I am delighted at last to be reading this rational discussion of the meat of Dick's discovery. I cannot follow the details of your conversation, but they remind me almost exactly of the details of my conversations with Dick leading to my understanding of almost all of his first chapter.

Dick's notation is a little unorthodox, which he admits and helps clear up when you ask him. His development is also very subtle and you can't assume that his inferences follow the same path that you would expect at the outset. But, Richard, I think you are better equipped than me to follow Dick's development into the second and following chapters. I am glad you are devoting some energy to that and I hope you continue to the point that you either discover an error in Dick's work, or become convinced that what you have understood of it is correct.

Since I convinced myself that the first chapter is correct, I have extrapolated and now believe (my belief system requires only a 50% confidence level) that his entire paper is correct.

What I get out of Dick's discovery, is that there is nothing we can discover by scientific investigation that can prove that our physical reality is not the presentation of a gigantic virtual-reality game to whatever these consciousnesses we have are. If the VR game is consistent, then the illusion it presents must follow the laws of physics. The substrate or mechanism (cosmic computer) that hosts the VR game would have to be quite unimaginable by human standards, but then again, so would the mechanisms of relativity and QM be quite unimaginable to, say, Democritus. We have come a long way, baby, and there is still an exciting road ahead.

Thanks again to you two.

Warm regards,

Paul

• As the court jester/twerp, add my comments - something - May 6, 2002 - 02:42 UTC
• To Paul - yanniru - May 6, 2002 - 13:59 UTC
  • VR game - why not? - pmartin - May 6, 2002 - 20:47 UTC
    • Symmetry question - harvey1 - May 6, 2002 - 22:17 UTC
      • Attempted Answer - pmartin - May 7, 2002 - 04:14 UTC
        • Laws of digital explanation - dolphin - May 7, 2002 - 09:00 UTC
          • Yes. Explanation = tautology - pmartin - May 7, 2002 - 15:12 UTC
            • Thanks Paul - dolphin - May 8, 2002 - 07:02 UTC
        • Another analogy - harvey1 - May 7, 2002 - 15:03 UTC
          • The judge was unfair - pmartin - May 7, 2002 - 15:37 UTC
            • Was he? - harvey1 - May 7, 2002 - 16:13 UTC
        • The Power of Symmetry! - doctordick - May 7, 2002 - 18:05 UTC
          • Some objections - harvey1 - May 7, 2002 - 19:17 UTC
            • I sense your confusion! - doctordick - May 8, 2002 - 15:31 UTC
              • And I see your's - harvey1 - May 8, 2002 - 20:07 UTC
                • Correction - harvey1 - May 8, 2002 - 20:43 UTC
          • Responding - yanniru - May 8, 2002 - 13:45 UTC
            • My image and patterns in time - yanniru - May 8, 2002 - 13:51 UTC
              • Only if you leave out a lot of data! (nt) - doctordick - May 8, 2002 - 16:08 UTC
            • The amount of data in my reality is quite large! - doctordick - May 8, 2002 - 16:04 UTC