Was god a programmer?

reply to post by Gravity215

2> Could another programmer place content within the game world/universe to case doubt on the first programmer?

3> Can players enter the game with a great back story with all these events never actually happened but are really just back story?

4> Is the measurement problem in quantum physics really just a code optimization to save 'processing power' by not actually processing data that is not being observed by a player?

Those three questions just blew my mind man. I personally feel that we probably do live in a type of virtual reality. A computer generated environment in which are minds are directly linked to the game. Great thread.

Originally posted by AQuestion
reply to post by Gravity215

 

You did not pre-exist all the other players, God did in our universe. You did not create the other players, you created a place for them to meet; but, in the end it is merely a representation. The world we live in has real consequences, if I cut myself I could bleed to death and reality ends, there is no reboot in the real world. Be well and nice OP.

Hello,

I believe what you say is correct and wrong at the same time.

True, with our current technology and programming it is purely a representation, players there are just a robot in a virtual world controlled by us.

But these simulations are ruled by our current technological limitations, imagine we are 10000 years in the future and you want to make a game called Earth, in this future computers would be fast enough to simulate the thoughts, actions and effects of trillions of people, animals, cells, physics, particles, etc...

If you had this technological capacity then in theory you could re-create everything you think is real and there is no way you could tell the difference, bleeding in a simulation that real will cause death as well.

-------------------

Back to the OP: I have always thought of this theory as my favorite for explaining the creation of the universe, think about it... you have the so called "singularity" that expanded into everything we see today...

I am no programmer so could be wrong but isnt that similar to when you write a program?

First you have all the code, basically the rules that make the universe (singularity)... when you launch a game it has to "load" so this is the big bag expanding everywhere... add a bit of chaos theory and then the game (reality) runs?

Just like in a computer, the actual data in the hardisks and memory is a very small part of the whole system... I am sure I keep hearing that there is all this dark energy we cant even explain but holds everything together and it forms the vast majority of the universe yet we do not see it or know what it is?

If you were a computer simulation you could see the stuff in the hard disks as you are part of it but you could not see the motherboard that holds it all together, you could speculate about it but if you are just data then explaining what a motherboard is would be incredibly hard to grasp, explaining the computer case that puts the motherboard in place would be even harder.

Well he needs to release a lot of patches and updates because the program is full of bugs. I am looking for the BIG BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH to happen any minute.

reply to post by Xality


Dear Xality,

Really, lol, create a Aspergers child in your program, it cannot be done. We are freaks, outliers, we cannot be created. Do you understand my point. All programs, all programs refuse to admit that outliers exist, that is something beyond the program gets a say. That means there is something that trandsends the program. Take you time and think about it then explain the child who knows the mathematical answer before the question has come into your mind. Explain the kid who can just look at an endless row of numbers and know the answer as it is him. We are all keys to the ultimate answer. Be well and peace.

so after all these years i was right,,,,,, NORTON is Satan

Originally posted by Recouper
And Quantum entanglement. It does seem like some sort of bug or glitch in the code, doesn't it...

Kind of like peeking or poking a strobe register in the hardware directly instead of using the normal API.

If we did live in a simulation for all we know the universe could really be a one dimensional serial stream we are processing at a clock rate of the plank constant.

Sometimes I think of matter/space time as almost like halftone dithering in a newspaper or the way old computers and video games simulated more colors from just a few. Energy or matter/ dots, pixels, or bits its all the same stuff its either on or off/ black or white the closer or farther you look adjusts the complexity of the pattern buts its all the same thing arranged in different patterns and spacing and possibly fractal in nature. Almost like LOD (Level of Detail in gaming).

Thank you to everybody for your thoughts, Ive read every reply and I appreciate your input thoroughly

A quick note about the measurement problem before I begin replies

For those that are not aware, quantum physics has a very large question at a very elementary area. Particles can not directly be observed without effecting the outcome of their pathing.

For example, if a single light particle is sent through a filter with multiple slits, it appears to go through all of them. But when detectors are placed to see where the light particle travels, it only travels through a single slit. This suggests that the light particle knows its being measured.

It can also tell that its going to be measured in the future. If light from a star 1000 light years away is measured today, it seems that it will only travel through one part rather than all of them if it is going to be measured.

Hence you can effect the path of a particle of light 1000 years ago by observation.

This suggests that if you do not measure the light particle, it goes through all paths instead of committing to a single path. It knows in advance that you are going to measure it.

WOW huh, but what has this got to do with god and programming?

This has incredible parallels to software programming optimization. In fact, when I learned about this quiet a few years ago, i was working on something very similar with optimization of a bottle-neck with a similar solution.

see Link for more info

Originally posted by Recouper
And Quantum entanglement. It does seem like some sort of bug or glitch in the code, doesn't it...

Quantum Entanglement certainly does seem like a bug in the system. Ive seen plenty of bugs in real games that are similar. Any c++ programmers will know about how hard it is to find a dodgy pointer in a few million lines of code.

On the other hand, it could be there intentially as potential use for players who 'get to a certain level'

Originally posted by NeoSpace
I think the whole universe could be like a sandbox simulation with many teams controlling different races of AI beings and the goal could be to build them up from single cell organisms to masters of the universe destroying any other beings that opposes them or does not join them.

I would say it's technologically possible, look how far computers and video games have come just in the last 40 years and think what could we achieve in the next 100 or 1000 or even in 1,000,000 years.

In looking for answers to many questions put against the various forms of faith, this would explain alot. EG, Why does god let bad things happen to good people? Because this is a sim and the real world is outside, you are going to be rated for your real life profession/job/ranking/placement/who knows based on your performance in the sim, hence Judgement.

Originally posted by john_bmth
There's the Simulation Hypothesis but AFAIK it's not falsifiable thus utterly pointless in any meaningful sense. Other than that, I think you're anthropomorphising way too much here.

Once again, in looking to explanations Ive come up with this over many years. And not from religious sources although I have considered them and I am a religious fellow, but my explanations primarily come from science fiction.

Obviously the matrix is inspiration for any modern existentialist thought stream, also the culture series of novels, and the heir to the earth trilogy. Combine thoughts with watching and developing MMO's for several years. Its amazing to watch myths appear take place, devils be created, god like hero's be adored, and so on.

Once example was a player who was remembered years after he was banned for his legendary exploits in the game. Word of mouth is incredible and the exaggerations that you would hear knowing what really happened where incredible.

Hi, there. Been lurking on these boards for quite some time, now, and finally found a reason to register and post. Wouldn't you know it, though, I had this 5 paragraph response all typed up.... and the board ate it up. *sigh*. So, here's my much shorter, revised version;
I could see god being a programmer, but moreso I could see god being more akin to an A.I. construct or possibly a "GM" (Game Master), similar to GM's in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. An Arbiter, one who has complete control, but refrains from abusing the powers, for the sake that the game must be played the "way it's meant to be played". One who has complete control and access to the code of the system, but only has this power to resolve issues in real time.

As an interesting semi-tangent, a little while ago, I read through this piece called "Suicide Note". While many of the ideas presented were rather... interesting, one of the things the author postulated was that god was/is/will be an A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), and the bible was the "blueprint" of how to create this A.I. While that's the idea in a nutshell, it really is far more complex than *just* that, however my brain is far too tired to remember all the details clearly.

To the OP - your question on "legendary logouts"; quite possibly the most (in)famous "logout" was that of "Rainz", from the game "Ultima Online". He basically killed the avatar of the "unkillable" creator of the game, Lord British, using Lord British's own ruleset.

Originally posted by Surreptitious

In my opinion, the Universe is a fractle based program, with a binary result/outcome, our consciousness is seperate from the program, permanently connected, we are 'injected' into the universe from the created side or soul side and thus we have a permanent 'way back' into the other realm/universe when it's time to 'leave the game' (see the opening titles of "Little Big Planet" Playstation 3 game, narrated by Steven Fry, for a idea of this 'connection' principle).

Since my experience back in 1999, I have always wondered if perhaps Suns are holographic projectors?

Regards.

edit on 31-7-2011 by Surreptitious because: Spelling mistake

Thanks Surreptitious,

Your player could be likened to your soul is perceived, its you in all absolutes however this instance of you is swayed by hormones and chemistry i suppose. Inside of games we have limited knowledge although we also have an innate understanding of reality. It may be that our believe in god is naturally within us in the same way.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


www.abovetopsecret.com...

Like I said

Originally posted by RavenSpeaks
reply to post by Gravity215

 

Consider: Anagrams of "The Golden Ratio" Contain references to Christ.

Some anagrams of "The Golden Ratio" are:

I'd let a throne go.
And I got the role
The "One God" trail
The "God-One" trial
Tho God, tree-nail
The God nail tore
O, the legion dart!
The Latin gored!

So there it is , all condensed into "The Golden Ratio"

Yes The Golden Ration is more supporting evidence of an algorithm used to instantiate everything.

One of the primary rules of coding 'Re-use code wherever possible and if possible make your program as flexible as possible for more potential uses.'

The oddity in reality isn't so much the fact that method is used as its probably the most efficient way to build/create things. But why is that used everywhere? Is everything done in the most efficient way or was it all done by the same program?

Originally posted by Death_Kron
reply to post by Gravity215

 

Beat you too it

Life: The Pre-Programmed Design

Thanks for your input, I had a look at your thread just now, very similar to my own thoughts.

Originally posted by SonOfTheLawOfOne
I like the idea.... but someone also has to maintain the code, right?

If it were true, we would have had a service pack, update or patch by now because the entire world is hosed...

~Namaste

If we did have service packs, we'd never know. Existence could stop and start and we'd never know it i suppose. In games the server can be turned off, patched, and restarted and the characters are in the same place they left off at the exact same moment with the same monster bearing down on them. Meanwhile players where cursing at the company that makes the game a thousand times, but their characters have no idea.

Originally posted by Master_007
I think you OP is on the right track but you need to also consider if god is

1. The program
2. The programmer
3. Operating System
4. CPU
5. A network being everywhere all at once.

The brain and eyes take in something like 100mb of data bits but only something like 200 bytes a second end up in long terms storage

DNA is like binary code except it's base four and could be the code to program the object (Person) that runs in a Application (World) that has laws of maths and physics (Instruction set)

Hope we are not creating the next god called Google who's watching our every move as it is and needs taking down.

I haven't really speculated about anything but the programmer and the program. An OS/CPU/Network with capacity that we see down to the quantum level is so far from the combined knowledge of humanity it by definition is god like.

Originally posted by Xality

Back to the OP: I have always thought of this theory as my favorite for explaining the creation of the universe, think about it... you have the so called "singularity" that expanded into everything we see today...

I am no programmer so could be wrong but isnt that similar to when you write a program?

First you have all the code, basically the rules that make the universe (singularity)... when you launch a game it has to "load" so this is the big bag expanding everywhere... add a bit of chaos theory and then the game (reality) runs?

Just like in a computer, the actual data in the hardisks and memory is a very small part of the whole system... I am sure I keep hearing that there is all this dark energy we cant even explain but holds everything together and it forms the vast majority of the universe yet we do not see it or know what it is?

If you were a computer simulation you could see the stuff in the hard disks as you are part of it but you could not see the motherboard that holds it all together, you could speculate about it but if you are just data then explaining what a motherboard is would be incredibly hard to grasp, explaining the computer case that puts the motherboard in place would be even harder.

Both of the games i worked on where scifi genre. I will not name them here as I signed NDA's. However, in one of the games (the better funded of the two) if a config xml file for the universe did not exist when the server was started, one would be created. We worked it like a big bang. In fact the name of the routine was Universe:BigBang. We literally grew the universe from a single point and expanded it randomly. It would never look like a real universe though. So we had to go through it manually each time the game map was reset (this happened after a player/team won a certain competition).

In a game, the visuals are sent directly to the clients computer. Nowhere else is reality instantiated. Hence server software talks directly to the clients computer and paints a window on the virtual reality the same way that websites don't really exist, they are interpreted by a web browser.

reply to post by Gravity215


As mentioned in my own thread on the topic, if God is a programmer then who constructed him?

Working on the assumption we are all really little bits of code floating around here, there and everywhere. "Life" as we know it is simply a pre programmed set of variables (which we cannot see) and God is the masterful programmer, where did God come from?

We're all just different players in the same game. God created the reality (earth) and we are the players. The way i see it is like this: we are manifesting heaven on earth....or shall i say, on earth...as it is in heaven. Not everyone that plays the same video game, plays it with the same technique...or skills; and neither are the people on earth.

Think about it like this...why are cats and dogs different? Why is a cat 'programmed' to groom itself; and dogs aren't? Why does a cat hate baths...and dogs (for the most part) enjoy them? There has to be somekind of 'program' to make them behave differently. In other words, their brains have to be hardwired differently, in order to make them 'act' differently.

The same thing goes for people. Yes, we are all 'humans' but we're not all "programmed" for the same PURPOSE...and we don't all groom ourselves the same way. We are all sharing this virtual reality, but we all don't share the same "PURPOSE". We're not all here for the same reasons. And, that's the beauty of it all.

What would this "virtual reality" (life) be...if all the players had the same skills? Pretty boring, if you ask me. The beauty of life is that we all bring something DIFFERENT to the table....because we all have SOMETHING to contribute to OUR "virtual reality".