If there are simulated worlds, does there have to be a first non-simulated one?

Prishon

There are people who believe we live in a world, simulated on a computer. That computer must have been built in either another computer-generated world or a real world (by which I mean a non-simulated world). If it has been made in another computer-simulated world then the (simulated) computer on which the simulation (program) for "the next" simulated world is run must be a subset (by which I circumvent the notion of size) of the "previous" computer, which means that the computers on which the next-world simulations are run will be ever-decreasing subsets of the previous computer.

Doesn't this mean that there has to be a first real world because if the "stack of turtles" would be infinite there would be no limit to the increasing subset connected to a computer in a previous simulated Universe, sending the subset to infinity, when the simulated Universe gets more and more down the stack of turtles?

If the simulated Universe grows to an infinite subset (when tracing back the track of subsequent simulations or going down the stack of turtles) of the previous computer, whatever the programmers program into it, wouldn't it take an infinite time to program this infinite set, so the next simulated Universe never gets finished (and neither the preceding simulation) and the process stops. In this case, there has to be a first, infinite real-world (because such a world can't be programmed in an infinite computer). Programmers in this real infinite world can make a finite-world simulation.

This is a crude (but essential) outline of my thoughts on this subject, of which I clearly think that a real world has to be there.

By the way, I think it's a waste of time to elaborate on the idea that we live in a simulated world (which indeed, as written below only shifts the problem of explaining Nature to an alleged previous simulated world, etc.). I'm satisfied with the world I live in and it's my gut feeling that the world I live in is real. So in my eyes, there isn't a first world that's real but it's the world we live in that's real (I think it's a creepy thought that we live in a simulated world, just I think it's a creepy thought that we're made by (a) god(s) or by evolution for that matter). But despite all that, I'm still curious how others on this site think about this subject.

Could we live in a simulated world made by gods?

javi2541997

↪Prishon

It could be but I think is not related to computers but minds. Our world and reality is built by us. The development of awareness give the patrons of the world or country we lice in. Keep in mind that we the humans are the only species which can think or make abstract situations that do not even exist at all.
So, all of these aspects about simulation depends a lot on our imagination. I think the question is not about it this world is simulated but how further our mind can go in the "real" and "imagined" one.

Prishon

↪javi2541997

Thats an interesting approach! Let me contemplate on it. ☺

javi2541997

↪Prishon

Sure friend! :up: :100:

TheMadFool

A = {B}, B = {C}, and this is where it gets interesting, C = {A}

World A simulates world B, world B simulates world C, and world C simulates world A. All worlds are simulations.

Prishon

A = {B}, B = {C}, and this is where it gets interesting, C = {A} — TheMadFool

The snake biting its tail. It would be a vacuous snake though.

TheMadFool

The snake biting its tail. — Prishon

Ouroboros

The ouroboros is destructive - the snake consumes itself. I couldn't find a constructive analog. Do you know of one?

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪javi2541997

That's how I think of the simulation problem too. I think people are getting ahead of themselves when they start worrying about stuff like the speed of light being potential evidence for the universe being simulated. We already are in a simulation. We don't interact with the real, the noumenal. We interact with internal simulations of them. When I see a car roll up to a stop sign I only understand it in relations to the symbols superimposed on the purr sense immediacy. The sight alone is just a riot of colors and shapes, it's the simulation I understand (and of course, even sense immediacy is a simulation of what is going on outside).

So we're in a simulation. I suppose we could also be a simulation in a simulation, but rather than a universe running on a PC, we could be the thoughts of another being thinking of what it is like to be an "other.' This is the interpretation of God of the mystic Jacob Boehme.

God is everything. God wants to know Itself, and must do so through Its self. Thus it posits that which it is not, other minds, through which to know Itself. We know there is something not nothing, because we're here. A thing is defined by what it is not, the negative, and so it makes sense that God must create the other to be as something can not be without a definition.

If there are simulated worlds, does there have to be a first non-simulated one?

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