[applfanboysbgon]

I've thought about this a lot in the past, and it seems like the strongest argument for our existence being a simulation. What are the odds of being born a human and not a bacteria, a fly, or, apparently, a nematode? What are the odds that I would be born into a wealthy country? What are the odds that I would be born into what appears to be the end of history -- the most prosperous species in the most prosperous time of Earth's 4 billion year history of life, where I can live comfortably, but technology has created multiple civilization-ending threats that will probably come into fruition shortly after I am gone (should I be so lucky)?

The only thing that gives me pause is that if this is a simulation, the beings that created it are evil for creating both a world so full of suffering and a simulation so detailed (from my own perspective) that we fully experience such suffering. For what purpose could simulations like this possibly serve, I wonder. Does it entertain such hypothetical higher beings, in the way that we create murder simulations to entertain ourselves? Or is it somehow informative, although we'd expect the simulation to be much lower resolution than the universe it's being run in? Maybe we're just in some random gambler or forecaster's model, which is not wholly accurate but with sufficient fidelity may gain a couple of percentage points in predictive power.

[rollulus]

Your thinking is flawed. It seems to assume that you were pulled from a pool of souls and got assigned to an organism somewhere in time. That’s not the case. What makes you “you” is nothing but your brain cells.

[applfanboysbgon]

I'm not talking about souls or anything like that. I'm simply talking about the simple improbability of, out of all possible lives I could have had, mine being one this relatively comfortable and novel. How many organisms lived on Earth in the last 4 billion years? Some foo-illion, where foo is some prefix that I cannot even conceptualise, some number so large that it is far beyond my brain's ability to comprehend. It's difficult to accept that I, or any human, won such an incomprehensible lottery.

Particularly combined with our setting. We've just developed world-destroying weapons, and resources are running out - the environment is being destroyed, water reserves are being depleted, our society is built on non-renewable resources that will run out in the next couple of hundred years at the latest, all things which could lead to the use of such weapons. Plus we live in a novel time, with unbelievable speed of new discoveries and interesting things happening, in contrast to the billions of years of nothing much interesting happening. If you were going to create a simulation, isn't an interesting simulation like this exactly what you'd create, whether for entertainment or research?

And if it is a simulation, the odds of living such an interesting existence go up. Potentially by a Fooillion-fold multiplier. How many simulations have we run here in our short time having computing technology? Now imagine how many simulations higher beings could run, over a longer timescale. Our odds of existing in one of those interesting simulations is so much higher than this being an un-simulated universe where we just happened to be born in an immensely interesting time where the fate of civilization itself is at stake and could foreseeably end in 50 or 500 years.

[rollulus]

You repeat the same mistake here:

> I'm simply talking about the simple improbability of, out of all possible lives I could have had, mine being one this relatively comfortable and novel.

That implies that there is a separate organism and an “I” (I used the word soul for that) and that the two were assigned to each other. No, the two are the same. And the probability of you being you is 100%.

[iceflinger]

The only reason you can even introspect or ponder this stuff at all is on the substrate of your human language. It's no sense to make this analogy with other forms on life on earth when there are plenty of your fellow humans who rolled much worse odds than you. The more disappointing part is how the humans who rolled good odds don't seem to want to do much about this.

[defrost]

> What are the odds of being born a human and not a bacteria, a fly, or, apparently, a nematode?

If you're having that thought and expressing it on the internet ... 100% certainty.

In a similar many worlds conjecture, with an infinite number of potential universes with an infinite combination of fundemental physical constants, what are the odds that I'm here in this, one of the only possible universes with a sweet spot of values that allow life?

Observer bias is a thing.

[aagha]

People will come up with any and all reasons to keep from believing in God.

> As for those who dis-believe, it makes no difference whether you warn them or not: theywill not believe. God has sealed their hearts and their ears, and theireyes are covered. They will have great torment.

[satisfice]

I don’t need a reason not to believe in God. It’s an incoherent idea. Even you don’t know what it means.

You probably imagine some Santa Claus character on a throne. But I don’t know which God I should be imagining? Athena? Indra? The All Spirit? Spaghetti Monster?

State the thesis clearly, then present your evidence.

[aagha]

You don't need to imagine something for it to exist.

You've never seen a black hole, nor--even with visualizations we have today--could you likely comprehend one if you saw it.

[satisfice]

"Black hole" is a coherent, testable idea. It has real world physical implications, and is the simplest explanation for what we do see. There isn't a Korean version of a black hole vs. a version accepted by the Kurds. There are no stories of black holes befriending humans. In fact, there is nothing about a black hole that seems to care about humanity.

"God" is a vague fantasy, invented by the first people and slightly updated as technology changed. It has been made concrete, yes, but in many different and irreconcilable ways since the dawn of human imagination. So you can't just "believe in God." You believe in some particular version of "God." And that version is probably dictated by whatever your parents believed, rather than by the actual state of reality.

[applfanboysbgon]

Whether God exists is of no concern to me. I feel the same way about a hypothetical God as I do about our hypothetical simulation overlords. If God exists, he is an evil, arrogant being. "It's God's plan" for somebody's child to be assaulted, "God's plan" for somebody else's child to get terminal cancer, and "God's plan" for millions of Jews to be gassed. Yet he is not above intervening on Earth, because he allegedly flooded it and killed almost every living thing on the planet[1]. I would never worship such a sick, twisted fuck even if it were proven that he exists. According to Catholic doctrine, 'hell' is merely eternal separation from God and his believers. I couldn't ask for a better reward in the afterlife.

[1] Today this is described as a metaphor by Christians, but that's obvious cope. Before we scientifically disproved the possibility of anything like this happening, this was historically regarded as something that literally happened by the Church. It would be a fucking stupid metaphor, anyways. If you interact with humans to impart your teachings only twice, which mankind is expected to uphold for thousands of years and use as the source of their morality, maybe do a better job of being a role model than all the "metaphorically" evil shit you did in Genesis.

[echoangle]

> What are the odds of being born a human and not a bacteria, a fly, or, apparently, a nematode?

Well you probably have to be a human to ask yourself that so it seems fallacious to argue like that.

> What are the odds that I would be born into a wealthy country?

10% maybe?

> What are the odds that I would be born into what appears to be the end of history -- the most prosperous species in the most prosperous time of Earth's 4 billion year history of life, where I can live comfortably, but technology has created multiple civilization-ending threats that will probably come into fruition shortly after I am gone (should I be so lucky)?

Since the human population is at a peak currently, probably not that bad. From a quick google search it looks like only about 110 billion people ever existed and there are currently 8 billion people alive so the chance of being alive currently given you’re a random human is about 7%.

And also I don’t think human civilization will end in the foreseeable future. Climate change is going to lead to some changes but overall humans aren’t even close to going extinct.