Simulation hypothesis and TGD

Heikki Hirvonen asked for my opinion about the simulation hypothesis. I must say that I find difficult to distinguish the simulation hypothesis of Boström from pseudoscience. It says nothing about physics It is not inspired by any problem nor does it solve any problem. And it only creates problems: for instance, who are the simulators and what physics they obey? We would be just computer programs. But how computer programs can be conscious: this is the basic problem of materialism. One can introduce a magic world "emergence" but it only puts the problem under the rug.

Some systems can of course create simulations of the external world and even themselves. Neuroscience talks about self model, which is a very real thing. Modern society is busily simulating the physical world and its activities. But this has nothing to do with Boström's hypothesis about a mysterious outsider as a simulator and ourselves as computer programs, who never can know who this mysterious simulator is (God of AI age).

It is however interesting to look whether the simulation hypothesis might have some analogies in TGD.

1. TGD predicts a hierarchy of field bodies as space-time surfaces which are counterparts of the Maxwellian and more general gauge fields. Field bodies are predicted to be conscious entities carrying phases of ordinary matter with a large value of effective Planck constants making the quantum coherent systems in large scales. They give rise to a hierarchy of conscious entities.

   For instance, EEG would communicate information from biological body to field body control signals from field body to biological body. In quantum biology field bodies serve as bosses or more like role models for the ordinary biomatter. If I am forced to talk about simulation, I would say that the biological body is a simulation of the magnetic body.

2. In TGD cognition has p-adic corelates as p-adic space-time surfaces. Cognitive representations correspond to their intersections with real space-time surfaces and consist of a discrete set of points in an extension of rationals. They could be called simulations since cognition is a conscious representation of the sensory (real) world. All physical systems would have at least rudimentary cognitive consciousness and would be performing these "simulations".

For the TGD view about Universe as a conscious quantum Platonia see this. For the TGD view of how computers could become conscious see this.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.