by hn-0001 on 4/23/22, 11:14 PM with 9 comments
by benlivengood on 4/24/22, 12:27 AM
Except that drugs and blunt trauma have direct impact on our experience. So a BIV would need some additional poking and prodding to mimic what would happen to the simulated brain. What happened to BIV's who got simulated lobotomies, for example?
And if we posit that the simulation adjusts the actual brain in the vat accordingly then it becomes the general full-simulation argument, not BIV.
by robbedpeter on 4/24/22, 3:51 AM
So is the important part of the question whether reality is being modified by a man in the middle? You end up exactly where you are already, having to answer the same questions about where you are in Plato's cave, so unless you have evidence to think you're in a simulation, the simplest explanation is that there's no filter between you and reality except the limits of your senses and cognitive capacity.
This is the same argument about living in the matrix. You can't assume that the option of us not being brains in vats is available. You'd have to explain what a brain not in a vat would look like - something entirely made of computronium, in a configuration radically different than our hodgepodge evolved meat suits look like. It's more likely that we're simulated and tricked to think we have brains and bodies than for us to be physically different, and stuck in a Matrix all unaware.
I'll stick with the simplest explanation that satisfies all available evidence. We're all brains in bone vats riding around meat suits for adventure and exploration.