This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Yeah, but if the Fermi Paradox isn't meaningful on that base layer, it could still be meaningful on this current layer, which is the layer I was talking about.
If our current layer is a simulation -- and the simulation hypothesis says that we are -- then the Fermi Paradox isn't meaningful.
I don't think we can draw any meaningful conclusions based on the hypothesis that our current layer is a simulation, including conclusions about what ideas are meaningful vs. not meaningful. If our reality is a simulation, we simply have no idea what the rules are of the layer above ours. Either way the only way to figure out the rules of our reality is by observing it, in which case it's useless to talk about whether we're being simulated.
The argument that "our simulators must be simulating something similar to their reality" is I think pretty weak since the only argument in favor of it is that it makes sense to us, based on our logic in this reality. It could be that they're just a bunch of amorphous 10^8^203810681.1-dimensional blobs, one of which happens to simulate realities with our universe's rules. We don't really have any way at all to determine the truth one way or the other besides using our own logic, which again, is equally as simulated as the rest of reality.
Even if it turns out that we, in this layer of reality, can accurately and completely simulate another layer of reality, that still says nothing about the layer above us because the "base layer" could be so much weirder than we can possibly imagine.
You're the one claiming the Fermi Paradox has merit even in a simulation.
Yes, I know. Are we even having the same conversation? Two posts up I said "This does not tell us much about what the simulators' universe actually looks like, or what resemblance it bears to ours, if any."
I didn't say "we can't draw any conclusions if we're in a simulation." What I said was "We can't draw any conclusions based on the hypothesis that we're in a simulation." Essentially what I'm saying is that that hypothesis gives us very, very little evidence towards anything and so even if we are in a simulation we can reason as if we are not.
You're the one drawing conclusions based on hypotheses about what our simulators' universe actually looks like. Namely, your conclusions rely on an assumption that other universes similar to ours are also being simulated, and I don't think that there's any good evidence for that.
Obviously not, since your posture leaves you confused why we aren't apparently in a grabby civilization, and mine solves that. The simulation hypothesis doesn't provide a lot of concrete advice, but it does solves some anthropic dilemmas such as the Fermi Paradox.
It does not, in any respect. Already said this several posts up: "This does not tell us much about what the simulators' universe actually looks like, or what resemblance it bears to ours, if any, but it does tell us that we probably aren't in the bottom layer."
OK, tell me, how does this solve the Fermi Paradox? Please do so without relying on any information about what the simulators' universe is like, including information on what they're simulating.
The Fermi Paradox basically says, isn't it weird that the universe seems so easily colonizable, yet hasn't been colonized? The Simulation Hypothesis says, no, that isn't weird, because once you agree that we're in a simulation, the best that the Fermi Paradox brand of anthropic reasoning can demonstrate is that the set of simulations that our simulators are running does not make it overwhelmingly likely that we'd find ourselves in a simulation where the skies are filled with grabby aliens. No paradox left!
Sure, and there are all sorts of other possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox too. Could be that God simply banned aliens, they're hiding from us, we're wrong about how physics works in some drastic way, there's a snail in the Andes which excretes a gas which renders us incapable of perceiving aliens and their effects, etc. When I hear "paradox" I don't think "there is no possible explanation for this," what I think is "this seems to indicate that we're wrong about the universe in some fundamental way."
The simulation hypothesis can definitely explain the Fermi Paradox, but I think reasoning in that way is very unproductive. The simulation hypothesis can also explain literally anything else--we just surmise that things are the way they are because that's how they were simulated to be. Because of this, I don't think it makes sense to use the simulation hypothesis to explain anything at all.
For example, let's say we're contemporaries of Einstein when he's coming up with relativity. There were issues with the Newtonian model, and it would absolutely be valid to say something like "all this shows is that our simulators are adjusting the numbers behind the scenes." It would also be valid to come up with a million other possible explanations, but each of those explanations has no actual explanatory value, it's just post-hoc reasoning. You can't use your hypothesis that "aliens adjust the numbers behind the scenes" to predict how the numbers will be adjusted, even though it absolutely does address and nullify the "paradox" that the numbers aren't adding up the way we'd expect them to.
So building off of that, EVEN IF WE ARE BEING SIMULATED, I don't think that we can use that hypothesis for anything at all, since it will equally explain literally anything. Maybe on their layer of reality, the opposite of anthropic reasoning is true, so we just find ourselves alone due to how logic actually works. Maybe cause and effect don't actually exist, nor does logic, and the Fermi Paradox is nothing but an illusion created by our feverish minds trying to force patterns onto a naturally chaotic reality.
There are plenty of non-simulation ways to resolve the Fermi paradox too, but they rely on fairly unsupported claims (such as that life is vanishingly unlikely to arise even on optimal planets) and I think that's what you're doing here too.
I don't think that even granted we're in a simulation, we can make any conclusions at all based on that knowledge.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link