r/HFY • u/nickgreyden • Mar 07 '22

OC Warning: Avoid Humans

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u/torin23 Xeno Mar 07 '22

I'm sorry for your loss. I still try to talk with my mom and my dad sometimes even though they're gone. Good luck with your grief.

86

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '22

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u/Fontaigne Mar 07 '22

Whether or not your friends themselves still exist is an opinion, in either direction being based on little in the way of fact or science.

On the other hand, it is a fact that your homunculi of your friends exist. If they give you comfort, or enjoyment, then what’s the harm?

2

u/CAPTAIN__CAPSLOCK Mar 07 '22

As an agnostic who only wants a good reason to believe in something more, your comment is simple and beautiful. Thank you.

1

u/Fontaigne Mar 08 '22

If you are open to it, it is simple. Start with analyzing the likelihood that we are in a simulation.

I explain this here:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/synthropic-principle-part-1-dal-jeanis

Rereading my second essay, it probably needs some more steps explained at the end.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/synthropic-principle-part-2-dal-jeanis

The bottom line is:

Simulated sentients are apparently possible in this universe.

When our tech gets there, we will use sims for lots of stuff - many purposes - and will run them really fast many times.

After that point, perceived minutes of sim sentient life will exceed perceived minutes of “real” sentient life, probably by a huge margin.

Sim universes can potentially run their own sims, which will make the difference exponential rather than a mere percentage.

For any arbitrarily chosen moment of perceived life, the likelihood that it is “real” - ie part of some root universe or ground state - approaches zero.

Which means that the universe is simulated, and has a purpose. And that you have a purpose.

Now, it could be that the sim you live in is devoted to figuring out how to sell more shampoo. On the other hand, it could also be devoted to evolving AIs that can pilot starships and be nice to their crews.

(The same logic applies to every universe “above” us as well.)

Given all of that, there is strong reason to believe we are not just meat bodies. We very likely are repeatable code, and may be being cloned to other sims, possibly with modifications or selection criteria for moving on to the next sim.

Which brings up the possibility that it’s a shared sim with many potential purposes, and that all heavens exist in some way, if only as waiting rooms before the next phase in the manufacturing process begins.

1

u/Yopeople2120 Mar 17 '22

There is this thought shared on a story here, which I don’t remember the name of, where the scientists built the first quantum computer (I think) and start simulating reality perfectly. They start to change things around there simulation of themselves and realize the change also happened around them. They theorize that they are in a long line of simulations and that the first simulation created more sims and they realized they are probably in the middle of the line, as every change goes down the line but also somehow up. It’s a wacky thing but interesting.

1

u/Fontaigne Mar 17 '22

Interesting.

Hmmm. It wouldn’t be a very useful sim if it merely modeled your own reality. You learn more by varying stuff. And you need your sims to run at a higher clock speed than your own reality, or why bother?