VR Kritik

Bob Chen
*Note: This is geared for ‘less experienced’ judges. It contains many informal wording

Intro
Because the resolution has no materialistic substance, I negate the resolution:
Resolved, It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of
nuclear weapons by nations that pose a military threat.

Value
I value Justice as giving each their dues. This should be the value for the round as
the resolution asks the question of whether or not military action is just.

Kriterion
My criterion is proof of existence in the natural reality. One necessary component
of justice is that the just object must exist at all as what the object is specified. This is
kind of hard to comprehend so I will simplify this. Say an apple is just, but a
computerized apple is not just as it does not truly exist and cannot be just. My criterion is
saying that in order to fulfill it, my opponent, or I must prove that the world exists in the
natural reality and is not a computer simulation or dream. This criterion fulfills all other
values as all values depend on the natural reality

Body
All of my opponent’s arguments assume that the world is a natural reality and is not
computerized. However this is flawed. Jaron Lanier explains how the world is a complex
virtual reality, or VR,
Robotics researcher Hans Moravec originated the argument that we are probably already
living in VR: If it is possible to build virtual realities sophisticated enough to
give rise to sentient residents, it’s likely there would be many such VRs. After
all, once we built the first car of the first laptop computer, millions upon millions more followed. (And even if
humanity never builds superlative VR machines, some alien civilization
somewhere will do it, if possible.) If you are a self-aware creature, then there are
two possibilities: You live in natural reality, or you live in one of these super-VRs.
Since there is only one of the former and a lot of the latter, the chances are
quite strong that you, and indeed all of us, are living in a simulated world.

Although this may seem crazy, this is not as strange as some of the modern-day theories.
Brian Whitworth notes a few of these new ideas:
While virtual reality theory seems strange, so do other current theories of
physics, e.g. the many-worlds view of quantum physics proposes that each quantum
choice divides the universe into parallel universes, so everything that can
happen does in fact happen somewhere, in an inconceivable “multi-verse’ of parallel universes. This is a
minority view but surprisingly popular. Even relatively main-stream physics theories are quite strange. Guth’s
inflationary model suggests that our universe is just one of many “bubble
universes” produced by the big bang. String theory suggests the physical
world could have 9 spatial dimensions, with six of them “curled up” from our perspective. M-
 theory suggests our universe lies on a three dimensional “brane” that floats
in time along a fifth dimension we cannot register. The cyclicekpyrotic model
postulates that we exist in one of two 3D worlds that collide and retreat in an
eternal cycle along a hidden extra connecting dimension. Equally strange are
the results of modern physics experiments, where time dilates, space curves,
entities teleport and objects exist in many places at once, e.g. at the cosmic level:

In fact, a universe that is a VR explains many of the scientific abnormalities. Brian

Whitworth notes a few of these abnormalities,
1. Gravity slows time: An atomic clock on a tall building “ticks” faster than one on the
ground.
2. Gravity curves space: Rays of light traveling around the sun are bent by curved space.
3. Speed slows time. An atomic clock on a flying plane goes slower than one on the
ground.
4. Speed increases mass. As objects move faster, their mass increases.
5. The speed of light is absolute. Light shone from a torch on a spaceship moving at 9/10ths of the
speed of light leaves the spaceship at the speed of light.
The above statements don’t fit our normal reality concepts, yet they have been experimentally
verified, e.g. in 1962 one of two synchronized atomic clocks was flown in an airplane for several days while the other stayed
stationary on the ground. The result was, as Einstein predicted, less time passed for the clock on the plane. In relativity theory a young
astronaut could leave his twin on Earth and return after a year’s high-speed travel in space to attend his twin brother’s 80th birthday.
This is not considered a theoretical possibility, but as something that could actually happen. The quantum level of physics introduces
even more strangeness:

Brian Whitworth then goes on to explain how a simulated universe can answer these
questions easily. For the first three abnormalities, they all deal with gravity. Gravity is
caused by large amounts of mass. Whitworth simplifies this easily with the VR theory.
5. Processing load effects. On a distributed network, nodes with a high local workload will
slow down, e.g. if a local server has many demands a video download may play
slower than usual. Likewise a high matter concentration may constitute a high
processing demand, so a massive body could slow down the information
processing of space-time, causing space to “curve” and time to slow. Likewise, if
faster movement requires more processing, speeds near light speed could
affect space/time, causing time to “dilate” and space to extend. Relativity
effects could then arise from local processing overloads.
Weird abnormities that happen with gravity can be explained as simply a
connection can only send things so fast. This also can explain the fourth abnormality as
the information is moving fast enough to cause it to make a disruption in space.

The fifth abnormality has to deal with the maximum speed light can travel.
Science has tried to explain how something can only move as fast as a certain speed, but
VR can explain it better. Whitworth furthers
2. Maximum processing rate. The maximum speed a pixel in a virtual reality game can cross
a screen is limited by the processing capacity of the computer running it. In
general, a virtual world’s maximum event rate is fixed by the allocated processing capacity. In our world, the
fixed maximum that comes to mind is the speed of light. That there is an absolute
 maximum speed could reflect a maximum information processing rate (see next
section).

A VR model also explains many other things. Whitworth furthers

One of the mysteries of our world is how every photon of light, every electron and
quark, and indeed every point of space itself, seems to just “know” what to do at
each moment. The mystery is that these tiniest parts of the universe have no
mechanisms or structures by which to make such decisions. Yet if the world
is a virtual reality, this problem disappears. Other examples of how a VR approach could
illuminate current physics issues include:
1. Virtual reality creation. A virtual reality usually arises from “nothing”, which matches
how the big bang theory proposes our universe did arise (see next section).
Whitworth explains another abnormality in science
7. Algorithmic simplicity. If the world arises from finite information processing, it is necessary to keep frequent calculations simple.
Indeed the core mathematical laws that describe our world are surprisingly simple: “The
enormous usefulness of
mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no
rational explanation for it.” In VR theory physical laws are simple because they
must actually be calculated. The physical world as a virtual reality, Brian Whitworth
The abnormality that Whitworth explains is how mathematics can actually
describe natural reactions very simply. One would expect the equations governing our
very existence to be very complex, but they can easily be described as a variable divided
by another. In VR, this is true because indeed, they are governed by simple equations.

In essence, VR is very plausible, Whitworth explains,

Individually none of the above short points is convincing, but taken together
they constitute what a court might call circumstantial evidence, favoring
virtual reality against objective reality. When coincidences mount up, they present a
plausibility argument if not a proof. More powerful evidence is provided by cases which a VR theory
explains easily but which OR approaches have great difficulty with. Two such cases are now given in more detail.

Indeed, the scientific community should be behind this idea. One of the laws the
community follows is Ockham's razor, or “entities should not be multiplied beyond
necessity”. Ockham’s razor basically says that with two similar theories, the simpler one
should be accepted as there is a fewer chance for it to be incorrect. Ockham’s razor
favors VR as VR does not need multiple theories to describe all of the Universes
quirkiness. It just needs one.

Conclusion
Because my opponent does not sufficiently prove that military action to prevent
proliferation is in the natural reality, you should negate the resolution, Resolved, It is just
for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons
by nations that pose a military threat.