they're real?" (I'd answer probably yes)

"If humans could do this, do you think someone would?" (I'd answer most definitely yes)

2 yes answers would most certainly make the possibility that we're a part of a simulation much more likely than actually being "real".

It is what it is. Life is good.

Thanks for bringing up this topic!
I find a few of these points to be be deeply convincing support for the possibility of a simulated universe. Wave-particle duality and the “granularity/resolution” of the universe, as well as the observer effect of quantum mechanics, all seem like obvious programming shortcuts. And I know a lot of people wave off the statistical justification, but I find it to be equally convincing.

On the other hand, things like crop circles, déjà vu are totally unconvincing as support to me. Like the mandela effect, déjà vu could easily be an outcome of our brains. And crop circles seem likely to be 100% frauds.

As for the fine tuning issue, it feels like the anthropic principle could explain that as well (we see a universe tuned to our existence because otherwise we wouldn’t exist to see the universe). Some of the other support offered seem to be no more than coincidence. If we’re going to postulate a possible creator (and really, aren’t we?) I’d rather not base it on coincidence

I’m not familiar with Prof. Gates, and evidence from the evidence density of the universe. I’ll have to look into those. And I’ve never quite grasped what a holographic universe is supposed to be. I guess more digging is called for there, as well. All in all, I think the simulated universe is a fascinating possibility.

Very interesting and pretty impressive list of reasons we could be in a simulation. If we are what possibliities might exist?

Unlike many of the others, I do not find this suggestion preposterous. However, like many of the others, I don't feel it worthy of a great deal of my free time to think about extensively.

I have my doubts that if it IS true, it is discoverable truth. However, of all the arguments you have presented above, the argument from pixellation is the only one I find compelling. In particular, quantum physics (if it is indeed a correct model of our existence) suggests that there is a lower bound to our degree of resolution, something that isn't true of most fractal objects, which we observe most natural dynamic systems to be.

Of course, if "all this" is simulated, it begs the question of whether our simulator is itself simulated. My feeling is, is that that in and of itself might be falsifiable by us attempting to create simulations ourselves with a high degree of replication of our reality and finding that the actual resolution limit is lower than it should theoretically be (loss of information due to imperfect replication). We won't know the answer to this thought-experiment until we know more about how our (real or simulated) universe actually works.

Some of your arguments ascribe a certain "intent" to the simulator(s?)-there is no reason to think the simulation was created by human-like entities, although it is one possibility. I'm also unsure as to why our known universe is so vast with regards to ourselves, and yet there aren't more "NPC's" we've run into.

It's true that a complex simulation might be generated with fairly efficient code, I think Rule 110 is a good example of that.

Unless there is the possibility that we could somehow communicate "outside the universe", the relevance of the truth of this conjecture remains dubious. Perhaps, though, it might be of some benefit to our own attempts to develop AI, and understanding the nature of consciousness. Those are pretty big "if"s though.

When did mankind start thinking of this simulation? Was it before the books and movies that deal with the subject or was it after?

Let us replace gods with another idea. Presto! Here is a new religion.

That is just replacing the god of the gaps with simulation theory. Simulation theory becomes a religion. Tyere are more errors, logical fallacies, misunderstood concepts, and plain nonsense that I feel like responding to.

OK, maybe just one: "Evidence from the Cosmos: The accelerating expansion of the Universe is evidence. The energy density of the Universe cannot remain constant while the volume of the Universe is increasing. That's a free lunch. That's the generation of something from nothing. Software however can create that illusion."
First law of thermodynamics also known as the law of conservation of energy. Energy, in an isolated system, cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change form. The opposite of what you stated. From the way you worded the statement you don't seem to be familiar with the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy. Finally, the concept of expanding universe is a simplification in the intuitive, three-dimentional space, even ignoring the foutrh dimension - time. Most people don't realize that it is not expansion in space but expansion of space itself. Rememering that, the concept of expansion means something different. OK, one more. Let's not confuse a quanta with a unit of information. Quantization may not apply to everything, we just don't know yet. The Planck length is considered the smallest unit for various reason but that doesn't mean that space is quantized. Science has no clue what space is. We know bits and pieces, we know that on a subatomic level space is non-local. That there doesn't seem to be such thing as distance. We know that particles pop in and out of it because of the fact that quantum world is governed by probabilities, not binary zeroes and ones. We know do little about the universe that speculating about living in a simulation cannot be taken seriously. Silulation hypothesis, just like religions, tries to explain complexity of the universe by introducing even more complexity. In case of religions it's gods, goddess, etc. in case of simulation hypothesis it's super smart beings with superfast computers. With simulation we are getting into the First Cause territory from religion but in this case the question would be: who is simulating the simulators?

The software analogy still suggests a Designer Programmer (plus background hardware for the program to run in). Strikes me there's no significant difference between this and the God hypothesis.

Analogy and godspeak always move hand in hand.

You're spouting nonsense. Just sayin'.

The idea of the world is a simulstion is silly. The Holographic Theory means that the information contained in a volume of space can be represented in two dimensions on the boundary of that space. The implcations of that finging are significant but that is all the theory states. It's about a property of nature, the universe, sort of like the fact that angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. No, we don't know what space is, the simple double slit experiment shows that it is not what it seems to be. We don't know if time exists. If scientists don't find evidence for particles necessary for the supersymmetry to work the string theory as it is today will be dead. Maybe quantum loop gravity will offer a way towards better understanding of the substrate of spacetime. We are certainly missing something big or maybe are coming up against the limit of our intellectual abilities. After all we are apes and evolved to find food and make babies on the surface of a small

I would love to believe that this theory is fact. It would help to think such a fucked up place isn't real.