Why does everyone think a simulation has to represent what already exists?
Why are you re-asking the question I just answered?
You are giving a really narrow view of possibilities. So you’re going to make me keep asking you the same question I guess until your horizons expand?
OK, let me try to be more explicit. I’m not saying the simulation represents what already exists other than the possibility for simulations to exist within it.
The world we’re in must contain the possibility of simulations, or we never would have thought of any of this.
The real world (be it this one or some other) must also have the possibility of simulations, or else it’s impossible that we’re in a simulation and that settles the question.
Entertaining the possibility that we might be in a simulation requires that there is a world in which simulations are possible, in other words.
We seem to be in a world in which simulations are possible.
So, whether this is a simulation or not, it is nevertheless true that “A world in which simulations are possible exists”.
The evidence that the world we perceive is that world is far stronger than the evidence that it isn’t.
Our simulated world and the real world could be different in all respects aside from this one, and my argument would work in exactly the same way. I don’t think I can make it more clear.
Why can’t there be a simulation without the real thing, whatever that is? This is so, because reality is thought of as existing differently from its simulations.
Besides, what is the real thing, apart from its simulation(s)? Which are simulations and which are the real thing, whatever that is?
There may or may not be simulations of the real thing, but the real thing can never be proven as existences within their own right, mainly because the differences are too far from the real, the cannot be experienced as different.
So what if every thing is a simulation of some other simulation, and so on. There may be an original, but it is not an existenze in the verifiable use of the word. So it is only a hypothetical, such as the idea of a first cause.
Au contraire, mon ami, jerkey. A bridge exists, just not many know how to get to it without losing their flesh and bone.
A real bridge or an ideal one? Berkeley fell into this trap, or did he? For the same reason it is said that if God did not exist, he would have to be invented. If invention is akin to simulation, there may not be an argument.
Either/or, really? 
You are not even trying. Enjoy your travels. No point in PMing back if you cannot suspend your disbelief and prefer to play games.
No, Mongoose, I did PM back, check it. On the either/or, the Anselm argument is getting a serious reconsideration. Always though that the invalidation was premature, before it’s time. Maybe it will never come successfully.
As far as my travels go, I’m holed up in a cheap hotel, raining each day. Travel here is weather permitting. But thanks.
The literal ‘real’ is not to be confused with it’s simulation, since such confusion is manufactured, qua: again , simulated. I think that was established.
So there is no difference between a revised, and re-interpreted tool, of course in another time’s vernacular. This causes dissent, and I understand your point.
This is what happens in the de-differentiation of the ‘real’. Audieau, for now. Beddy by here.
The people who say things like “we could be in a simulation” or “we could be in the mind of God” don’t themselves then offer an alternate ontological understanding of the nature of reality, so their claims have no meaning. We have no coherent ontological framework with which to compare and contrast their claims, to measure what might be more or less true, more or less accurate, rational or significant, etc.
This issue of “simulation hypothesis” is a perfect example of how non-philosophy masquerades as philosophy.
It may be a case of a recurrence of ontology, with spaces in between, where the elements have ‘spaced out’ , unrecognizable in form. These spaces are like the bridges Mongoose may be alluding to.
jerkey,
Not yet actualizing my bridge while awake? I gave very appropriate directions on the how-to’s long ago. Alluding? I outright name my experiences to the best of my abilities. The bridge is your soul, tap into it and go.
What makes a simulation a simulation, if not through comparison to some more real thing? What do you, specifically you, mean when you say ‘simulation’ such that you think the world could be one without it being generated by some pre-existent, non-simulated world?
Simulation is only a cover by which to distinguish levels of reality, not necessary in any prioritized or temporalized order. It is a convenient label to pre Elmo all realities except the one at hand which we call reality.
Simulated reality refelects the age old qualm about whether is this only another dream within which our reality is grounded in.
Oh, now our reality is grounded? Ha!
Yes, grounded within another ‘simulation’
Why must our reality be grounded in another simulation? Why not our reality being the first simulation, the soul of God in a sense or perhaps his beating heart?
Tough one, Mongoose. But what comes first is transcendent. If God’s soul exists here and now, He suffers immanence, therefore temporalization suffers as well, into a reduction, with Him.
Okay, now in an english version for my simpleton self.