My opinion is that all algorithms exist and thus their solution exists and thus they have been "simulated".

However, the algorithms are represented without variables, because variables are just caching and optimization and whatever only required to run the algorithm inside a machine that can only execute a single instruction at a time sequentially, and the algorithm might also need to be executed in little steps so that the variables can be read to view the state of the algorithm.

That is also why i dont believe the universe would be running inside a computer, it would require too much variables to hold its state to be executed sequentially by a machine. k.

My opinion is that all algorithms exist and thus their solution exists and thus they have been "simulated".

However, the algorithms are represented without variables, because variables are just caching and optimization and whatever only required to run the algorithm inside a machine that can only execute a single instruction at a time sequentially, and the algorithm might also need to be executed in little steps so that the variables can be read to view the state of the algorithm.

That is also why i dont believe the universe would be running inside a computer, it would require too much variables to hold its state to be executed sequentially by a machine. k.

But the programs computer wouldn't be the computers we have. For all we know it could do every operation at once. It's not bound by this universe.

I can honestly say that I've never before seen the anthropic and Copernican principles mixed in with naked subjectivity so deftly. I tip my hat.

[quote name='Waterlimon' timestamp='1344696602' post='4968418']
My opinion is that all algorithms exist and thus their solution exists and thus they have been "simulated".

However, the algorithms are represented without variables, because variables are just caching and optimization and whatever only required to run the algorithm inside a machine that can only execute a single instruction at a time sequentially, and the algorithm might also need to be executed in little steps so that the variables can be read to view the state of the algorithm.

That is also why i dont believe the universe would be running inside a computer, it would require too much variables to hold its state to be executed sequentially by a machine. k.

But the programs computer wouldn't be the computers we have. For all we know it could do every operation at once. It's not bound by this universe.
[/quote]

or it could do every operation over a thousand years, for a single iteration of time step. since we exist in the program, we could never actually know how long it takes for the universe to iterate forward one step, in terms of whomever is running the simulation.

i've read articles which claim that the closer we get to the technological singularity, the higher the odds are that we are a simulation of some post-singularity human race. the odds of us actually existing just before that point are increadibly low because after the point, the capability to run such simulations increases exponetially.

as for the scale of the universe, that's still all just observations, in reality, we haven't even sent a device at least 1 light year from our planet. how do we know that the universe isn't just some huge resolution variably moving cube map?

It doesn't matter if anyone loses it what matters is it is lost. If it meant that all we ever did was for nothing then that is bad.

Why?

If it meant that all we ever did was for nothing then that is bad.

Even assuming that our "reality" is not a simulation of any kind, I think it would be much easier to argue that all we will ever do is "for nothing", than to argue otherwise.

"Life" has arisen from processes in which patterns of molecules, in given environments, cause other molecules to form the same patterns, with a very small degree of variation. In that sense, the only "purpose" an individual has (whether it be a person, dinosaur, spore, or yeast) is to participate in propagating its population of individuals.

That individual bacteria living in my digestive tract will not be remembered, and some day, when I die, especially if I'm cremated, its entire population will come to a final end, and everything it did will have been "for nothing".

The very idea that we are somehow different, that our lives are somehow more meaningful, is, in my speculation, an evolutionary artifact, common to animals with high function brains which helps serve the purpose of self preservation, population preservation, and mate selection. In other words, because that attitude has arisen in some populations, those populations have more successfully propagated, thereby propagating that attitude.

But don't be fooled. Most species that have ever lived are now extinct, and we will be no exception. Not only will I be quickly forgotten by my population, but eventually there will be no one to even remember our species at all. I speculate that this is true whether a we're a simulation which suffers a power outage tomorrow, or whether we evolve into electronic intelligence that survives to a cold death of our universe.

If the idea that "all we ever did was for nothing" is bad. Then we better be ready to deal with bad.