Philosophically and theologically, it doesnt seem nearly as clever as Bay Area Fags make it out to be.
Lemme consider its deeper underpinnings:
- This reality is not the Final Reality. There's something off, something at least once-removed about this reality
- This reality begs for some sense-making. It doesn't sit well as chaos, and something written into our code compels us to order and rationalize, suggesting that reality itself is an ordered, purposeful narrative or code. What we call reality is, in fact, written / created
- Some being or beings engage in something akin to authorship, or coding, which creates our world and our selves. Their designs for us are mysterious and shrouded, but possibly discoverable
- Our desire for predictability and deeper understanding is best served by aligning ourselves with the invisible codes and laws which underwrite our experiences
All of this seems pretty much religion 101, or even Platonism 101. The metaphor of the Divine Word is expressed in binary rather than hebrew or arabic or whatever, but same shit.
A simulation dude might advocate for the novelty of his theory thus: "As we progress in tech, we obtain better metaphors for the Creator(s)/Creation act." Okay, instead of a quill and scroll its a screen, big whoop.
Date: August 3rd, 2026 3:14 PM Author: Wild Pisswyrm
IMO the lineage goes Plato's Cave to Descarte's Demon to Harman's technologically updated brain-in-vat (along with Putnam's semantic treatment) to Bostrom's computational and probabilistic modeling. Bostrom supplied the modern formulation. Parts of it are novel like using probability and the idea of ancestry simulations and future compute capacity to calculate what the chances are under certain assumptions.
Date: August 3rd, 2026 3:20 PM Author: Richard Ames
God reveals Himself to us using whatever language and understanding we have at our current place and time.
Silicon Valley fags simply have their heads too far up their asses to appreciate this. "We made a computer, therefore god must also be a programmer." Oh wow how convenient they are just like god, guess we should listen to whatever they have to say! Fucking lol.
Date: August 3rd, 2026 3:43 PM Author: aromatic toaster becky
The Bostrom work is not at all Rigorous. It follow the pattern of lots of other modern bullshit: “watch me invent probabilities and multiply them together!” When challenged: “I’m just saying that if these assumptions I pulled out of my ass are true, then certain conclusions follow!” Wow, thanks champ that helps a lot with my understanding of reality.
It appeals to the same audience that wishes charity were more like poker and “proving” theological and ethical arguments by multiplying things by infinity. (Gay, autistic, and retarded).
Date: August 3rd, 2026 4:03 PM Author: Wild Pisswyrm
The empirical force of his argument is limited, yeah, because all of the important input is uncertain, but it's not mathematical nonsense. The formal implications are legitimate. You can't make an argument like that without assumptions obviously so the force is limited to the arguments for the assumptions and whether you are willing to accept them. I guess I just don't know what you are expecting from something about "simulation theory" where we obviously don't have direct empirical evidence.
Date: August 3rd, 2026 4:56 PM Author: aromatic toaster becky
When I heard about simulation stuff I was hoping for evidence, recommendations or predictions. Instead I got “either we live in a simulation or we don’t, depending on whether unknown beings that might not exist have certain capabilities and interests.” This is not useful information. You can structure the exact same argument for literally any goofy premise you might imagine. True scholarship should involve grappling with the world as we observe and experience it (however imperfectly).
strikes me that these people want to grapple with Plato, Aristotle... and at least in the christian tradition Augustine and Aquinas.
those four built corvettes. the 21st C sim guys are building boy scout roller derby boxes and are super proud of them. theyd do better to study the work of men far smarter who approached the very same questions
Date: August 3rd, 2026 11:18 PM Author: Wild Pisswyrm
Hypothetical advanced beings are grounded in the observed existence of at least one technological species and in the apparent abundance of potentially habitable environments. That does not prove simulators exist, but it distinguishes the hypothesis from arbitrary fantasy. IMO I don't really think the biggest issue with the argument is the existence of beings. The probabilistic arguments for assuming we are one special little planet and there are no beings elsewhere is far weaker and requires far more insane assumptions. The issue is when you start assuming advanced enough tech survives to be simulators when we don't know how rare tech is. From the observable example on Earth I think it is fairly safe to assume life itself is pretty abundant in the Universe, but out of all of the different lineages of life on earth over billions of years, from the evidence we have leftover it seems only one has reached advanced tech so that's probably pretty rare. And even at our advanced state we still aren't at the level of being simulators.
Date: August 4th, 2026 9:16 AM Author: aromatic toaster becky
From our limited sample, Earth-like planets are rare and much better at creating bacteria than the kind of life that makes spaceships and computers. To me this suggests that we are probably a weird aberration and other life is either mostly bacteria, super-intelligent dolphins chilling in a distant ocean, or more advanced and hiding because they correctly identify us as the kind of beings who would love to test space nukes and are otherwise not really interesting to know.
I can go study biology and astronomy and so on to refine my estimate of probabilities here. But hypothesizing that maybe my available data was constructed by simulators who are sort of like me but also radically different in unknowable ways and outside my ability to observe does not help me to accurately understand anything and it is nothing but a stoner fantasy. Like what if we’re all ants man and the world is an ice cream cone?
Date: August 3rd, 2026 5:51 PM Author: the White jensen huang
for real though it's not nearly as silly or ridiculous as its detractors in this thread make it out to be
it's a totally reasonable theory for the origin of our universe. people who have a gripe with it really just have a gripe with metaphysics. which i agree, metaphysics is mostly just silly and ridiculous. but we should have self awareness about our feelings about it
Date: August 3rd, 2026 11:20 PM Author: Wild Pisswyrm
It isn't silly or ridiculous at all. Could potentially be almost certain depending on the truth of the assumptions, which we don't have enough evidence to say for sure, but aren't exactly insane.