I think the problem with that assumption is that a simulation would have to represent every bit of information under simulation. From the perspective of a human being, most of the universe could be simulated only at a very high level of abstraction - there’s no need to maintain the state of every subatomic particle in a star in a neighboring galaxy, for instance.
The argument presented above rules out a infinite chain of simulations inside simulations. It may still be possible to have a finite chain of simulations, where the fidelity successively decreases. At some point down the chain the simulation can't have enough capacity anymore to contain conscious beings, which wonder, whether they live in a simulation.
I think that maybe brings in a question of if you should assume a piece of information say the existence of this 't' is uncorrelated with being simulated or not. If not than I think it can be shown that it's probability of being part of a simulation is just equal to the fraction of information in the universe that's dedicated to simulations which I think most people would imagine is less than 50% given the knowledge that that space has a max information capacity. I do admit that you might think information associated with consciousness is more common in simulations than out, but idk, also maybe not. Personally I find the particular set of facts I'm presented with to not seem particularly simulated. My life isn't particularly interesting and I think most information in the kinda of limited resolution simulation you're imagining should have unusually high value of some kind.
This would only be true if the arrow of time only moves toward the future. If it also moved backwards, even in a greatly limited manner, you wouldn't need to track everything. You'd basically have infinite storage for a finite amount of data.
The second law of thermodynamics creates the arrow of time, only pointing to the future right? And aren't all other laws of physics time symmetrical? What explains these laws co-existing better than it being part of a simulation?
The simulations aren't nested, they're simultaneous and all under one hypervisor! Maybe one of my old Qubes laptops is running the second layer of the simulation - I should probably turn it back on.
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I think the problem with that assumption is that a simulation would have to represent every bit of information under simulation. From the perspective of a human being, most of the universe could be simulated only at a very high level of abstraction - there’s no need to maintain the state of every subatomic particle in a star in a neighboring galaxy, for instance.
The argument presented above rules out a infinite chain of simulations inside simulations. It may still be possible to have a finite chain of simulations, where the fidelity successively decreases. At some point down the chain the simulation can't have enough capacity anymore to contain conscious beings, which wonder, whether they live in a simulation.
I think that maybe brings in a question of if you should assume a piece of information say the existence of this 't' is uncorrelated with being simulated or not. If not than I think it can be shown that it's probability of being part of a simulation is just equal to the fraction of information in the universe that's dedicated to simulations which I think most people would imagine is less than 50% given the knowledge that that space has a max information capacity. I do admit that you might think information associated with consciousness is more common in simulations than out, but idk, also maybe not. Personally I find the particular set of facts I'm presented with to not seem particularly simulated. My life isn't particularly interesting and I think most information in the kinda of limited resolution simulation you're imagining should have unusually high value of some kind.
This would only be true if the arrow of time only moves toward the future. If it also moved backwards, even in a greatly limited manner, you wouldn't need to track everything. You'd basically have infinite storage for a finite amount of data.
The second law of thermodynamics creates the arrow of time, only pointing to the future right? And aren't all other laws of physics time symmetrical? What explains these laws co-existing better than it being part of a simulation?
Or even just passed thru from the base world.
The simulations aren't nested, they're simultaneous and all under one hypervisor! Maybe one of my old Qubes laptops is running the second layer of the simulation - I should probably turn it back on.