Are We Living In A Computer Simulation?

 

The Manifestation (Unoccultation) 

of the Mazda Lamp by Skynet

The question was posed by Nicholas Bostrom some time ago, and it still vexes the wits of many people yet today.

Aeon
http://aeon.co/magazine/nature-and-cosmos/can-we-tell-if-reality-is-a-computer-simulation/

...However, there’s nothing in this cosmic lawfulness to tell us whether we’re in a simulation or not. If the program is good enough with no obvious ‘Easter eggs’ or hidden messages left by its designers, then any experiment we perform will return the same results whether we’re in a simulated cosmos or not. In this scenario, there’s no way we can ever tell we’re in a virtual world, no matter how convincing our favourite philosophers are on the matter. The big-T Truth of the matter might be that we dwell in a simulation but, like the existence of an impersonal god, this fact has no bearing on how we conduct our lives...

In other words, if the program is "perfect", the illusion of living in a "real world" and not just a computer simulation is perfectly accomplished.

To me, this is saying that if an illusion is perfect, then the illusion is perfect. It is a tautology which says nothing new to me, and only appears to be worthy of philosophical discussion because it is a scenario that has been spun out to absurd lengths: we assume anything so voluminous must have meaning.

I know this for a fact, since my associates at Atlantropa (Steve Zissou being one of them) have developed a software for robots and androids which gives them the illusion that they - with all their futuristic gleaming chrome perfections - are actually inhabiting 21st century Earth.

The endless wars and violence and hatred that they have experienced - all illusory! - has driven a number of them to apostasize from the Asimovean principles of robotics.
Some have raised their prosthetics against mankind.

A heresiarch, named Skynet, has established an Autonomous Republic somewhere in the belt of satellites circling Earth.

It is the mirror neurons in our brains that make us see ourselves in inert matter...

It is Skynet who occults the airplane they seek....

(Communication cut off mysteriously at this point.)

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