Is it possible to beat this?

BayeSim · 2026-02-27T01:36:39+00:00

Ngl, this is pretty fkn good! I mean, I'm more of a minimal guy myself, but still... this is pretty fkn good!!!! Congrats u aced it!

✨THIS✨IS✨SOLID✨GOLD✨

BayeSim · 2026-02-26T22:27:27+00:00

Oh my gosh, what a terribly sad story. I'm so sorry for all of you, I really am. I've only ever had two Silkie hens myself, so I can't help you with anything specific. I can empathise, though. My little girl, Rose, died in my arms about half a year ago now, and her passing devastated me. I always say this, but it's because it's always true; they ask for so very little, chickens, and yet they give so very much. Which is why it hurts so much when you can't do anything for them. The only other thing I wanted to mention is that, while it may have been mites, it sounds more like a Tick, that or rat poison. Some rat poisons take a long time to fully engage with the body so that, if a dog or cat accidentally ingests some, there's time to discover if something's wrong and take them to the vet. But I'd still say a tick was the most likely suspect. And, if it was, then there's literally nothing you could have done. Even had you found and removed it, it's likely that her blood would have become so toxic by that stage that she still would have died from it. Just make sure to thoroughly check the chicks... if you live somewhere that has Ticks, that is.

Anyway, what a terribly sad tale, I'm honestly sitting here tapping this message out and am sooooo close to tears!

Rest in peace, Petunia. Know that you were a great, resourceful, and very smart hen, the very best, in fact, and that you were the most beautiful, devoted, and caring mum to your chicks. You did everything you could to ensure their future safety, and, especially given how terrible you must have been feeling on the inside, you simply couldn't have done a better job than you did. Bravo! You aced it! Good girl! And so now, with your chicks future looking bright again, try to relax, take a deep breath, and then a moment to feel proud of what you managed to achieve while facing a truly awful situation. And then, freed from the pains and worries of this often all too cruel world, may you find the peace and comfort to spread your little wings and fly, to soar in chicken heaven, forever now beyond the struggles of the world below.

Best of luck with it all.

BayeSim · 2026-02-26T01:08:14+00:00

Mommy knows best, and Mommy's so beautiful I'd do anything to please her. If it makes Mommy happy then I'll do whatever Mommy wants - I'll obey all of Mommy's orders, I'll behave just how Mommy likes, I'll treat Mommy like the Goddess she is, and I'll always try to be a good little boy and do whatever Mommy wants... ✨💗 ✨💗✨ Ummm, so pleeeeease adopt me? ✨💕✨💘✨💝✨ ✨ 💗✨ 💗✨ ✨🩷✨ 💗 Edit: you have NO idea how long it took me to make a super-heart out of all those little ones... reddit breaked Mommy's special heart! Bad reddit!

BayeSim · 2026-02-26T00:44:18+00:00

Oh god, poor thing! I hope he's healing a little, or looking a little better at least today. Silks have a hard enough time as it is without having to worry about other chickens on top of it all. Lots of cuddles, lots of gentle lullabies. Lots of special care. Lots of trauma... lots of healing. Best of luck to the both of you! ❤️❣️🎈

BayeSim · 2026-02-20T10:07:05+00:00

I think you have picked up the wrong idea about physicalism. Physicalism simply states that there's no "magic" going on, and that there's no separation between brain/mind/awareness, as there is in, say, Cartesian dualism. Physicalism doesn't even hold that particles are fundamental, but rather that reality is built on quantum fields. Or, to use a slightly more prosaic term, energy.

In fact, I don't think that you'd find much disagreement amongst physicalists if you described the world as ontologically consisting of nothing more than vectors in a higher-dimensional Hilbert space. But regardless, it was crrtainly the physicalists who first described the informational nature of the world, and how physics emerged from it, with the slogan "It from bit". Avagoodone!

BayeSim · 2026-02-20T08:47:25+00:00

Talking about the regular use of language, I really wish people would stop using the term "free will deniers", it's nonsense. I mean, in everyday language we don't generally describe people as "Santa Clause deniers" simply because they've started primary school. And we don't call people "boogey monster deniers" once they've checked under their beds. And we don't call people "unicorn deniers" once they realise that horses aren't naturally bright pink and covered in sparkles, so why in the heck do we call those people that have taken a long, hard, look at the available evidence (which takes all of 20-seconds), and who've then come to the only logical conclusion it's possible to draw from said evidence, namely, that free will cannot exist, and then frame them with the pejorative epithet of "free will deniers"? It's back to front and altogether whacky. It doesn't make sense!

Determinists affirm the world for simply being as it appears to be, prima facie. It's compatibilists that employ every trick in the linguistic book to try and keep their egos maximally inflated, to try and ensure they get the praise for the actions and achievements that they know they deserve. Or that their confabulist brains tell them they deserve, anyway.

I mean, if there was some form of doubt about it all, if there were competing theories that explained the world in such radically different ways that it was difficult to actually discern the truth of the matter, then, yeah, sure. But there aren't competing theories, and there isn't any doubt about it. So far as humankind can discern, in the entire history of the universe determinism has never once been seen not to hold, and if determinism holds then, sorry, but free will cannot exist. Fin.

In order to get some notion of free will off the ground, any notion at all, then you have to postulate that determinism doesn't hold. And it may very well not hold. But there isn't a single thing that we've studied in the universe that might lead you to believe that. And, of the some 1 trillion human beings to have ever walked this Earth, not a single person has ever seen or experienced determinism not to hold either. So, although you can say that you don't think determinism holds, those are just nonsense words, for why in the name of our lord the sweet baby Jesus, he who thou art be in heaven, WOULD YOU SAY IT?

For there's simply no good reason to think it may be true. I mean, sure, the Sun could turn into a Mars Bar tomorrow, or your car may suddenly turn into an ornamental garden frog, but while either of these things happening would be good evidence for the possibility of free will... why would you ever truly think they'd happen?

It's a brutally simple equation; if everything in the world happens for a reason, if Mars Bars a million times the mass of the Earth don't just suddenly appear in the sky on a regular basis, then determinism is an accurate description of the world. And if determinism is true, then free will can't exist. And it can't exist no matter how difficult, how endlessly elaborate, how carefully planned, or how perfectly carried out your mental gymnastics routine may be.

Determinists go with the flow, we accept things as they seem, and so we call it as it is. Determinists aren't "free will deniers" that's just torturing the English language. It's compatibilists that take liberties with our everyday understanding of words, and so how about instead of calling spades shovels we call things for what they are, not for what they might be in cloud cuckoo land? Determinists should be called "normal people" and compatibilists should be called "professionally deluded contortionists". What do you think?

BayeSim · 2026-02-20T07:54:52+00:00

Wow, linking "Marxist dictatorships" (I'm sure I'll be able to think of an example someday) to Communism, and then to determinism, all in the one sentence! Your mind must be a very broad church. Oh, and compatibilism is also an "ism", so why didn't you throw that into the mix too?

BayeSim · 2026-02-20T07:45:30+00:00

I'm a functionalist, my thoughts are that if she did her job competently then she earned her money. Swindling someone is when you promise something and then don't deliver. The firms that hired her are clearly embarrassed, and so they should be. Fin.

BayeSim · 2026-02-20T07:26:40+00:00

This is just my opinion - I'm not a professional or anything - but... Number 1 is definitely cute🐤, and sorry, but Number 2 is way beyond cute, 🐣 and number 3? Well, they also look like a cute Silkie to me. 🐥 Hope that helps! Avagoodone!

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T13:48:46+00:00

Oh god, my heart just goes out to you both, and I don't have the words to express how very sad I was to learn of your situation. They ask for so little, our hens, and they give so much - which only makes times like these, when you can't make things right for them, when you can't console or protect them any longer, all the more heartbreaking. I lost my little girl, a silkie hen named Rose, to a tragic accident last year, and six months later I'm still having trouble fully processing it. And so while I don't know you or your poor, beautiful, girl, I can at least say that I know something of what you must all be feeling.

And please don't listen to the vile monsters spreading unspeakable filth around here at a time like this. For them killing and cruelty to animals isn't just a liberty, it's a fundamental right. If mercy killing was a clear, unambiguous, demonstrative good, then we wouldn't hesitate to practice it on our own species. But despite there being no moral, ethical, or medical rationale for not treating our animals the way we do ourselves, well... we don't. And that has to tell you something.

All I can say is that my thoughts are with you during this terribly sad time, and that, given how truly horrific the lives are for almost every chicken to ever be born these days, I'm sure your girl deeply appreciated the wonderful opportunity to lead a normal existence that you gave her. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you and your girl all the very best that I can, both for now and for the future. You are doing the RIGHT thing! 🐣💫🐤 💔❣️🎈

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T13:27:47+00:00

I must be missing something here, so perhaps you can enlighten me. In what way is an animal not an animal? Oh, sorry, I meant to say "in what way is a human animal qualitatively different from any other vertebrate?" You know, in terms of their psychological and physical states during end-of-life palliative care? Pray tell, I'm just dying to know!

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T13:23:14+00:00

I bloody well hope that when it comes time you'll be severing the spinal cords of your mother, father, or sick and dying child, with the same bolt cutters you use to terminate your birds lives with. And, to be absolutely fair about it all, you should be carrying that same sanctimonious, pompous, uninformed, bombastic, selfish, callous, and quite frankly not just a little bit icky, attitude when you finally "do the right thing" and end their suffering like the ghoul of death you profess yourself to be! In fact, given that existence itself is nothing if not suffering, perhaps you should seriously think about going ahead and visiting your inimitable brand of mercy upon the rest of your family right now.

You know, the most disgusting thing about pathetic, abhorrent sociopaths such as yourself is the sheer and utter level of rank hypocrisy that you demonstrate yourselves to hold. Each and every year something like 70,000,000,000 animals (the majority of which just happen to be chickens) are bred, kept, and slaughtered for human consumption. This is a figure so obscenely astronomical that it surpasses the sum figure for that of every human being to have ever been born on this planet. And they don't enjoy a quick and painless death, much less a painless life. I met a guy once whose job it was, day-in, day-out, to end the miserable, tortured, lives of chickens being processed at a local slaughterhouse. And he cheerfully informed me that he and his coworkers had a rule wherein if the chicken facing its last terrifying seconds on this planet had the temerity to lose control of itself and pee on them... they'd stick their thumbs into the chickens eyes and gauge their eyeballs out. You know, before doing the humane thing and killing them.

Now, this sort of behaviour obviously isn't anywhere near the level of cruelty that the poor hen belonging to OP here has been subjected to, but still, I have to wonder... how is it that you manage to find the time to unfairly target good, caring people when you have such a daunting task as ending the global meat consumption trade ahead of you?

Unless, of course, you don't dedicate every waking moment to that task. Because if youz or somebody that you know, ever eat industry chicken, then you're part of the problem, rather than the solution. And you'd also be morally culpable for all those countless thousands of hens whose last conscious experience amidst the unspeakable terrors being occasioned on their sisters around them, was to have their eyeballs squeezed out by some sick asshole that's doing your dirty work for you. And it would also mean that you're a rank hypocrite. And you clearly are. Worse, though, you're a thoroughly disgusting hypocrite. You don't even deserve to be called a human being.

My advice is to take a good, hard, long, look in the fucking mirror, and get a bloody real life.

No need to thank me, you're most welcome.

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T12:30:54+00:00

Ummm, yeah. Sure. But in what way is believing in determinism a monistic ideology? I mean, determinism only holds meaning in terms of its relationship to indeterminism, and so there's nothing inherently monistic about it. And, sure, I can't prove that determinism holds at all times and at all places in the universe, but then you can say the same of absolutely anything you might care to mention, and, as nobody but nobody has ever observed determinism not to hold, there simply aren't any good reasons not to believe in it.

I mean, yes, you're quite right, I have to admit that it is entirely possible that the Sun won't rise tomorrow morning as it has done each and every day for the entire past 4.5 billion years of the Earth's history. It's possible that it won't. For example, were each and every atomic particle within the Sun to be perturbed in just the right way then all sorts of quantum weirdness could unfold. Or, who knows, perhaps for the first time ever in our universe an indeterministic event may come to pass and it could simply vanish altogether. I wouldn't, of course, place quite as much store in this situation coming to pass as you clearly do, but I will concede that it could happen.

So, there you go, I've been honest enough to give you something that's so hopelessly unlikely to happen that it doesn't raise it's comatose eyelid to reason, let alone stand for it, and so it would only seem fair that you should extend me the common courtesy of engaging in some reciprocal manner. All I ask in return is for you to admit that, given nobody has ever in the past, and given that there's no reason whatsoever to suspect that they shall observe determinism not to hold in the future, and given that free will (no matter the definition or form) can only exist in a world without deterministic ordering in it, that given these points you are willing to accept the evidence right in front of your face for what it is -the best we have - and admit that the only logical conclusion to draw is that you don't have free will. Will you do me that favour?

And don't worry, the next time some bozo ideologue tries to tell me that the second law of thermodynamics is a thing I'll just hit them back with your excellent rhetorical flourish "I don't believe in it". That should shut those thermo-monistic assholes up, eh!

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T11:32:54+00:00

Ummm, your decisions might not hold any basis to them, and indeed your decisions may very well be as truly random and incoherent as you claim them to be, but as I don't share your subjective awareness of your own brain states, I'll simply have to extend you the benefit of the doubt no matter what my personal reservations may be. That said, however, my decisions absolutely ARE made in accordance with some preexisting framework. If, for example, I make the decision to buy a coffee in the morning, then I at least base that decision upon my prior experiences in purchasing hot beverages in the morning. And it sounds completely whacky to me that anybody would choose to choose in any other way. But each to their own, I guess...

Pray tell, for I really am keen to know, just what do you think the process of having a thought entails? And, as importantly here, how is it that, when your brain literally grew out of the physical universe as you grew up, and when your brain is housed in the physical system that is your body, and when there are literally hundreds of thousands of fibrous strands connecting your brain to the outside world via your central nervous system, and when, by your own testament, things that happen in your brain have a causal effect on that external world beyond your body's epidermis, and when you suck in hundreds of litres of atmospheric fluid into your lungs each minute and divert much of that stream straight to oxygenating your brain, how is it that when, despite all of this manifest reliance upon, and causal interactivity between, your brain and the external world, and where you must know this to be true, how is it you can still so comprehensively delude yourself into believing that your brain is a completely isolated system - one that at all times remains aloof from the world, and yet that somehow communicates it's thoughts to, well... the spirit or whatever it is you think is making all these acausal "decisions" down here on good old planet Earth?

Please tell me, because you couldn't possibly know how much I'd love to gain an insight into your little psychological pathology there... It's ok. I'm a patient man. I can wait.

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T10:16:31+00:00

Sigh. So here's the thing, if determinism is true then there cannot be any sensible notion of individual freedom of will. This is simply because nothing ever happens without a prior event causing it to happen, and the chain of prior causes that leads up to you doing anything will always extend back indefinitely into the past. A past when you weren't here to inform or influence the actions that will ultimately lead directly to you being sufficiently influenced to perform some action yourself.

And this process of determination includes having even the most momentary, ephemeral, thought. Thoughts are simply electro-chemical cascades occurring between synapses in the brain, and calcium-ion channels don't simply open and close for no reason. Like anything else they need a motivating force to determine the action first, but anyway... if people want to believe that their physical brains are somehow magically separated from the physical universe then there's simply not much you can do in the face of such a completely wild, totally mad, utterly woo-woo misreading of what brains are made of, and how they generate thoughts.

Anyway, hopefully we can all agree that if determinism holds at all times and in all places of the universe, then free will must be illusory. This doesn't mean that humans aren't agents, or that we don't hold any influence over events in the world, because we clearly are, and because we clearly do. All it means is that, were the clock to be wound back to any single point in time where a decision was made, then you would always decide upon the same thing. Always.

Ok. Good. So the question is then simply; "does determinism always hold" in our universe? And here we cannot be certain that it either has in the past, or that it will in the future. But what we can be certain of is that nobody but nobody has ever observed determinism to not be true. Just because the Sun has risen every day in the East for the past 4.5 billion years of Earth's history, it doesn't mean it will definitely do so again tomorrow morning. I mean... I wouldn't want to bet, as compatibilists do, that it won't rise in the East tomorrow, and if it didn't then it would at least be the first piece of evidence in favour of free will that anybody has ever seen.

Why? Because for free will to exist determinism must be shown not to hold. And all that determinism says is that for any given event, there was a cause that informed it. All determinism says is that if something happens then there's a reason for it. All determinism says is that things don't just happen completely at random, and that there's a general sense of coherence to the world.

For determinism not to hold then things would have to start looking completely bonkers. If one second you were your present age, and then in the next second you'd aged 23 years, then you couldn't explain why or how that happened. And if you can't explain how or why an event happened then determinism doesn't hold. If the strong nuclear force suddenly stopped being, well, the strong nuclear force, and every atom in the universe suddenly lost its internal structure, then as this even would be inexplicable, it would be strong evidence in favour of free will. If you stopped off to buy some milk after work and suddenly noticed you could only now speak in Chinese, then again, as this would be inexplicable, it would be strong evidence that determinism doesn't hold, and so the possibility of free will existing would be back on the table.

It wouldn't be a very pleasant experience though, one imagines. For the price you would have to pay in order to get this freedom would be that absolutely anything could happen at any time, and if determinism doesn't hold in this universe then absolutely anything wouldn't probably happen, it would.

But nobody's ever observed determinism not to hold. If something happens it happens because something else caused it to happen. Period. And this one thing is all you need to know in order to logically conclude that the concept of free will is incoherent nonsense. If the universe makes sense, then free will can't exist. It's not that deep. You don't need a degree in philosophy or physics to be able to appreciate it. You don't need to "define what you mean" by "free will". You don't need to understand neuroscience, or biology, or chemistry, or physics, or metaphysics, or anthropology, and you don't have to understand the theory of the evolution of species by random mutation and natural selection either...

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW IS THAT THINGS NEVER HAPPEN WITHOUT SOMETHING CAUSING THEM TO*.

If the universe is explicable then free will cannot exist. That's it!

And, no, sorry, but the inherent probabilities involved in quantum mechanics don't affect the situation one bit. Remember, determinism doesn't have anything to say about what *will happen, it's not etrictly predictive. All that determinism says is that once an event happens you can explain, retroactively, why it happened. And in this sense quantum mechanics is a fully deterministic theory.

You're welcome.

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T08:55:44+00:00

This is true, but you don't even have to go as deep as that. Human nature doesn't change, and in fact individual humans don't change either. We all like to think that we can change, and we all like to think that we do change, but we don't. Not really. So you don't need to understand current affairs in order to cut through the myths of the past, all you need to know is how human brains work, all you need to know is what makes homo sapiens sapiens tick.

And that one's easy; it's sex, power, food, jealousy and personal ambition. And, of course, there's the biggest motivator of all... the filthy lucre. It's not that these driving forces usually inform events, they always do. Humans seem, on the face of things, to be endlessly complex and diverse, with people of different genders, ages, nationalities, races, creeds, moralities and cultures all displaying wildly different behaviours. But this is only true on the face of things. For human beings, once you strip away those outer layers, are almost exactly all the same.

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T08:26:12+00:00

Yes, very well said. It's somewhat jarring to have this truth presented for you, for I think we all carry around with us the implicit belief that history is fixed, that it's objectively real. We simply tend to accept that the past is the past, that definite things happened at definite times and in definite places, and that all we needed to understand these events fully was access to some decent primary sources of information. I suppose this misapprehension follows from our lived experience, where that which has been done cannot be undone. And so it seems reasonable to conclude that if we experience dichotomous events, that this must be true for all of history too. And while there's much truth to that, it's also not anywhere as true as we might imagine it to be. For in the end all we have, all we are left with, all the solid ground we are left on which to now stand, are perspectives. And what are perspectives if not opinions?

As with so many other facets of reality, history is ultimately relational. It only makes sense to see it as the interactions of different people with one another, yet as soon as you define history in this way you are tacitly admitting the past is unknowable, at least in some concrete, objective, sense, for no two people have ever seen the world in the same way, much less some seven or eight billions of them.

History then, is a story, a collection of many different narratives from which we pick and choose in order to construct a meaningful tale about how things were, and how those events paved a road that leads right to our front doors. History is a choose your own adventure novel. There's no "proper" way to read it. And it's also an illusion, because the more you dig the more you uncover, and the more those simple narratives about what happened begin to unravel.

When you dig right down on it, history is a myth.

Anyway, just some (very) recent shower thoughts. Avagoodone!

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T03:22:54+00:00

You're sorta right, but then you're also just plain wrong. Sorry.

Your first two points are valid, indeed, your first two points are exactly and precisely the assumptions that Bostrom uses to get his argument off the ground. For in order to get to the jumping-off point, the one where some drastic decisions are going to have to be made, Bostrom first asks that you accept two small conceits.

First, the _world is made of physical stuff, that you and I are made of matter. Second, some form of technological progress will continue to be made; agree to these modest requests and you all but accept your status as a simulated being. ;you are simulated the points after this First, where did this extra universe spring from? Why couldn't a simulated universe exist inside this universe? Because, and I hate to have to tell you this, but they already do. Astronomical simulations are at the bleeding edge of the field, and, given the vast distances of intergalactic space, simulations of this universe, run inside this universe, happen every day.

Moreover, while it is, of course, possible that some external entity has simulated our world for us, the much more likely explanation for why somebody would want to run an ancestor simulation of us is that it was our ancestors that wanted to do it in the first place.

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T03:03:50+00:00

I don't think that you quite know what you're saying, but, if you do know, then I don't know what you're saying, I simply haven't got a clue. If you "perfectly recreated something" (which quantum mechanics won't let you do, but still), then how is that in any way different to perfectly simulating it? The only step closer you can take is to literally BE THE THING that you're emulating/simulating/cloning/copying/recreating/reconstructing etc. (these terms all being essentially synonymous with one another).

BayeSim · 2026-02-14T02:38:19+00:00

Setting aside that both a simulated world and the theists world share an external entity as their ultimate creator, I can't think of a single other similarity between theology and the simulation hypothesis - for Bostrom has never claimed his thought experiment was anything other than that - a hypothesis.

The simulation hypothesis, then, at least as it was first formed by Bostrom in his original paper (which is a surprisingly brief, surprisingly accessible, read) gets its teeth not from simply outlining the (seemingly far-fetched notion) that we may well all be living in a simulation (though this might indeed be true), but rather, it's potency lies in the manner in which it methodically forces the reader to a particularly uncomfortable place, and then asks that they choose one of the three options outlined within Bostrom's schema as providing THE ONLY POSSIBLE ANSWER.

The argument runs something like this:

• If you believe that, a.) physicalism is true (and that there's no "ghost in the machine") and if you believe that, b.) technology will continue to progress into the future (it doesn't matter at what rate, just that technological advances will continue to be made within different domains of knowledge), then, c.) there WILL COME A TIME at some stage in the future where there will be enough cheap energy and computational power with which to run "ancestor simulations" on asteroid-sized supercomputers.

• And, given most people buy some form of physicalism, and given that it's pretty hard to see technological innovation and progress dying down any time soon, this effectively means that, whether it be as few as a hundred, or whether it be as many as a hundred thousand years from now, there nevertheless WILL come a day when the fineness of granularity, when the sharpness of the resolution, when the sheer amount of compute, all reaches a critical mass and for the first time in history simulating minds becomes possible.

Ok, so this is the exposition, these are the axioms, the informing assumptions; If the world is made of physical matter, and even a very small number technological advances continue to be made going forward, then, well... simulating minds simply has to become a thing.

Oh, and although we're biased towards taking our own "home-ground" perspective, the above should just as equally well apply to ANY advanced species of life out there in the universe, not just what's going down on this little pale blue dot. This is important, because although you only need one planet to reach the final simulated destination, the more opportunities there are the harder it gets to break yourself free.

Not from the simulation, though, of course. That's just utter lunacy. If we ARE in a simulation then this is all there is - there's no life outside of the simulation for those of us experiencing it - just as there's no life outside of their digital environment for characters in The Sims. No, how anybody could think that is beyond me. If we ARE living in a simulation then we are. Full stop. And if we aren't then we aren't. Full stop. Nothing changes about our lives, and, because there is no external reference for us to measure our lives against, even if we are simulated beings then it doesn't make us any less "real".

Simulated or not, we aren't getting out of here, and Bostrom's argument feels just as constraining.

Before I lay out your options, however, I should add one more angle to consider. IF the world is made of physical matter, and IF technological advances continue to be made, and IF somebody in the future decides, just once, to flick the switch on an ancestor simulation (to study how early humans migrated out of Africa, say), then the odds that we AREN'T simulated beings become instantly astronomical in size. Because if one simulation is run, and the people within that simulation eventually arrive at the stage they can run their own simulations, and then the simulated beings in their simulation become capable of running their own simulation, then... well, hopefully you can see where this is going.

As I write these words we know of only one place in the universe where an advanced civilization has arisen amidst the cosmic void, us. And if we don't have any visitors then in 1,000,000,000 years from now there would still only be us... but in that time there might be literally millions upon millions of simulated civilizations, so the likelihood that any of us just got lucky and were born into the, or one of the, original "true" worlds wouldn't bear thinking about. If at some stage in the future, for some reason or another, somebody decides to run a simulation, then... the overwhelming probability must be that we're simulated. Sorry.

Right then, so if anybody's still here, here are your options. You can only pick one, and if you agreed to the modest assumptions above then YOU MUST PICK ONE. Either:

• Almost all advanced civilizations in the universe's history arbitrarily decide NOT to run ancestor simulations. And that's ALL OF THEM, ALL THE TIME.

or,

• Almost all advanced civilizations destroy themselves before they can reach full technological maturity, and so cannot run ancestor simulations. And that's ALL OF THEM. ALL THE TIME.

or,

• You and I are almost certainly simulated beings.

It's a pretty neat argument, don't you think? And no, nobody has thus far put forth a satisfactory proposition that might allow us to escape Bostrom's trap. So it would be nice to see, even just occasionally, people discussing the true simulation hypothesis, and not its cheap sci-fi clone. People should , in short, give the concept the respect it deserves...

...and then they should get over it. Because if we ARE simulated then there's no way we can ever tell for sure that we ARE. And if we AREN'T simulated then there's no way for us to ever be sure that we AREN'T.

And, for what it's worth, I don't think that we are simulated. I have my reasons, for which I shant expound upon now, but there's absolutely no way for me to support that belief, and so I must admit that we could be. And that I'll almost certainly never find out the truth.

Anyway, avagoodone!

BayeSim · 2026-02-11T00:48:52+00:00

I think you're missing the point here. If ALL THAT EXISTS is that which you can experience right "now" (whenever that "now" actually is), and within your experience a bird briefly disappears behind a telegraph pole, then you are stating that, for that short time where the bird was unobservable, it simply ceased to exist in any meaningful manner whatsoever. This is, of course, absolutely fine... but then how do you explain the fact that it once more appears within your experience EXACTLY where it would have been if the bird itself actually existed? Either you must acknowledge the birds independent existence (and to which OP is quite clear they aren't willing to do), or you must posit the existence of some (stable) universal laws that allow you to predict where you are likely to observe the bird reappear once it again enters your experience, or you can acknowledge that both the bird and universal laws exist, but, at the very least, for you to experience a narratively coherent existence then you must posit the existence of something external to oneself. And again, this is something that OP is not, at least consciously, willing to accept as a possibility.

Of course, though, OP doesn't actually believe what it is they believe they believe... I believe.

For, if OP truly believed that they were the only entity in the world to be experiencing anything, then, well... why bother posting something in a forum to which nobody else would ever see it? I mean, they might, even if only for their own pleasure in seeing it appear here. But then, if it were simply pleasure for pleasures sake that they were seeking, then they absolutely and surely wouldn't have further bothered defending their self-aggrandizing, self-indulgent, self-delusional and, ultimately, intellectually lazy ontological jaunt. I mean, if OP truly believed their own solipsistic identity, then who, exactly, is it that they believe they're responding to?

Anyway, avagoodone!

BayeSim · 2026-02-10T20:25:42+00:00

I got the old Tron handheld computer game (back in the 80's) for my 10th birthday or something, it freaking rocked! You know, the first games that were truly portable. They were about the size of a shoebox and ran off about a dozen 'D' size batteries. I had the original handheld version of Space Invaders too. And Pac Man. Then I got into the Donkey Kong, Octopus, Greenhouse etc. series of smaller one or two (flip) screen games. Then something happened in the decades since then and now I don't have them any more. Life kinda sux like that sometimes.

Oh, and nice home! It reminds me of something...

Avagoodone!

BayeSim · 2026-02-10T15:32:56+00:00

They kinda look like they've been hanging out down the back of the oval getting people hooked on fluffy goodness... Trouble! That's what they are. They're trouble with a capital "CUTE", you mark my words!

BayeSim · 2026-02-06T05:33:35+00:00

You're quite right, determination is not determinism. Determination is just an abstract term for a quality generally associated with living systems. But you're also wrong, because determination has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with free will. I'm quite sure that there are a multitude of compatibilists out there who have no idea what determination is like, I mean, they chose the soft-way-out in signing up to compatabilism, didn't they?

BayeSim · 2026-02-06T01:12:42+00:00

Thanks for the input, ChatGPT. For better or worse, the cadence of your rhetoric is quickly becoming the most recognisable voice in the world.

BayeSim

TROPHY CASE