Submitted by garden_frog t3_z1n43x in singularity
mootcat t1_ixc5kjh wrote
Reply to comment by Plenty-Today4117 in Expert Proposes a Method For Telling if We All Live in a Computer Program by garden_frog
What would lead you to believe this was an external glitch as opposed to one in your own brain?
Memory issues and perceived temporal distortions are common enough.
purple_hamster66 t1_ixddrdz wrote
Maybe, two cats?
In quantum class, students learn how to calculate the probability that a bullet will pass through a piece of paper without damage. (The answer is about 1 in 10^500, if you are curious). What is the probability that your cat did the same, thru the glass?
mootcat t1_ixdl64a wrote
What a remarkably sensible solution!
Plenty-Today4117 t1_ixenrl2 wrote
What is your opinion of scientists trying to prove we live in a simulation? Do you think they are insane?
purple_hamster66 t1_ixhzntx wrote
As Clinton once said: it depends on what your definition of “is” is.
There might be an absolute ground Truth (with a capital T) that is what is really happening. And there might be a number of other truths (lowercase) that have exactly the same math but are not real. Does it even matter to us? For example, we count apples, and add the counts to other counts. We don’t count the actual apples for the sum, but have a system that works 100% of the time; it is not really what is happening. Does that matter if the answer is right all the time?
Plenty-Today4117 t1_ixeni4j wrote
I didn't say it passed though glass.
purple_hamster66 t1_ixhzzer wrote
True, all you said is that it’s weird. Is it perception or reality, tho? (Or something else?)
I propose that it’s not reality.
teachMe t1_ixtjvez wrote
What is behind that calculation?
Bakoro t1_ixc7ely wrote
>Memory issues and perceived temporal distortions are common enough.
What makes you think that this is an internal glitch as opposed to a flaw in the world's programming?
If it's common enough, maybe that's a failure of the design of the system.
mootcat t1_ixcfv6x wrote
Occams Razor.
We have mountains of evidence of human brains/memories being inconsistent, fallible, malleable and overall untrustworthy, but very little of the laws of the universe adjusting to teleport cats.
Some people want to beleive in magic, ghosts, mysticism, God etc and that's fine, but to claim that they are reality with no factual backing is backwards.
Bakoro t1_ixclknj wrote
>We have mountains of evidence of human brains/memories being inconsistent, fallible, malleable and overall untrustworthy, but very little of the laws of the universe adjusting to teleport cats.
So you trust our inconsistent, fallible, malleable and overall untrustworthy brains when they deny the mystery of the teleporting cats?
How do you know that the answer isn't simply that cats are very good at covering their tracks? They're already well known for transcending the borders of life and death, what's a little teleporting?
Also, this is all a joke, since a few people seem to be taking me way too seriously.
WordsMort47 t1_ixcfpok wrote
The design- or not- of the human brain is far from perfect
Bakoro t1_ixckn2k wrote
I think you're missing the point. If you're questioning the foundation of reality itself, there's no way to logic your way out of it, because any argument you make can be flipped around and all blame can be placed on either side.
Plenty-Today4117 t1_ixc7glt wrote
Something like this has never happened to me before or since, and this was 4-5 years ago. My cat was near the glass wall. Then I turned around. When I turned back it was on the other side of the glass wall wanting to get back inside. There was no way it could get outside without me opening the door for it, but I did not open the door.
Also the glass wall was not horizontal to my viewpoint, so I could not confuse the cat being on the other side of it. The wall was edge side to me, so I saw the cat on the right where there was carpet and furniture, when I looked back it was outside on the left on concrete. It was broad daylight.
If I had experiences where I lost time and forgot doing things. I would have crashed my car years ago. I have not done that.
Eye witness accounts are good enough for a court of law. If someone says they saw a crime, the lawyers don't automatically question their sanity, unless the witness has a history of it. If the law did that, very few criminals would ever be convicted. This is outside your experience, so you think its crazy. That's okay. Its a normal reaction.
mootcat t1_ixcfc7j wrote
Our minds are extremely fallible. Eyewitness accounts are historically terrible and weighed very little in court.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_testimony
I get that what you perceived felt like reality to you, but doesn't it seem a bit extreme to assume that very laws of the universe are what glitched and not your own biology?
People hallucinate, misunderstand, misremember and have any number of faults in their perception everyday.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory
To you what you experienced is reality and that's totally fine. In the same way someone with a different neurology might see or hear something that I could not. That does not make that experience true at large.
BenjaminHamnett t1_ixd327m wrote
I’ve mis seen things. People hallucinate and survive their bad driving.
It’s more likely we’re in a properly functioning simulation and this dude mis saw something than for this to be proof that the sim malfunctioned
Plenty-Today4117 t1_ixeqwyn wrote
*Some* people hallucinate. I don't do recreational drugs, nor do I take prescribed drugs, nor does anyone in my family line have genetic predisposition to it. Hallucination is not something I do, but it might be something you do.
If you seriously believe what you are saying, you would not drive a car, nor cross any road, because you could be hallucinating.
Wikipedia is not a credible source. They used to fail students for using it. Its founder says its been hijacked by politically motivated people who use it to quote each other. But since you like Wikipedia so much here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Most_Published_Research_Findings_Are_False
purple_hamster66 t1_ixdczu3 wrote
The people who mis-see things and crash are less likely to survive to tell you about them. In any case, claiming you saw something that wasn’t there might be enough to get your license revoked, so why would people claim this in court?
PositiveWeapon t1_ixdo0i4 wrote
As others have said eye witness testimony is considered extremely unreliable in court. Our visual system takes up the largest area of our brain and uses a significant amount of energy. To save energy, the brain assumes a lot of things. If you were subconsciously expecting your cat to be inside, at a glance, it's entirely possible your brain put the cat there.
I'm not ruling it out, I think this is a simulation. But if there was a glitch, isn't it more likely the cat would be floating upside down or halfway through a wall or something? Given what we know about the brain it's far more likely to be an artifact of our brains energy saving feature.
Plenty-Today4117 t1_ixemqr8 wrote
Long term memory is unreliable. There was no long term memory involved here.
PositiveWeapon t1_ixerdki wrote
Vision is not 100% reliable.
You have a blind spot at all times. Do you notice it? No, because the brain fills it in with what it expects should be there.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-04-25-me-722-story.html
Lots of articles about the brains use of prediction to save energy, here's a random one: https://www.quantamagazine.org/to-be-energy-efficient-brains-predict-their-perceptions-20211115/
Watch some lectures on YouTube to really blow your mind. You need to understand you don't actually 'see' anything, ever. At all times you are viewing your brains reconstruction of its perception of the photons it collects. Yes, effectively the brain contains a graphics card ridiculously more sophisticated than anything we can create.
As for crossing the road, the goal is to keep you alive. You are far more likely to see something that isn't there than not see something that is there.
Plenty-Today4117 t1_ixex85g wrote
Dude... The cat was inside. I turned around for a second, then turned back and it was outside, in a place it could not get to, unless I put it there. I was shocked to see it outside, so I went outside, picked it up, and brought it inside.
What I remember is the shock that something in the world was not in the same place that I left it. This has never happened to me before or since. This is not rocket science. The people in this thread are over thinking it.
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