Dealing with the Simulation

dealing with the simulation:

that night i was admitted to a mental hospital in November, 1992, i had the most frightening thought before i was sectioned and hauled off in a van: i was the only real person there, the other people in the room, all not real. solipsism was to me extremely disturbing. the idea had never occurred to me before that night. i didn't want to believe in it.

i am not solipsistic but i find it hard to believe as i once did that everyone is a real person. so it becomes a guessing game. what percentage of people are real? when i meet someone am i dealing with a real person? do real people have a presence?

if you think about it, how likely is it that all lifeforms that possess consciousness are capable of being human? surely not 100%. could there really be billions of people that could be configured as human? yet it appears there are.

what is unquestionable is that this reality possesses high intelligence. intelligence that could run a simulation?

and why are we here? i don't remember asking to be born on Earth. what is the purpose of the simulation? simply to meet other people?

i used to think of people that aren't real as "illusions". now in popular culture they are called NPC's.

if you seriously entertain the idea that the world of Earth is a simulation, populated by fewer than 100% real people, the concept of risk changes. you might like to visit somewhere abroad. it looks so good in the brochure. what if complete countries have 0% real people? with no one real to do anything there, aren't you straining the compute needed for you to visit this place? consider that real people generate programs for doing things, processes that can be shared with other people. if driving a car works for me, it can work for someone else. it is a risk to do something that no one real has done before then surely? what if you get in the plane to go off to that place in the brochure with a 0% real population and the simulation just freezes or worse because the place simply does not exist yet? more commonly, what is it like to go from somewhere where say 50% of people are real to somewhere where only 1% are? i think i have got what that feels like going somewhere where nobody seems real.

to put it bluntly, assuming as i once did as a child that the world is 100% populated by billions of real people now seems naive.

CLEARCHARGE

Schizophrenia Identity and the Refutation of Solipsism

schizophrenia identity and the refutation of solipsism:

assume you weren't living on Earth, a world in which you see many other people. and you start hearing voices. and what you hear is unpredictable, it doesn't seem you are hearing your own thoughts aloud. you would likely assume you were indeed talking to other people. you just can't see them.

however, on Earth, hearing voices is referred to as hallucination, that is, they are unreal. a diagnosis which has a solipsistic bias to it, that the voices are all me. but what if the voices are real but the people you see and interact with aren't, that they are merely simulated people? also a solipsistic take on reality. this matter of solipsism and its various shades needs to to be dealt with. on the one hand we dismiss what we hear as other people and on the other we dismiss what we see as other people.

so what is me and what is another person? consider in a reality where physical motion is not real and the stuff of reality is fixed in space, we can divide space up into personal zones, what i call personal bubble spaces, each centred around the person's head. what is far away from me is not me therefore and must be other people.

extreme schizophrenia is a condition that breaks the rules of the universe. strange things happen. time lapses. teleportation. hearing voices. objects appearing. objects disappearing. images of text suddenly changing while you view them. what it does is raise scepticism about the world. that's probably a good thing.

CLEARCHARGE

True Aspects of Solipsistic Notions

true aspects of solipsistic notions:

so it's true, it ain't no one man reality, my human ego is not that big. there are others, how many lifeforms could there be?

they say two is company, three's a crowd, one man two women or one woman and two men, but it ain't that kind of reality either so what can one say?

that sometimes nobody could help you, you're on your own, just seems true. that you could never be someone else with their individual senses is also true. like who saw what and when?

what's the polar opposite of solipsism? is it dependency without sense of self?

CLEARCHARGE

Solipsism and the Independent

solipsism and the independent:

"i'm made up of lots of parts. i am the sum total of my parts, right? are any of my parts alone? not really! so of course i can't really believe in this total aloneness. can i see what other people see? all i know is me and what comes from elsewhere."

"tell me about what you think of yourself. why do you think of yourself as a dependent person."

"maybe i know myself very well maybe i don't, sure, i surprise myself sometimes but i'm not as shocking as other people! the question is whether you think of all of this reality as a whole. i think of it as connected parts. so you see i read other people's work, stuff i couldn't possibly come up with on my own, so i know other people are real, in as far as i define a unique person. i depend on other people. of course, still, i have to manage my life."

"do you prefer your own company? what are your thoughts?"

"i don't know. other people are something i can't fully comprehend."

"your focus determines a lot. you can only think about so much at a time. where none of this concerns you could be happening right now and you might never know. where you become independent is when you realize you're on your own out there."

"i find solipsism very frightening. yet i know it can't be true."

"you're your own man. you look for company. but you should realize that sometimes all that matters is what's going on with you yourself."

CLEARCHARGE

The Frame of the One

the frame of the one:

how does it start, anyway? you know yourself. if you accept the concept of time zero, with nothing before then, who is to say that God or anyone, created you, given that you as one person existed from the beginning of time immemorial. you did not even create yourself. you just were. there is, and was, no explanation, and never will there be one, for why you, or greater reality exists.

i am. what else, or who else exists? are they the same? if not, how different? what am i? what parts constitute me, and what parts constitute any person, for that matter?

if i could find one other person, in a leap of induction, many more might exist, surely that is the case? the question then becomes, well, how many in the quantity of person?

now you have Earth 3D all around, social networks, computer networks, family networks, business networks, etc., all groups or sets composed of such persons. the question becomes, are they really connected overall? are there some, for practical purposes, isolated groups separate from the main mass of society?

even if everyone is connected does that mean however that there is little or no affect at a distance? electronic transmission fades, meetings don't happen, even if they did, their resulting influence on me is negligible, for i don't remember it even if it did happen.

maybe i am in a network of 4 million or even 4 billion, computer code streaming across my personal electronic field. this is only apparent now, certainly not at time zero, the first day, or even 100 years ago.

CLEARCHARGE

A Chain of Personal Bubbles in Space

a chain of personal bubbles in space:

"to common sense, or what assumptions everyone has to make, solipsism seems almost absurd, those afflicted grotesquely delusional. what's worse, if not true, if there were many minds, not just one, in reality, it's extremely embarrassing. i mean, it's like, too bad she's crazy, she's thinks she's the only one and doesn't believe i'm real, i'm supposed to be like a figment of her imagination or something. or he's a solipsist, he thinks he's God, only less powerful."

"well, it's not that hard. that's why you have to consider all the possibilities. either it's one mind only or at least two, right? though, on the balance of probability and all that, and what it seems, if it's more than one, it's got to be many, surely? but let's not get into what exactly is a mind by definition, what they have in common and if each mind is unique could you really consider there to be more than one? that's a mind boggler in itself."

"yeah, someone who can think independently, ok, to an extent, i mean, is there any real independence if everything is connected?"

"that's a whole other question. but yes, a mind can think. but how to visualize space? how connected is everything or everyone? i mean, it's like, i think things like other person at 80 degrees mark 7, four light years away, that is, again assuming that everyone is fixed in position in space, that nobody really moves."

"yeah, if space were densely packed, like thick vegetable soup or something, there would be like billions of ways people are connected, right? but what if it weren't? what if everyone was, like, in their own personal bubble space and there were chains of bubbles, different people, connecting people together?"

"so you could be the bubble next to mine or you could be 20 bubbles down the chain. it's like six degrees of separation, sort of."

"only the completely real, nothing could be more real, version. i mean it could look like a diagram of the world wide web or something more complicated, there could be clusters, there could be sections only connected by one link, there could be multiple ways two personal bubble spaces were connected. and so on."

"great. but i'm imagining it now and i'm thinking what if you could move your personal bubble to another personal bubble?"

"that's just the illusion created by light and time. my theory is that nobody moves. you'd think, in the end, you'd have a fair idea who your neighbours were, at least, you've got to know them better than someone 1000 degrees of real separation away."

"well communication is a wonderful thing, the internet, the press. but i guess you're right. where does this image of bubbles come from? i guess it's from blowing soap bubbles as a kid."

CLEARCHARGE