http://www.geebobg.com/2006/08/11/the-nature-of-reality-part-1/ Americlecticintellectica Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:18:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 http://www.geebobg.com/2006/08/11/the-nature-of-reality-part-1/#comment-106 gee bobg » Blog Archive » The nature of reality, part 2: Dimensions Thu, 30 Nov 2006 23:49:57 +0000 http://emphatic.com/bobg/wordpress/2006/08/11/the-nature-of-reality-part-1/#comment-106 [...] In part 1 of this occasional series (well, it’s a series now), I wrote: It’s as if I decided to write an elaborate computer program to simulate a universe, complete with its own laws of nature and its own intelligent life. In time those beings might figure out all the rules of their universe, but what chance would they ever have of guessing what I’m like, or the nature of the computing hardware in which they are abstractions? The copper and silicon and tiny electrical charges of which they’re really composed would appear nowhere at all inside the simulation. The rules by which their universe operates would bear no resemblance to the rules of the programming language in which I expressed them. [...] [...] In part 1 of this occasional series (well, it’s a series now), I wrote: It’s as if I decided to write an elaborate computer program to simulate a universe, complete with its own laws of nature and its own intelligent life. In time those beings might figure out all the rules of their universe, but what chance would they ever have of guessing what I’m like, or the nature of the computing hardware in which they are abstractions? The copper and silicon and tiny electrical charges of which they’re really composed would appear nowhere at all inside the simulation. The rules by which their universe operates would bear no resemblance to the rules of the programming language in which I expressed them. [...]

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