Is virtual reality real? | Anders Sandberg and Massimo Pigliucci discuss David Chalmers' position

it's a bit like saying a simulated hurricane doesn't make anybody wet well simulated persons inside that simulation would get wet but no you won't you're using the same word wet yeah well it should be to simulation right but to mean something that is not even comparable it's something totally different [Music] so I'm rather fond of David Chalmers take on virtual reality he's been cornering the market

of philosopher materiality ever since he wrote about Matrix and the philosophy and he makes this argument that we should actually treat Virtual Worlds as real in the sense that virtual objects have causal Powers if I use my virtual sword on the virtual Dragon I might be able to kill it the virtual Dragon might threaten my virtual Avatar there are interactions going on in this little environment

it's in some sense a closed system where cause and effect works according to their own little rules and as he points out this means that experience is in their matter so David Chalmers Who full disclosure I think is actually being wrong on pretty much everything he's doing in his life um just to put things out there has a very interesting conception of causality as you pointed

out the difference between my virtual dragon and a real dragon coming into this room is I if I'm afraid of the virtual Dragon I can just turn off my computer and the virtual dragon is gone the real one is gonna eat me no matter what uh and there's nothing I can I can turn off Philip K dick who was a famously dystopian brilliant science fiction uh

author said that reality is the thing that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it right and that is the part of the problem one of one of the points that was made a few minutes ago was that there has to be consequences for for something to be called a reality well I think there are consequences because quite a lot of interaction we do in

Virtual Reality might have the resistant effects not just in the sense that maybe when you turn on the computer the dragon is uh back there and programmed to be even more angry but a lot of interaction we do in Virtual Reality or social if I yell at somebody in an online Forum there are actual consequences now you might say yeah but that's because we're real people

behind the the scenes here you get really upset but I think the virtual reality we could be universities just like that the university is a place where people come together and role play this we are the activity we have a various names and ideas about what's going on we're very happen to be very physically but we're playing a kind of elaborate social game according to particular

social rules and many of them matter quite a lot for the rewards we get in terms of payment and or credibility to getting invited one wonderful festivals things like that so I do think that actually that when the Lobster Thermidor is not real that mostly matters if you care about the nourishment part but if you say eating a lobster thermador is a social occasion and I

want to have a nice Lobster with my friends even though over this route of many continents that aspect of a nice dinner is relevant talking about back to Chalmers right one of the classic arguments against the Chalmers notion of uh computer uploading and and virtual realities and all that sort of stuff is that or is his view of Consciousness is that uh yeah you can simulate

uh physical processes in a lot of detail for instance you can simulate photosynthesis bit by bit even at the quantum level and the only thing you don't get out of a simulated photosynthesis is sugar which is the only thing that matters yeah right and without sugar pushing back against this to say you get simulated sugar which is real within that simulator it's a bit like saying

simulated hurricane doesn't make anybody wet well simulated persons inside that simulation would get wet but no they won't you're you're you're you're using I mean the interesting thing to me is uh I understand what you're saying but no you won't you're using the same word wet yeah well it should be to simulated right but to mean something then it's not even comparable it's something totally different

simulated wetness has nothing to do with actual Wellness but but the problem is of course we're already living in a simulated world this world the classic environment us is made out of weird quantum mechanics stuff but we're not observing that we're see living in the classical war world to us there is wetness but there is actually just wave functions moving in the Hilbert Space level description

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