I don’t understand how the assumption that we are living in a simulation which is so convincing as to be indistinguishable from a non-simulation is any more useful than the Boltzmann brain, or a brain in a vat, or a psychedelic trip, or that we’re all just the fantasy of the boy at the end of St. Elsewhere: since, by virtue of being a convincing simulation it has no characteristic which knowingly distinguishes it from a non-simulation. In fact some of those others would be more useful if true, because they would point to phenomena which would better explain the world.
How are the other examples not compatible? What fact could only necessarily be true in a simulation but not on a psychedelically induced hallucination? Or a fever dream? What do you mean “look up close” close to what exactly?
I don’t understand how the assumption that we are living in a simulation which is so convincing as to be indistinguishable from a non-simulation is any more useful than the Boltzmann brain, or a brain in a vat, or a psychedelic trip, or that we’re all just the fantasy of the boy at the end of St. Elsewhere: since, by virtue of being a convincing simulation it has no characteristic which knowingly distinguishes it from a non-simulation. In fact some of those others would be more useful if true, because they would point to phenomena which would better explain the world.
How are the other examples not compatible? What fact could only necessarily be true in a simulation but not on a psychedelically induced hallucination? Or a fever dream? What do you mean “look up close” close to what exactly?