Some thoughts on Existence, God and Religion

there's nothing to stop anything that wants to exist from doing so, (or at least coming into existence anyway), and equally nothing to compel it, to have anything to do with what any of us want to think we know.
non-physical things do not depend on anything physical, nor do they depend upon being known. this is two different things.

we can know there are boundaries of what we have already learned, but existence is a separate thing, not dependent on what we know, whatever our egos try to insist to the contrary.

the number, names and natures of gods or god like beings, are unknown to anything human, whatever any familiar named belief may claim.

we can experience well wishing non-physical things though, that are not limited by our knowledge, or any knowledge.



we don't need to pretend to know what we don't. we don't need to compel others to do so. we can experience and live these things without either.

we can imagine things, and there's nothing wrong with that either, its just that what we imagine, what we believe, are never all.

its open ended is another way of putting it. i know some will complain that if it is, anything can get in.

well it is, there's nothing we can do about that, and its not up to us anyway.

but its not inherently good or bad that it is, it just is. when people insist that existence can only be one way or another, that is when they are making the big mistake,
of limiting what they can imagine, that has nothing to do with what might or might not actually be.

 

Perfect timing is the joy of artful existence . Simulations are tedious like a metro gnome .

 

I don't believe I gave any indication that I didn’t deem this as reality, just that I wanted to discuss the nature of this reality.

Have you had a chance to look at The Simulation Hypothesis , it points out that a Simulated Universe is actually a better fit for the nature of reality than the Materialistic Universe that you seem to favor.

 

I'm not going to watch that at the moment but I"ll try and get around to watch it eventually. If you find the topic really interesting, I recommend this panel discussion, which I have watched in full. It features some vary prominent and smart people discussing varying viewpoints on the topic.

 

Quite frankly I don't care if you ever watch it.

Ignorance is bliss.

 

If the universe if a simulation using quantum computing would it still be deterministic? I think it might perfectly match our universe.

 

I scrapped my initial reply, which was likely better than this one, but that's a good question. I attempted to envision a scenario accepting the Simulation Hypothesis and incorporate your quantum computing notion as well, but it kind of stalled and seemed as arbitrary as like a Supernatural explanation.

What I'm having difficulty grasping is if uncertainty of quantum states decohere to transition to classical states, and the macroworld (observable universe) we experience in the simulation, than it seems like it might necessitate that quantum computing would follow a similar decoherence to run a defined program that is our simulation.

But part of my refrain on the initial response, is that perhaps you can elaborate a (qu)bit on how you think it would match?

 

I wasn't thinking of the macroworld per se. I don't know much about computing but it seems to me it would be simple to construct a program, using a hypothetical quantum computer, that simulated the behaviour of elecrons or quarks, let's say. I kind of think of the universe as a bottom up construction, a sum of it's parts if you will. I'm a reductionist. So assuming one had access to an arbitrarily large amount of computing space one could one could construct a simulation of our universe that would be indistinguishible from the real thing. (It would evolve differently of course because of the Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics.)

This reminds me of the 'brain in a jar' conundrum. What if you're just a brain that has it's sensory nerves hooked up to a computer that provides impulses that simulate a reality. How would you know the difference?

Any of that make sense?

 

To simulate our Universe, you would have to account for the macroworld, so I think from an anthropic perspective, it's for all practical purposes deterministic. Even if parameters were slightly changed for a multiverse, I think that'd be the case.

I kind of have the same response to the infinite regress of Simulations scenario. If we cannot know, then why not just deem this reality?

 

I think this is maybe where we disagree. I see the macroworld as an emergent quality of the microworld, which isn't deterministic.

 

It seems to me we are getting hung up on the computer needed for a Simulated Universe; perhaps I should have asked do we live in an Analog or Digital Universe? If the universe was analog then everything would be “smooth” but it does not appear to be “smooth” and in fact Quantum Mechanics seems to be saying we live in a Digital Universe that is composed of quanta or steps of matter and energy as if we live in a Simulation.

 

If we are to make the distinction, the emergent quality where we reside in as beings has cause and effect, I don't see how that changes anything.

 

Everything is connected even in a materialistic way. I can sit in the sun and photons will flow through my body that 8 minutes earlier were at the sun's core. There's also cosmic rays originating in deep space that are constantly hitting the earth and even reach sea level. Millions of people are interacting with each other every day yet each person is like a node operating out of it's own mental plan for the day. Scientific instruments can detect brain waves and that's about it.

 

if you didn't know the difference, would it matter?

 

to me the question of existence is what can exist, and to that the logical answer would seem to be absolutely anything.
whether we can imagine it or not. some things might actually not exist, but anything can, if you get what i mean, the difference between can and does.
i don't believe anything needs to be infallible, nor that wanting to be feared is in any way good, but even those, its not a matter of can't, just of doesn't.
the universal wonder of strangeness though, that is a thing that exists. the caveat there, is that what people pretend to know about it, is people pretending.

if you're only seeing from where you stand, you're just not looking wide enough to see a reasonable, realistic and probable picture.
existence is a bigger picture then 'do i exist?' or 'is what i experience real?'.

 

I guess it would depend on what you wanted to do with the information.

 

Whether "absolutely anything" can exist or not, kind of depends on the nature of the world we live in.

The question that I asked here is not whether what we experience is real but what is the nature of that reality.

I have found it interesting that the world appears to be Digital and that, at least in the microworld, conscious observation can change the world around us.

Which makes me wonder, can “conscious observation” also make substantial changes the macroworld we live in.

 

Also about this video, I found it to be disappointing. They spent very little time talking about what they have actually found out about the nature of the world we live in and wasted a lot of time giving their personal opinions of whether we live in a “computer simulation” like Simlife.

 

The topic of the Debate is "Is the Universe a Computer Simulation?" ...

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you didn't watch much of it, there is definitely a lot more information than you are suggesting. but perhaps you are disappointed because the evidence is not all that compelling, barring some monumental shifts in the understanding of laws, constants, etc. of nature, this topic largely resides in the realm of Philosophy.