Paranormal: Yes or No?

[Root 66 Woodshop]

I received a call yesterday... and Passed it onto a colleague of mine who lives closer than I do.

A 68 year old Catholic woman for the past 6 months has had issues where she can hear singing and prayers being read to her at night - she's seen what she can only describe as two "orbs" floating about her bedroom... and on the odd occasion has woken during the night to a bright yellow light.... and a Catholic priest had called around to "bless the house"... as she was scared to go into her own bedroom at night.

My colleague contacted her last night, and she was in a panic... very stressed, very tired and repetitive to the point of amusing... While trying to reassure her that she wasn't going bats**t crazy and that we could help.

Majority of what we do is "piece of mind" work... we attend the homes of those that think that they're being haunted and provide evidence to the contrary.

I.E. We are not charlatans, we do not profit from the weak, abused, mentally unstable, we make no money from what we do... i.e. My team...

Yes, on weekends we run Paranormal Investigations (otherwise known as Ghost Hunts) were members of the public pay us [X] to observe what we do - however the [X] amount isn't for our gain other than to allow us access to the properties that we visit... i.e. Due to much larger profiteering groups that are out there (no names mentioned) locations have hiked up the prices of over-night investigations between £400 - £1250 per night... We personally don't have that kind of money so we split the amount that the location wants between the maximum of people we want to take with us... IF we don't get the full amount we ourselves fork out for the balance... in some instances we've just forked it out ourselves... no issue to us on some occasions... for instance we recently visited 30 East Drive - a well known haunted location... we found zip.

It cost us £400 but as Investigators of the Paranormal we wanted to know what the hype was... we found nothing personally...

 

[STDFR33]

@Haunted Worlds East Drive is only 10 minutes from us. We were going to do one of the tours with it being local, but we thought it was very expensive for what it was.

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

it is to be honest.

But that it my personal opinon... Personally, IMPO if groups stopped over-charging then location prices would drop and be more affordable.

About 14 years ago we went to Newcastle Keep... splendid place, couldn't fault it... it's ambient and look and feel was amazing, had a good few nights in there at £100 per night... now I believe it's about £450 ... you don't get anything extra... the people who run the place and fair play to them saw how silly prices were from other groups that were advertising it... so decided sod it, we'll have some of that... as a group when we went, we said it was £10 per person and split it between the team... when we took the public with us, it was the same price... Yes we made a bit of money but it covered our insurance at the time and petrol... it wasn't as if we made a wage on it.... never have and never will.

 

[cjd]

If this is the case, and billions of indistinguishable simulations exist in the universe, the odds of us not being in one of these simulations (i.e. base reality) is indeed one in billions.

Moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the museum’s Hayden Planetarium, put the odds at 50-50 that our entire existence is a program on someone else’s hard drive.

So we've gone from a chance in one in billions to a near certainty passing through 50:50 on the way..

You remember I said that the probality can't be known and is somewhere between 1 and infinity?

It's basic maths.

Ha!

One thing Musk said is spot on though. The human race itself will either eventually create a simulation that we can't tell apart from the real world (and soon), or we'll die out before we get there.

Oh really, just those two options. Not maybe get along just fine? Is being sane not an option in this fantasy? I give up counting the absurdities it all this. Like I said, people will invent and believe anything and everything and find absurd ways to justify it to themselves and others - including fake maths.

Now this argument falls apart if........

.........you're not a gullible idiot.

Look, this 'is reality real' thing is a philosophical debate that's been going on since the ancient Greeks or before. It doesn't require virtual reality machines to work through the logic and in fact if you need to include them, you've lost (because VR machines are real). But it's a long and intricate debate that might be best taken to another thread if you want to go there.

 

[Newchodge]

At the most basic level, just because simulations undetectable from reality may be, or even are possible, it cannot mean that we must be part of one. Simulation and reality will both exist.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

So we've gone from a chance in one in billions to a near certainty passing through 50:50 on the way..

You remember I said that the probality can't be known and is somewhere between 1 and infinity?

You can make the numbers ultra conservative, if you like.

Let's say the universe, with 200 billion galaxies, only has 10 civilisations which have evolved a few thousand years ahead of us and are able to create indistinguishable simulations.

As we would be unable to tell the difference, the chances of us being in base reality would be 1 in 10. It's as simple as that. In terms of probability, we would more likely be in one of the simulations than not.

The one in billions figure comes from the reasonable argument that a universe of this size - with so many galaxies, stars and habitable planets - is likely to have billions of advanced civilisations, with many of those having advanced before us and therefore inevitably creating simulations which we may be a part of.

And with the building blocks of life being so common in the universe, the chance of earth being the only planet in the universe with advanced life, or even one of a few, is extremely remote.

Oh really, just those two options. Not maybe get along just fine? Is being sane not an option in this fantasy? I give up counting the absurdities it all this. Like I said, people will invent and believe anything and everything and find absurd ways to justify it to themselves and others - including fake maths.

Of course it's just those two options. Not sure what "getting along" has to do with it.

We can create photorealistic worlds now, in 2017, only a few decades after Pong was one of the most advanced virtual simulations humanity had ever created.

It is a matter of time (a relatively very short period of time in human existence) before virtual reality is created which is indistinguishable from real life. If we keep progressing, that's eventually what we'll get.

So the two outcomes I stated really are the only two realistic outcomes. We'll either get there, or we'll become extinct before we do. The only other option is that we can create virtual worlds indistinguishable from reality, but we just decide not to. We advance the tech far enough, but we just decide not to use it for no particular reason.

The same goes for any advanced civilisation out there, and any which happened to evolve a few thousand years faster than us in this 13.8 billion year old universe would have already reached this point a while ago.

The question is whether you think there are advanced civilisations out there in the universe, or whether we're on the only planet with life. This isn't a science experiment, so you can have an opinion.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

At the most basic level, just because simulations undetectable from reality may be, or even are possible, it cannot mean that we must be part of one. Simulation and reality will both exist.

All we really have to go on are the statistical odds.

If we can't distinguish real life from a simulation, in any way shape or form, then the odds of us being in base reality are 1 in however many indistinguishable simulations currently exist in the universe.

The only way anyone can reject this is if they believe there are no advanced civilisations in the entire universe which have advanced slightly faster than we have (or that none exist at all).

In that case, with no simulations out there which we may be a part of, the chance is zero.

However, given what we know of the size and make up of the universe, the possibility of us being alone is exceedingly small. I think even the most ardent sceptic would agree with that.

 

[cjd]

Let's say the universe, with 200 billion galaxies.....

No really, let's not.

The reason is that you're starting in the wrong place - Decartes didn't need virtual reality, massive universes and false arithmetic to work through the meaning of reality. It's all been done before and the conclusion is........

Of course it's just those two options. Not sure what "getting along" has to do with it.

It's because whilst you fantasise about all this fluff, we have to get on with life as we know it as best we can because to us there's no difference between being an avatar in a god's video game or being what we are, real people made of real stuff that bruise when our ar$es are kicked.

The question is whether you think there are advanced civilisations out there in the universe, or whether we're on the only planet with life. This isn't a science experiment, so you can have an opinion.

How did that become THE question? And why would my opinion matter? It's irrelevant - none of us know or can know. Multiplying big numbers by other numbers does not give you any sort of answer if you don't know the starting conditions of life. Maybe they're 10 to the power 100?

Most of the world believes that we are unique based on books of myths written a couple of thousand years ago. We're no more further forward than that.

 

[Deleted member 226268]

Undeniable fact =
Every living thing on planet Earth originated, and came from,
Outer Space.
.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

How did that become THE question? And why would my opinion matter? It's irrelevant - none of us know or can know. Multiplying big numbers by other numbers does not give you any sort of answer if you don't know the starting conditions of life. Maybe they're 10 to the power 100?

Because we're having an informal debate about it?

I thought we were, anyway. This was never intended to be an "I win, you lose" conversation. Even if we can't prove it, or even know about it, I still find it rather interesting to chat about.

If anyone else would like to discuss the topic, feel free to chime in.

 

[cjd]

Because we're having an informal debate about it?

Ok fair enough.

The likelyhood of other life existing elsewhere in the universe must be high. The reason for this is that because life exists here, it turns the question around, we now have to find reasons why we *shouldn't* find life on other planets with similar favourable conditions. Given that we know that the likelyhood of other planets like ours existing is high, if not certain, the likelyhood of life elsewhere must be more likely than not.

But life doesn't equal conscious life. We know that conscious life only evolved here once in 3.5 billion years and we know that it was the result of random events. It certainly wasn't inevitable and it certainly isn't inevitable that it will last here for any significant length of time. 99.9% of life on earth has become extinct. The best estimate is that intelligent life has only been here for 200,000 years - the blink of an eye. It may be that there's life elsewhere but it may never progress further than self-replicating molecules - or it may be billions of years behind ours.

Additionally - like the paranormal - despite looking for evidence of intelligent life, we've not found any yet. (No need to object to this, I know we've only just started, and there's gazillions of places to look etc, etc - in this area it's a valid argument. It's not a valid argument when dealing with stuff here in our back yard.)

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

It's possible we may not find any evidence of the paranormal or life on our planet in our life time... but still doesn't mean that neither are there...

I actually quite like how the discussion is going... it begs for more answers rather than ending the conversation with a simple "there's no such thing".

As I've said before I'm not going to attempt to prove anything about the paranormal as people whether we like it of not will and do "pfft pfft" every kind of evidence that is put out there... but please feel free to visit our website and listen to the EVP section from Liverpool's Newsham. You can quite clearly hear what appears to be a young child saying "yeah" and goodbye... at 3.00am ish in the morning there is no real reason for this... could it have been pure luck that we had what appears to be the same voice answering us? Possibly... but it does make investigating the paranormal more interesting...

 

[Newchodge]

@cjd while I agree with much of what you say, I cannot agree about intelligent life having only been here about 200,000 years.

If you mean our species, Homo sapiens, we have been here probably about 50-75,000 years.

If you mean our genus, Homo, there have been Homo species around for at least 1.9 million years.

If you mean hominids, that is bipedal primates with opposable thumbs and the ability to hunt animals, then about 5 million years.

However there is no way that I would accept that only hominids represent intelligent life. All mammals are intelligent, even if their intelligence is different to ours. And mammals have been around a very long time.

I probably accept that intelligent life only evolved here once, in that there was a single species that gave rise to all intelligent life, but your timescales are way out.

Plus, you are making the very common assumption that life can only have evolved in similar conditions to ours, and that life is similar to the experience of life on this planet. That is not proven. There may be many different forms of sentient life, that we cannot comprehend, evolved on other planets under different conditions.

There is also the argument that it may be that life as we know it (Jim) has only ever evolved once and we are that life.

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

With regards to life on other planets... human beings breathe oxygen... animals use oxygen in different ways on this planet... because we/they evolved and "had to" ... science teaches us that in order for their to be life there must be two energies... sun light and redox chemistry...

Yet... evolution has proved to us that life can exist without sunlight... granted the radiation from sunlight could well be a nominal factor for vegetation and food sources for animals to exist without sunlight but that goes without saying...

Go back 40+ years and it was all about water and oxygen to survive... but really when you think about it... that's what WE need to survive... who are we to say that's what alien life would need... after all that's what would make it alien to us... being not of "this world" and most importantly being different to us.

 

[Mr D]

Indeed Haunted Worlds. For most of human history we did not have evidence of viruses and bacteria. We don't deny they are there now. We didn't until just a few decades ago know that 'smokers' in the ocean, underwater volcanic vents, contained life but we do now.
We discover things that were not known before.

With the pace of scientific and technological knowledge these days we cannot conceive of what will be discovered before the end of the century even. Some insist that ghosts cannot exist - there used to be people that insisted people could not travel faster than a horse, there used to be people who insisted that airplanes could not fly, that organ transplants would not work, that computers might eventually be small enough to fit in a room!
Science and technology move on. They will catch up to reality eventually.

 

[cjd]

As I've said before I'm not going to attempt to prove anything about the paranormal as people whether we like it of not will and do "pfft pfft"

But why on earth not?

If you're convinced it's true and have so much opportunity to demonstrate the evidence, why not? This is a business forum after all. Prove it and make your millions.

The sceptic's answer is it's because you can't - and it's not because it's not possible. It must be possible given that you are able to see and hear it.

 

[cjd]

@cjd while I agree with much of what you say, I cannot agree about intelligent life having only been here about 200,000 years.

If you mean our species, Homo sapiens, we have been here probably about 50-75,000 years.

"So far, the earliest finds of modern Homo sapiens skeletons come from Africa. They date to nearly 200,000 years ago on that continent. They appear in Southwest Asia around 100,000 years ago and elsewhere in the Old World by 60,000-40,000 years ago."
http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_4.htm

However there is no way that I would accept that only hominids represent intelligent life. All mammals are intelligent, even if their intelligence is different to ours. And mammals have been around a very long time.

'Sapiens' means wise man. Conscious, not just intelligent. Fully self aware, able to ask questions like 'are we in a simulation?'

Plus, you are making the very common assumption that life can only have evolved in similar conditions to ours, and that life is similar to the experience of life on this planet.

No I'm not making that mistake, neither am I making the mistake that there may be an infinite number of multiverses where every possible scenario is played out. Or that the universe is resting on a turtle's back. Let's stick to what we might know for now, eh?

 

[sirearl]

I suspect one of the big problems humans have in understanding many things is that they can only conceive of intelligence in terms of how the human brain works.

Why on earth should other alien life forms think as we do.?

 

[Mr D]

sirearl - just reading through some threads online in social media or on forums you can wonder why on earth other people think so differently than we do. And that's people with presumably similar education, similar or same society, same country, same sex.
Alien could very well be hive mind or something we cannot even conceive of with our terran understanding.

 

[Newchodge]

"So far, the earliest finds of modern Homo sapiens skeletons come from Africa. They date to nearly 200,000 years ago on that continent. They appear in Southwest Asia around 100,000 years ago and elsewhere in the Old World by 60,000-40,000 years ago."

That is a very isolated view of human evolution, and uses terms that seem designed to deceive. For example " Our species of humans first began to evolve nearly 200,000 years ago" is a really weird way to describe it evolution is a continuum, with some rapid phases and some periods of little change. But it is impossible to state when our species, Homo sapiens, first began to evolve. Arguably it began to evolve when the first major cranial changes developed, or the first changes in dentition, or the first bipedalism.

Almost every anthropologist believes those 200,000 year old fossils were Homo erectus, a probable ancestor of Homo sapiens, a small group claim they were early sapiens, but if you look at the skulls of erectus and of sapiens the differences are immense.

The fact that sapiens means anything irrelevant. Int is the name chosen by humans who consider themselves to be sapient, so used that name. It has no bearing on whether these are the first conscious humans. Evidence of art among early Homo would suggest that there was a culture prior to sapiens.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Ok fair enough.

The likelyhood of other life existing elsewhere in the universe must be high. The reason for this is that because life exists here, it turns the question around, we now have to find reasons why we *shouldn't* find life on other planets with similar favourable conditions. Given that we know that the likelyhood of other planets like ours existing is high, if not certain, the likelyhood of life elsewhere must be more likely than not.

But life doesn't equal conscious life. We know that conscious life only evolved here once in 3.5 billion years and we know that it was the result of random events. It certainly wasn't inevitable and it certainly isn't inevitable that it will last here for any significant length of time. 99.9% of life on earth has become extinct. The best estimate is that intelligent life has only been here for 200,000 years - the blink of an eye. It may be that there's life elsewhere but it may never progress further than self-replicating molecules - or it may be billions of years behind ours.

Perhaps.

What gives me a lot of confidence in there being a large amount of advanced civilisations is the sheer size of the universe which I think a lot of people often underestimate.

We're talking about 200 billion galaxies here. Each one with hundreds of billions of stars.

And further to that, you have data from the Kepler telescope which, when the data is extrapolated, shows that there could be at least 40 billion planets orbiting within the habitable zones of stars which could support life in the Milky Way alone.

If that was the average for every galaxy, we'd be looking at 8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 habitable planets, and that's only based on what we've found so far with current technology (scientists expect the number of stars and galaxies in the universe to rise as we find more).

That's 8 sixtillion, so even if the chance of advanced life developing was unfathomably small (which it may be), you could still be looking at billions of advanced civilisations.

Our sun is also relatively young compared to some. Well, it's middle-aged, shall we say. Billions of stars have already been born and died off in our galaxy before ours even appeared, so it's not like we've got here particularly early in the lifespan of the universe so far.

As for the reason we haven't found any other life yet, I think that's just due to the scale of how far we have to search. For example, this is how far radio waves from earth have travelled since humans first created them:

Even if there are thousands of advanced civilisations in our galaxy alone, we could have to wait thousands of years before our radio waves reach them, and then wait thousands of years for communication to travel back. And obviously the further away we look, the further back in time we look.

In regards to indistinguishable simulations, we're just talking about a difference of a few hundred years here. This also assumes that we try it with existing technology, when we are more likely to move into biological technology and form brain-like systems for computation (if it isn't broke, don't try to fix it, as they say).

So in my view, the odds of there being a large number of advanced civilisations across the universe, capable of creating life-like simulations, is very high.

But would you agree that, if we hypothetically knew there were 10 civilisations out there with indistinguishable simulations, then the odds of us being base reality are 1 in 10? After all, if you literally cannot tell the difference, then there doesn't seem to be anything pointing to us being more likely to be living outside of a simulation right now.

Is it this you disagree with, or the possibility of civilisations out there having created such simulations, or both?

By the way, there's a huge part of me which finds the idea utterly ridiculous. I think it's just instinctive. However, I just can't see how we can get around these odds IF simulations do exist out there in the universe and IF we cannot distinguish whether we're in one or not.

To me, the odds are 1 in however many life-like simulations currently exist in the universe - however many that may be. But we could certainly be that one which is in reality, of course.

 

[Newchodge]

As I said before

At the most basic level, just because simulations undetectable from reality may be, or even are possible, it cannot mean that we must be part of one. Simulation and reality will both exist.

Why MUST we be part of a simulation even if they do exist?

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

As I said before

Why MUST we be part of a simulation even if they do exist?

We mustn't be in one. No one suggests it's a given.

It's just statistical odds. For example, the odds of rolling any number on a dice are 1 in 6.

So if any number of indistinguishable simulations exist in the universe created by advanced civilisations, and we cannot tell whether we're in one or not, then the odds of us being in reality are 1 in however many simulations there are.

If real life and the simulations are absolutely identical, it's pure chance. If there's just one advanced simulation out there in the entire universe, we're either in it or we aren't, so the chances are 50-50. We wouldn't know either way.

 

[Newchodge]

You've got a major logical inconsistency there. Any number of simulations exist and any number of realities exist. If you don't know how many there are of either then you cannot begin to say which is more likely. You are assuming only one reality. Why do you think there is only one reality?

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

You've got a major logical inconsistency there. Any number of simulations exist and any number of realities exist. If you don't know how many there are of either then you cannot begin to say which is more likely. You are assuming only one reality. Why do you think there is only one reality?

Of course. There are plenty of multi-reality theories, including the many-worlds interpretation which suggests that everything which could possibly happen, either now or in the future, has occurred in one of an infinite number of universes. If infinite universes exist, then it's guaranteed that every possible outcome of every possible event has existed as well.

We don't know how many simulations exist. There may be none. But the reasoning behind the argument is that humans, having only invented integrated circuits within the past 50 years, can currently create photorealistic simulations of the real world (we see them in most movies today).

So with that speed of progression, it's not going to be very long at all, in relative terms, before we create full sensory simulations which are indistinguishable from real life. It's a matter of time, unless we either choose not to do it for ethical reasons, or become extinct before we get there.

Given our own speed of progress, any advanced civilisation in the universe which evolved even a fraction quicker than we have (just a few thousand years) will already have such simulations right now.

So if we were to assume that such simulations already exist in the universe, then we're back to the original point, where our chances of being outside of a simulation are 1 in however many simulations exist. That would then give probability odds of what's more or less likely.

Nick Bostrom has expanded on this quite well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality

He also makes the point that creators of simulations wouldn't know whether they were in a simulation as well, so they may be simulated minds which have created simulated minds, which then in turn create simulated minds of their own, and so on.

Eventually, that would result in the number of simulated realities vastly outnumbering the number of "real" civilisations, making it less and less likely that we happen to be one of the "few" not in one of them.

 

[Reba]

Let's stick to what we might know for now, eh?

No let's not. Let's open our minds and question what we don't understand, and strive for the impossible, that's how our species has thrived and discovered the new and wonderful over the millennia.

 

[cjd]

That is a very isolated view of human evolution, and uses terms that seem designed to deceive. For example " Our species of humans first began to evolve nearly 200,000 years ago" is a really weird way to describe it evolution is a continuum, with some rapid phases and some periods of little change. But it is impossible to state when our species, Homo sapiens, first began to evolve. Arguably it began to evolve when the first major cranial changes developed, or the first changes in dentition, or the first bipedalism.

Almost every anthropologist believes those 200,000 year old fossils were Homo erectus, a probable ancestor of Homo sapiens, a small group claim they were early sapiens, but if you look at the skulls of erectus and of sapiens the differences are immense.

Well we can nit-pick this to death if you like but as a general statement of human development 200,000 years is the current view.

"Anatomically modern humans evolved from archaic humans in the Middle Paleolithic, about 200,000 years ago.[3] The emergence of anatomically modern human marks the dawn of the subspeciesHomo sapiens sapiens,[4] i.e. the subspecies of Homo sapiens to which all humans alive today belong. The oldest fossil remains of anatomically modern humans are the Omo remains found in modern-day East Africa, which date to 195,000 years ago and include two partial skulls as well as arm, leg, foot and pelvis bones.[5][6][7]"

If you want to make distinctions between H. sapiens sapiens and something we calling extant modern humans which are currently still classed as H. sapiens sapiens, then some argue that that happens around 50,000 years ago - but that's pretty debatable.

"Behavioral modernity—a suite of changes in Homo sapiens behavior and cognitionincluding abstract thinking, deep planning, symbolic behavior (e.g. art, ornamentation, music), exploitation of large game, and blade technology—is evident from around 40,000–50,000 years ago,[11] and may have emerged abruptly then or may have arisen through gradual steps.[12][13][14][15][16] However, it can and has been argued that Homo sapiens have been fully capable of modern behavior from the time they first evolved.[17]"

All this is very interesting but it make no difference to the main point - what we're talking about is the emergeance of intelligence and consciousness here on earth and that has happened only very recently whichever date you prefer. And it has only happened once.

 

[cjd]

Perhaps someone can tell me how there can be conscious, self-actualising beings inside someone else's simulator?

The mistake being made here is between subject and object. The subject is conscious - he's the one wearing the goggles. The object is the avatar in the simulation - he's a piece of software. How does the avatar have consciouness? it's a programme without substance.

The answer is either "I think therefore I am" or it doesn't matter, we can't ever know. I'm with the former but don't care if it's the latter.

(English Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; And because some men err in reasoning, and fall into Paralogisms, even on the simplest matters of Geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other, rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for Demonstrations; And finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be something; And as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am,[c] was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the Sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.[e][f]

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

@cjd

Out of interest did you listen to the EVP recording?

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Perhaps someone can tell me how there can be conscious, self-actualising beings inside someone else's simulator?

The mistake being made here is between subject and object. The subject is conscious - he's the one wearing the goggles. The object is the avatar in the simulation - he's a piece of software. How does the avatar have consciouness? it's a programme without substance.

The answer is either "I think therefore I am" or it doesn't matter, we can't ever know. I'm with the former but don't care if it's the latter.

The brain is just a biological computer. Some think there's "more" to consciousness, but there's every possibility that any machine, wired in such a manner with sufficient processing power, could be just as conscious as any human being.

If we can re-create the processing power and complexity of that 1.4kg lump of mass in our heads, it can do anything we can do, and most probably a lot more.

In a sense, we can even create simulations already by dreaming. Many people have extremely life-like or lucid dreams in simulations created in their own heads, so the "tech" is already there. It's just a result of biological evolution instead of anything we've made.

But it really depends on how such a world would be simulated. I would suggest that the most likely route would be to simulate every particle and force in existence and how they interact (i.e. copy the mathematics and laws, which we have already proven is deeply embedded in our universe).

If an advanced civilisation could do that, they could create an indistinguishable simulation and simply let it run its course. Stars and planets would form, and living beings would evolve in the same manner. It wouldn't require any "input", as they'd just be simulating the fundamental particles, forces and laws to allow the universe to evolve itself (as ours has already done).

This would also allow simulated beings to create simulations of their own.

This is extreme, far-flung stuff, of course. It would require computing power and intelligence far beyond what we can even fathom.

But the point is, if us humans last long enough, we'll most probably get to the point where we try to do this ourselves, and succeed to some degree. So the question is whether another advanced civilisation out there over the past 10 billion years has managed to do it first.

After all, scientists estimate that the first stars and galaxies appeared around a billion years after the big bang, and we actually have evidence of a planetary system born about 12.8 billion years ago. Our own solar system formed only around 4.5 billion years ago, and is known to be at least a second generation star, so we are, by all accounts, quite late to the party.

Who knows what appeared and evolved in the 8 billion years before us, or what such civilisations could have done with even a miniscule 10,000 year head-start.

 

[WebFixer]

Bit late to the party, but if anyone's still reading:

You should never:

Use a Ouija board;
Attend seances;
Get involved in any kind of occult activity, even tarot cards.

What you are doing is sending up a flare to entities who will be happy to masquerade as Chief Eagle Feather, Rasputin, David Bowie, your granny Mathilda or anyone you want. They are the demons of Hell. They start out friendly and then they become more ... oppressive.

Using something like a Ouija board is giving them a legal permission to enter your space and it can be darned difficult to get rid of them. They're quite the lawyers, I understand.

Activities like the above keep Catholic (and Protestant) exorcists busy, and they'd very much rather not be.

 

[Newchodge]

Do you really think the demons from hell think to get legal permission? Funniest thing I've heard in a long long time.

 

[cjd]

The brain is just a biological computer. Some think there's "more" to consciousness, but there's every possibility that any machine, wired in such a manner with sufficient processing power, could be just as conscious as any human being.

If we can re-create the processing power and complexity of that 1.4kg lump of mass in our heads, it can do anything we can do, and most probably a lot more.

In a sense, we can even create simulations already by dreaming. Many people have extremely life-like or lucid dreams in simulations created in their own heads, so the "tech" is already there. It's just a result of biological evolution instead of anything we've made.

But it really depends on how such a world would be simulated. I would suggest that the most likely route would be to simulate every particle and force in existence and how they interact (i.e. copy the mathematics and laws, which we have already proven is deeply embedded in our universe).

If an advanced civilisation could do that, they could create an indistinguishable simulation and simply let it run its course. Stars and planets would form, and living beings would evolve in the same manner. It wouldn't require any "input", as they'd just be simulating the fundamental particles, forces and laws to allow the universe to evolve itself (as ours has already done).

This would also allow simulated beings to create simulations of their own.

This is extreme, far-flung stuff, of course. It would require computing power and intelligence far beyond what we can even fathom.

But the point is, if us humans last long enough, we'll most probably get to the point where we try to do this ourselves, and succeed to some degree. So the question is whether another advanced civilisation out there over the past 10 billion years has managed to do it first.

After all, scientists estimate that the first stars and galaxies appeared around a billion years after the big bang, and we actually have evidence of a planetary system born about 12.8 billion years ago. Our own solar system formed only around 4.5 billion years ago, and is known to be at least a second generation star, so we are, by all accounts, quite late to the party.

Who knows what appeared and evolved in the 8 billion years before us, or what such civilisations could have done with even a miniscule 10,000 year head-start.

Ok, this all great sci-fi fantasy stuff but you're avoiding the core issue of whether we as conscious beings can be fooling ourselves into thinking we are conscious, self-actualised beings or not. This is a philosophical question that has been pondered for thousands of years and is independent of whatever technology you can dream up.

If your answer to that is yes, we can be fooled, then my assertion is that it doesn't matter to us - we can't know so we must carry on as if it's real.

But I'm with Descartes.

 

[cjd]

@cjd
Out of interest did you listen to the EVP recording?

Nope, listening to a recording isn't evidence of anything is it?

You're convinced and it seems that you return regularly to these places where frequent 'appearances' occur so it should be really easy to prove it properly and await either your Pulitzer or Nobel Prize.

What's preventing you?

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Ok, this all great sci-fi fantasy stuff but you're avoiding the core issue of whether we as conscious beings can be fooling ourselves into thinking we are conscious, self-actualised beings or not. This is a philosophical question that has been pondered for thousands of years and is independent of whatever technology you can dream up.

If your answer to that is yes, we can be fooled, then my assertion is that it doesn't matter to us - we can't know so we must carry on as if it's real.

But I'm with Descartes.

I don't think it's a case of fooling ourselves. It's the fact that we would be conscious.

Whether you take how all the atoms, molecules, chemicals, forces and physics interact in a real brain, or you simulate them to act in the exact same way, the results would be the same. One is real, one is not, but the consciousness itself is not any "worse" or any "better" either way.

You're right, we can't know, but I still find it interesting to talk about nonetheless. It won't impact my life or how I live it whatsoever, but one can still wonder.

I'm not sure why you dismissed a lot of the previous post so readily though. The universe is around 14 billion years old, with evidence of the first planetary systems 12 billion years ago. Compare that to our own sun, which is a second generation star, and our solar system which is only 4.5 billion years old.

This means that many stars and habitable planets were around at least 8 billion years before our Earth even appeared as a ball of inhospitable, burning rock. It's therefore very feasible that a huge number of advanced civilisations lived and died before our own star even burst into life.

It would frankly be surprising if this wasn't the case. If our sun was born, the planets appeared and advanced life evolved in a 4.5 billion year window, you could fit two of those "generations" into the period of time before our sun even existed.

 

[Newchodge]

I think what people are trying to say, really is who gives a s**t. It is completely meaningless.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

This does go back to the Fermi paradox though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

"Where is everybody?"

 

[WebFixer]

Do you really think the demons from hell think to get legal permission? Funniest thing I've heard in a long long time.

They don't need to get it. They have it, if you invite them onto your premises. Or your person. Or someone else directs them your way.

This must be the case because, if demons exist, we'd be bothered all the time. In fact, we'd be dead.

An analogy is if you give permission to someone to stay in your house it can be quite difficult to get them out if they won't go voluntarily. Current mundane law is interesting:
https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law/overview

Anyone who originally enters a property with the permission of the landlord is not a squatter, eg if you’re renting a property and fall behind with rent payments you’re not squatting if you continue to live there.

You have to formally evict them.

This article gives a brief overview:
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/interview-with-an-exorcist

---

I recall reading with some amusement on a forum well-known for having a subset of atheists. Someone posted the question: "Has anyone ever had any spooky experiences?". Turns out, many had.

The atheists prefaced their accounts with statements like, "Well, I don't really believe in the paranormal, but ... "

What I'm surprised all the bedroom boffins haven't worked out is that preternatural and supernatural phenomena can't be proven scientifically, because they fail one key scientific test: reproducibility.

A ghost can't be made to turn up in a lab at Imperial College London at 2.45pm on a Tuesday. And then again a 3.15pm. And again. And again.

So they say it's all bosh and go back to playing World Of Warcraft.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

I think what people are trying to say, really is who gives a s**t. It is completely meaningless.

I find it interesting. Maybe others do. If such "meaningless" chatter frustrates some folk, maybe this is not the best conversation to participate in.

There are probably 10,000 times more people out there talking about Kim Kardashian, but I'll stick with my meaningless conversation about the origins of the universe, the existence of lifeforms, the advancement of technology and the many philosophical implications.

Let's just hope the children of today do that as well instead of focusing on celebrities and reality TV. I suspect it will make the world a much better place.

 

[Newchodge]

Whoosh

^

Head