• antrosapien@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Check out Ancestral simulation In a nutshell, it says that humans are living in far future and we are just a simulation from scratch so that they can study their origin, how they come to be etc

    • Zoolander@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The purpose is to observe our behavior and how we react to stimuli. And it’s not that it’s “correct”, it’s just that it requires no intervention. If it’s “real”, then it was started by an outside force and is being observed like a Petri dish amongst other simulations.

      • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Do “they” ever intervene or do you think its strictly regulated, like double-blind or whatever?

        Like do you think they actually do or can pick favorites (protagonists/main characters) or is it way more sterile?

        • Zoolander@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          If it’s truly meant as a simulation, then intervening in any way would go against the purpose of the simulation.

          Just think about how we run our simulations. We give the computer parameters about the “real” world because we’re interested in the results. If our entire world is a simulation, amongst other simulations, then intervening would ruin the simulation.

          • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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            11 months ago

            Checkpointing interesting points in simulations and rerunning with modified parameters happens literally all the time

            Especially weather / climate / geology and medicine

            • Zoolander@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              They’re re-run, though. You don’t change the parameters in the middle of the simulation. That goes against the point of simulating something.

              • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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                10 months ago

                You don’t rerun everything from scratch. Especially weather simulations can be checkpointed at places you have high certainty, and keep running forks after that point with different parameters. This is extremely common with for example trying to predict wind patterns during forest fires, you simulate multiple branches of possible developments in wind direction, humidity, temperature, etc. If the parameters you test don’t cover every scenario that is plausible you might sometimes engineer it into the simulation just to see the worst case scenario, for example.

                And in medicine, especially computational biochemistry you modify damn near everything

                • Zoolander@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  You’re confusing simulations of specific events with a simulation environment. If our universe is simulated, then it’s unlikely that the creators of the simulation would be interested in the individual occurrences you’re describing. The universe is what’s being studied, not the happenings inside of it.

                  • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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                    10 months ago

                    Simulations of boats in water don’t care about what’s happening to the water much of the time yet it needs to be there, you seem to be way too confident in your conclusions