Tag Archives: virtual reality

November 2, 2019

Virtual Reality

I’ve seen objections that simulating a virtual reality is a difficult proposition. Many computer games, and a number of animated movies, illustrate that we’re very far along — at least regarding the visual aspects. Modern audio technology demonstrates another bag of tricks we’ve gotten really good at.

The context here is not a reality rendered on screen and in headphones, but one either for plugged-in biological humans (à la The Matrix) or for uploaded human minds (à la many Greg Egan stories). Both cases do present some challenges.

But generating the virtual reality for them to exist in really isn’t all that hard.

12 Comments | tags: Greg Egan, simulations, virtual reality | posted in Computers, Sci-Fi Saturday

October 6, 2018

Realism

By Wyrd Smythe

In debates (or even just discussions) people sometimes ask how we know the physical world is really there. A variation asks how we know that what we perceive as the real world is the same as what other people perceive. (One example of this is the inverted spectrum.)

The most accurate answer is: We don’t. Not for sure, anyway. There is at least one assumption built in, but it’s one we have to make to escape our own minds. According to ancient philosophical tradition, the only fact we know for sure is that we ourselves exist. (Although I think there’s an argument to be made about a priori knowledge.)

But, as with the excluded middle, accepting reality as an axiom seems almost necessary if we’re to move forward in any useful way.

2 Comments | tags: Cogito ergo sum, excluded middle, idealism, realism, reality, René Descartes, solipsism, virtual reality | posted in Philosophy

December 12, 2014

Reality IS Virtual (probably)!

By Wyrd Smythe

virtual reality One of the things I mentioned in my recent Material Disbelief post was that, if you accept everything physics has discovered in the last 100 years or so — and if you believe in philosophical materialism — you are faced with the very strong possibility that all of reality is some sort of simulation or machine process.

Not only does all the evidence, as well as some basic logic, seem to point in that direction, but as a model of reality it provides easy answers to many of the conundrums of modern physics (e.g. Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” and some basic questions regarding the Big Bang).

Today I want to lay out the details of the arguments for this.

31 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, Bell's Theorem, DisneyQuest, DNA, EPR paper, Leopold Kronecker, materialism, metaphysics, Philosophical materialism, physicalism, reality, simulations, virtual reality, Zeno's paradoxes | posted in Physics

November 16, 2014

Material Disbelief

By Wyrd Smythe

collision Two things collided. I saw Leon Wieseltier on The Colbert Report and was enthralled by his view of modern social life. That moved a friend of mine to look for other YouTube videos of Wieseltier. She posted a good one that then moved me to look at more. Bottom line, I ended up watching a fair bit of the man last week. Still enthralled.

Meanwhile, after my last post about religion and atheism, a reader commented that she found the article so balanced she couldn’t tell on which side I stood. As an agnostic, that’s the goal. Yet, in one of the videos, Wieseltier expresses an idea that really grabbed me.

It has to do with on which side of what line I stand.

57 Comments | tags: Dualism, Leon Wieseltier, materialism, Monism, Philosophical materialism, physicalism, reality, spirituality, teleology, The Colbert Report, virtual reality | posted in Religion, Sunday Sermons