(February 22, 2021 at 10:08 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: You're the one who decided to babble about paintings, John.
(February 22, 2021 at 9:59 am)Irreligious Atheist Wrote: What if we're in a simulation? Can the programmer program us to have life after death?
Not under IIT, no. It can program something identical to us and we could even assume that it believed itself to be us, but, going with the computer analogy, it would be it's own individual instantiation of conscious programming.
I really hate how words used in science get twisted by people. Like how laypeople equate the use of "theory" in science to mean the common usage outside science as being a "mere guess".
I have a hard time with the word "simulation" too. It implies to some a cognition watching over the universe like a computer programmer. But that concept still fails apart when taking infinite regress into account. "If we are a simulation, then what caused that simulation, and what caused that simulation, ect ect ect ect" It still begs the question.
The universe is not aware of us. It has no capability of caring what happens to life on this planet. It is not a living thing, it is simply the environment we exist in. Just like one can accept that the seasons on our planet are not controlled by a God, or cosmic programmer. Motion isn't always cognitive life, but mere QM and physics.
I wish I could find the video of Neil deGrasse Tyson hosting the panel of scientists again. One lady was a M-theorist. And if I am remembering correctly, basically she was ultimately theorizing, that no matter how many dimensions, or parallel universes, or bubble verses(multiverses) that everything is a wave function that bubbles and ultimately will decay back to zero. That to me is mind blowing. But it makes far more sense than old mythology or si fi woo. It is consistent with a very basic statement that nothing lasts forever.
I hope I am remembering that correctly.
I would argue there is an "eternity" but not a magic one or cognitive one, or god based one. But merely like seasons cycling. Or like a light switch going from off, to on, burning out, going back to off, quantum twitch, which triggers another wave function leading to the transition from off to on again. There is no problem with infinite regress if you break it up between off and on.
I find it amazing alone, that everything builds up from the sub atomic level, to the atom level to the molecule level to the macro level. I find it amazing that particles pop in and out of existence too. I find it amazing that things like a neutrino can pass through a solid planet. I find so much about science amazing and how much of a microscopic point our planet is in all that, and how fragile what we have now is.
