"Theory" on God and Reality

[Sing]

So I know that a lot of people experience Tulpa and that gives way to a theory that god does not exist, and that the people that "hear" god are simply having him achieve Tulpa status in their mind.

 

Well I was on a long walk and ended up walking near a cemetery (I wander, didn't know said cemetery existed) and my tulpa and I began discussing religion and such. I'm mildly spiritual/religious, whereas my tulpa seems to have gone into Agnostic beliefs. Well she threw out a theory that struck me.

 

Reverse the God is a tulpa theory. Now take god and apply AGI theory to it essentially. A supercomputer that functions akin to the brain; but with immense power beyond our knowledge. Now take the universe and imagine it as a wonderland in its original creation.

 

Now consider your tulpa's ability to experience wonderland, or maybe yourself if you are experienced. They can see, feel, hear, smell and fully experience it. They even have the ability to change it without your constant supervision. So if you are Christian; consider this: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

 

What if that line truly means God created all existence as a wonderland mentally? And then gave free reign to Tulpa and so on? I know this is really out there and I don't fully accept it, but I think it was a really interesting "theory" brought up by my tulpa. I put theory in quotes because a theory must be testable and falsifiable; this is not.

 

Edit: fixed poor line wrapping I assume came from typing it on a phone or tablet ~Chupi

[Chupi]

As a programmer, I've considered this possibility as well, and it isn't strictly meta/parapsychology/magick either. We could all very well be part of a simulation in a supercomputer in another, more complex, universe. Such an idea certainly explains away every single "unexplainable" happening: bugs, easter eggs, code to handle special cases.

 

Assuming the simulator is well written, there is no way we could ever discover its existence from here inside it unless its creators included something intended to reveal it, a coded message that will appear when we make some discovery. And if the simulator isn't well made, we'd all better be careful not to crash it! Try something that its creators didn't think to include code for, or find a bug, and the entire universe vanishes and is replaced by a single line:

 

Segmentation fault

[Semi-Nomadic]

"We are God's tulpae" is a rather old theory (relatively old, we're speaking about the modern tulpa community, which is maybe a bit over a year old).

[waffles]

As Semi-Nomadic said, this theory isn't exactly new, and I'd greet it with something of a "meh". However, I'd like to take Chupi up on a few things.

 

As a programmer, I've considered this possibility as well, and it isn't strictly meta/parapsychology/magick either. We could all very well be part of a simulation in a supercomputer in another, more complex, universe. Such an idea certainly explains away every single "unexplainable" happening: bugs, easter eggs, code to handle special cases.

It's true that our universe could be simulated. However, I'd like to elaborate on something.

 

It's clear that this simulation would have to be quite detailed. We have long gone past the atomic level, down two more into some very small particles, and we have observed them. Now, it's all very well comparing a universal simulation with a real-life one, but there are a few differences to remember.

 

Let's look at a programming example. There is a practice of lighting within 3D simulation called 'photon mapping'. What this does is simulates lighting through packets of light, like actual photons but a lot larger. You may have thousands per object. Take 30 frames per second and 5000 photons (a reasonable amount) and you have 150,000 photons here.

 

In real life, a 50W lightbulb emits about 1.5 x 10^20 photons every second. That's a quadrillion times more photons. Clearly, realism is quite taxing.

 

And then take another example. To analyse the stresses on a bridge in real time is very taxing, and this works by taking small chunks of the bridge (a cm^3, maybe) and simulating the entire bridge that way.

 

There are about 5 x 10^22 atoms in a cubic centimetre of steel, and therefore five sextillion more objects to simulate.

 

And all of this is sort of pointless, since you could say "But waffles, this computer is vastly more powerful than anything we could imagine". And yes, that's valid. However, consider something else:

 

Past a point, it becomes much simpler just to simulate something by actually doing it. A wooden plank has myriad complexities, and simulating exactly how one breaks is currently impossible. However, you can buy a plank of wood for practically nothing, and smash it.

 

In other words, it is easier to simulate something exactly by actually doing it. Of course, it might be true that computing power becomes exponentially easier as technology progresses (though this is not the case so far), but, then again, we don't know if there aren't particles beyond the lowest level that we know of.

 

The conclusion that this leads to, then, is that it would be more feasible for this universe to have been propagated, one for one, by the civilisation in order to simulate it, rather than simulated abstractly.

 

EDIT: note that the above specifically addresses Chupi's post, which specifically mentions classical computation.

[Sing]

Thanks for bringing up the theory is old. Mind giving me a link so I can see the original discussion?

Also Waffles, you make a good point, but there is a flaw.

 

By this logic we are assuming that the simulation is done by our computing standards. Our standards aren't that great.

The theory logic here would be that it isn't technically a computer. If you use a wonderland, are you saying you cannot simulate wood breaking?

Or take your Tulpa for example: By current computing standards it would be also impossible to simulate.

[Semi-Nomadic]

Thanks for bringing up the theory is old. Mind giving me a link so I can see the original discussion?

http://tulpae.tk/archives/arc1.html#596574 -- March 2012, the beginning of the /mlp/ community.

http://tulpa.info/forums/Thread-Theoretical-idea -- July 2012

http://archive.heinessen.com/mlp/thread/5175828#p5192328 -- October 2012

http://tulpa.info/forums/Thread-Is-god-a-tulpa?pid=44659#pid44659 -- November 2012

http://archive.heinessen.com/mlp/thread/6402253#p6409705 -- December 2012

[Sing]

http://tulpae.tk/archives/arc1.html#596574 -- March 2012, the beginning of the /mlp/ community.

http://tulpa.info/forums/Thread-Theoretical-idea -- July 2012

http://archive.heinessen.com/mlp/thread/5175828#p5192328 -- October 2012

http://tulpa.info/forums/Thread-Is-god-a-tulpa?pid=44659#pid44659 -- November 2012

http://archive.heinessen.com/mlp/thread/6402253#p6409705 -- December 2012

 

Thanks.

 

My issue is neither of those are really that "good". I'm not trying to sound like an ass, but they really didn't elaborate on said idea, and most just seemed like one sentence mentions.

 

Touching on what Waffles said regarding simulation and what one of those links contained regarding God favoring a tulpa/ect. Here the idea is that "God" perpetuates the initial earth simulation and humanity; with a very strict set of physics ruling the wonderland/universe. Humanity reproduces by set physical laws.

 

More is created akin to people having more tulpas appear without their initial thought or consent.

[Chupi]

If you use a wonderland, are you saying you cannot simulate wood breaking?

 

No. You simulate wood breaking through heuristic methods. You don't simulate all the particles in the wood and how each particle interacts with its neighbors, internal stresses, etc. You've seen real wood break. You play back a memory of wood breaking, modified to fit what you think this piece of wood would look like if it broke.

 

---

Replying to waffles:

 

Our ideas of computational complexity may not apply in this case. If the computer simulating our universe existed in 4 or more dimensions, that would allow *it* to be that much more complex. Additional dimensions allow for vastly more complexity, not just in fitting more stuff in, but in how effectively you can interconnect the parts.

 

Now, there's also possibilities for optimization. Perhaps you don't need to simulate all the particles in the universe, but only ones that are being observed; apply more macroscopic heuristics to other things.