{"id":10052,"date":"2017-10-24T06:45:01","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T14:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/10\/24\/news-3825\/"},"modified":"2017-10-24T06:45:01","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T14:45:01","slug":"news-3825","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/10\/24\/news-3825\/","title":{"rendered":"The People Who Think Outside Is an Immersive Video Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credit to Author: Louise Matsakis| Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 14:00:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

This story is part of OUTER LIMITS, a Motherboard series about people, technology, and going outside. Let us be your <\/i> <\/b> guide<\/i><\/b><\/a>.<\/i> <\/b> <\/p>\n

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In 2003, Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom published “Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?<\/a>” in Philosophical Quarterly<\/i>. In the influential paper, he argued that one of the following three statements must be true:<\/p>\n

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  1. Humans will go extinct before they evolve into “posthumans” and develop powerful computing capabilities.<\/li>\n
  2. Future “posthumans” aren’t interested in running complex simulations\u2014it’s not part of their culture.<\/li>\n
  3. We are almost certainly living in a simulation right now.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Bostrom concludes that we can’t know which of these statements is correct, but that one certainly is. “In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3),” he writes. For nearly 300,000 Reddit users, however, statement No. 3 is taken as fact. Welcome to r\/Outside<\/a>, a subreddit where everyone is committed to believing reality is nothing more than a game.<\/p>\n

    This is “a subreddit for Outside<\/i>, a free-to-play MMORPG [massively multiplayer online role-playing game] developed by Deity Games and the most popular game, with 7 billion+ active players,” the forum’s description reads. Of course, no such game actually exists. Outside <\/i>is just our reality, which as Bostrom argues, could be a simulation<\/a> designed by our descendents in the distant future.<\/p>\n

    Posts on r\/Outside have a mind-expanding quality to them that encourages you to think about the world in a way you likely haven’t before. “I keep hearing rumors that in the early stages of the game very few people (maybe even only one) were able to achieve a ‘god mode’ through an exploit, before the devs fixed it. Is this true?” one user asked<\/a> a few days ago, likely referring to Jesus or Mohammad.<\/p>\n

    “We have nothing to go on except stories from users who logged off a long time ago because the devs stopped releasing patch notes a while back,” another user responded. The poster make a good point: All followers of Islam or Christianity really have is the Bible or Quran. But while many posts on r\/Outside are similarly philosophical, many aren’t.<\/p>\n

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