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The World is....what shape?

What shape is the world?

  • Flat

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Cubed

    Votes: 2 13.3%
  • Yellow

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Fluffy

    Votes: 5 33.3%
  • A pan dimensional space cookie

    Votes: 3 20.0%
  • A lion, a Witch and a Wardrobe

    Votes: 2 13.3%
  • Whatever Trump says it is at the moment

    Votes: 1 6.7%
  • None of the Above. Shape is a social construct you racist pig!

    Votes: 4 26.7%
  • None of the Above. The world is a computer simulation

    Votes: 1 6.7%
  • I don't know. I' m waiting for the voices to tell me

    Votes: 4 26.7%

  • Total voters
    15

Laika

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Come on people. It is the great controversy of our times. What shape is the world?

Free your mind from the tyranny of science, knowledge and truth and venture out in to the unknown, the unknownable and watch that chicken cross the road and bring about the end of the time-space continuum by killing its grandfather by inventing thanks-giving.

And so I'm not accused of being a fact-nazi whose oppressing you by denying you the ability to hold contradictory views simultaneously, the poll is multiple choice.

What's you're view?
 

Ouroboros

Coincidentia oppositorum
Good poll and good choices. I checked more than half. :D

I think "A pan dimensional space cookie" is probably the most likely answer. the world is a cookie, and it should be eaten, slow and savor every bite.
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
Come on people. It is the great controversy of our times. What shape is the world?
Its a pan-dimensional space cookie. The other options don't even compare. I mean...I am inclined to start a band now. That's how great that shape sounds.
 

dfnj

Well-Known Member
Come on people. It is the great controversy of our times. What shape is the world?

Free your mind from the tyranny of science, knowledge and truth and venture out in to the unknown, the unknownable and watch that chicken cross the road and bring about the end of the time-space continuum by killing its grandfather by inventing thanks-giving.

And so I'm not accused of being a fact-nazi whose oppressing you by denying you the ability to hold contradictory views simultaneously, the poll is multiple choice.

What's you're view?

We do not live in a computer simulation. Google "quantum mechanics debunks materialism". We live in strangely spiritual Universe. Whatever IT is that decides something is being observed in a double slit type experiment is strangely spiritual in nature. The laws of physics keep everything nice and orderly in the Universe yet at the same time the Universe is amazingly unpredictable and imaginative. The scientific evidence does NOT support the idea we live in a clockwork Universe with hard determinism which is a prerequisite for having a computer simulation.

Your first three words of your post, "Come on people" immediately started the following song to start playing in my head:

 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Come on people. It is the great controversy of our times. What shape is the world?

Free your mind from the tyranny of science, knowledge and truth and venture out in to the unknown, the unknownable and watch that chicken cross the road and bring about the end of the time-space continuum by killing its grandfather by inventing thanks-giving.

And so I'm not accused of being a fact-nazi whose oppressing you by denying you the ability to hold contradictory views simultaneously, the poll is multiple choice.

What's you're view?
What do you mean by "world"? The Earth? The cosmos?

But I think the racist pig one has to have my vote anyway, on sheer amusement grounds.:D
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
The scientific evidence does NOT support the idea we live in a clockwork Universe with hard determinism which is a prerequisite for having a computer simulation.
You can hook up your computer to a random number generator or you could run the simulation on a quantum computer. Both would result in a non-deterministic simulation. My guess is that the simulation we are part of runs on a 5 dimensional, quasi-analogue, quantum, non-Von Neumann machine and we will never the chance to disprove that hypothesis from within the simulation.
 

Wu Wei

ursus senum severiorum and ex-Bisy Backson
Actually.... the voices say....its a donut..... and I have the pictures to prove it

1541789697177-DonutEarth.jpeg
 

dfnj

Well-Known Member
You can hook up your computer to a random number generator or you could run the simulation on a quantum computer. Both would result in a non-deterministic simulation. My guess is that the simulation we are part of runs on a 5 dimensional, quasi-analogue, quantum, non-Von Neumann machine and we will never the chance to disprove that hypothesis from within the simulation.

Well if it's "non-Von Neumann" then it's not a computer by traditional definitions. Can we just use Turing machine for argument. A Turing machine makes more sense to me if we are going to proclaim we live in a computer simulation. If we did live in a computer simulation it would have to be Turing computable. I'm not sure reality is Turing computable.

Your random number generator idea does not take into account the role of an observer changing what is being observed at the smallest scale of measurement. This is the part that is strangely spiritual.

Also, you are confusing abstraction with reality. Your ideas about reality are not the reality they represent. The problem with your way of thinking is you are completely ignoring the analog nature of reality and consciousness. There is no digital clock pulse. In reality, everything is connected to everything else. The arbitrary abstractions imposed by measurements do not change the fact that everything is connected to everything else and parts of reality are happening all at once independently. There is no wall clock. The fabric of reality is relative. A computer simulation does not have this recursive semantics to its execution. There is no get-fetch-execute cycle to how matter behaves. Our minds are more like analog radio receivers than they are like microprocessors.

Here are two videos on this subject. The first has to do with linguistic philosophy of consciousness simulated on a computer.


This second video has to do with "idealism" versus "realism" and which one of the two is best supported by the scientific evidence. This matters because for reality to be a computer simulation there has to be a clock-pulse driving the get-fetch-execute cycle which there is not:


I once had an argument with someone who had dogmatic beliefs about Artificial Intelligence and coming Singularity which is always just around the corner in becoming real. Many years ago when I was studying artificial intelligence I was trying to prove human beings were no different than computers. I was trying to come up with a thought that was similar to the following computer program:

10 NOP
20 GOTO 10

This is an "infinite loop". And anyone who has study the limitations of computers, that is Computability Theory, knows about the Halting Problem.

Halting problem - Wikipedia

Since I was not able to create an infinite loop with my thoughts I came to the conclusion the human mind and our consciousness is not bounded by the Halting Problem, and therefore, artificial intelligence is impossible because our minds are NOT computer-like but something else.

The closest thought I could come up with to lock my mind into an infinite loop was this question: "Have you ever thought about what your brain is doing between thoughts?" Most people just laugh their way out of the infinite loop. Computers do not have a sense of humor. This is why I doubt very much the Universe is a computer simulation. There's just too much humor in the World for this to be a computer simulation.

Since I could not find a thought that would put my mind into and infinite loop I lost interest in AI. I no longer thought it was possible. And ever since I've been devoting my life to the study of how consciousness works and the true nature of the most profound spirituality we can experience here and now.
 
Last edited:

Wu Wei

ursus senum severiorum and ex-Bisy Backson
I have no idea what you are talking about...but the earth is a donut...no doubt about it...you just can't argue with proof in pictures

Y8XX4JP2.jpg


THANK YOU. I thought it was a triangle but, this proof is undeniable. Are you a wizard? Or God?

Hard to say.....but I will say this...a whole lot of hikers say Oh God when they see me coming....

uSZsabr.jpg
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Well if it's "non-Von Neumann" then it's not a computer by traditional definitions. Can we just use Turing machine for argument. A Turing machine makes more sense to me if we are going to proclaim we live in a computer simulation. If we did live in a computer simulation it would have to be Turing computable. I'm not sure reality is Turing computable.
Although I was half joking about the properties of the machine our simulation runs on, there was a specific meaning to the non-Von Neumann quality. If we live in a simulation it is most likely a Turing machine because program and data are separated. I.e. we are not able to change the program by a genius hack. Or in other words, magic is not possible in the simulation.
Your random number generator idea does not take into account the role of an observer changing what is being observed at the smallest scale of measurement. This is the part that is strangely spiritual.

Also, you are confusing abstraction with reality. Your ideas about reality are not the reality they represent. The problem with your way of thinking is you are completely ignoring the analog nature of reality and consciousness. There is no digital clock pulse. In reality, everything is connected to everything else. The arbitrary abstractions imposed by measurements do not change the fact that everything is connected to everything else and parts of reality are happening all at once independently. There is no wall clock. The fabric of reality is relative. A computer simulation does not have this recursive semantics to its execution. There is no get-fetch-execute cycle to how matter behaves. Our minds are more like analog radio receivers than they are like microprocessors.
For all we know reality is digital, even time is. But since that is only manifest at the Plank scales, reality is quasi-analogue. A property that I have given my hypothetical simulation.
I once had an argument with someone who had dogmatic beliefs about Artificial Intelligence and coming Singularity which is always just around the corner in becoming real. Many years ago when I was studying artificial intelligence I was trying to prove human beings were no different than computers. I was trying to come up with a thought that was similar to the following computer program:

10 NOP
20 GOTO 10

This is an "infinite loop". And anyone who has study the limitations of computers, that is Computability Theory, knows about the Halting Problem.

Halting problem - Wikipedia

Since I was not able to create an infinite loop with my thoughts I came to the conclusion the human mind and our consciousness is not bounded by the Halting Problem, and therefore, artificial intelligence is impossible because our minds are NOT computer-like but something else.
That is simply an argument from personal incredulity (and sloppy research). You are executing an infinite loop in the form of

10 LIVE
20 GOTO 10

This loop runs until the machine breaks.
Also, you didn't try to implement the halting problem but a very simple infinite loop while disregarding that you have an interrupt driven machine with 100 billion cores.
The closest thought I could come up with to lock my mind into an infinite loop was this question: "Have you ever thought about what your brain is doing between thoughts?" Most people just laugh their way out of the infinite loop. Computers do not have a sense of humor. This is why I doubt very much the Universe is a computer simulation. There's just too much humor in the World for this to be a computer simulation.
And sometimes a humorous OP can lead to deep philosophical discussions. That was not my intend. I don't even think that we are living in a simulation. It is just an interesting thought experiment for pondering certain concepts. And it is the most likely of the given choices in the poll.
Since I could not find a thought that would put my mind into and infinite loop I lost interest in AI. I no longer thought it was possible. And ever since I've been devoting my life to the study of how consciousness works and the true nature of the most profound spirituality we can experience here and now.
Consciousness is much like god. It's a label without meaning. Everybody has a slightly different concept of what it is and tries to deduce how it works. But both parties missed the first step to first establish that it even exists.
 

Wu Wei

ursus senum severiorum and ex-Bisy Backson
You know, based on votes at this time, it appears the majority thing the earth is fluffy....kind of like a pillow....like this

41VOw%2B96OSL._SX425_.jpg
 
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