The strangest thing to ever happen to me took place in Tomsk, a Russian Siberian city. A week into my stay there, I bought a neon orange toothbrush to replace an old toothbrush. Some two weeks later I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth but the toothbrush was gone. It completely disappeared.
Looking for this neon orange toothbrush was the only time in my life that I felt insane. I scoured the bathroom on my hands and knees before extending the search to the entire apartment, even looking in trash cans, drawers, and cabinets. I figured that its disappearance was due to one of the following two reasons:
1. I sleptwalk and threw the toothbrush out the window. This is unlikely since I have no history of sleepwalking and sleep extremely light (so light that the sound of my own snoring wakes me up).
2. The landlord came during the early morning to dispose of the toothbrush, just to fuck with me. The problem with that scenario is that the front door was loud with a dungeon master lock. If I didn’t awaken to its opening, I would have when it was closed and locked again.
I stayed in the apartment for a week and the neon orange toothbrush never appeared again. At that time I didn’t consider a third explanation of its disappearance: there was a glitch—a bug—in the computer simulation we’re living in.
A paper by Oxford philosophy professor Nick Bostrom makes a case for the computer simulation argument. His paper, which I recommend reading, states that one of the following three scenarios must be true:
1. We will go extinct or somehow destroy ourselves before developing the technology or computational power to create simulations with conscious subjects (i.e. become “posthuman”).
2. A posthuman civilization that can create a simulation with consciousness will elect not to, perhaps for ethical reasons.
3. We are currently living in a computer simulation, one that has sufficient detail without major bugs that convince us our reality is not an artificial construct.
The first time I heard of simulation theory, I reviewed it just for curiosity’s sake, to see how convincing the argument was for us to be living in a sort of Matrix but without the physical pod component. While I’m not fully convinced, the logic presented is sound and I’m open to the small possibility that we’re part of a SimUniverse where the big bang was a start button pushed by an advanced species who wanted to learn more about their own creation, or perhaps who just wanted to be entertained. The fact that scientists today are eagerly hoping to simulate consciousness on computers suggest that the idea must be irresistible to advanced species.
My initial objection to believing a simulation is possible is the detail our reality provides. There’s no way I can be “fooled” of existence, but nearly every single night I’m fooled by a simulation called dreams, which not only lack rich detail, but are still believed by my mind in spite of having colossal bugs well known to lucid dreamers:
- You can’t see your hands
- Light switches don’t work
- Clock faces never display
Is it possible that dreams are a simulation of a simulation, and that everything around us is digital data stored on quantum computers so powerful that it would take an entire planet to house them based on current technology?
If the environment is included in the simulation, this will require additional computing power – how much depends on the scope and granularity of the simulation. Simulating the entire universe down to the quantum level is obviously infeasible, unless radically new physics is discovered. But in order to get a realistic simulation of human experience, much less is needed – only whatever is required to ensure that the simulated humans, interacting in normal human ways with their simulated environment, don’t notice any irregularities.
There have been other theories that clash with the neatness of our current model of the world. One states that there are multiple universes operating concurrently, and another, my favorite, states that there has been a great many iterations of the universe, each with its own physical properties that determine its makeup and construction. Maybe we’re living in universe number 1,350,372—an advanced “species” of universe that evolved from previous ones like we evolved from previous animals—and when it inevitably collapses upon itself, another big bang will create a new universe with different conditions of physics, chemistry, and life.
How can we ever prove that we’re living in a simulation? The biggest indicator, based on probability formulas provided by Bostrom, is if we successfully create such a simulation ourselves. In that case, a posthuman scenario has most certainly occurred in the universe before, allowing there to be a far greater number of simulated organisms than real ones. If we create a posthuman simulation, Las Vegas odds would then heavily favor the fact that we are indeed living in one.
…we would have to suspect that the posthumans running our simulation are themselves simulated beings; and their creators, in turn, may also be simulated beings.
Reality may thus contain many levels. Even if it is necessary for the hierarchy to bottom out at some stage – the metaphysical status of this claim is somewhat obscure – there may be room for a large number of levels of reality, and the number could be increasing over time. (One consideration that counts against the multi-level hypothesis is that the computational cost for the basement-level simulators would be very great. Simulating even a single posthuman civilization might be prohibitively expensive. If so, then we should expect our simulation to be terminated when we are about to become posthuman.)
One big part of our reality that can’t be explained is the double slit experiment, whereby the physics of our universe behaves differently just because we happen to be observing it. Watch the following clip if you are unfamiliar with this famous experiment, whose result has not changed after many replications:
This experiment is conclusive in proving that perception of objective reality can be dependent on the observer, meaning it changes simply because a set of eyes (mechanical sensors) are watching, without any other alteration to the environment. Can’t this mystery extend to life as a whole with people instead of electrons? Can things in our own reality change depending on if we’re looking or not? Are simulation programmers filling in information ad-hoc depending on how closely we are watching?
In my own life I noticed something consistently peculiar and frustrating—the attractiveness of women decline based on how carefully I’m looking for an attractive woman. If I decide on a day of dutiful work, I always see more attractive women than if I go out with the intent to meet women. Having a different mental goal changes what my eyes see and therefore what I get aroused by. While we can conclude that this difference in perception is due to my brain viewing reality differently based on the goal or intent it contains at the time, the double slit experiment offers up a potentially different explanation.
…a posthuman simulator would have enough computing power to keep track of the detailed belief-states in all human brains at all times. Therefore, when it saw that a human was about to make an observation of the microscopic world, it could fill in sufficient detail in the simulation in the appropriate domain on an as-needed basis. Should any error occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. Alternatively, the director could skip back a few seconds and rerun the simulation in a way that avoids the problem.
And so we may be coming full circle, from believing in a single creator, God, then killing him off in place of evolution and natural selection, a process that prefers ever increasing levels of complexity and intelligence even though robust gene replication can occur on a basic cellular level like in bacteria, and now back (for some) to believing in a creator, not of one God but a species whose intelligence we would be unable to grasp with our feeble minds.
While the simulation argument has no bearing on my day-to-day life and what I’m feeling in the present moment, it has made me wonder more about what we’re doing here. If there is no reason, as I suspect, then we’ll just have to find a reason ourselves by living in a purposeful way, but until then I would really like to know what happened to my neon orange toothbrush.
Read Next: We Are All Sisyphus
Yes, it’s a simulation. Created by God. The Bible is singularity.
Yes, it’s a simulation. By Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Odin, Thor and Frey.
What? You say belief in one unproven supernatural creature is right but these other ones don’t exist? Prove it.
All those are physical beings living temporily with limited power.
We know they are myths because they do not meet the logical characteristics of God necessary to bring all tiime, space and matter into existence
Contrast their stories with Jesus’ description of the Most High……..all that is seen and unseen, greater than the human mind can even comprehend. , more powerful than the universe itself.
Your argument is childlike , often repeated by ret-ards and easily disposed of.
“My god is real and your god is fake…”
“I don’t have to prove anything because my prophet has already spoken the truth”
Excellent arguments. Completely irrefutable.
Those are your arguments.
Kalam is mine.
Believing that all time , space and matter created itself out of nothing with no First Cause is pure atheist magic..
It’s really the biggest magic trick of them all.
Beyond that , atheism is nothing more than a form of high functioning autism.
On Man, you should Really see a doctor. And a good one, I mean It.
Is that suppose to be an argument?
Here’s a simpler and more concise argument – your religion is bullshit. Take your Bible and shove it up your fucking ass you hypocritical sack of shit.
Nice.
If and when people ask I tell them I am an apatheist. I am totally apathetic to the question of whether God exists or not. It quite simply has no fucking bearing on my life. Or, put another way, the question of whether there is a god or not in no way effects the price of shit I want to buy.
Can’t everybody express a view without a resort to calling them mentally ill? 99.9% of us are mentally ill judging by the rapid deterioration in society that I am seeing and the inability/unwillingness of anyone to do anything about it.
+1-1=0…if our universe is the +1 or matter,then the existence as proven in experiment of anti-matter gives us also -1.The simultaneous existence of both can come from/equal nothing..no need for causitive action by deities.
It is false to think that disproving other arguments proves our own unless the possibilities are finite and all but ours is disproven.
Any fabric of existence that supports the creation of +1 and -1 from 0 or nothing is in fact something. A void of creation is a fabric of reality, and where did that come from? Space is not empty: dark matter, dark energy.
We can define that something beyond as God, but we certainly don’t have anything by which that ‘God’ can be characterized. We have no divine will expecting worship based on the weighy void of space that is not nothing.
”Space is not empty: dark matter, dark energy.”
How do we know that before the big bang that space is not empty. Perhaps it is the result of the beginning that true void is not longer void.
”We have no divine will expecting worship based on the weighty void of space that is not nothing.”
That’s true. Kalam only proves a creator nothing more nothing less.
Wrong, Nothing is not “cancel each other out’ Nothing measn nothing , no charcteristics , not description, no properties.
Nothing is not something, as you Dawkins-tards keep saying it is.
If everything requires a creator and nothing can come from nothing, then who created your chosen deity? If you’re honest, man seems to be the only logical/sensible/intelligent reply.
Wow, thanks for that search! Never heard of this!
Yes it is possible for something to come from nothing. Quantum physics has shown that it’s possible. Ultimately “nothing” itself is unstable so a kind of existence will naturally occur by itself.
Believe whatever u want though. I don’t really care anymore whether you believe that Yaweh created the universe just for you. I’m pretty much done with organized religion already. Just don’t force it towards me.
The “nothing” you describe is a quantum vacuum. A quantum vacuum is not nothing, in terms of the absence of anything. The quantum vacuum is something. The laws of quantum mechanics are not nothing either.
A quantum creation of the universe doesn’t disprove God. It does disprove a God of the Gaps.
I know God exists. But religion is mostly a trap, having been subverted. All religions have commonalities, so there is a line of truth and a line of lies in the same stories that are retold.
We do live in an end times for humanity, where the human race gets mostly destroyed and judged; the Bible is merely the most accurate text to describe these times, though it also has been altered.
Childlike Arguments 101
Exhibit A: A mating pair of every land-bound species was put on an ancient ark of wood made manually with ancient technology, and they did not eat or kill each other, die from disease, or represent a genetic pool too small for reproductive survival of those species.
Exhibit B: Thou shalt not kill, unless I say so.
Exhibit C: If you are attracted to a married woman, you have committed adultery. Married women cease to be attractive to all but the husband based on marriage interference that turns her wave attraction (broadcast) into partical attraction (husband channel).
Exhibit D: Jesus was born to biological parents who lived in Nazareth before Jesus was born (Luke 2:1) and who did not until after Jesus was born (Matthew 2:1). There are plenty more contradictions discovered by critical scholarship of the Bible.
Exhibit E: The New Testament glorifies poverty: giving the Temple your last two cents, always taking a collection for the poor, the difficulty of a rich man going to heaven, ‘good’ Samaritan risking his own welfare, etc. No wonder the poor will always be with us. Now give your betters on earth all your money, incidentally of course.
Exhibit F: Faith is all you need to be part of the Elect and get heaven rather than hell. Also, many are called but few are chosen and the rest get nashing of teeth (torture), but faith is all you need, and there is an Elect, but unto the fourth generation the sins of the father will keep you out: i.e. believe what we tell you to believe and really believe it.
Exhibit G: God is omnipotent and Satan deserves to burn for eternity, but Satan is only following God’s plan and taking one for the team. We know, we know, Satan has free will according to God’s plan, and so do I. I’d rather have been made pure than free. We get no temptation we can’t handle, yet we are all sinners and need God’s grace.
Exhibit H: Love thine enemy and turn the cheek. Is not a helper of evil evil? We have not done those things which we ought to have done. Actions in this life only matter when God is keeping score, check the fine print, amirite?
”Exhibit B: Thou shalt not kill, unless I say so.”
It was not a proper translation. The Hebrew always indicates murder.
”Exhibit H: Love thine enemy and turn the cheek. Is not a
helper of evil evil? We have not done those things which we ought to
have done. Actions in this life only matter when God is keeping score,
check the fine print, amirite?”
Not what you think it is:
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/madmad.php
”Exhibit G: God is omnipotent and Satan deserves to burn for
eternity, but Satan is only following God’s plan and taking one for the
team. We know, we know, Satan has free will according to God’s plan, and
so do I. I’d rather have been made pure than free. We get no temptation
we can’t handle, yet we are all sinners and need God’s grace.”
What is Goodness without 1stly the possibility of evil. Is purity and obedience worthy if there is no possibility of the other?
That is some high-level paranoid thinking, Roosh. I hope you find your toothbrush.
Uh. I am not Roosh.
Exhibit A: A mating pair of every land-bound species was put
on an ancient ark of wood made manually with ancient technology, and
they did not eat or kill each other, die from disease, or represent a
genetic pool too small for reproductive survival of those species.
Exhibit C: If you are attracted to a married woman, you have
committed adultery. Married women cease to be attractive to all but the
husband based on marriage interference that turns her wave attraction
(broadcast) into partical attraction (husband channel).
Sin begins in the mind. When you are undressing her in your mind you have begun to commit adultery. Involuntary attraction is not a sin.
”Exhibit F: Faith is all you need to be part of the Elect and
get heaven rather than hell. Also, many are called but few are chosen
and the rest get nashing of teeth (torture), but faith is all you need,
and there is an Elect,”
Here’s the thing. No matter how much Good a person does it does not in any way cancel the sin. And to cancel the sin and be just there must be a substitute.
”but unto the fourth generation the sins of the
father will keep you out: i.e. believe what we tell you to believe and
really believe it.”
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/paydaddy.php
”Exhibit A: A mating pair of every land-bound species was put
on an ancient ark of wood made manually with ancient technology, and
they did not eat or kill each other, die from disease, or represent a
genetic pool too small for reproductive survival of those species.”
I will await the evidence on that one. You may think it childish however the fact the Nineveh and Babylon did exist despite the fact that they were previously regarded as childish myths because its in the bible doesn’t make it untrue. If the bible is accurate in history at those times perhaps it may be correct at earlier times.
Exhibit A it does not say “species” Its say “kind” .
Two of each kind , of land animals
Exhibit B it does not say “thou shall not kill” It says “thou shall not murder”
Exhibit C It does not say “attracted” It’s say “Lust in your heart ” And it certainly doesn’t say “love in your heart”
Exhibit D
|Luke 2:1King
2 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.”
”
Matthew 2:1King James Version (KJV)
2 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,”
Nothing you are claiming is true
Exhibit E This is just your commentary , not a contradiction in the Bible.
The Rich man asks what more he can do, even tho he kept the Commandments and the Sabbath.
Exhibit F “Faith is all you need to be part of the Elect and get heaven rather than hell.”
Sorry but no , You must REPENT , and put your faith in Christ , You don’t have to do anything else.
All your examples are wrong and now Im bored
No one can whup Thor dont be stupid !
Fedoras are really fucking stupid.
He doesn’t need to prove jackshit, you retard, I don’t think his statement was a strong assertion.
You must be an autist.
”What? You say belief in one unproven supernatural creature is right but these other ones don’t exist? Prove it.”
Which has the best record of interacting with humans in history?
Perhaps this is not definite proof. But the ones that reveal themselves to man are more plausibly the ones that exist. Perhaps there are others but we don’t know.
The origins of ‘God’ in the bible is derived from Hebrew ‘Elohim’, i.e “Those who came down from the sky” – Our creators. The bible is in fact real documentation of history, if you acknowledge God as meaning our ‘creators’. If may sound silly, but it all makes sense on a site called spaceagogo.com by using archaeology, ancient civilisation documentations, etc.
Ha, the Christian God doesn’t exist. Thor is the true god. I am a neo pagan.
cool! the christian god just wanted to see what would happen!
You sure are a good writer, always interesting.
I just want to know why the simulation assigned me to inhabit the body and mind of a risk-averse beta who constantly gets abdominal cramps.
Talk about a bug!
It’s not a bug, it’s a “feature”. 😛
Welcome to CryptoPanopticon Stay4Sure Digital Penitentiary 0xD3ADB33F, where anything is possible, even your permanent erasure!
They told me when I got here that rubbing your own penis was the equivalent of the F1 Help key, but no matter how many times I do it doesn’t seem to be producing any instruction manuals…
Lift the veil.
You are looking into the face of a Grue.
Your best option is to run North.
Roosh, Maybe you never bought a neon toothbrush. Maybe it’s something you imagined you did..
Maybe you have a false memory.. Our brains are already just computers, simulating reality.. Maybe it was a glitch in the brain.. Some people’s dream curcuits in the brain are even active at the same time as their reality observing curcuits – and they don’t notice the difference.. People hallucinating or hearing voices – that’s two modules at work at the same time and people cannot say which one is the depiction of reality.
Or maybe, you are becoming a splitted person like tyler durden in fight club.. And you have no memories of throwing away your toothbrush..
Maybe the toothbrush collapsed into a singularity, then erupted into its own new universe, propagating the system.
It was the Jews and their New World Order media who took the toothbrush
Fight club – google MK Ultra. That entire film, as well as many others, is about brainwashing people. In fact, all of Hollywood is about brainwashing and lately we get a lot of apocalyptic movies as they are hinting the obvious to us.
Yup…most Americans dont realize they’re under Talmudic Rule.
#SchlomoOwnsyou #StupidGoyim #ShekelsOverEverything
We live in an algorithmic prison. From the stock market to advertising..its all done via Algos.
“The fact that scientists today are
eagerly hoping to simulate consciousness on computers suggest that the
idea must be irresistible to advanced species.”
This is where I think you have to tread cautiously. Suggesting the simulation of consciousness “must be” irresistible to advanced species presumes advanced species think the way we do, evolved the way we do, or have any of the priorities we do. Remember Spock in Star Trek IV? “There are other forms of intelligence on Earth, doctor. Only human arrogance would assume the message ‘must be meant for Man.'”
I think at this point in our development as a species there is simply zero data from which to make this sort of presumption. We have yet to encounter an advanced species or indeed find any complex life anywhere in the cosmos that even shows a hint of self-awareness, or sapience if you will. I’ll concede SETI’s continuing silence (which is provisional of course) might in a contrarian sort of way support the simulation theory — but against that are the carbon-based molecules and proof that bacteria can exist off Earth, that indeed a comet may have triggered life on this planet to begin with, and that even in our brief time period of looking at the stars we’ve seen a number of planets that fall inside the Goldilocks range, capable of supporting complex life.
Thing is, if you presume an advanced species has created in effect a worldwide Matrix, it can pretty much only lead in circles because any speculation about the intent, resources, and mindset of the advanced species is a dead end. Even trying to suggest that the simulation must consume a massive, improbable amount of energy is a dead end: if our rules of physics are themselves simply rules of a simulation, how can we even imagine that an advanced species is constrained by them or is not indeed utilising an entirely different set of physics, our physics themselves being as arbitrary as endless lives in a computer game?
Like I said, this has parallels with what I hope is an emerging understanding in the species: that God, if it exists and if we can even define it, is mostly if not utterly transcendental. We cannot know or be clear about anything regarding its existence or nature, so Aquinas/Averroes’ attempts to reason our way up to God are fruitless; if God isn’t bound by logic or the laws of physics then even analogues must fail.
Astute observation. In short, we don’t know enough to frame the question, so the question should be frameless: Who or what is the ultimate cause of our existence? I define existence only so far as ‘I think; therefore, I am’ and not knowing the nature of that existence which is causally bound by the answer we don’t fucking know. We don’t even know if we can rely on causality. It is like trying to solve the Bridges of Konigsberg with the wrong assumptions, and some starting point is necessary. I figure that we are trapped in spacetime and that the ultimate cause is not bound by time, maybe not space either, and so resources may be limitless because the highest supernatural existence somehow just IS, and somehow that just isn’t right either.
A true human knows he does not know such things. Sheeple always prefer certain oppression over uncertain choice, and I hate them.
BTW, a fucking great post! I think I hope the experiment is a fraud.
There might not be a way of looking outside the box, but there may be a way to detect if there is a box:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429561/the-measurement-that-would-reveal-the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation/
“‘The most striking feature…is that the angular distribution of the highest energy components would exhibit cubic symmetry in the rest frame of the lattice, deviating significantly from isotropy,’ they say.”
By which it should be possible to detect that the box is indeed a box …
Yyyyyeah, but to my mind this still assumes that our shared box has any rules that match those of the world outside the box. That’s sort of my point: asking about the box is something of a Category Error, because if there is a box we have no real way of comparing that box to any reality outside the box – ergo we cannot know, fundamentally, whether it’s a box or not. The article still assumes that the same rules apply outside the box as in. It’s sort of like Commander Shepard reasoning that we, his creators, have infinite lives because he always comes back from the dead inside his simulation, or that we must be using some mega-powerful biotic field to contain his universe because biotics exist and work inside his entirely fictional universe.
fall inside the Goldilocks range, capable of supporting complex life
Correction: capable of supporting complex life that, like most life on Earth, requires liquid water to survive. This does not account for the existence of complex alien life that survives entirely on, say, gasses that are lethal to most forms of Earth life.
Good point. From memory there’s been some suggestions that life within the simulation, cough, I mean, within our universe need not necessarily be carbon-based — that silicon based lifeforms are at least a theoretical possibility too.
Where did the toothbrush go? Short answer: Some crazy bitch you brought home stole it for fetish pleasures.
lol In all seriousness, this was a great article, it seems that no matter how much our knowledge increases, there will always be questions that science is unable to answer.
I once lost a teacup and couldn’t for the life of me figure out where it had gone. The only conclusion was that the landlord must have entered my apartment for some reason, accidentally broken the teacup and then swept it up to cover his tracks. Later in the week I found it in the microwave oven with the cold tea I had wanted to heat up.
Once you start questioning existence, you realize you really can’t prove anything except that you have consciousness. This is a classic problem going back to De Cartes and early Renaissance. He kind of jury rigged in God to confirm reality is real but other philosophiers like Locke and Hume argue you can’t confirm anything.
I asked a philosopher grad student about this and his reply was “it’s true you can’t confirm anything but in your day to day existence you should act like reality is real. If this universe is in fact reality and you did something assuming it wasn’t, you would be in deep shit. So even if reality could be fake, hedge your bets that it’s real.”
As for your toothbrush, Occam’s razor would argue you probably lost it somewhere or its in some place you didn’t check since you assumed it wouldn’t be there.
“If this universe is in fact reality and you did something assuming it wasn’t, you would be in deep shit”
Exactly. That’s what I say whenever people don’t like an argument where I can show the probability favors my theory. “But no one can ever be sure of anything!” they say so they won’t have to think of consequences. No, but every single decision you make, you assume what is most likely and act on it. Pressing the keys on your computer might not produce letters, but the probability is in favor of that phenomenon, so you press the keys when you want to type something. It’s all about dealing with what is the most probable. Goes all the way up to how you should view politics, psychology, the character of people you see in the street based on if they dress like dregs or not (an example of how these discussions usually get started).
Weeeeeeelll, not to be a smug snot about it, but if every single decision you make is based on what is most likely, logically every casino or Lottery organisation should have gone bankrupt in the first six months of their operation.
‘I asked a philosopher grad student about this and his reply was “it’s true you can’t confirm anything but in your day to day existence you should act like reality is real. If this universe is in fact reality and you did something assuming it wasn’t, you would be in deep shit. So even if reality could be fake, hedge your bets that it’s real.”‘
For some reason I’m reminded of Pascal’s Wager in this.
I don’t think the double split experiment is evidence of a simulation, and physicists would mostly agree. It’s an experiment about quantum mechanics that really doesn’t say much about whether or not the universe is a simulation. The best evidence that we have for the simulation hypothesis is Fermi’s Paradox, which poses the question why haven’t we come in contact with alien life if alien life is so probable to exist given the scale of the universe
However there are theories about the simulation hypothesis that are testable
There are is an ongoing experiment to test the simulation hypothesis called the Holometer
http://bgr.com/2014/08/27/is-the-universe-a-simulation/
Also, this recent paper proposes another method to test by looking at the cosmic ray spectrum
http://www.phys.washington.edu/users/savage/Simulation/Universe/
“The best evidence that we have for the simulation hypothesis is Fermi’s Paradox, which poses the question why haven’t we come in contact with alien life if alien life is so probable to exist given the scale of the universe”
Fermi’s Paradox is really interesting. If I was an alien, sent to Earth in human form to probe humanity, I can’t help but admit my report would be devastating.
Or maybe they are here already, sabotaging us from within
And plucking airliners out of the sky…
Regarding that experiment, I’m no expert but electrons seem easily affected, including by devices to watch them which are also made of electrons and would it not be possible that is the factor? I’d be curious to know how close the watching device was to the electrons moving through the slits.
Would the results be the same if they could place the watching device 1 mile away from the moving electrons, with device still be able to zoom in and monitor the activity from such a distance?
Earth is a concentration camp and Jews are gate keepers who torture and enslave humanity with their filthy existence
Flagged for blatant anti-Semitism … I would prefer that Roosh be a good goy and just focus on things like this silly computer simulation theory rather than trying to figure out the true nature of mankind’s enslavement …
Are you not canaanites though, who were supposed to serve japheth and shem? So therefore not semites? And whilst I give some respect to your being the Adversary, it is true that there is more to this reality than it seems, that the ‘false’ jews have their part to play, that some ‘jews’ are of God, and that the brain is a mere neuroelectrochemical interface that if fed false signals can be deceived. This last point, I fear, would not be understood by most of the human race, which is why we continue to be so deceived today and destroyed by the lies we are fed and by the works of our own hands, thereby condemning ourselves through our lack of belief and ignorance. I truly desire that all repent, including you and yours Shlomo, for that day comes upon us.
Most jews are the devil, whether or not they want to admit it is something else.
I know im a Khazar and i do everything I can to honor my forefathers 🙂
Roosh, check out Black Mirror White Christmas it’s a mindfuck of a show. Explores this topic of computer/simulation. After watching it, it left me a little disturbed.
My friend told a similar tale, where he got some popcorn, walked into bathroom and it was gone. He is in his 60’s and still to this day is perplexed. He is overweight and was probably high, since it happened in 60’s. I think he inhaled both the popcorn and the bag
We are not living in a computer program. There are million year old dinosaur bones and human histories to prove that we were indeed cavemen. Back then, we simply clubbed a bitch over the head and then dragged them home. That club has been replaced by witty banter and clown game. Keep SciFi were it belongs.
Not necessarily true. The simulation theory in my mind could have simply have been created by an advanced species and could have been modelled on their reality. THEY could most definitely have evolved from caveman.
With the ever increasing complexity of our ability to create figments of reality with art such as video games (particularly Assassins Creed which holds this exact topic as its premise) and the exponential rate of growth it is experiencing, such a theory is not far fetched.
Philip K. Dick, a prophet of science-fiction once proclaimed this before his death; an interesting and troubled man: Videos can be found on Youtube.
Apostle John lived in a cave, When did people stop living in caves?
Kant and Descartes talked a great deal about whether or not we are living in a simulation.
A ferret (they love shiny things) came in your window during the night and took it.
This might seem far fetched to someone who has never had a ferret as a pet and obvious for those that have
http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/11508156.jpg
Dude what you have described here is like those matrix movies
Did you ask the landlord if anyone else mentioned something similar? Perhaps a mischievous ghost?
Deep waters, and great article, Roosh.
I knew one man whose car keys just mysteriously disappeared. He had it on him the whole time before it just vanished, so it couldn’t have been that someone stole it or misplaced it. He searched for more than an hour and finally found it in the garbage can. It turned out that he accidentally threw it away along with his finished cup of coffee because he was holding them both in the same hand.
Roosh if you’re going to waste time questioning your existence, read about Godel’s theory of incompleteness. Basically it proves mathematically that no system of knowledge is capable of analyzing itself. Now if you consider the whole universe as a system, and us humans just a part of it, then we’re bound to run into questions for which we’ll have no answers and it’s impossible to ever find out the answers, because whatever answer we try to provide to these questions, the answer must be contradictory to something else we consider truth. So there you have one possible explanation for the double slit experiment, it’s possible that we’ll never have a non-contradictory explanation as to what is actually happening there.
As for your missing toothbrush, there’s a much simpler answer which has been almost always proven correct. It’s called ‘absent mindedness’.
No. Things disappear. I am still bothered by my favorite pair of shorts disappearing when I was 15. I’m 47 now.
About 15 years ago, I went home for a visit, let myself into my mothers house and that was it. Never saw my keys again. When she moved about 5 years ago I reminded her to look for the keys. Not found.
There have been other instances.
I never faced disappearing objects. However, and this may sound strange, from time to time, I seem to be aware of events *before* they happen. In such a case, I get a déjà vu-like feeling hours to minutes before the event actually occurs. The feeling is always vague and never clear-cut.
Now, it’s possible I somehow subconsciously detect specific patterns (since a lot -or perhaps *all*- phenomena and events are cyclic in nature) which my brain uses to calculate probabilities which it then uses to do a prediction. It’s like my brain is running some kind of Fourier analysis ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform ) on all incoming, but subconscious, sensory information.
I read that that has something to do with glitches in our short-term and long-term memory. The glitches cause distortions in your perception of time and being.
I prefer the term “artificial person”, if you don’t mind.
I consider the entire universe as a matrix simulation created for the education of us Souls. That is why so many people connected with the movie The Matrix, because they knew the creators were up to something.
As far as your toothbrush is concerned – possible explanations: the cleaning lady, a girl you had over, a girl you had over who got a creampie and saved the toothbrush to do a DNA test in 9 months to verify if you had indeed become daddy, landlord in your absence, you throwing it away while slightly drunk or deep in thought. I don’t think that our Matrix has glitches like in the movie.
When they use the word ‘matrix’ they mean the ‘mark of the beast in the head’ that feeds us false reality and leads us to err, hence why so much is going awry in the west and the world today. Of course, most people won’t believe this explanation…
Consider that an argument that omits ethics and morality as a core of existence is just a way we comfortably lie to ourselves to justify our errors and omissions. If sleeping with a bunch of beautiful women truly fulfilled you then you would not offer this existential exposition on your inner emptiness. The solution for all of us evil creatres is to turn away from sin and give your life to Gods son Jesus Christ. God bless you.
The animated explanation is voodoo. Programmers call bugs they can’t get rid of ‘features’. The particle-wave duality of matter does not require, as far as I can tell, that one behavior be more computationally cheap than the other. I just looked at the wiki entry, and if the observer takes a measure, then the observer interferes with the electron. Our stupid forebears saw gawd in the weather, in the trees, etc. Of course, we are much smarter than they ever were. Faith is a personal wishing well that reflects what you already see.
”Faith is a personal wishing well that reflects what you already see.”
Or it can be based on empirical evidence. Consider the chair you are sitting on. You have faith that the chair does not suddenly collapse otherwise you will not be sitting on it.
Our stupid forebears saw gawd in the weather, in the trees, etc. Of course, we are much smarter than they ever were.
I guarantee that our “stupid forebears” were much smarter than you are.
In fact, looking at humanity in general now, we seem to have gotten even stupider and less wiser than ever before. How else to explain the madness of Western Civilization?
The main problem with the simulation argument is basically the same as with all major religions. You explain the complexities of reality by pointing to something even more complex.(aliens)
I believe the “Holographic universe model” is more likely to be accurate, as it factors in the weird quantum observations, yet is true to the idea of an evolution from the very simple “towards” the more complex.
Cogito ergo sum.
Roosh, this possibility was considered and disproven long ago by Descartes in 1637: “Je pense, donc je suis.”
Tom Campbell – My big TOE (Theory Of Everything)
Yes, we are living in a computer simulation as far as I can tell, and he explains how and why, you can even read his book online for free.
http://www.my-big-toe.com/
His youtube site has dozens of lectures explaining the science of it, probably start at the Calgary lecture series.
http://www.youtube.com/user/twcjr44
https://youtube.com/watch?v=T1vYHOPFgcg
This guy should have written the sequel to The Matrix. Cornel West really didn’t do too well on that.
Poltergeist
Why anything?
Why not?
Read this: http://www.islamic-laws.com/pdf/Theological-Instructions-Yazdi.pdf
I myself have experienced some strange anomalies, that really make me wonder Roosh. One was a lot more serious than your toothbrush incident.
Edinburgh, 2009. I was staying at Argyle backpackers, in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Website: http://www.argyle-backpackers.com/
The hostel consists of two joined Victorian homes. So the building are fairly old. There were several floors reached by climbing stairs, and toilets close to these stairs on each floor.
One morning, I hurried up the stairs to one of the toilet doors…opening the door I was suddenly looking at a large futuristic-looking mens room (the sort of thing you might see in Japan), with rows of toilet cubicles, mirrors and modern amenities. I thought it odd at the time, but I had to use the toilet in a hurry, so I was quickly in and out.
Later that day thinking back, I realized the strangeness of it…the mens room had been far too large and modern to fit into the hostel! I decided to again return to that toilet to check it out…but I couldn’t find it… I searched the hostel and opened all toilet doors, but only ever found small cubicles. The big modern futuristic mens room I had seen had apparently vanished without a trace!
Now I must emphasize this is not a joke. This is an accurate memory. I was of fully sound mind and I was not on drugs or alcohol at the time of the incident. Further the memories are sharp and clear…I was definitely awake, sober and in no doubt about what I saw.
Maybe it was a dream?
I’m pretty darn certain I was wide awake. I mean, I have a crystal-clear memory, and I never ‘woke up’ afterwards – my memory of the day is a continuous memory of me encountering the futuristic mensroom in the hostel, then going about my day as normal – returning to the hostel in the evening, trying to locate the same room again and not finding it.
Certainly very very odd.
Out of body experience or Soul Travel if you have been fully awake. Many people have similar experiences – can be trained. Unless you speak BS – then it’s just BS.
Here’s another weird phenomenon in quantum mechanics: http://m.livescience.com/28550-how-quantum-entanglement-works-infographic.html
I like hot girls.
Strange how this topic seems to be in the air. I’ve just been watching a few YouTube videos from Bostrom and others on this topic, and was considering posting on the forum about it.
While few people will really take it seriously, Bostrum has convinced me that the idea that we are living in a simulation is a real possibility. His logic is sound. Note that he doesn’t claim to have proved it, and in fact emphasises that it is unprovable. But given the technology that mankind can already create and can imagine creating in the future, the idea of such a simulation can’t be dismissed.
I also wonder if this hypothesis explains Fermi’s Paradox, which is the fact that no extraterrestrial life has been found despite the staggering number of stars in the universe. This parameter simply hasn’t been built into our simulation. We are in the Dome.
Roosh ive found my hands many times in lucid dreams. Just sayin. Big fan of your work. Oil region pa
Apologies for the confusion. Allow me to explain.
The ‘universe’ you inhabit is indeed, a simulation. It was created by us, the Neon Toothbrushes. As an amusement, we attempted to create a world in which our physical manifestation would have some practical purpose to a conscious being, without them being aware of us. Thus, the universe you now enjoy, whose laws of of physics lead inevitably to intelligent primates that have dirty teeth.
I was quite proud of our somewhat undergraduate prank until the soap next to me in Roosh’s bathroom claimed that his kind had created the Neon Toothbrush universe! Shocked, I immediately returned home to inform my people.
Ockams razor anyone? I also notice these strange anomalies in life, for example in the past few months I’ve been seeing people who look like doubles, in close proximity, on trains, walking on streets and the hot girl thing you mentioned. When I was doing day game hardcore for 6 months, I felt I didn’t even see close to the amount of hot girls I see now on normal days. I guess its just bias, I did approach over 700 girls in the day time, clearly most of them were attractive enough.
Regarding the Dr. Quantum video you posted.
Your desires are your demands, which may be matched by others’ supplies. All people you see around are basically yourself. The good you do to others you are doing it to yourself. The bad things you do to others you are also doing them to yourself.
You create your own reality. Imagine a town square with 100 doves, all eating peacefully. Suddenly a few of them decide to act as hawks. In a few generations time, all of them will behave as hawks. The doves will disappear from that universe but will keep living and eating peacefully as doves in a parallel universe. That pretty much sums it all up.
Fascinating quandry Roosh
Oh sorry, I forgot to say I borrowed your toothbrush. My bad!
The cleaner stole it.
Roosh, you should go back to Anna. It’s Christmas time and this is a weird article
Quit sticking neon toothbrushes up your ass, Roosh 🙂
It gets even weirder… Error correction code found in string theory equations… Some disagree but it’s certainly intriguing..
http://www.onbeing.org/program/uncovering-codes-reality/feature/symbols-power-adinkras-and-nature-reality/1460
In that case Roosh…enlighten yourself then….www.laurency.com
Hey roosh i read in your book about you in Venezuela. I’m from Caracas and it would be cool if you write your opinion about the country. What you saw, how you moved and everything around there. Did you stayed in Caracas or another city?
Whichever way people look at this argument, the unsettling truth seems to be that the logical end point of any such simulation is when we develop advanced computers and simulations of our own – i.e. the singularity.
Considering that this now only appears to be a few decades away…its times like this I wonder if someone should go out and assassinate Bill Gates, or drop a nuke on Silicon Valley…just to be sure.
The theory certainly seems possible:
http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/scientists-play-god-with-man-made-cosmos/story-e6frfkui-1227171599345
Puritan theology dating back to Jonathan Edwards contains ideas similar to this (but based in a Biblical framework, of course). Essentially it posits that the universe exists in the matrix of God’s mind. Meshes surprisingly well with modern discoveries in quantum physics. Not suggesting anything, obviously, but it is an interesting theory, no matter what cultural lens you view it through. Computer simulation adds a nice digital touch, although I think the theory only exists because of our modern obsession with and reliance upon all things digital. 2000 years ago people believed similar things but shaped by their personal culture. Full circle, I guess.
This is some Donnie Darko level pondering.
Have you been banging too much? Or too little?
We’ve secretly replaced Roosh’s toothbrush with Wheeler’s delayed choice quantum eraser.
Let’s see if he doesn’t notice. 🙂
One time I was asleep in my upstairs bed then my father handed me the key to my car since he borrowed it. I wake up to being unable to find my key. I opened the front door that let the sun shine in and saw something sparkling beneath the downstairs sofa. It was my car key. I’ve yet to have been able to explain this one.
Install GPS on your toothbrush next time.
I’m reading “the fabric of the universe” by greene where he gets in depth about the double slit experiment and quantum mechanics. The way I understood the explanation about the slit experiment is that when the electrons or particles are viewed (which changes their behavior) it is because there is light focused on them in order to measure. The actual observation causes a difference in the light that is reflected off of the particles and because the particles are so incredibly small….the energy from this light beam which is used to observe is interfering with the natural behavior of the particle. So, the particle changes its motion/behavior because it is interfered with.
So many haters on this article. This is the shit… Men need to learn to awaken and ponder their existence.
A scenario: You were distracted one time in contemplation, and just as we have a blind spot in each eye that our brain completely removes from our awareness, a part of your consciousness was diverted. Maybe the brush was flushed away. Perhaps you dropped it behind a cupboard. Occam’s razor is by far and away your biggest sleuth assistant. Putting the missing brush down to a simulation glitch is the same as saying God did it to test you – exceedingly unlikely when so many other more plausible possibilities exist.
Most likely explanation for the toothbrush not being found? Our memory is not a perfect recorder of events. We do an enormous amount of things every day and many are not permanently recorded. You see this as significant for many reasons but that does not require invoking magical or special circumstances. Our imperfect memories are enough. This is less evidence for the simulation and more evidence of your ignorance of neurology.
Please shoot the programmer! This game sucks.
This is awesome, always love your writing, keeping us all thinking! Happy New Years
Brings to mind the Holy Trinity.
Roosh,
I’m not sure what happened to your toothbrush. If you find an item that you lost, is the universe doing you a favor?
If it’s possible, you should take LSD and see what ideas it reveals. I’ve determined that all human beings are gods, each with the capability of creating their own ideal reality. Anything you want is available to you, provided you take the right steps to get them. In the Matrix film, everything is instant. In our ‘normal’ world, thoughts and emotions eventually lead to ideas which leads to action and eventually actualization. A slow but true process for experiencing the ultimate ideal reality. Inside each human being is an entire universe that is waiting to be discovered. Infinity inside each, and each with the capability to shape their human experience to their own individual liking.
Most people will never ‘unplug’ to grasp this concept. Which is a shame because life on planet earth is an amazing gift and great experience. It’s easy to get consumed in the world and never realize your true nature which is that of a God. We are all gods, but most will never realize it.
There’s a reason that video games are so popular, especially Grant Theft Auto. Ideas that hint at us having full control of our reality are appealing to us.
Roosh, I recommend you take some LSD.
Roosh knows that he’s a God, don’t worry.
I’d like to offer my lowest common denominator take on your toothbrush…It has spent at least a little time up someone’s bum…Did you happen to leave a camera in your room the day it went missing?
😉
http://www.snopes.com/racial/crime/toothbrush.asp
It is not uncommon, in surveillance states, for rooms in which visitors are staying to be disturbed in some way that makes it clear to the occupant that he is being watched. Removing your conspicuous, “neon” toothbrush would be a typical example of this.
The cardinal weakness of the simulation argument is the assumption that consciousness can be brought into existence by a computer simulation. There is no reason to be confident that this is in fact the case.
observation: missing toothbrush…
explanation: the world is a lie
seems legit
A giant pack rat carried your toothbrush off. Let’s just hope it wasn’t licking on it the other nights!
Nice article. The mere observation of an experiment might interfere with the experiment itself. Quantum physics is a World by itself, I wish I could have a book which could explain certain phenomena in an easy and less scientific way.
Very nice video as well of Dr. Quantum. Explains the light Particle-Wave duality in a super simply.
Yes we live in a simulation or rather we experience life through a host body. We are but a soul and mind that lives inside that body. As the body grows so does the experience of living inside the simulation. Pretty much all we live could be perceived a big computer game. The game of life. In this game there are no rules but at the same time there are so many…. The game may end sooner or later…but tell me… have you ever played a game only once?
You may be interested in the article Spirituality and Science: The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot.
Some thoughts: A holographic universe is brought into being by God for His purposes, and exists as long as He wills. Time is a function of this creation, and God is outside time as its Creator, but can interact within creation as He chooses.
Man is created in the image and likeness of God, having some of the divine “spark”, yet is less than his creator. Woman is created from man and in his likeness. Therefore man has purpose, and direction, as well as worth. He is not “nothing” in any sense of the word.
lol, your reticular activating system is trolling you.
hehe… you once mentioned that one of the signs American girls are dumb is that they like “The Secret”. now you subscribe to those same ideas.
Something occultists have known for centuries. If you want to ‘glitch the matrix’ on purpose & in your favor, look up how to perform ‘sigil magick’. The logic is sound; the subconscious creates & dictates your reality and sigil magick is purposefully placing instructions/programs into the subconscious. I advise trying it with insane crazy things that you don’t care about so that there’s no doubt when they come to pass.
The double slit experiment proves only one thing, that our reality is created by our own minds. It is subject to laws that govern other workings of the universe, but our reality is ours. Yes, we all live in the “matrix”, but it can be changed, altered by new information if we are willing to accept it. I.e. The red pill. This is why eyewitness testimony and recovered memory is both compelling and unreliable. You can’t experience “reality” without being a part of it. Being a part if it changes the reality. Plato’s allegory of the cave.
There are many posts on many threads at abovetopsecret.com, a site for alternative topics, that discuss inexplicably lost objects. Sometimes things disappear practically in front of people’s eyes.
Often, they reappear in the most unusual ways. For example, something missing for weeks suddenly shows up in the middle of the kitchen floor, or on top of a pile of folded laundry — somewhere it couldn’t have been all that time. And usually there’s a loud thud before it appears. Some people are so prone to it that they learn to just ask for the item back and it will come back with a thud.
There are many strange cases of apportation, where objects appear out of nowhere or after meditations. Check out the Scole Experiment. Flowers and jewelry would materialise during their experiments trying to contact the deceased.
The most compelling case is when they were contacting a woman who had been in the news when she was alive. A newspaper with an article about her materialised. Skeptics tried to claim some sort of sleight of hand. But they had the paper analysed and it was printing with old-time lithography on a type of paper no longer used. It simply could not be a facsimile. And it was in perfect condition despite being decades old, perhaps 100 years, I forget exactly. There is simply no way that a paper could be preserved that long without aging, and then the enormity of the hoax would be incalculable.
And before you wonder why they don’t claim Randi’s million dollars, they looked into it and determined the deck was stacked against it ever being claimed.
This post made me think about fractals: self repeating patterns on infinite levels, whether you zoom in or zoom out.
http://www.metabit.org/~rfigura/figura-fractal/inverse-spiral.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
Now assuming 1. That fractals exist en 2. That they may be found in our universe and as a stretch 3. Our universe is fractal, this would fit nicely into the simulation/dream theory.
Imagine this: if we are able to simulate life in the form of computer games, like Grand Theft Auto or Skyrim or The Sims, and occasionally we can simulate games within games, like Game Design Manager, or even deeper, Game Design Manager Manager, you could interpret this as zooming into the fractal to discover a new “lower” level of simulation. But what if this works upwards as well? What if what we currently call reality is not the highest fractal plane, but somewhere in the middle? What if we are a simulation within a simulation within a simulation to the n-th degree? If fractal levels are possible while zooming in, why shouldn’t we be able to extrapolate that they are there while zooming out. This conception of “lower” levels of a higher reality also fits nicely into Plato’s “idea world” or Gnostic conceptions of reality.
Whatever the truth, this kind of shit makes me feel icky. Sadly my brain seems inclined to this type of thinking, but I’d much, much, much rather be oblivious and ignorant.
I am the only one in this simulation and everything and everyone else is part of it.
Someone could simulate me a few millions…
All of you are morons and retards this isn’t a simulation We are real!! Can a simulation think? no! can it smell? NO! THERE IS NO SUCH THING as an advanced computer simulation
nothing mankind makes is perfect If this is a simulation why do we have emotions?
why do we breath? if we are nothing but computer programs we would be nothing but Robots
in the bible it said God didn’t want us to be the same he made us different from one Another hence the different skin tones the different facial features if we are nothing but programs we would be robots materialized beings with no emotion,no love no compassion,no Nothing!,in the bible it’s states man has put material things like false Idols and False Gods before God and will be condemned for it and Another thing if this is a simulation how come our bodies don’t lag or freeze how come our Universe doesn’t Glitch out
You people are taking this theory too far and using a fictional movie(The matrix) to back up your lame theory It would be nice to show humanity some proof of this So called simulation….. like show us some Glitches or Bugs,show me a picture of our world having a Glitch. Just like the big shit bang theory show me proof that a random explosion hypothetically created the Universe out of nothing and Don’t show a me a stupid philosophy Book about bullshit potheads scientists like Philip K Dickhead or Stephen Hawkins the Mentally Autistic Crippled Inbred Mute asshole.
There seems to me to be one more option to the three possibilities that isn’t covered: “4) It isn’t possible to create simulations with conscious subjects.” To assume that this is possible doesn’t seem reasonable since we can’t prove that it is possible. I suppose you could argue that this option is implied by the first if you also assume that we will one day become extinct since, in that case, we would become extinct before creating a simulation containing conscious subjects. But why would you have an implied and unstated assumption when stating it separately makes things more clear.
“…A creator, not of one God but a species” Spot on, imo. What Roosh is describing here is known as Raelism
http://www.spaceagogo.com
Your toothbrush example reminded me of something I have been noticing since I was a child. I see something on a shelf at home (let’s say a bottle). Then minutes later look again and cannot find it. Eventually I do find it but it always seemed strange to me that even in a very small place objects seemed to disappear and reappear. However I have always put it down to some glitch in the way we see things.
Classic poltergeist activity involves things such as toothbrushes disappearing and then reappearing days or even years later. It’s often accompanied by the presence of a woman undergoing puberty or menapause, and a world-wide phenomenon of bite marks on the neck has been reported since at least the Middle Ages nearly world-wide. Stan Gooch, the man who insisted on neanderthal introgression when neanderthal wasn’t cool, equated it to the para-psychic phenomenon of stigmata. On the other hand, doctors have recently proven that consciousness goes on after death, for at least 15 minutes and probably more. It’s interesting the modern mind thinks “virtual reality” before “ghosts” or “psychic phenomena,” but all are equally probable.