VR and the multiverse

[Nearly Sane]

Not really a new idea but tied more closely in to VR than is usual. As with many such ideas, you end up with the same place as solipsism. 'so what?'

http://m.nautil.us/issue/46/balance/virtual-reality-poses-the-same-riddles-as-the-cosmic-multiverse

[Sriram]

Know Thyself!  Identify the Inner Self and you know reality!

[Enki]

Which suggests that there could be many realities, each one appertaining to any individual who identifies his/her 'inner self'.

[Nearly Sane]

Which suggests that there could be many realities, each one appertaining to any individual who identifies his/her 'inner self'.

and assumes there is an Inner Self as part of reality

[Enki]

Indeed!

[torridon]

Know Thyself!  Identify the Inner Self and you know reality!

If we are in a simulation, then the Inner Self is a fabrication of the simulator, and not real. We probably could not easily discern that we are in a simulation.  As it is, even if we are not inside some grand cosmic simulation, all our normal experience anyway is a kind of virtual reality. We all have an intuition of direct experience of reality, but that is a false intuition. Look at the computer screen in front of you; we think we are seeing it, but we aren't, all sensory experience feels real but it is all internal mental fabrication and not the real thing. We live our entire lives with a VR headset on that we cannot remove in order to experience reality directly.  Maybe this means that 'direct experience' is in fact a meaningless notion. The only form that experience can take is that of derivative fabrication.

[Udayana]

"We"? If you are in a simulation, VR or an actual reality you can't assume "us others" are anything than aspects of yourself -  as NS suggested, it's a solipsism.  How many realities are left after a pass of Occam's razor?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

A simulation could have pop ups from the simulator.