Possibility of us living in a simulated reality

[Kenazis]

I'm siding with Blavatskyan (?) thinking here that the material world is, in the end, only an illusion, a reflection of the true reality.

But if the reflection reflects clearly and that's the main (or even only) "map" which we can use and coordinate ourselves in this life, should it be taken as real as the "Spiritual world behind it"? Maybe it's better to say that this reflection is the territory and the spiritual philosophy "the map"? What is map without the territory?

[RaktaZoci]

But if the reflection reflects clearly and that's the main (or even only) "map" which we can use and coordinate ourselves in this life, should it be taken as real as the "Spiritual world behind it"? Maybe it's better to say that this reflection is the territory and the spiritual philosophy "the map"? What is map without the territory?

We are entering quite abstract grounds, my friend. I think that even Plato admitted that the shadow world had to be "something". I'm not the expert here, though.. What you suggest seems to make sense; through ideas, or spiritual reality, we can realize what is virtuous and with reason we can figure out how to act wisely. So I guess that would be some kind of an ethical map..

[Insanus]

The spoon is a social construct.

[Benemal]

It gets a little confusing, that these conversations are branching and overlapping. What was just discussed in 'Augmentation/technological modification', would be more on topic here (or one of the others) .
Anyway, I was asking a question; are western scientists becoming gnostics? Not in a general sense, but there seems to be a faction. Have they, through they're research, found these questions, or have they been reading books, that they don't want to publicly admit to? I really have no idea, if scientists are inspired by "mysticism".
I know they read sci-fi and reality follows fiction/imagination. For example, China's advanced state surveillance system is called Skynet, and one of Japan's leading robotics companies, is called Cyberdyne.

[Nefastos]

are western scientists becoming gnostics? [...] I really have no idea, if scientists are inspired by "mysticism".

At least in a way that behind the concept of our modern scientific world view haunts the spirits of the dualist gnostics.

The gnostic & neoplatonistic groups affected strongly the young Christianity and its specific body-spirit dualism. And from that cultural basis, after the disintegration of the old world & the thousand years' dark age, was born the scientific world view which assumes – as a balancing, karmic act – the other pole, the pole of matter. But whichever pole one chooses, it is surprisingly easy to move between the two extremes, and thus the matter-ascent "gnostic" (i.e. dualist) view of the earlier scientist might indeed easily change to spirit-ascent gnosticism of the later science. (Which will reach its zenith in understanding how its artificially created realms like internet or virtual realities are functioning on a different but already existing level of mental existence.) At the very top, the change already happened in the 20th century; but the popular science drags behind, as exotericism tends to do.

As it comes to practical science, the criticism I gave in the discussion you mentioned is not against the cosmology itself, but its praxis in violence against holism:

By forcing too severe changes will pose a great threat to sanity and spiritual well-being of all the connected parts, because in nature the minds blend usually only with time & harmony, necessarily considering the flow of all the principles and sub-principles involved. Human science is so far from that attitude that it has practically become its antithesis.