Cris_MirandaFor the past three years, Cris Miranda has been taking VR pioneers down the rabbit hole of thinking about the deepest philosophical implications of virtual reality on his Enter VR podcast. He has been seeking out the boundaries of our understanding of reality through these conversations, and much like Elon Musk concluded a few weeks ago, Cris has concluded that it’s most likely that we’re already living within a simulation.

I had a chance to sit down with Cris at the Silicon Virtual Reality Conference to explore some of these deeper thoughts about the nature of reality through simulation theory, our predictions for the future of VR, how artificial intelligence will be dismantling the structures of society, the role of VR in cultivating empathy and shared realities, and the overall information war over what the story of reality is and whether we’re going to take control over our own destiny or let someone else define it for us.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Kent Bye
  • samidge

    It is a quantum computer simulation containing algorithms that exist in a state of probability until measured and resolved. Energy and force, gravity, chaos, entropy, morphogenic / feedback behaviour etc.
    Multi-layered is correct. But is it infinite?
    We are emergent evolved “rendering machines”. Code within the code.
    Our brain process and interpret this quantum mathematical reality.
    We / AI will create simulations this century. The quantum framework will allow simulations to infinitely exist with one another. If the simulated environment “survives” life and further quantum machines will emerge.
    Time and scale are not impacted by the previous or next simulated layer.

  • kalqlate

    While surely A LOT of simulations from now until the foreseeable future will be of the current game variety but greatly, greatly advanced, MOST simulations will be of the Big Bang simulation type that grow a universe from simple rules.

    Why? Because they are simple, they can grow to be complex beyond any scale of a planned game, and finally, because such growth-from-a-seed simulations more accurately reflect our own universe.

    Further, in such simulations, the specific outcomes are unknown: such specifics as to whether intelligent life will occur. Such simulations also easily reflect Special Relativity, which implies all of time exists simultaneously–all moments are “now”. This is because time becomes a variable “t” of something like a universal wave equation. As an equation, all of its solutions exist, even if they aren’t computed. Time traversal for the creator is simply a matter of setting “t” (entropy) and other variables that account for time dilation, quantum fields, etc. Try that with a game-based simulation. You can’t. A game-based simulation of a particular great complexity has to be developed at a particular great complexity, even if fractals and such are employed.

    My reasoning is that Big Bang seed simulations are easier, reflect our own universe, and can grow into EXTREME complexity without much planning and effort at all. These will be the greater number of human or machine created simulations BY FAR. Therefore, if we are in a simulation, it is most probably not a complex, planned VR type but a computed and evolved-from-a-seed type.

    Do a Google search for “big bang simulation”. With steady advancements in conventional and quantum computing, these simulations will be able to be computed to ever-increasing levels of detail… all the way to computing intelligent life on a planet… all the way to computing individual life forms with brains.

    • kalqlate

      A video of a Big Bang simulations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY0bKE10ZDM.

    • 999

      I agree with you, though unless the simulation is both entropic and negentropic in balance I doubt anything resembling life could ever emerge. I think of it more as “the big cycle” than “the big bang” (which I feel, by only acknowledging the entropic side of the coin, reflects the polarization of materialism and patriarchy). “Big bang” is like considering centrifugal motion but ignoring centripetal. A simulation modeling negentropy can produce self-organization.

      • kalqlate

        Agreed. I don’t know if has been officially concluded yet, but I believe cosmologists and physicists currently conclude that the laws of nature work forward and backward in time; therefore, our most commonly discussed Big Bang universe is also negentropic. Whether it is spoken of as Big Cycle seems mostly a matter of convention.

    • MV

      You have a woeful understanding of Specual relativity.

  • JustNiz

    People need to stop crediting Musk with the “living in a simulation” idea, or thinking it’s even a recent invention. Many philosophers and scientists including Hawking have been talking and writing about the hypothesis for decades.

    • Harald Heide Gundersen

      “All is mind and mind is all” is a hermetic principle from before the egypts rediscovered the pyramids… :-) :-) :-)

    • Simon Therrien

      I agree! Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, 1981. You cant barely talk about simulation without referencing this book. (or even Plato’s allegory of the cave over 2300 years ago)
      Altough, the podcast is interesting, it barely stays at the surface and consist mostly of personal opinions.

  • Ajit Rao

    These guys are smoking some really good stuff

  • yag

    there is a great page on rationalwiki about that subject
    http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Simulated_reality

  • SVPRO

    Very good！

  • dk

    2016 interesting ….before Kent went down the rabbit hole of ufos