Can it be that in 10 years, everybody will believe that we live in simulated reality, and these galaxies are created on demand when we stare into particular region of space?
Elon Musk says he thinks so: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-simulated-univers...
Because they are interesting and fun to think about?
Because they may create new ideas which impact models, frameworks, directions, and analogies of thought in experimental and theoretical disciplines of the same or differing subjects?
Because not everything is testable, or even when it is the number of variables simply makes controlling the experiment for accurate causal derivations difficult to impossible? (increasingly true as science progresses, often leading to false levels of confidence).
> Because they may create new ideas which impact models, frameworks, directions, and analogies of thought in experimental and theoretical disciplines of the same or differing subjects?
How do you figure? Whether we are in a simulation is a) unknowable by definition, or it's not a very good simulation, and b) doesn't change anything about how our universe works from our perspective. Why would speculation about "why" impact anything about the decisions we make?
If someone thought they were in a simulation, they might try to find a way out of it, or might start not taking life seriously.
If, as most people, you think that one's beliefs shape one's actions, then it should be pretty clear that a belief that we live in a simulation could lead to some people acting differently based on that belief.
Only if one did not have free will or if one's beliefs did not shape one's actions would such a belief have no potential impact.
> If someone thought they were in a simulation, they might try to find a way out of it
This is completely nonsensical.
> or might start not taking life seriously.
People already do this just fine.
> Only if one did not have free will or if one's beliefs did not shape one's actions would such a belief have no potential impact.
Free will is a pretty thought, not anything to do with a simulation theory. Why does it matter whether you are forced to bow down to physical laws vs simulated physical laws? You can tell yourself whatever you want, but you gotta bow.
> > If someone thought they were in a simulation, they might try to find a way out of it
> This is completely nonsensical.
It really depends on the nature of the simulation. For example, if the simulation was something like what was depicted in The Matrix, where one's experience or senses were being simulated while one's real body was outside the simulation, then it could be possible to find a way out.
Of course, if your entire existence was simulated and you had no existence outside the simulation, then it would be more difficult, but perhaps even then not impossible, depending on whether you believed that a copy of yourself was still you. For instance, one could conceivably "upload" a copy of one's mind/brain in to a robot that was external to the simulation and that robot could then potentially have access to sensations/experience outside the simulation. Of course, then it could be argued whether that's another simulation.
But the potential for whatever is "outside" the simulation being just another simulation (ala Inception) is always there. And I'm not sure how one could ever be certain one was ever really "outside" and not just in another simulation -- though it might be possible that one really is "outside" without being certain of it. Or one could be certain and mistaken, or certain and correct. But then one could always be mistaken.
> > or might start not taking life seriously.
> People already do this just fine.
I meant people who took their life seriously because they thought it was "real" and then finding out that they and everyone/everything around them was simulated might decide, as a result of this realization, to no longer take life seriously. For example, they could have valued human life before, but when realizing that the beings they thought were alive before actually weren't, then they could start not valuing them anymore.
Of course, some people don't value their own lives or those of others regardless, and don't take their life seriously anyway.. but I'm not talking about them.
> Free will is a pretty thought, not anything to do with a simulation theory.
The point of bringing up free will was to show under what circumstances one's beliefs would not have any impact on one's actions. Those circumstances are ones in which one does not have free will.
If one does have free will, and one's actions really are shaped by one's beliefs, then the belief that one is in a simulation could have an effect on what one does.
If one does not have free will, or one's actions are not shaped by one's beliefs, then the same belief would not have any effect one what one does. One would do what one was determined to do regardless.
My bet they will. As soon as VR gadgets become more realistic, people will start asking more philosophical questions. Let's talk about it in 10 years :)
People have been asking these questions for thousands of years.
Take a look at Hindu mythology. The idea that the world is an illusion or a dream was quite common as far back as 3 or 4 thousand years ago, and has lasted on through the present.
Another version of that belief was made famous by Plato 2500 years ago. Then Zhuangzi's famous "Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man." came about 2300 years ago. Then yet another version by Berkeley about 250 years ago.
The whole "the universe is a simulation" is just the most recent variation, that came about with the advent of computers.
The Upanishads posit a reality of consciousness that upends the common ("worldly") conceptualization: dream state was held to be a higher and more fundamental experience of reality. In this sense, the "worldy" experience was actually "slumber" and the dream world more "real". In the Gita, Krishna declares that what common people experience as "day" and "awakened" is "night" and "sleep" for the yogin.
The Sufis symbolized the worldly existence and our apparent multiplicity as 'foam on the surface of an ocean' (c.f. Quantum cosmology and quantum foam), with the true reality being the eternal sea.
In both, "the Real" is the true Self, the "infinitesimal" that is "the Most High"; and the "outward world" the microcosom and the true macrocosom the inner reality of Man.
There are Hindu myths that speak of the world being a dream of Brahma (or of Vishnu, depending on the myth), and of the world ending when the dreamer awakes.
Buddhism (how could I have neglected to mention it?) also has the illusory nature of the world (and of the self) as a central tenet -- though what that actually means varies with the strand of Buddhism you're talking about.
The world as illusion was even a belief of some Gnostics, who lived a couple of thousand years ago.
To complete this list (and also follow up to your hoped-for "escape from the simulation" /g) the Qur'an explicitly says that "this life is an illusion and a pastime" and in the Sura of the Jinn, we are informed by these non-Human sentient beings that they have been trying for a very long time to escape but have always been frustrated in their attempts.
Regarding Buddhism, in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha, to the apparent dismay of a few thousand attendees -- they get up and leave! -- informs that the Three Vehicles are merely devices to reach various levels of understanding, and that this world ("a burning old house") was an attraction that attracted his children but unfortunately they got caught up in the illusion and now need enticements (the Three Vehicles) to rescue them from the burning old house.
People in this thread are being way too dismissive of an idea that couldn't possibly have been expressed or understood without modern computational science, specifically the notion of Turing equivalence.
True, but this new variation is fundamentally different exactly because now it's not just an abstract process of unknown nature, but a "computation". It will be interesting to see how the idea will be reconciled with "science". E.g. with "random mutations" allegedly driving evolution, to name just a single aspect.