Re: The Simulation Argument again

From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 01:32:33 MDT

  • Next message: Alfio Puglisi: "Re: Political labels (was: neocons (WAS IRAQ: Weapons of Mass Delusion))"

    At 08:34 PM 6/4/03 -0700, Mike Lorrey wrote:

    >The presence of paranormal phenomena could, in fact, be considered
    >evidence that one is in a simulation, if such phenomena are observable
    >and outside the bounds of the laws of physics. ...

    >For example, if ever psi phenomena can be demonstrated, then this might
    >be evidence of 'hacking the sim'.

    Exactly, and I would say that they *are* demonstrable. On just this basis,
    I wrote in a book on psi phenomena published in 1992:

    < If life is in some authentic sense a kind of semi-autonomous program
    running within a cosmic simulation (a rather Platonic conceit), might it
    not learn to interfere with the programming that constitutes that universe?
            Such self-programmed loops could produce astonishing discontinuities in
    the world that we (the subroutines) experience: one subroutine (or
    consciousness) might contrive to subvert the usual rules and directly
    access the knowledge normally available only to another data register (that
    is, a different person). It might even prove feasible to `re-program' the
    physical conditions in one's `simulated' surroundings.
                                    THE LOTTO EFFECT >

    Damien Broderick



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jun 05 2003 - 01:42:09 MDT