Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch (They'll-Believe-Anything Alert)

New York Times ^ | 8/14/2007 | John Tierney

[mojito]

Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.

But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.

You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.

[mountn man]

Prime Designer = Good and a reasonable idea. God = Archaic, ridiculous idea worthy of scorn.

That pretty much sums up todays liberal mindset.

[boop]

"Amazing what people will think up to avoid confessing a belief in God"

I particularly enjoyed the atheist scientist arguing that life was created on Earth by an "alien". God created=impossible. Alien created=scientific postulate.

[boop]

LOL on that clip. Didn’t Spock say: “could a WOMAN take THIS?”

[Tenniel2]

"... a hard-wired sense of vulnerability instilled at birth along with a strong desire to please that which threatens us ..."

Yep, that explains all those poor wee sleekit tim'rous cowerin' Muzzie beasties, falling all over themselves to please the infidels.

My personal strong desire is to stomp the everlovin' r**f*** out of that which threatens me and mine, thankyouverymuch.

[goldstategop]

I remember watching Star Trek TNG "Lighting In A Bottle" - at the end, Captain Picard muses that the holographic university to which Dr. Moriarity and his lover have been placed is for all extents and purposes, a "real" universe. That brings us to our own existence. Are we characters living in someone else's dream? Its a fascinating question. What is the nature of reality and what is the nature of illusion? As the episode illustrates, the answer to those questions seem to be a matter of perspective.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus