(December 5, 2014 at 10:59 pm)Heywood Wrote:(December 5, 2014 at 10:27 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I think the problem here is that I see no perspective from which computer generated "sub-realities" exist. They are collection of mathematical rules with the results displayed visually. There is no inside perspective.
I'm okay with your position that there is no inside perspective provided you also take the position that you cannot possibly be a simulant existing in a computer reality. If you think it possible that you could be a simulant and think there can be no inside perspective.....then you have a contradiction in positions.
Premise 1. Computer simulations have no inside perspective from which an entity contained within them would perceive a reality.
Premise 2. I perceive a reality.
Conclusion: Therefore I cannot be an entity contained within a computer simulation.
Is the above argument valid and true as far as you are concerned?
Pretty much, except that you can't really talk about being contained in a computer program in any spacial sense. The cute evolving box-like creatures shown in your previous video are generated by and presented as the results of a program. But they are not contained in the program any more than 10 + 10 = 20 contains twenty or a quadratic equation contains the curve you can graph using it.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
