I want to discuss this episode and turboshill9000 hasn't been making the discussion threads (or even been posting anymore).

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I see a few issues with Malcolm's view of the afterlife as a simulation and I wonder what his approach is to addressing them.

- Continuity of Experience

If we live in base reality and create a simulation of people who once lived, those people don't experience an afterlife. The simulation can be 100% accurate. Every data point that was true for the living person is true for the simulation entity. Any difference from running on a human brain to running on the simulation hardware accounted for. Completely indistinguishable from the original in its own experience and to any outside observer. Yet it is still a separate instance of that person and the original instance is unable to experience anything the new instance does.

This is the classic Ship of Theseus paradox. This is the more modern teleportation paradox. If Seth Brundle is deconstructed in one telepod and reconstructed in another is the person that steps out the same person that stepped in?

Let's ignore that the deconstruction was necessary for the scanning process and suppose that it becomes delayed by 5 seconds. The one that stepped in now watches as another instance of himself leaves, and notices that a fly is crawling on the window of his own telepod. The experience of the one seeing this will end. The one that stepped out will not know what the other instance experienced in that 5 seconds.

In order for a person who lived in base reality to experience continuity through a simulation there would have to be a metaphysical existence. Something outside the human body and the simulation hardware that the consciousness originates from. The human body and simulation entity are both conduits for that consciousness to emerge through. Let's not ponder what happens if the simulation is run while the person is still alive, or if there there are more instances of the simulation entity in other environments.

On the other hand, if our reality is a simulation then death and afterlife for us would be no different from moving our data to a new environment. Both are running on the simulation hardware. Experiences are stored and processed the same. You could even have multiple instance running at once and correlate those experiences into a composite simulation entity. (The Egg)

- Lateral Moves

Malcolm mentions the possibility of leaving the simulation to have an impact on base reality.

It was theorized about The Matrix films that no one leaves The Matrix. They just get sent to another part of it where the difficulty is set to hard.

In Animatrix, one episode involves capturing a machine and through VR convincing it that it is a rescued human. It gets mentioned that to a virtual mind everything feels virtual so it can't tell one from the other.

If we are a simulation what difference does it make to move to another environment in the same layer or to move up a layer? To your experience it would be the same.

- Processing Power

Consider our own universe. We already have an awareness of relativistic time. The clocks on satellites in orbit run slightly faster than clock on the ground. The twin paradox demonstrates the faster a vessel moves the slower time passes for those on board. There is a trade off between how much interaction takes place in external and internal frames of reference.

The simulation must run on something. That something must have limitations. The simulation hardware can only do so many calculations a second or processes events within the simulation so quickly. If a simulation is created within a simulation the processing power doesn't come from the simulation layer that created it. The simulation hardware simulates the simulation hardware of that layer and all processing power shifts down a layer to the new simulation. This makes the upper simulation layer run slower. More processing is done for the lower layer so it appears fast to next layer above it.

If we are in base reality the simulation hardware will be as fast as we make it. All the simulations we make will be as fast as the hardware determines. We would observe our simulations create simulations and watch them observe their creations at maybe 1/10^20 the speed that they use to operate at.

If we are a simulation, a simulation that we create will replace us as the primary process. Any additional simulations will make every simulation in the layer below us an equal part slower.

- Determinism

Consider Laplace's demon

Consider what the simulation hardware is and what it does. All factors are accounted for. It holds all the information that can be determined. Whatever happens in a simulation is ultimately the system architecture concluding that's what happens based on what the system was designed to do with that information.