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Are we real or people in a virtural world?

Among Us Cyan

Are we real or not?

Reply 1

Ascend

Against the simulation hypothesis:

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-simulation-hypothesis-is.html

Reply 2

64Lightbulbs

does it matter if we aren't?

Reply 3

miser

Our conscious experience is constructed by the brain, so we are living in a simulation one way or the other.

As to whether we are real or not, our conscious experience is real. Concepts of personhood, the nature of objects, etc., are likely mistaken though - just interpretations our brain makes that were genetically/memetically successful.

Deeper truths of reality might be unknowable to us, since we're only able to know about the parts we can interact with and make inferences from them.

Original post by Ascend

Against the simulation hypothesis:

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-simulation-hypothesis-is.html

The author of that article is mistaken. She says,

The philosopher Nick Boström, for example, claims it’s likely that we live in a computer simulation [...]

That's a misrepresentation of his position - he simply put forward a hypothesis, and its truth value depends on the validity of the argument's propositions.

Bostrom says,

It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don't think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears.