“What if I tell you…”
Then you’re a liar.Excuse my honesty, I am not trying to attack anyone.Your affilation doesn’t change anything, if you’d be after the truth of the matter you’d consider it irrelevant.

” tell you that I don’t believe in god, that I don’t go to church, ”

E.g why should you go to church as atheist^^ And if you do it for social reasons, why do you think this is something relevant to this discussion?Redundancy or lie, or faulty reasoning;)

I heard lying is a sin to some christians, and taken literally you didn’t even claim not to do these things.Trying to avoid something?^^

“have a degree in a field of science”
Why don’t you get more specific?
Btw: A scientist who reasons like a non-scientist is no better than the latter.This is the kind of monkey mentality which makes the scientific method a necessity.Either something is true as to what we can now right now, or it is not.It doesn’t matter who pronunces it.

You don’t even know why it is not logically entailed that the ability to create something by material manipulation doesn’t mean that everything has been “created.” You want to have a degree in some field of science!?This explains why intelligent people tend to favor auto-didactism.Or you’re a lying

Anyway: Which field would that be? E.g: Knowing how to stitch someone together doesn’t mean you understand science.There is a difference between content and method.

“that I have read multiple books and articles”
Btw: Reading doesn’t equal understanding.And books and articles already are plural, why do you add multiple!?To add some “gravitas”?

———————–
To answer your question: Of course, a god is a possibility.If you’d be a scientist, you’d know that the respective (that pertain to this matter) fields work with probabilities instead of certainties.

This means, that the possibility of a god proves exactly nothing, and can’t be proved.Nor entirely disproved.The likelihood is what matters.And you should do some meta thinking and see that there is a difference between your state of knowledge and the external world.Which means you don’t know in the sense the “normal people” would define knowing.Your “knowing” belongs to the fields of classical logic, which is built to resemble the structure of western minds (indo-european language) and not reality itself.

The ability of humans to create life means that you’d have to adjust your probability for a “normal” (pretty provincial, too, since there are many people who think in different ways about this) god downwards!

How about some micro clowns singing “the xavier song”, in the restaurant at the end of the universe, as creators of 56.7948% of the world.This is possible too, for all we know.

———————————-
“It’s simple.”
Well, not comment.

“Answer the question then, show me that you’re smart”
I don’t need your approval.I just said you can get moving and start some research yourself instead of pestering us with your ridiculous pre-enlightenemt notions.There are reasons this is taught in several COURSES.If you’d wanted “bulletproof” reasoning, you’d not expect to read thousands of sites condensed in one comment, or would you.

Or whom are you trying to convert!?

Have a nice day:)

Ps: Creating LIFE out of NOTHING?You’re arguing definitions… the exact reason why we had to throw off the yoke of christianity in order to progress.Do you know the fable of the invisible dragon?

Unless you do this, there is no point in really adressing your claims, since you just wouldn’t get it.

Ps: Stop shifting the burden of proof.

Pps:
Why do people feel the need to repeat claims they picked up at church or sth like that, which have been adressed by smart people again and again, again and again!?

And why do you use all these guarding “terms”.Just be honest, and strip away all the verbiage.Your “arguments” alone give away your position.

Add a sufficient financial incentive to locate and exploit any such bugs and the hacker community will take it from there. ;-)

Even then, it’s pointless, and we’d never know anyway. The authors of the simulator can fix the bug, reload from a snapshot and continue the simulation, preventing us ‘simuloids’ from using the exploit _WE_ found, or even being aware we had discovered it in ‘a parallel universe’ | ‘prior incarnation’ | [insert religious philosophy here].

Kinda nice for them, code that finds its own bugs.

Anyhow, the principal questions are: what is meant by “computer” and what is meant by “simulation”? Simulation of what?

I would make a universe within my universe, a simulation of my universe (inflation leads to a cold rip, cold rip isolates a seed used to start a Big Bang). Or destroy my universe to start a new one (big crunch collapses to a seed used to start a Big Bang).

I would use a Turing machine. In my new universe I could participate (God), observe (relativity), or do both (singularity).

The behavior of Quantum mechanics proves nothing except the behavior of Quantum Mechanics itself….in short, it may prove that the apparent instability of the universe on that scale is just the nature of Quantum Mechanics not the limitations of an artificial power source. Somehow, I just don’t think we live in a simulation, although simulations may be possible I doubt they will acheive real self-awareness and this kind of infinite sophistication.

I totally disagree. There is no rule that states, “Thou shalt not experiment with advanced computer science until your species develops a colony on another planet.” The two are obviously entirely independent.

Analogous to the X-Prize Foundation’s method of setting a goal, then rewarding the first party to achieve that goal, I extend that idea to computer science. As computer power grows to the level where universes can one day be simulated, a reward could be offered for the first team to evolve a “Simulation Infinity”, an initial universe simulation which produces an infinity of deeper level simulations within it. In the simulation, complex intelligences must arise who could eventually discover the scientific method, computation, and begin running their own simulations. Once a research team develops the ability to create a universe with digital intelligent entities within it, such a universe may or may not automatically generate a Simulation Infinity. To test the research team, you would only need to set up the initial parameters and then fast-forward the simulation (the entities within would still experience their own relative time) to see if these initial parameters produced the Simulation Infinity- endless simulated universes within universes, an infinite inward spiral of digital universes. A team that could accomplish this would have the capability to see into the simulations of “deeper” simulations embedded within the original, as they would be piggy-backing off of it. My question to you Ray is this- would a correctly coded universe, one that was designed and had succeeded in producing a Simulation Infinity Outcome, reveal its success by overburdening the hardware’s resources? Would a finite computer system be incapable of handling an infinite number of simulations produced within it by entities within it, or would the piggy-backing inner simulations only require the computer level above’s resources?

I have a Skyrim character in a beautiful simulation that reminds me of Yosemite in my percieved reality. I suppose the hardware community and Bethesda software will keep improving the fidelity of their simulations as verious levels of realism and AI become feasible. And so, another level of the simulation-within-simulation is being born.

Doesn’t that make you feel special? ;-)

Dpn’t misunderstand my following comment because I think you have a great idea…for the Universal Simulation 1.0…but to paraphrase Feynman….”I fear this stage is a bit large for that play”

Why not have an infinite number of shooters to solve the problem? Also, I’m sure that both Hans and Nick would agree that the main challenge here is not just who thought of the concept but for the person (or group) who is able to form a testable theory of the Univeral Simulation.

By the way, Nick, I had the pleasure of a fleeting meeting with you at Foresight and I appreciate your past time and efforts!

Hey out there…any more contributions to this thought experiment?

Robert