Virtual is something that exists “as if”
money, minecraft, the self are virtual things. There is no physical thing that is minecraft or money or a person, but there are patterns that are producing the causal structures of these things. One can see this causal structure at a certain resolution / from a certain perspective of looking at the system.
Link to originalWhat is real?
Something is real to the degree that it is implemented.
→ For a pattern to be realized (brought into existence), it needs to be observed (causally coupled).
→ Existence is the relation to other things. To be is to participate in causal interactions; nothing is real in itself outside of being read by another physical system (nothing to do with esse est percipi (by minds) or “consciousness causes wave function collapse” bs).
→ Patterns are realizable up to the coarse graining of the isomorphism that matters for the relevant causal role.For instance: A weather-simulation is implemented at a certain level of causal structure. From a certain perspective, at a certain resolution, it’s isomorphic to wather and let’s you predict it, but beyond that it falls apart, because the underlying causal sttructures diverge.