The latest strip from Jesus and Mo, called “nerds”, came with the email note, “Don’t take the red pill! Or is it the blue one? I can never remember.”
To Mo, it’s “Allah all the way down”:
Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ nerds
April 24, 2024 • 9:00 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
It’s technologically advanced nerd- turtles all the way down.
Simulation can be anything – 21st c. Deism with a product of humans, specifically from tech/science – namely a computer – as god.
Or a nucleic acid based computer which I think has been done/published, which if you squint your eyes is just evolution by natural selection except it was done on purpose, and on and on – worshiping nothing but the ego/self, unfalsifiable.
Notice also the word “hypothesis” – a gnostic abuse of language, as a simulation is unfalsifiable.
Auguste Compte says “Hi!”
I haven’t gotten to Compte yet – still on Hume (in the Very Short Introduction series from Oxford…)… going to get the Compte asap.
You can tell if you’re in a simulation if a cat glitches.
How … how, at all, would one tell?
Just look at his famous predictions.
Turns out Oxford VSI series doesn’t have Compte or Positivism – so if anyone’s looking for a writing gig, maybe get in touch w/ OUP – I’ll get a copy when it comes out!
Not that I’ve heard. I have heard – quite a while back, I think I was down a rabbit-hole of alternative reading frames) – of people implementing LOGIC GATES using DNA (or RNA) to carry out computations such as activating (or not) a gene. Which is the fundamental unit of computing. And DNA is a storage medium. So you’ve got the elements of a Turing computer there.
But actually implementing a DNA computer – not as such. I wouldn’t be surprised to find someone describing it as such though.
Yes, good points – I just searched “scripps dna computer” now to see, and got a PR:
http://www.scripps.edu/newsandviews/e_20120213/keinan.html
“… Our device is based on the model of a finite state automaton, which is a simplified version of the Turing machine. ”
Paper:
“A Molecular Cryptosystem for Images by DNA Computing”
Angewandte Chemie
It’s just interesting to check out, and probably a lot more to find – but not in an iPhone yet – is all I’m saying.
I doubt it would ever get into an iDevice. While the volumetric and by-weight density of DNA storage is, theoretically impressive, the read-out rate … I think the technical term is “sucks”. And the write-speed is worse. As for the clock rate – electronics went past cellular mechanisms in the 1960s? 1950s?
There is potential for DNA in long-term storage of information that you can realistically request be delivered by snail mail. (e.g. Inter-Library Loans for reports written before WW2 – it’s only a few years since I last needed to do that, and there’s little reason to think the papers have been digitised, yet. Probably hasn’t been requested since.)
+1
Silly. I heard directly from no less an authority than Tim Leary that it’s all directed panspermia.
I met Tim Leary twice, once at Bimbo’s 360 in North Beach, another time in someone’s home at a party. He was smoking Marlboro cigarettes both times. He liked blowing smoke, so to speak.
But I did like his “transhumanism” slogan:
“Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension”
—SMI2LE
I guess he wanted to direct the panspermia himself.
When I was a little kid, 4 or so, I wondered if everything was part of someone’s dream, and would go away if she woke up. (For some reason, I pictured the person as an old lady.) I know other people had come up with this idea before, but I came up with it on my own. I later wondered if we were all characters in a super-realistic cartoon show created and watched by aliens. They could read our thoughts, just as we can read the thought balloons of comic book characters.
I wonder how common these thoughts are.
Mo is right, people need to get real.
It’s not a simulation but fields pervading space and time… I say what!
It’s a bit embarrassing that so many smart people take the simulation hypothesis seriously. The straightforward application of the idea (every element of our world is simulated in detail) is ludicrous, and when you try to patch it, you end up in “God put dinosaur bones in the earth to tempt the unbelievers” territory real fast.
It’s just deism for the digital age.
Think about it. All that has to be simulated is one human brain.
We know what it feels like to have “just a brain”, with no external reality attached to it – that’s what dreams are. Our waking reality decidedly does not feel like that – we perceive a stubbornly persistent external reality that is truly outrageous in scope and detail. If you were to simulate a single brain, would you put it in an simulated environment with billions of galaxies with billions of stars each, giving the convincing appearance of running on a combination of quantum field theory and general relativity? If yes, WHY?
But you’ve never seen any of these billions of galaxies with billions of stars. At best you’ve seen photographs with patterns of dots on them.
Nothing keeps you from buying a telescope for a couple thousand bucks and convincing yourself that at least the closest galaxies look just like they do in the textbooks. And if this were just a simulation – why bother with that level of detail?
Edit: this is what I meant with “God put dinosaur bones in the earth to tempt the unbelievers” territory.
Interesting discussion … I think Arthur sums it up nicely:
… a small frontier fortress. Admittedly the fortress is impregnable, but the garrison can never sally forth from it, therefore we can pass it by, and leave it in our rear without danger.
Arthur Schopenhauer describing solipsism
I can’t think of a way of proving there is a reality beyond my perception, yet I believe.
And just because the universe might behave ‘like’ a simulation does not mean it is one.
+1