The Computational Requirements for the Matrix

goombah99 writes "Nick Bostrom discusses the computational requirements needed to simulate human existence. He offers a proof based on the anthropic principle, that you are almost certainly a computer simulation and not "real". The idea is that given that humans don't go extinct in geologically short time then eventually computer capability will allow complete simulation of the human cortex. Consequently, there must be far more simulations running in future millennia than seconds since you were born. Thus its astronomically more likely you are a simulation than real ... if humans don't go extinct shortly. Recalling the 13th floor, Robin Hanson discusses how one should try to live in a simulation. David Wolpert also weighs in on the physical limits of Turing machines for simulation of the universe. This also may explain why time travel seems impossible: we dont meet visitors from the future since only the present is being simulated."

Comments

and this my friends is why

[cyrax777]

drugs are bad mmmmkay

Re:and this my friends is why

[LBArrettAnderson]

my thought exactly. There's no way processor speed can continue at its current pace to that point. It would have to be nearly infinately fast to simulate all the 10000000000000000000000000000000000's of atoms i can see right now, and even put an electron microscope up to and see formations of. There's just too much to simulate, that is, of course judging that this person is saying that WE will be able to do it eventually. I don't doubt that it's possible that processors are a lot faster beyond the matrix (since they use optic processors where the speed of light is a trillion times faster there than it is here). But for someone or something in our universe to accomplish something like that would be ridiculous. There's way too much going on.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Well, you see, the funny thing is that you don't need to simulate the atoms at all. All that you need to simulate visually is the smallest object a person can resolve with his unadied eyes. Everything else is simply mapped on top of that.

For touch, you just simulate the smallest texture difference that a human can feel. For sound, all you need to do is simulate the sounds that a human can hear.

All of these would need to have a certain safely margin to account for people whose senses are better than others, but all that you really have to feed the brain is sense data. As long as it is input propperly,

Now, you would need to physicaly simulate things, but you can reduce the complexity of a model arbitrarily if you are willing to sacrifice quality. The computer detects that we don't need high quality simulations of tables, so it only simulates where the corners would be and fills the rest in as a polygon.

Of course, all of this assumes that you have a more-or-less sentient computer. It would have to be able to decide when we don't need obscenely high quality simulations in order to save its processor power. That wouldn't require true sentience, but it would take quite a bit of clever AI programming.

All of this is a gross simplification. It would still be impossible with modern computing methods because it would require a computer larger than Jupiter, and that's not even with a power source.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Oops. Forgot to hit preview. Correction to the third paragraph's final sentance:

As long as it is input propperly, the brain shouldn't be able to tell the difference between reality and the simulated world.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point. The idea is that you don't need to simulate the world, but just the part that YOU percieve. For example, I don't need to simulate the tree in the forest (it does NOT make a sound when nobody is there to hear it). If you only simulate things that humans can actually see at any moment in time (ie: feeding impulses into your brain - and making your brain think its reality) then the computation involved isn't that great (well, huge, but isn't impossible).

Just consider current generation of 3D games. Some games can make your heart beat faster, or make you jumpy, etc. The point being that eventhough at a concious level you know it's only a game, your brain is still fooled subconciously into thinking the game might be real, and thus, makes your heart go faster and pumps up the adrenaline (as if you're gonna be running away from that monster for real).

Now, imagine that game with 3D goggles, perfect sound, etc, where YOU are not conciously awear that it is a game...

This is the future, and I think we'll see it far sooner than most people realize (20 years tops).

Re:and this my friends is why

[Aglassis]

There's no way processor speed can continue at its current pace to that point. It would have to be nearly infinately fast to simulate all the 10000000000000000000000000000000000's of atoms i can see right now

They don't necessarily have to be that fast. Its not like there is a time limit since they are defining time. Even if they took 10000 sec to simulate 1 sec, it would not alter our perception since it is only based on the past. It will still be 1 sec to us.

And why not assume that they did some simplifications? Why should we assume that the universe that we exist in the the one that the simulators run? It could be much different and the laws of physics different as well. It may be able to run simulations of huge amounts of atoms because that may be a trivial amount of processing time to a much more complex universe.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Wes Janson]

Incorrect. For a more primitive being, perhaps animals at the zoo, such an environment would suffice. However, if you are creating a virtual world where the smallest resolution is only a few microns, you will inevitably run into problems when the intelligent beings of that world attempt to use science to learn. If our world were virtual, and had no detail below 10 microns, or a tenth of one, or a thousandth, scientists with knowledge of what should be, would notice. Experiments could be devised using lasers in such a virtual world to demonstrate the smallest possible "pixel size", and the cat would be out of the bag immediately. For a simulation to run effectively and keep it's inhabitants unaware of their situation, it requires complete, total, perfect simulation of what we think of as reality.

Re:and this my friends is why

[TheLink]

I'd mod you up but I have no points.

And even if our bodies are "real" and not simulated and we are just wired in like in the Matrix, our minds could possibly be slowed down to allow the simulator to keep up.

For example, we could be in a simulation that was set up to keep space travellers entertained and their minds from decaying too fast whilst they traverse vast distances in near suspended animation - no FTL. And perhaps something went wrong and that was eons and eons ago, so the current bunch of people are descendants genetically engineered by the "ship", but have no idea it's a simulation.

And skipping to the ending:

Of course the heroine finds the debug sequence, wakes up and since her brain is no longer underclocked she manages to beat the evil AI (still limited to simulator speed) to the punch and save the day...

Nah... :).

Re:and this my friends is why

[TheLink]

Uh, what if someone builds a device to look at smaller objects than the unaided eye can see?

There are so many ways to do that, that it might conceivably be better to simulate at a lower level than to deal with all the possible special cases, or allow people to detect the flaws.

As for processing limitations, it's might not be impossible if you can underclock the minds of participants - put them in suspended animation or something.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, reality is what we perceive. A computer can only simulate worlds which are less complex than the world in which the computer exists, but if the simulation is closed, its inhabitants have no way of proving that it's a simulation. They simply have no way of knowing how things are in the real world. Even bugs in the simulation would appear as an empirically found law of physics to them. A laser in such a world would not exist except as a function of the basic elements that exist in the simulation. However, such a simulation would obviously need to either be seeded without science and develop it by itself or overthrow the science it was seeded with.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of simplifications, any worthwhile simulation of reality would include the ability to create computers. With computers come simulations of reality. As previously mentioned, any worthwhile simulation of reality would include the ability to create computers. Ad infinitum.

As you look into parallel mirrors, you can never see the infinity because your head is in the way. In other words, there is no accurate simulation of reality.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Naikrovek]

High level emulation. If there is a microscope for you to look through, it is being emulated, then whatever has created the microscope can program it to rewrite everything you look at with it in a way that makes sense to your species.

it would be mind-numbing to write (much less RUN) a program that would fully emulate every atom in the world at all times. all you have to do (ask anyone in movies) is emulate the minumum amount to look realistic on screen. if someone needs to look closer, emulate what they're examining properly, only while they are examining it. Otherwise you can very easily emulate a white box with bumpmaps, rather than the wood, the drywall, the paint, the electricity, and everything else that makes a wall. until someone examines the wall, you can get away with just a white box with paint-like bumpmapping.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Then you simulate what would be seen. Everything could be treated as a surface with a varying transparency and a texture mapped on top of it. You wouldn't have to visually simulate anything smaller than the eye could resolve, but if needed, the simulation could simulate portions in more detail.

It would be easier from a programming standpoint to simulate all of the individual atoms, but that would be prohibitively slow. We're talking tens of thousands of years for less than a second of simulation time using conventional computers on anything less than a planetary scale.

Quantum computers and chemical computers could speed it up greatly, but it would still take massive amounts of raw processing power to keep track of all of those atoms, let alone let anything interact with them.

You can never see anything smaller than the smallest dot that your eye can perceive. However, you can design devices to enlarge objects (or increase the resolution of your eye, depending on how you look at it).

One of the huge problems with The Matrix is the question of how people were actually put into it. If anyone had memories of the real world, then they would undoubtedly find a way to pass them on to their children. So, that implies that none of the first generation of Matrix denizens was ever outside the Matrix at any prior point in their lives. Yet they had parents. The programs in the Matrix aren't compassionate at all, so they certainly couldn't have raised the children. Perhaps they had been imprisoned for millennia, but if that were the case, I would have expected the robots to have wiped out the last of the independent humans. Due to the way memories are stored, there is no way to erase specific memories from the human mind without some serious brain damage. We can only stop new ones from forming. Perhaps the robots were able to create synthetic sets of memories for the first parents, but again, how? That would require someone in the Matrix in the first place so that his memories could be copied. Perhaps the first parents were willing subjects? I don't really see that as in The Animatrix, the general populace was destroying the robots in the streets. That would be like southern whites agreeing to be slaves to some blacks during the Civil War. Very few would. Perhaps enough did that they were the first generation.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

That complexity thing is only true if you constrain it to be possible in real-time.

As for the rest, you are perfectly correct. If there was a flaw in the program, (like, say, nothing was smaller than 1 nm or the speed of light is only half of what we measure it to be), then that is an absolute fact as far as the people inside are concerned. As long as they have never known any different, they have no reason to disbelieve it.

Re:and this my friends is why

[cr_nucleus]

Now, you would need to physicaly simulate things, but you can reduce the complexity of a model arbitrarily if you are willing to sacrifice quality. The computer detects that we don't need high quality simulations of tables, so it only simulates where the corners would be and fills the rest in as a polygon.

makes me wonder if you've ever seen a realtime 3D scene, or even a wooden table. what you describe here looks bad on a screen, so i don't think it would be very convincing in a virtual reality.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider the worst case: I make an observation, then I look away and you stop simulating what I don't see. Then I look again and make another observation. What do I see? The more you don't simulate, the more randomness must be perceived, because causality extends through unobserved reality. You have two options: What I see is either random or you simulate everything which has an influence above randomness on what I'm supposed to see (actually that is only one choice: level of randomness). If you start post-simulating, the world becomes less fluid for an external observer, if you choose randomness, the world may become less realistic und thus less interesting for an external observer. A little randomness can have huge consequences, see chaos theory. Too much randomness is something to stay away from. It may be preferable to have the falling tree in the forest make a sound.

Re:and this my friends is why

[spongman]

Surely the results of such experiments could be faked. For example, it could be simple to build a 'matrix' where the value of PI could be, say, 5, or where Newton was correct and light permeated space the instant it was emitted and mass had not effect on time.

Hell, there are limits to our own understanding of both the extremely small and the extremely large. What if those limits are not that far from the limits of our "simulation"? How would you tell? Build bigger accelerators/telescopes? How big would they need to be?

Our knowledge of "what should be" is based purely on obseravtion. We're always testing the boundaries of our knowledge. But who's to say that when we delve deeper into the depths of the cosmos we won't discover a message:

"game over, insert coins to play again."

or

"Hi, this is God, I'm not in right now, please leave a message."

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

The complexity issue is complicated. You add another, but entirely different, complicated issue: time. How would a computer store a state that is more complex than the world in which the computer itself exists? The computer can take all the time it wants, but the information it has about the simulated world is necessarily less then the information which is needed to represent the "real" world.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

The simulation can be simplified to the extent that its even possible today. For example, if you take a new born baby and strap some VR goggles to his eyes and a joystick to his hand, and leave him to play Quake for his entire life, he would have no way of knowing that it wasn't real. It doesn't matter that its not an accurate simulation of real life - eg. the pixilation that he'd see when he looked at things close up would just be accepted as reality.

And you don't need to simulate touch at all - just inject him with some anestheic to disable those sense. He wouldn't miss them because he'd have never experienced them.

If you did that to millions of people, over many generations they'd probably work out there own system of science based around the physics simulation that exists in the game, which is their reality.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right about Newton but wrong about PI. That's the beauty of math: It's almost entirely self-sufficient. PI can not be 5 in any reasonable simulation. PI is either what PI is to us or the simulation would be so different from our world that you wouldn't recognize a thing in that simulation.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it would be quite a bit less mind numbing to simulate each known atom and their properties than to simulate all possible combinations and interactions thereof. Of course, you would need an amazing computer to run it in real time!

Re:and this my friends is why

[schmittystone]

did you read what you posted? you'd be one of the easiest ones to fool...

Re:and this my friends is why

[SilentJ_PDX]

If you knew all the rules of the universe, it might not be that mind-numbing to write a full simulation. Especially if there really is a grand unifying theory. In fact, it would probably be significantly easier to emulate everything properly than adding a bunch of speed hacks.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Slurm-V]

If our world were virtual, and had no detail below 10 microns, or a tenth of one, or a thousandth, scientists with knowledge of what should be, would notice

Surely it would be less cyle intensive to only run that kind of software when such thing were being measured or observed. They're entirely likely to figure out how to counteract Heisenberg in the next version.

Re:and this my friends is why

[B'Trey]

Incorrect. All that needs to be simulated is what you actually perceive. In modern games, the engine calculates what can and can't be seen and doesn't draw the things that can't be seen. A simulation would use a much more sophisticated version of that algorithm. If you're looking through a microscope, microbes are individual simulated. If you aren't looking through the microscope, then they aren't simulated, or are simulated in the aggregate to calculate gross effects that might be perceivable (such as tainted meat causing food poisoning.)

Remember, the simulation has to know exactly what you're doing and what you're perceiving in order to feed the information to your brain. If you turn your head, that isn't a physical motion. The simulation detects the impulses that indicate you desire to turn your head, and adjusts your visual and physical feeds to simulate that motion. So it's certainly capable of determining that you are peering through a microscope and adjusting the level of detail accordingly. How detailed is the simulation? Precisely as detailed as it needs to be, but no more.

One interesting result of this is that observation would affect the behavior of the universe. Also, changes in the environment, such as the presence of a second slit in a screen, might alter the algorithm used to calculate the behavior of, oh, I don't know, maybe photons.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Cause and effect transcend observation. The only reliable way of simulating a world with certain basic rules is to simulate these rules all along, not simplifying them when no one looks. Simplifying the calculations removes information about the state of the simulation. That is most likely going to be detected at some point, and then the rules you want the inhabitants of your simulation to perceive would be invalidated. If you don't simulate all quarks, then the inhabitants will sooner or later realize (sic!) that quarks are not what you want them to be.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

it would be mind-numbing to write (much less RUN) a program that would fully emulate every atom in the world at all times. all you have to do (ask anyone in movies) is emulate the minumum amount to look realistic on screen.

I dont think that it would be all that mind numbing to simulate every atom. In fact, we have a process to do such a similar thing, and have been doing that for at least 45 years. It's called cellular automation. We use it to model fluid dynamics among other things. THe rules tend to be rather simple, and easy to compute, the results totally unpredictable. If we are a simulation, then chances are that were just a massive cellular automation running on a massive alien computer. Chances are that they dont even know we exist. CHances are that we will build a massive cellular automation to model our own world, in an attempt to better understand our environment, in the process it's possible that we could create virtual intelligent beings, and be totally unaware they even exist.

Re:and this my friends is why

[spongman]

how very euclidean of you. there are plenty of 2D geometries where the circumference of a locus equidistant from a point is not 2PI times that distance.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Eythian]

All of this is a gross simplification. It would still be impossible with modern computing methods because it would require a computer larger than Jupiter, and that's not even with a power source.

Here you assume that the system running the simulation exists in a world much like the one we experience. It's pretty easy for us to simulate a simple 2D world, for all we know, this is some dumbed-down simulation with 'only' 3 dimensions.

Re:and this my friends is why

[qubex]

Actually we do know the Universe's smallest "pixel size": the Plank Scale. Who's to say whether this is a computational limit imposed upon our simulation by external beings or a true physical limit?

Also, it isn't actually true that a computer cannot simulate soomething more complex than itself. If time is no object, it can simulate something a million times more complex than itself in a very long period of time. Who's to say that maybe a single second in our simulated world takes a million, maybe even a billion years to compute in "real time"?

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words: God doesn't care.

Re:and this my friends is why

[jetmarc]

> Well, you see, the funny thing is that you don't need to simulate the atoms
> at all. All that you need to simulate visually is the smallest object a
> person can resolve with his unadied eyes. Everything else is simply mapped
> on top of that.

From a programmer's point of view, this is a bad idea. After all, you will
need special plugins for every device that aids the eyes. You have to check
if any of your simulated physicians invents a tool like a microscope, and
then hot-upgrade your simulator to provide consistent results to him.
Although more work at the beginning, you save yourself a lot of time and
hassle when you just do it right from the start.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure you would recognize anything in a full simulation of such an environment? A change like that would ripple through all sorts of other rules that make our world what it is.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Define complex. Alternatively, explain how a computer would simulate a world with higher complexity.

Re:and this my friends is why

[znode]

all you have to do (ask anyone in movies) is emulate the minumum amount to look realistic on screen.

On the Summer Reading List thread, many slashdotters mentioned The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Within Ch. 6 was a description of how Prime Intellect "rewrote" the Universe, as follows:

"No, you wouldn't. Let me ask you something. If I leave here...if I go back to civilization...does this forest continue to exist?"
"I can leave it running in your absence if you want."
Caroline wanted to throw up. Now even the forest wasn't real. Nothing was real. "Don't bother. Get rid of it."
Instantly, it disappeared. She was standing in an antiseptically white space so pure and seamless and bright that the eye balked at reporting it to the brain. She was standing on a hard, smooth surface, but it was not visible. There were no shadows. There was no horizon; the floor and the sky looked exactly the same, and there was no transition from one to the other. She might have been standing on the inside of some enormous white ball.
Prime Intellect was still there. "What is this?" she asked.
"Neutral reality," Prime Intellect said. "The minimum landscape which supports human existence. Actually, not quite the minimum. I could get rid of the floor. But that would have startled you."

So basically, the visual portion of this world would just be like a raytracer running constantly. Whatever the eye can see it simulates and draws; out of the eye, nothing is (and need to be) simulated.

Re:and this my friends is why

[spongman]

You're right, I'm sure such changes would have drastic effects on the type of universe inside the simulation. Mathematics would remain the same, but Physics would be different (maybe just a hint of green?). But if you were born in such an environment (assuming, of course, you could be), life wouldn't seem so strange subjectively. Although, to an observer living in a "universe" with different rules that environment might seem quite strange. There's no real reason why the universe inside the Matrix looked somewhat like the world outside (except it's just cheaper to film it that way).

Mouse's comments at the dinner table addressed this directly.

Re:and this my friends is why

[sg_oneill]

As long as it is input propperly, the brain shouldn't be able to tell the difference between reality and the simulated world.

Especially if the computer is programmed with the assumption that the brain should not be allowed to be aware of the LOD (wow, I never thought I'd use that term in philosophical debate).

BTW, anyone with keen interest in tihs topic with a good sci-fi tastes have just gotta read greg egans "Permutation City". Its a classic.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Jerf]

One interesting result of this is that observation would affect the behavior of the universe. Also, changes in the environment, such as the presence of a second slit in a screen, might alter the algorithm used to calculate the behavior of, oh, I don't know, maybe photons.

Only if the simulation is poorly written, which we can't assume. It is not conceptually difficult to imagine that the "zoomed in" parts of reality exactly match the approximation to a fine enough level of detail that we can not tell the difference, even in principle.

So observation doesn't affect anything in any coarse way, it just affects the depth of the simulation, and there's no experiment you can run from the inside to tell what's going on. Simulation or no, the double-slit experiment will behave the same, or the simulation is broken.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Cappy Red]

I think you dance around this point: Why does the world have to be complex? People... most people... will buy into the world they live in if they know of nothing outside it. Especially before the ubiquity of movies and radios, amongst those living in remote locations, living lives assigned more or less by community(farms, villages, etc), few broke the mold, or left to become adventurers and explorers.

If you are born to the simulation, and are told that nothing is outside of it(or that a big hairy monster will gobble you up as you fall off the edge), you will have little reason to test your boundries. Then all that's needed is a big hairy monster or two to guard the border and chomp any poor slob with too much imagination and not enough fear of the unknown. ... I certainly hope none of the simulators are reading that.

*honk*

Re:and this my friends is why

[frankthechicken]

This is the future, and I think we'll see it far sooner than most people realize (20 years tops).

Ahhh, this must be the Duke Nukem Forever game you are talking about.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Chakde Phate!]

Incorrect. All that needs to be simulated is what you actually perceive. In modern games, the engine calculates what can and can't be seen and doesn't draw the things that can't be seen. A simulation would use a much more sophisticated version of that algorithm. If you're looking through a microscope, microbes are individual simulated. If you aren't looking through the microscope, then they aren't simulated, or are simulated in the aggregate to calculate gross effects that might be perceivable (such as tainted meat causing food poisoning.)

This is the premise of Stephen Baxter's short story 'Phase Space'. It was some time since I read it, but the idea was that all humanity lives in a simulation which does exactly what you describe, and simulates only what we are looking at at the time. The 'hardware' behind the simulation gets more and more complicated over time to cope with our increased understanding of the universe.

Eventually, the simulated universe ends because some human suspects this and fires a laser beam at Alpha Centuri to prove it. He reasons that it would be impossible for the simulation to expand to fill such a large volume that quickly, and so the laser beam wouldn'd bounce back...unfortunately, the simulation just shuts down. As the great Terry Pratchet said, if someone put a big red button in a cave with "End of the World Button -- DO NOT TOUCH" written on it, the paint wouldn't have time to dry...

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny you have a binary joke in your sig, it's kind of relevant. In versions of the Matrix reloaded script, before it was even called that, Neo and I believe Tank were talking about the computational capability of the matrix. Neo asks how it is possible at all and Tank replies "you're a programmer right? what does a computer think with? 1s and 0s... in the 20th century" He goes on to say that these machines that conquered humans and created the Matrix are not binary thinkers. Due to some sort of biological enhancement the mainframe of the Matrix is able to use any value between 1 and 0 as the basis for all computation.

I am nowhere near smart enough to figure out the true implications of a computer being able to do that, but it seems like it would be a benefit to a computer to have a few more fundamental pieces of knowledge.

I read that above tidbit from a version of the script written in 99, and while I have never seen proof that it was fake, it wouldn't take much to convince me.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Rosonowski]

Or mabye that microscope that was invented, for some reason, doesn't work. As long as you were consistent with all the given physics of the simulation, no one would notice.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Rosonowski]

But the simulation could have a law of physics (again, all the subjects know is that which they have observed) that no computer, no matter the method of construction, could ever be fast enough to run such a simulation.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Glytch]

Who's to say that maybe a single second in our simulated world takes a million, maybe even a billion years to compute in "real time"?

Man, this place looks expensive. I feel like I'm wasting a fortune just standing here.

Re:and this my friends is why

[CableModemSniper]

Thanks, I was wondering if I was going to have to bring that up. All these posts about how hard it would be to simulate the universe are full of hubris. Everybody keeps assuming the universe we live in is complex. Maybe it isn't.

Re:and this my friends is why

[gurumeditationerror]

Also, it isn't actually true that a computer cannot simulate soomething more complex than itself. If time is no object, it can simulate something a million times more complex than itself in a very long period of time. Who's to say that maybe a single second in our simulated world takes a million, maybe even a billion years to compute in "real time"?

And where is the computer going to store this data that is more complex than itself? Even if you could store the universes data atom for atom in the computers memory you'd need a computer at least equal to the complexity of the universe..

Re:and this my friends is why

[DavidTC]

Why the hell would you simulate the universe?

No human being would notice if you just simulated the surface of the earth, with a few minor sub-simulations for people in airplanes and spaceships, and then something painting a sky.

I don't know why so many people here are assuming some sort of perfect simulation of 'reality'. I mean, that's a perfect justification for the speed of light, right there, easy of simulation.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Madcapjack]

This ought to be modded up.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Whyrph]

True, true. One can expound theory after theory about things that "must happen" given sufficient time . .but they don't always have to. Given sufficient time we may have the computational power to create a Matrix . .but would we?

eventually computer capability will allow complete simulation of the human cortex. Consequently, there must be far more simulations running in future millennia than seconds since you were born.

There's the logical disconnect in the article - humanity could go forever without ever making such simulations. First of all, we might never see the need. Also, think about the power of religion, among other things, to brainwash the population. Then again, the, ahem . .sexual applications of such technologies would probably end up pushing it into the mainstream, even if it was heavily opposed.

Also . .an interesting thought I just had - if a matrix-like simulation was created by humans, for humans, there would undoubtably be a lot of friction between the outsiders and the insiders. And the outsiders could quite possibly pull the plug. One wonders if that effect might, in itself, lower the likelihood of one's life being a simulation.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Madcapjack]

For touch, you just simulate the smallest texture difference that a human can feel. For sound, all you need to do is simulate the sounds that a human can hear. or you just adjust the smallest texture difference that a human can feel...but then again, this leaves open tools that circumvent this...

Re:and this my friends is why

[maraist]

not having read the article yet, it seems trivial to simulate a universe. Recall from physics how we learn about our universe. We don't start off with atoms, we start off with macro-scopic relationship-equations. Ideal-gass law, simple voltage-current relationships, ideal charge field/force laws, action/reaction, momentum, etc.

These are all macroscopic approximations of what is really going on. They are inaccurate as you delve deeper into the inner-space. But the key is that depending on what you are trying to simulate, you have no need to waste computation time on distant objects; merely to generalize them (until and unless they ever become near objects). This drastically saves computation time.

If your focus is a single human being, then the rest of the universe can be generalized, including all other human beings (hurd mentality can apply). Thus it may very well be less computation time to create completely seperate universes for each and every focal point. All other humans /animals are statistically/generically modeled, and no two humans will experience quite the same universe. This doesn't hurt anything since two separate models will never truely interact, so synchronization is unnecessary.

Still, if interaction is necessary, we have all sorts of common phenomena which could explain the discrepency.. Memory-loss (memory uncertainty), mysticism, deja-vous (for use with resyncing timed events). So you could independently model two universes, then merge them together for some time period (possibly reseperating them later on).

To minimize the negative effects of merging models, the same formulas would generally have to be applied. Truely macro-scopic events (extra-planetary) would probably all share a common model (since there's no point in duplicating this aspect).

The main point is that it's likely to be possible even today to provide enough processing power to render an entire population - especially since from inside the simulation, you can have no way of telling how many focal points there are.. You can safely assume that you are truely the center of the universe (reminds me of when Zaphod Bebblebrox entered entered the chamber of dispair in the hitchhickers guide).

Theologically, Gods and deamons could serve as control venue's. As law and order persist, their need is deminished and localized. The concept of the afterlife, however, may be very real, insofar as your particular model is considered valuable.

While I agree that the laws of physics may indeed be different in the proposed "user" world (to use a tron phrase), the laws of scale should be no less applicable. Meaning that even in a logarithmicly scalable world (or possibly even an inversely factorial world), there are still limits. The only thing it effects is the size of the individual models. (And thereby it's depth)

One important aspect, however, is that since each model focuses around a small truely interactive environment (determined by available processing power), then it's entirely possible to have a beowolf cluster. Each node is mostly independent of other nodes (insofar as very little information is exchanged). Information exchanges are like the temporary merging of seperate models. While a given machine is only so powerful, you can arbitrarily limit it's complexity such that you can cheaply produce hundreds, thousands or millions of these machines.

Enjoy..

Re:and this my friends is why

[DavidTC]

No, waht you need is a speed that people in the simulation cannot exceed, and a universe with large empty spaces, which will discourage them from moving out of their one little section of reality.

Re:and this my friends is why

[maraist]

As you look into parallel mirrors, you can never see the infinity because your head is in the way. In other words, there is no accurate simulation of reality.

Ahh, but you forget planks limiting constant and special relativity. There is no such thing as infinity for two reasons. You can only get as small as allowed by the plank scale - period. And you can not experience further than the speed of light inside your realm of existance (meaning a life-time times the speed of light during that time).

The reflective mirrors will eventually discretize into photons, afterwhich you will not achieve any greater resolution.. The reflected image will degrade in quality accordingly.

So it's entirely possible to define the computing power of the "user" domain as the particular value of plank and the speed of light in a vacume.

See my other article for an understanding of how you need not even require more than modern computing power to simulate a universe with even these constraints.

I will, however, concede that your use of the term "accurate" complexifies the situation. But I argue that general relativity applies. Accurate only needs to be true in the eyes of the beholder. Plus there is no concept of an absolute frame of reference, and therefore "accurate" can not properly be realized.

Re:and this my friends is why

[SiMac]

Wait a minute here...why would we have to simulate all that? All we need to simulate is what goes into the brain. A picture of something doesn't go into the brain. If you draw a skill life without having learned how, it won't look anything like the real world. You're brain's not actually perceiving everything; not everything would need simulation. You can simulate things at higher levels than the basic tactile, visual, and auditory, and you'd need even less power, although the programming expertise required would grow and grow.

Re:and this my friends is why

[giblfiz]

hate to nit pick, but your whole theory falls apart when one watches ciphers betrail dealings in the matrix 1. It is rather clearly implied that "our robot masters" have the ability to wipe memories. There are some other problems with your "problem" with the matrix, but I think Ill just stick with K.I.S.S. for this retort.

Re:and this my friends is why

[meta-monkey]

I work at a computer architecture and networking research lab at a university. I write simulators to simulate more advanced computer architectures that haven't been built yet. I run those simulations on computers I have access to now. Sure, it takes a minute of real time to simulate a milisecond of simulation time, but the "simple" computer is simulating the "complex" comptuer.

This could certainly apply to a simulation of our universe, also. Maybe we're all running in slow motion in our simulation, because it takes a minute of real time to simulate a milisecond of our time.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Dr. Spork]

Go read the fucking article! Your objections are dealt with.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Carnivorous Carrot]

> it would be mind-numbing to write (much less
> RUN) a program that would fully emulate every
> atom in the world at all times

Actually it'd be pretty easy.

Just define several arrays of about 10^^300 x 10^^300 x 10^^300 or so, representing in 3-space every possible position in the universe, and start filling 'em up with subatomic molecules, set down the rules (or go deeper, similarly for quantum mechanics) and just check each position against all the others for collision detection, etc.

For all you know, that could be trivial with a 10 cent processor in that surrounding meta-universe.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Carnivorous Carrot]

The first batch could have been "grown" from scratch by the machines, as well, with agents & friends filling in as the adults for the first generation.

But why bother with mind erasure available? Presumably mind memory implantation, too. After all, they can load any skills necessary; memories should be trivial to them.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I think I'm just gonna go watch NASCAR.

Re:and this my friends is why

[jetmarc]

> Or mabye that microscope that was invented, for some reason, doesn't
> work. As long as you were consistent with all the given physics of
> the simulation, no one would notice.

I peeked through microscopes myself already, so I take this as proof that
we don't live in a simulation. At least not one of those corner-cutting
el-cheapo simulations.

Or, wait.. Maybe THEY have temporarily put me into the "extended detail"
processing queue back then?

Re:and this my friends is why

[coresi]

If we already live in a Matrix then we already live by the Architect's rules. It won't matter how good our telescopes or our microscopes are, always our observations are defined by the constants the Matrix Architect chose. We won't be able to trick the master program into showing something that it cannot show. There is no reason to fake physics results since all constants c, pi, h etc. are already arbitrarily defined and the world has been built on top of them. Whatever the Architect missed in his design it is known as a paradox in our world (you know, the few particles breaking the symmetry laws or the paradox involving the second law of thermodynamics). Even more, unless the Architect used the same constants and values from his own world, it is strongly possible that our world and his world are entirely different.

I will bring here a small example from my daily work as a programmer. Most people are familiar with menus and the most recent files used list - MRU.

This is a constant I usually set at the beginning of my programming work as a #define constant, and usually I set it to 10. Now imagine I give my Menus a little intelligence and they will start to study their universe. One of their biggest puzzles will be the MRU constant: it is always 10. It is not much unlike c- the speed of light in our universe. The Menu denizens will try their best to create telescopes and microscopes to solve this puzzle, to no avail: wherever they look they will see the same MRU=10, because this is what I did set up before compiling their world and implicitly it is a hardcoded part of their world. If they try to break this rule, at the very most, and only if they become very advanced they will cause mayhem in their world (and a computer crash in mine).

There are few interesting developments here:
- The Menus are not aware of me since I don't provide them with my web cam feed. They will troll around in their ignorance until I choose otherwise.
- The Menus can be contacted and let know about their puny situation by a rogue program on my machine.
- In order to change the MRU constant, I (the creator) have to destroy their world and recompile (recreate) it.
- The Menu world has not been built in my image. Their Menu divinity (known by my peer programmers as the 'Help' menu) has no resemblance with its maker.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Carnivorous Carrot]

> For touch, you just simulate the smallest
> texture difference that a human can feel.

My god, where is the folder with all the Sandra Bullock big wrinkled kissy lips textures? Tank, load it up!

Re:and this my friends is why

[Elwood P Dowd]

But in order to assure that observation does not modify the outcome of the simulation, they would need to simulate everything we could ever possibly observe, just so that they could know the exact outcome.

Due to my poor understanding of quantum mechanics, I submit a counterargument to myself: The simulators picked an arbitrary resolution, and decided that if we observed quantum events or anything on that scale or smaller, we *would* change the outcome. That's why observation changes the double slit experiment. Because it's all a simulation, dude.

Please, anyone out there that actually knows something about quantum mechanics, feel free to explain why I'm wrong. If I were you, however, I wouldn't waste my time.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Carnivorous Carrot]

> Due to some sort of biological enhancement the
> mainframe of the Matrix is able to use any
> value between 1 and 0 as the basis for all
> computation

As long as this doesn't mean the full set of irrational numbers, then ultimately it maps to 0's and 1's, and you gain no computational advantage.

If they've found a way to calculate using true full set of irrational numbers, I cannot imagine them gaining any advantage over pure binary, at least not for thinking capability. It might make for an interesting, 100% accurate digital representation of quantum mechanics, though.

Re:and this my friends is why

[LBArrettAnderson]

it still has to simulate all the stuff that we percieve. How will it know to show us a butterfly? how will it know to make the stick hot? it has to simulate that as well.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

so if a simulated tree falls in a simulated wood and no sim is there does it make a simulated sound?

Re:and this my friends is why

[skywire]

The Anonymous Coward's post starts out strong, with the most profound comment in the thread, but weakens as it proceeds. Pi cannot logically be other than what it is. To even speak of pi being equal to, say, 5 is to speak incoherently. Not just incorrectly, but incoherently. A simulation cannot just 'set pi to equal 5'. Such a simulation could not be written, and it could not run. It's not just that things would be "so different".

Even with its flaws, though, it still should be moderated up as Interesting!

Re:and this my friends is why

[Elwood P Dowd]

You suggest that the simulators may be running in a completely different type of universe. I can't speak to that, because I'm bad with physics. However, if our simulator were bound to a similar sort of physics as our own:

There may be no stable enough platform to make such computations. Ever. If, in order to simulate our planet's homelife, you'd need a planet full of future computers simulating at 1/10,000th time (they might need to simulate much much slower), there may be no intelligence in a universe like our own that will ever have the capabilities to dedicate that sort of resources for the amount of time that would be required.

Re:and this my friends is why

[skywire]

Would it not be more correct to say that there are 2D geometries in which pi does not exist, because in them the ratio of circumference to distance is variable? If so, then your criticism of the parent post fails. He was right to attack the naive notion expressed in his parent post that we could easily construct a simulation in which pi is 5.

Re:and this my friends is why

[LBArrettAnderson]

from my original comment:

that is, of course judging that this person is saying that WE will be able to do it eventually. I don't doubt that it's possible that processors are a lot faster beyond the matrix (since they use optic processors where the speed of light is a trillion times faster there than it is here)

Re:and this my friends is why

[skywire]

Wrong. A simulation that would be able to fool us must simulate the whole ball of wax. A game engine, to maintain consistency and continuity so that the players do not notice problems, must continue to simulate even what is not currently being viewed.

Re:and this my friends is why

[LBArrettAnderson]

HOWEVER, i do agree with you on the fact that they create how we percieve time. so you just proved it possible. you're right, i was wrong, mod my original post down.

Re:and this my friends is why

[prestonmarkstone]

All these posts about how hard it would be to simulate the universe are full of hubris.

They're full of hubris in a number of ways. For one thing, the vast majority of discussion on this subject assumes us humans to be the focus and objective of such a simulation. It seems equally as probable that the simulation's purpose might be to investigate what kind of universe comes into being when fundamental forces are tweaked in certain ways or when constants are set to certain (possibly random) values. Maybe the simulation was designed to see what permutations of matter came into being given a simple set of rules -- a Prime Mover tosses in a handful of automata, defines their interaction, then returns periodically to analyze the data. If this latter case were true, then the existence of life -- intelligent or otherwise -- might be perceived by the simulation's administrators as a few interesting new cases of molecular development, and nothing more.

Re:and this my friends is why

[NoInfo]

Well, it should be modded up, but it's not actually important. Humans will invent cause and effect, even if it doesn't exist. This thread is mostly about humans inability to see outside, and why that negates 'problems' like these.

The scientists are going to try to deduce what-caused-what even if the only actual 'cause' is some Matrix-generating heuristic that doesn't actually always tie to a simple law or rule. It could even be tied totally to something outside the 'Matrix'. For instance, if every other Tuesday in the world housing the simulating processors (regardless of the time being represented in the Matrix), the 'sun' servers go down for maintenance, there is no way for them to figure out the true cause. Now they may notice that it happens more frequently when the sun starts acting up (bugs) or that soon after it appears brighter (after-patch bugs), but they're going to have to choose some "cause" in their science that can never actually be 100% accurate. (Kinda interesting that this sounds familiar to the equations in our own world, even though those equations do seem to get better and better.)

The point is that cause-and-effect will be generated by the humans in any environment they exist in. It's not necessary to code cause-and-effect in to a great degree, but I'll agree that it is helpful. Yet, the 'virtual' science they invent could very well be completely foreign to ours even if the simulation is based on very good heuristics simulating our world. That doesn't mean that humans wouldn't lead happy, normal, and productive virtual lives.

Additionally, the AI has plenty of control. If the AI wants to invalidate a discovery, a simple upgrade/patch can make the experiment irreproducible. Humans will not fully accept science that can't stand-up to experimental/imperical refutations.

Want to invalidate cold fusion? Oh, that's been fixed in the latest patch (thanks, auto-update). Is the AI unhappy that humans found that dangerous atom-splitting exploit? I'm sorry, in this version, you're going to have to try much harder to split the next atom. Or it's only possible for very rare materials.

But, don't despair, in this new update, all orgasms last a tenth of a second longer and (Hurry-This-Week-Only!) we're decreasing the chances your ball will land on 0 or 00. Enjoy!

Re:and this my friends is why

[gabbarsingh]

simulate all the 10000000000000000000000000000000000's of atoms

Haven't you heard of the exponential notation, you insensitive clod!

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

id like to see you draw that one with a compass.

Re:and this my friends is why

[nelsonal]

Sound's like their simulation needed IBM's computing on demand.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it's correct to say that the machines aren't compassionate at all. After all, the first Matrix was designed to be a utopia.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Aglassis]

if our simulator were bound to a similar sort of physics as our own:

There may be no stable enough platform to make such computations. Ever. If, in order to simulate our planet's homelife, you'd need a planet full of future computers simulating at 1/10,000th time (they might need to simulate much much slower), there may be no intelligence in a universe like our own that will ever have the capabilities to dedicate that sort of resources for the amount of time that would be required.

In order to simulate a universe you have to have a more complex universe. At a minimum you have to take into account the mass, velocity, and positions of every particle unless you decide to make gross simplifications (limits on observation, the definition of particles inside a black holes event horizon, etc.). To put the data into a framework that can be used for simulation would require a universe larger than the one simulated.

As far as resource management, a meta-universe may have a greatly exagerated speed of light and atoms (if they exist as defined in our physics) may be many times smaller, making the potential abilities of computers (and quantum computers (or another similar meta-universe physics construct)) much faster.

But then again, all points don't necessarily need to be simulated. Our perception is based on what our memory tells us is the past. It is as difficult to touch the past as it is to touch the future. As long as you simulate one time point, you have suceeded in your simulation because all the people in your simulation have memories and believe that they are continuing in a linear time. They believe that what their memories tell them happened 1 second ago even though it was never simulated. If you decide to run a simulation that reverses time it would have no affect on perception of time since it is based on the past. Even though you may grow from an adult into a child (in the time of the computer), at every time data point you think that you are growing into an adult.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, it could be simple to build a 'matrix' where the value of PI could be, say, 5

And call this Matrix "Indiana"?

Re:and this my friends is why

[whereiswaldo]

So it's certainly capable of determining that you are peering through a microscope and adjusting the level of detail accordingly. How detailed is the simulation? Precisely as detailed as it needs to be, but no more.

That reminded me of lossy compression algorithms used for music and video (eg. MP3, MPEG). The ears and eyes can only detect so many sounds and colours. We are able to manipulate more sounds and colours, but we can't actually ear or see them.

Perhaps we only think there is infinite detail, when in fact the sound is quite coarse?

But what's really going to bake your noodle ;) is how can dogs hear and smell better than us, and why can eagles see better than us? Because they are Agents? Who knows...

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what you're saying is that when I close my eyes the world goes away? Right...

Re:and this my friends is why

[spun]

Absolutely with you on the Greg Egan "Permutation City" recommendation. I just finished it a week ago, and it was brilliant. Very thought provoking. Saw it mentioned in the recent Scientific American article on multiple universes.

Re:and this my friends is why

[BitterOak]

A computer can only simulate worlds which are less complex than the world in which the computer exists

Not necessarily. Remember, the computer is only simulating the complex world, it doesn't have to implement it. Only things which we look at and focus our attention on need to be simulated. The far side of the moon need not be simulated, for example. It is possible, even in today's virtual reality type video games to create the illusion of worlds much more complex than the program really deals with. You assume there is detail beneath the surface which really isn't there, because it's easier for your mind to comprehend it that way than to think of it as an elaborate simulation.

Re:and this my friends is why

[g0_p]

The flaw in the argument I think is that memories could have been passed in a reliable manner to descendants. For eg. the only way that we know that our ancestors were apes and they lived by hunting animals is through observations and discoveries of what is currently available. Who is to say that these pieces of evidence were not planted to be discovered by us so we form our opinions about our past?

Maybe the first generation of denizens of the matrix were indeed humans with memories of the real world but were imprisoned by the machines and forced to live in the simulations. For the machine it is only a matter of running these simulations for a few generations interspersed with some pseudo-apocalyptic catastrophies and manipulation of data to make sure that less and less of prior memory can be transmitted accurately to future generations.

Of course if the computers are smart they would find ways to speed up this initial set of simulations so that it only takes say five years in real world time to simulate say a hundred years of simulation time. After a few tens or hundreds of generations and by carefully monitoring what information gets passed on between generations by eliminating key facts and planting alternative ones the computers can arrive at a set of people that it could plant in the Matrix.

Also it would not be required that these initial simulations be run on a very large number of people. Something like initiating and maintaining a culture of relatively small number of humans in a mini-Matrix "petri dish" for a few generations until they are ready to be transferred in the actual Matrix...

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

I spend quite a bit of time modeling things in Maya. The best way to avoid tremendously large rendering times is to simplify the models. Therefore, I wonder if you have ever actually BUILT a realtime 3D scene. The fact is that I have. I was speaking from a programmer's and modeler's standpoint.

An interesting thing about the brain is that it has parts specificaly to detect lines and textures. If you could find a way to stimulate those parts of the brain, then you could get away with even worse renderings than would normally be possible. A large portion of our reality is memory based. If you've been living in one house for a while, you've probably memorized where the light switches are. After that memorization period, you essentially set light toggling to an autonomic function. You expect your dinner table to have a particular texture, and if someone's switched it for another, it's a bit disorienting.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

I was assuming that the computer was in our universe simulating us in real-time. That part about only 3 dimensions is quite true. If we really lived in a 9 dimension universe, then simulating 3 wouldn't be that hard. It would still take an appreciable chunk of processor power, though.

Re:and this my friends is why

[neema]

Well, the first paper deals with the concept of the simulation using omission when details aren't needed. To quote from the paper:

"Moreover, a posthuman simulator would have enough computing power to keep track of the detailed belief-states in all human brains at all times. Therefore, when it saw that a human was about to make an observation of the microscopic world, it could fill in sufficent detail in the simulation in the appropriate domain on an as-needed basis. Should any error occur, the director could easily edit the states of any brains that have become aware of an anomaly before it spoils the simulation. Alternatively, the director could skip back a few seconds and rerun the simulation in a way that avoids the problem."

Hence, if an experiment with the lasers, as you gave as an example, was conducted, the director (or directors) could fill in sufficent detail to satisfy those observing, or even allow the observation to be made, only to alter their memories. Also, and this is an idea not touched on in the paper, why couldn't the director changed the AI's perception? If I show you something that is blue, but make you perceive it to be green, it doesn't matter that it's blue.

Re:and this my friends is why

[xPhoenix]

Going with the different laws of physics idea, also don't forget the TIME itself is subject to the laws of physics in our universe as well. Just because we PERCEIVE a 10 year time period to have passed (in our simulation world), that time period could very well have been 1 second in the world of the simulation machine we are running on. The reverse is also true. One second in the simulation world could have taken 10 billion years to compute, it's just what we perceive. If you look at it that way, any discussion of computer power/speed gets completely thrown out the window. This way, the simulation would be much like the Level 4 multiverse in the parallel universes article posted here a few weeks ago. The physical laws that we are bound to exist and are defined in a completely different environment (or no environment at all, in the case of the Level 4 multiverse where they exist outside of space/time in general). From this, you could assume that anything, no matter how complex, could be computed in what seems like an instant to us, since we are bound to the laws of the "program", aka the matrix could be run on an 8086 :)

Re:and this my friends is why

[andr0meda]

Not quite.

To be able to determine the pre-conditions for a simulation that needs to be started as you enter it's 'importance'-zone, you need to simulate all the elements that determine the pre-condition. Since in real life everything is influenced by everything, the recursion never ends.

This example provides good intuition about how e.g. quark entanglement works in quantum space.

3d games are an overly simplified version of life. There's no smell, no wind, no moisture, no air pressure, incomplete material properties.. there are only some physics simulations that in most games are 'ok' at best.

(For the record, I work on 3d computer games, and even though our games are very much alive, you could never fool me :).. but I must agree with you saying halo2 and halflife2 are friggin close to a physically correct experience..)

Re:and this my friends is why

[whereiswaldo]

Consider the worst case: I make an observation, then I look away and you stop simulating what I don't see.

Assuming the ones simulating our world even _need_ to recover that small amount of computing power saved when you looked away. Based on what is happening on our planet, in our solar system, and galaxy, computing power is not a factor.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Matrix becomes very popular
2) Write book about world being a simulation
3) Start selling red sugar pills
4) ????
5) PROFIT!!

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Just Think About it ... the universe may be running on a Z80 ... who would know :)

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

This argument seems to be very popular, but it is still wrong. If you use a reasonable and consistent measure for complexity, a system cannot simulate a more complex system. Anything which you omit from the simulation because there is no observer reduces the complexity of the simulation. If you look at a computer game long enough, the illusion falls apart, unless it is really a full simulation. (These terms are quite arbitrary. Of course a program which creates an illusion of higher complexity is a simulator too, it just creates a less complex simulation.) The inhabitants of a simulation can't look beyond the simulation, but they can - and eventually will - discover the rules which govern the simulation, if the simulation permits the existence of intelligent beings. If the simulator wants the inhabitants to perceive a certain set of rules, then precisely these rules have to govern the simulation, no more, no less. Creating the illusion of the correct outcome is the same as calculating it. An illusion which never fails to create the impression of the correct outcome is no less complex than a simulation of the outcome. In that case, nothing is gained by only pretending to simulate everything all the time.

Re:and this my friends is why

[raap]

From a programmers point of view I can fully understand why you would quantize the universe with a limit on the smallest spatial dimension (btw, I would do that with time also).

But why would one use a constant speed of light? It does not make simulations easier; all those general relativity equations must be really hard for the math coprocessor.

So why dont they use just a Newtonian Universe with quantum properties?

Re:and this my friends is why

[MoogMan]

Well, if "this" is a simulation then chances are that it is not perfect. In this case someone *will* eventually find a problem. Providing that the creators are not perfect, they could never create a flawlessly closed simulation.

Buffer overflows == Wormholes? Null pointers == Black holes?

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that I am the only real being and that all of you are just constructs to interact with, I am in fact an advanced species playing ultra realistick video game, its just so real that it took me a while to realise this!

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a case of armchair theologists at work?
Old religions collapse and new ones fill in their void. For science cannot answer conclusively the most important question of all, why do we exist? And that is where human logic ends and human emotion ie religion, including metaphysics, begins.

Re:and this my friends is why

[whereiswaldo]

I peeked through microscopes myself already, so I take this as proof that
we don't live in a simulation. At least not one of those corner-cutting
el-cheapo simulations.

Or, wait.. Maybe THEY have temporarily put me into the "extended detail"
processing queue back then?

Heh, so what if we ALL look into a microscope at the same time? Would we notice a slowdown?

I say "no", because each processor cycle would produce the same amount of work. Our perception of how things run would remain the same. The thing running the simulation, on the other hand, would say "damn! time to upgrade!"

Re:and this my friends is why

[willtsmith]

Already been done ...

Except, they write info-mercials instead books. The pills aren't always red. And they're almost always filled with something either

1) Less effective than sugar.
2) Far more dangerous.

Let's thank Newt Gingrich for endorsing an industry of liars and thieves (The Supplement Biz) by hamstringing the FDA.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

At the core, this hypothesis is the modern incarnation of a very old hypothesis, in fact this that same hypothesis forms the basis for Judaism, Christianity, Islam and many (if not most) other religions. The hypothesis is that we as well as our reality are the creation of some form of divine (supernatural) entity. The only difference is that in his implementation the entity uses mechanisms resembling computers to perform the creation. And it leaves the same question, how did the divine entity come to be. So what we have here, ladies and gentlemen is old business, so lets move on to new business.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

what about dreams? Dreams would be close to a simulated universe, wouldn't they?

Perhaps it is astronomically likely we are part of somebody's dream!

Re:and this my friends is why

[B'Trey]

Certainly, simplifying the calculation removes information about the state of the simulation. So what? We don't have access to any more information than the simulation does; therefore we have no way to prove that the simulation's calculations are incorrect.

Your argument essentially boils down to the claim that we would be able to run our own simulation (either a computerized simulation or a pen-and-paper calculation), and compare the results of it to "reality." However, calculating the future state of a system necessarily relies upon determining the present state of the system. When we determine the present state to some degree of precision, we tell the simulation that it needs to pay more attention to those details.

Re:and this my friends is why

[kabrakan]

The computer only needs to simulate what people can see--since the simulation is for people, anything else with a brain(or without) is merely a prop. Anything not in sight goes from the machines ram into storage, and i'm sure not every atom must be simulated.. equations describe our environment, and they can be applied to this simulation as they are in real life. This brings up the question... does a tree falling in the woods make a noise? Answer: NO, it doesn't deserve the proccessing power to be simulated. stop asking.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Jerf]

Don't even need to bring in QM... observe the simple, high-school level formulation of the gas laws, which with only a few more twists works on a wide variety of real gases, and adequately describes the macroscopic behavior of gas with only a few equations, yet this gas consists of trillions of molecules.

Also compare "lazy evaluation" in computer science; if nobodys looking, it doesn't need to be done.

Finally, "observer" is an easy word in QM to get hung up on. "Observer" in QM is any other particle, only fairly wacky theories require a concious observer. High-level simulation is adequate the vast majority of the time.

Re:and this my friends is why

[magnum3065]

What you're referring to is only part of what makes a computer complex. Certainly you can simulate a more complex processor than the one that is running the machine, but you can't simluate a computer with as much or more memory/storage than the one that's simulating it.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Your vision must be excellent since you claim to be right now looking at half of the atoms in our galaxy (estimated to be around 10^68).

Re:and this my friends is why

[russellh]

This could certainly apply to a simulation of our universe, also. Maybe we're all running in slow motion in our simulation, because it takes a minute of real time to simulate a milisecond of our time.

That might work if our reality were clocked. you're talking about the difference between a slow versus a fast chess game (they are identical), whereas "reality chess" would be a turn-less game, where the players can proceed simultaneously without waiting for the opponent to make a move. That's fundamentally different.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Wes Janson]

But if all particles are not being continually simulated, the effects will be apparant if the virtual scientists try to, for instance, measure the effect of gravity. For instance, if for the sake of saving processor power by omitting a vast amount of unseen matter, the simulation were to ignore and leave out every bit of matter say, 50 meters below and deeper than sea level, this would be very noticeable. Shock waves from earthquakes, for instance, would not transmit correctly unless the simulation were patched to falsify data results. People would float off the planet (or else the shell would collapse in upon itself), and necessitate another patch to apply constant gravity standards, and keep things from falling past that point. The list goes on, and while each could be patched, there would always be the bugs that get past, and have to be fixed post-launch. Virtual denizens will eventually notice them. Any simulation with the complexity of the real world would inevitably miss an enormous sum of bugs, and could never find them all. Without resetting the entire game, or invalidating the simulation by modifying memories, the overriding intelligence would simply be forced to allow the knowledge to proliferate.

Re:and this my friends is why

[LBArrettAnderson]

your math skills must really suck since you claim that 10^34/10^68 is about 1/2... 10^34/10^64 is quite a bit smaller than half... especially since it's almost zero... 10^(-34)

don't act smart when you're not, retard.

Re:and this my friends is why

[LBArrettAnderson]

sorry, "10^34/10^64" should be "10^34/10^68"

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

what a f***ing retard! that's like saying 10 is half of 100 or 100 is a fourth of 100000000. go back to school

Re:and this my friends is why

[packeteer]

You are totally right about perception. It would be possible to simulate a different matrix world for each person without much difficulty. All you need to simulate at one time in a world is whatever can be seen, touches, heard, smelled, or tasted but each person. Much of the world could be stored database style and not pulled up untill someone needs to experiance it.

Also, as for the inhabitants of the matrix using science to discover the fact that would also be easy to prevent. The computers simply need to cheat. They can simulate what a scientist would see or hear in each simulation. Lets say someone used a microscope, all that needs to be simulated would be what is displayed in the eye of the scientist.

Re:and this my friends is why

[jasonditz]

Couldn't you just put newborns in the simulation originally and simulate parents for them? Just kill everyone over 12 months old and the problem likely takes care of itself.

Re:and this my friends is why

[PurpleFloyd]

Why not? Pi is only ~3.14159 in flat space. In curved geometry (like on the surface of a sphere) the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumfrence can be not equal to pi in "flat space" or even variable, depending on the size or location of the circle.

I suggest reading Feynman's Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (or, even better, the complete Lectures on Physics); they can be tough going, but you will come out with a solid understanding of the basics of relativity. Note that they were written for freshmen and sophomores at Caltech, so math up to basic calculus is required.

When you finish the book, you will understand how space could be curved, even 3-dimensionally. One piece of advice: don't try to map every equation to your perception of the "real world," or you'll go crazy halfway through Not-So-Easy Pieces. Just go through the math and think about it later.

Re:and this my friends is why

[inKubus]

You fail to use your imagination adaquately. Remember, the microscopes and lasers you speak of are all based in this simulated world also. Therefore the same limitations apply to both the measurement tool and the reality they are trying to measure.

I think that everyone should look at this more pragmatically. What difference does it make? None really. If you choose to live your life like this is a big video game, go for it. I'd probably admire you. The problem is that there are lots of people with small brains, who fail to see the possibilities that many of us here on Slashdot do. And for them, just as AOL is an adaquate internet connection, the explainations for the world they have been taught is good enough also.

When it comes to philosophy, reality boils down to the idea of reality. What is real? Are 2 humans' brains really close enough to actually even have the same idea of reality? I mean, even with a common communications protocol, such as English, there is much idea that is never transferred between to humans when discussing what is real and what isn't.

The Matrix did a good job of VISUALLY analysing what real is (from an entertainment standpoint) but I think the problem is that we all have different ideas about reality and the methods we use to communicate, to help others understand what we are seeing, simply break down too soon.

In a reality like the Matrix, everyone is interconnected, everyone's brain is perfectly meshed with some advanced connection layer, more like a hardware layer than a software layer. In that case, we would all be in the same world, and we would be that holistic, one mind.

What a lot of people don't realize is that even with the conventional laws of physics and math and other junk we've been taught in school, it's easy to see that we all affect one another with our thoughts and actions. And altough we do not use an advanced protocol and design system to change the world by walking thru it, we do. I affect you and you me. In essence, humanity--well actually ALL MATTER functions as a single giant unit, a universe, in which all things happen.

Humans have such a huge ego that we can't even imagine being so small and meaningless. But we are. At the same time, we are more important then say dirt, because we exist as a higher order of organization. Like a whirlpool in a river, a human life brings together molucules in symphony, and then becomes more efficient at affecting its surroundings, sort of a form of communication and messaging.

Anyway, back to the original point. We are in a virtual world insofar as we use abstraction layers, tools for translation, to increase our inate ability to affect the world, be it a piece of dirt (translates your energy with a shovel to move it), a garage door (translates your energy thru a remote), a glass of water (with a hand, direct energy), or perhaps another person (translates your thoughts and intentions thru english or another language..). So, it makes no difference wether you call it Life, the Matrix, whatever, we are still all just junk that happens to be here, and I find it pretty fucking entertaining to be living in a video game.

Re:and this my friends is why

[MadKeithV]

It would have to be nearly infinately fast

Um, or trick us into thinking it was real-time but simulating us at a far slower pace? In a cortex simulation, it would be easy to slow our perception down as much as necessary for the simulator to keep up.

Re:and this my friends is why

[skeepa]

Sorry, but PI exists because it is an irrational number. If you set PI=5, it automatically disappear, like de relationship between de diameter and ratio of a circunference ... i mean, 2.
Anyway, I like PI like this :)

Re:and this my friends is why

[jpop32]

It would have to be nearly infinately fast to simulate all the 10000000000000000000000000000000000's of atoms i can see right now, and even put an electron microscope up to and see formations of.

Who says such simulations have to be done in real-time? Maybe what you percieve to be one second takes 5 years to compute in the simulators' machines. Any maybe they can dedicate a planet-sized computer to simulating one person's life.

A fact is that any Turing-complete system can _perfectly_ emulate the whole universe that we see. Look it up.

Re:and this my friends is why

[skywire]

If you had read my response to Spongman in this thread, you might not have wasted time lecturing me on elementary matters of which I am well aware.

My response to the Anonymous Coward's post was tailored to it, so as to point out its logical inadequacy, and did not need to go further.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually all you need to do is build in the rules for magnification. These will always be triggered when microscopes and such are used and the extra detail is needed.

This way you can avoid these extra plugins and get the computational advantages of simplification.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Makarakalax]

How would anyone prove that the "bug" is a bug and not just normal "reality"-type phenomenon?

Citing your own example, a blackhole == a null pointer, all current scientists think a black hole is a huge gravity well, they don't think its a bug in a matrix-like simulation we're all a part of. If someone published such a theory they'd be laughed at and branded a hippy. Everyone hangs on to reality quite firmly.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Mac Degger]

Sounds like you're discribing the planck lenght :)

The fatal flaw in the whole argument is that you presume that you actually need to simulate every bit (or pixel) of the lowest grain of a universe. But you forget that a lot is rule based...I can make a pretty convincing fake of the view through an electron based microscope using a few algorithms and other rules. Reality is quite compressible that way.

In other words, you won'tr need a computer the size of the universe to simulate the universe.

Re:and this my friends is why

[betat]

"She was standing in an antiseptically white space so pure and seamless and bright that the eye balked at reporting it to the brain."

Sounds alot like the Construct.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Rich0]

Heck you don't even need to emulate all that.

Since I'm the only person who really exists in the first place, the simulator only needs to emulate to full visual resoluiton the stuff that is in a 10 foot sphere around me. It can diminish resolution outwards from there. It only needs to simulate the people I actually run into.

Really - would you notice if 99% of the people you bump into at the mall were autogenerated 1 second before you looked at them?

Also - the simulation doesn't have to run in real-time. For I know 3 years of "real-time" elapsed while I wrote this comment.

Like you said with emulating full detail only during examination, the system could just pause time whenever I started to look at something, re-render the object, and then resume time.

If the system detected that a situation came up that would cause me to question the nature of the world it could just trigger a pause just in a nick of time, so the programmers could take a look and tweak things to avert the disaster.

The reason the movie-like matrix had to be high-powered is because the actual humans lived in the real world - the computers had to keep up with their real-time brains. If you had a matrix without the real humans in it - just simulated humans, it could run at any speed at all.

Re:and this my friends is why

[PurpleFloyd]

Your argument is bullshit. Pi is the ratio of circumfrence to diameter of a circle, nothing more. It may show up in other places; this is coincidence. I was merely pointing out how the ratio of diameter to circumfrence could be =! ~3.14159.

This is the definition of pi. Pi may be a useful tool in other equations, but that doesn't change its definition.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Dylan Zimmerman]

The problem with that is that the programs probably wouldn't make good parents. I can just see Agent Smith sealing a baby's mouth to keep it from crying.

Re:and this my friends is why

[mcamou]

Actually, you don't have to simulate all of the atoms. All the simulation would have to include is whatever I am perceiving at a particular moment in time. All of these Slashdot responses are actually simulated messages, created by the Matrix to simulate the fact that there is actually someone else besides me in the simulation. As a matter of fact, there is no way for anyone to prove to anyone else that they are, in fact, real, and not just a simulation created specifically.

Re:and this my friends is why

[Junior J. Junior III]

The reason processor speed can't continue at the rate it does is because the processors are in THIS universe.

You can't model something that is as complex as the model, it's a basic limitation on information theory. Thus, if this universe is merely a nested reality a la the Matrix, this Matrix could not have within it a nested universe which is AS COMPLEX as the entire universe (unless it's being modeled VERY slowly).

OUTSIDE of this universe, however, all bets are off. If this is indeed a nested reality, the bounds on the laws of physics in the outside-reality may be quite different from what's being modeled in here (much like the "physics" of the cellular automata known as Life is much different from the physics of the world we call "reality"). The limits on computational power may be quite different, and at any rate; our pereption of time's passage may be quite different from what the actual rate of modelling in the outside universe. It might take them years to render one second of our reality. But for us, time still seems to tick by at one second per second. Or it could be 10 seconds per second. Or one second per year. How would we know the difference, unless we can somehow step outside?

Re:and this my friends is why

[Junior J. Junior III]

So basically, what you're saying is, "Carmack is God", right? I thought Slashdot already knew that.

Re:and this my friends is why

[LBArrettAnderson]

no, how would it know what to show you? but people who have reminded me that time doesn't have to go at the same rate are right. you're wrong about it just having to show me stuff, because how would it know what to show me?

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

(Or may just too busy)
One wanders, inst that heisenbergs uncertainty priciple? Look... to simulate germs actions, for instance, gross effects, one would need one of the following:
1) to run several equations directly related to that specific action concerning all the germes in the simulated enviroment (the whole world);
2) to run probability based equations of the action related only to the observation itself;

In (1), one would have to end up simulating all germs in the enviroment (in the world), concerning all their possible actions, because those actions would be possible to happen in any moment in the enviroment. As discussed previously this technique would be resourse consuming, and maybe even impossible.

So, possible simulations would have probability based equations that would stimulate human observers according to their necessity.

Observation changes the observed object that behaves based on probability. How does that sound like?

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Complex numbers have connections to many other parts of mathematics. A particularly striking example comes from the work of Euler. In 1748 he discovered the identity

e^(i*x) = cos x + i sin x

This is true for any real number x.

Such a close connection between trigonometric functions, the mathematical constant "e", and the square root of -1 is already quite startling. Surely, such an identity cannot be a mere accident; rather, we must be catching a glimpse of a rich, complicated, and highly abstract mathematical pattern that for the most part lies hidden from our view.

In fact, Euler's formula has other surprises in store. If you substitute the value pi for x in Euler's formula, then, since cos pi = -1 and sin pi = 0, you get the identity
e^(i*pi) = -1

Rewriting this as
e^(i*pi) +1 = 0

you obtain a simple equation that connects the five most common constants of mathematics: e, pi , i , 0 , and 1.

Not the least surprising aspect of the last equation is that the result of raising an irrational number to a power that is an irrational imaginary number can turn out be a natural number. Indeed, raising an imaginary number to an imaginary power can also give a real-number answer. Setting x = pi/ 2 in the equation at the top of the page, and noting that cos pi / 2 = 0 and sin pi/ 2 =1 , you get
e^(i*pi/2) = i

and, if you raise both sides of this identity to the power i, you obtain (since i^2 = -1)
e^(-pi/2) = i^i

Thus, using a calculator to compute the value of e^(-pi/2), you find that
i^i = ~ 0.2078795763..............

I'd like to hear how something as simple as Pi is the ratio of circumference [you might want to try spelling that right in your comments] has such an interesting identity.

Such a close connection between trigonometric functions, the mathematical constant "e", and the square root of -1 is quite startling - except when you see it, right?

Re:and this my friends is why

[LBArrettAnderson]

let's estimate just about how far i was really off... let's see... 100,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy.. we'll just say the stars account for half of the atoms, so the equivalent of 200,000,000,000 stars... earth is 100,000 times smaller than 1 average star, so earth accounts for 1 2*10^16th of the mass in the galaxy. let's see you can see 1/1,000,000,000 of the way through the surface of the earth... so if i could see the entire surface, that'd be 1 2*10^25th of the earth. i'd say this room, with the air molecules included, accounts for about 1/1,000,000,000th of the surface.

i'm right, you're wrong.

Re:and this my friends is why

[jak163]

In that case the simulation would be for the benefit of the simulator, not one (or all) of the minds in the simulation, so each of us would vanish the moment his or her attention was diverted. That we are all always on all the time suggests we are not simulations.

Re:and this my friends is why

[CoCoUmlat]

But.... It doesn't matter if a simulation is only simulating things that are x small and y big. When we actually know that we are seeing x and y, we will think that they are the biggest and smallest things in existence.

We wouldn't be able to derive that we are actually within a simulation. We might also prove that our world can be digitally represented, but that does not infer that this is in fact a computer simulation.

As for trying to go beyond the limits of space, the number of atoms that need to be simulated remains constant... Maybe precision loss would be an issue, but given our life times and the imposed speed of light, it seems that one could give a provable upper limit that is within the limits of the simulations precision. It's fun to think of our world as a computer simulation, and the speed of light simply being the amount of time it takes to transfer data amongs threads, or some other similar concept! ;-)

Re:and this my friends is why

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been wondering about that for well over a decade. I could be the only real person and I would never be able to conclusively prove it until I was somehow removed from the simulation.

I Want Out!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the red pill?

Re:I Want Out!

[pavese]

I have quite a few here on my desk! But believe me, feeling like you're in hell because you're invincible isn't what a human beiing wants...

You don't want out, instrumentalism just sux and you know it. Consciously or not.

Re:I Want Out!

[SiMac]

In a proper simulation, there is no way out. Perhaps there is in a quantum mechanical simulation, however, since all the operations are not contained on a chip, just in a bunch of separate universes...

Re:I Want Out!

[prestonmarkstone]

You're assuming there is a way out for any of us, that we're participants in a simulation and that we have bodies or forms that exist outside of all of this. It seems as likely that we're not participants, but components of the simulation. If that's the case, there are no bodies to return to, and the only way out is by way of /dev/null.

After thinking about that, Neo quote required.

[Punchcardz]

Whoa.....

The future men said you say this.

[Anonymous Coward]

They said someone would try to persuade me that time travel was impossible. You have just validated their existence.

damn....

[Anonymous Coward]

reallly something to think about...im i real?!

Re:damn....

[Anonymous Coward]

Also something to think about: Following the standard rules of capitalization, punctuation and spelling.

woooah

[mjdth]

this article is way too deep for 3 am. i'll just wait until /. accidently reposts it sometime later this week at a more reasonable hour.

but either way, i wouldn't believe this because it would be too scary if it were true.

Re:woooah

[pyrote]

That's what they were wanting you to say... it's all written... here on this cd.

Re:woooah

[evilviper]

The /. has you...

Follow the white rabbit...

Re:woooah

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how it's truth would change anything (from your mind's perspective, at least), so I'm not sure why you would find it "too scary." Consciousness built on neurons made of atoms is no more real than consciousness built on simulationed neurons made of simulationed atoms. Consciousness is as consciousness does.

Re:woooah

[Anonymous Coward]

Deja vus happen when they change something

Re:woooah

[MainframeKiller]

I don't see how it's truth would change anything (from your mind's perspective, at least), so I'm not sure why you would find it "too scary." Consciousness built on neurons made of atoms is no more real than consciousness built on simulationed neurons made of simulationed atoms. Consciousness is as consciousness does.

My Momma always said life is like a box with a cat in it, you never know if it is alive or dead...

What do you expect, it's 5 am and I'm stuck at work!

Re:woooah

[Knuckles]

My Momma always said life is like a box with a cat in it, you never know if it is alive or dead...

Impressive. My mum never quoted Schrödinger to me

Re:woooah

[metlin]

To quote D. Adams, very deep. Reader's Digest has a column for people like you :-p

Re:woooah

[roman_mir]

That would be dejavu - it happens when they change something.

Re:woooah

[rosewood]

I know im not in a computer simulation because if I was, and I looked really closely at an edge, I would see the jaggies.

Re:woooah

[outsider007]

don't bother.
I read the article and I still don't know kung fu.

Re:woooah

[Durindana]

Frankly, it scares me because it implies that not only is afterlife possible, it seems likely...

What's more, as the Hansen essay explored, obtaining that afterlife means attempting to guess the simulation designer's goals, whether they be religious, artistic or whatever.

Maybe I should become a Zoroastrian. Or maybe the designer's goals include creating minds with a Kyoto-school acceptance of the absurd.

Re:woooah

[Rich0]

My Momma always said life is like a box with a cat in it, you never know if it is alive or dead...

You've obviously never tried putting a cat inside a cardboard box. Just try tapping the outside and you'll find out pretty quickly whether it is alive or dead...

screw it.

[cfscript]

i don't care if the entire universe is real, a computer simulation or an atom in a giant being.

hypothesise all you want, it doesn't change the fact that A is A and you have to go to work on monday. the last thing the current american society needs is a new kantian theory to overtake it.

i'm all about philosophy and learning as much as i can, but no matter what, existence exists. wish all you want, carrie anne-moss isn't going to magically appear, and your troubles won't disappear until you get off your ass.

Re:screw it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical 'blue pill' response.

Re:screw it.

[CoolVibe]

Cypher: Ignorance is bliss...

*ducks away*

Re:screw it.

[PingPongBoy]

In your simulated world, you understand the concept of Monday.

why should anyone present a simulation of such a mediocre world to an envatted mind year after year? Anyone with that much computational power would have loftier goals.

In The Truman Show, Truman is kept on his island but it takes so much trouble to keep him there. The speed of light is one of the barriers that keeps the universe as we know it from taking on all kinds of bizarre states.

Do we have simulators living in a universe free of such restrictions?

Re:screw it.

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole simulation theorizing is closely related to the concept of free will (or its non-existence). The hardware on which we "run" doesn't really matter, whether it's the "real" world as we perceive it or an advanced computer. Our nature is important. If you don't have free will, well, why bother? Whatever you think or choose is not your thought or choice. It may be that not everything is predetermined, but if that's not due to free will, then it's simply random. An entirely non-metaphysical (or simply physical = accessible to simulation) model of human existence reduces us to sophisticated animals, which has very interesting implications for the way we treat other people. Such a model instrumentalizes other human beings. They become expendable. Do you believe in law as a sole matter of reason or what is your motivation for not killing people? It may well be that the rejection of this realization is crucial to the existence of society, which makes religion not the opium of the people but its oxygen and water. If you were to build a world simulation, would you make its inhabitants religious?

Re:screw it.

[Anonymous Coward]

hypothesise all you want, it doesn't change the fact that A is A and you have to go to work on monday. the last thing the current american society needs is a new kantian theory to overtake it.

Actually the "fact" a is a and that you have to go to work on monday are only "facts" because you agree with them. So they are really opinions. And speaking as an american citizen fed up with the excess and lies of this country I would gladly see a theory, any theory, that brought about non violent change in the way we live our lives.

Re:screw it.

[cfscript]

oh, good.

try to travel back in time and fix it, jagoff.

peace is accepting reality. about the same time you do that, you may be able to stop spouting off.

Re:screw it.

[nametaken]

I'm going to take the, "it doesn't matter so long as you have free will" statement one step further and say...
It doesn't matter if you have free will or not. What matters is that you don't know. Tell me, what's the difference? You may be destined to decide to take the rotten apple tomorrow... but it doesn't matter... because you didn't KNOW you were destined to get the rotten apple. As far as you're concerned, you made a real decision to take that apple. Barring religious ramifications (the contexts of which would make this whole conversation moot), there is no real difference. In fact, knowing would only be torture. I'm sure everyone has seen movies and TV shows that illustrate that.

Now, I need an exit.

Re:screw it.

[Matthias Wiesmann]

I agree, the most annoying thing about the article "How to live in a simulation" is that it makes the classical IMHO erronous assumption that the simulator (the entity that controls the simulation) is basically like us.

This text roughtly assumes that the simulator is basically an american guy and the main reason for simulating a universe is to go to a party. Very deep philosophy. The simulator might well be a zen poet two centuries in the future interested in the pattern of human emotions, or some alien student trying to build the most absurd form of life. There is simply no way to know. So trying to please this simulator is completely absurd.

The talk about seeing the weaknesses in the simulation because certain parts are not simulated also takes the wrong perspective. Assuming you build a simulation that is not homogenous, you will make sure that the where there are simplifications they will have little influence (i.e they are not noticable). As for the hypothesis that certain people are not true, I don't like when people start talking about true/chosen/über/whatever people.

This is just some guy projecting his own bias on some theoretical entity and using this to justify his own (egoistic I might add) approach to live as being "logical". I agree that this is not what american society needs, but I fear it is what it wants. Of course, this has been the stuff of religions for centuries, replace simulator by god and voilà!

Re:screw it.

[cfscript]

yes, instead let's opt for the 'oh boohoo it's not my fault' ideal.

this is the last thread i'm going to bother replying to until i wake up sunday, but let me tell you, it's people like you that practically beg to not be blamed for your own sloth that are ruining the human race one by one.

even if i -am- wrong, and there is no free will by some sort of oogie-boogie god that you can't prove by any means, it doesn't matter. nobody respects a looter or a slacker except the same.

go ahead, start telling me how you have no power over your own frailty and blah blah blah, i'm still not going to respect, care or hire you.

nite,

--d.

Re:screw it.

[nametaken]

You're staying up too late. I said it doesn't matter if there is free will or not. As far as everyone knows, we do. Which means we can only function on the idea that all people are responsible for their actions. You just flamed me irresponsibly for arguing the same thing you believe.

Re:screw it.

[Overly Critical Guy]

Hope is accepting that your current reality is just a curtain, a hindrance to be overcome. We should all strive for what's behind it.

You wish for people to stagnate because you feel insecure about your situation in life, and rather than face the hopelessness of trying to change it, you choose a laughable definition for "peace" and aggressively go after others with terms like "jagoff."

It's the saddest thing I've ever seen.

Re:screw it.

[Overly Critical Guy]

Perhaps you should attempt basic comprehension skills before you flame someone for arguing the very same thing you believe. It shows the weakness of your mind.

You mask your disappointments and insecurities by convincing yourself you have accepted your situation, and therefore have no problems or weakness. To continue the facade requires constant feeding of the ego, which you placate with badly spelled ramblings toward other people who possess imagination and hope. Whereas you would convince yourself that you are "happy" living in a hole, the rest would be striving to climb out. That desire for the better situation is what has allowed our civilization to progress. In history, the envelopes was pushed by the dreamers, not dreary and cliched aggressive motivators like yourself. Cynicism is a spiraling hole almost as deep as the one you're sitting in. You despise the transferrence of anyone's blame because you inwardly harbor some for yourself, but believe it has dissipated because you think you're self-sufficient. The rest of us laugh as your reptilian brain lashes out in an attempt to hold onto the dream, making bizarre statements about not respecting and hiring people when nobody made such demands to begin with. The chip on your shoulder must be heavy indeed. It is very sad.

Next.

Re:screw it.

[Anonymous Coward]

hypothesise all you want, it doesn't change the fact that A is A and you have to go to work on monday.

Nobody said it did.

Everybody must have some sort of delusional idea of what reality is -- whether there's a god, a heaven, a hell, a cadre of alien souls in locked into our brains by Xenu, whether we're in a computer simulation, whether everyone else on earth is a robot built to entertain us, whether dragons really exist, whether it's ok to hate certain people, whether it's ok to ignore other people's problems, and so on in endless variety.

This is all necessary to prevent us from going completely insane over the fact that we're just very smart monkeys, who will eventually die and rot, and that there are more of us on the planet than we can possibly feed, and that as long as we are what we are, these will never change.

You sound as though you believe that such theorizing is a waste of our time and saps energy away from real work on tangible problems, whereas I sincerely dobut that people could ever manage to develop the civilization that we have without having some delusion about what reality is. If everybody knew that there are some problems that can never be solved, why would anyone do anything? Mankind is eternally striving for perfection, blinding itself to the fact that it can never reach it.

And thus enter the transhumanists, who neatly avoid the issue with the delusion that mankind will ultimately (maybe even very soon) trancend it's bodily form and become something that never dies, needs no food, and is millions of times more intellegent. Perfection, at last!

Er...no. No matter what form intellegent life takes, there will always be some resource for which demand is greater than supply. And it will fight over it, be it by claw or spear or gun or nuke or laser or by some means we can't imagine yet. Few will dominate many, as they always have, and yet...they will still all hold onto the delusion that all is right with the universe.

So, what I'm saying, roughly, is that philosophy is the fine art of facing the horrible truth of reality, but sideways, so as to concoct better delusions.

Re:screw it.

[Knuckles]

Not only has everyone seen TV shows and movies illustrating that, but it happens in everyone's brains all the time. Go read #5 of the Reith Lectures 2003 by Vilayanur S Ramachandran.
Zen Buddhism's claim to enable the practitioner to "live in the present" seems to be connected with these phenomena, and seems to have actual foundations in the material phenomena in the brain. Everybody interested, go read Zen and the Brain by James H. Austin

Re:screw it.

[bj8rn]

hypothesise all you want, it doesn't change the fact that A is A

Well, technically, the A on left of your 'is' is different from the A on the right of your 'is', as 1) its location on my monitor is different 2) the time you typed them was different. You can call me a nitpick now.

Re:screw it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does to change it. I am going to put in a simulation tape today and learn to fly.

Re:screw it.

[MsGeek]

hypothesise all you want, it doesn't change the fact that A is A and you have to go to work on monday. the last thing the current american society needs is a new kantian theory to overtake it.

No matter what the "true" structure of the world is, whether there is an objective reality behind it or not, the fact remains that in order to survive and function in the world one needs to pretty much live ones life as if A truly equals A.

Any amount of philosophizing notwithstanding, if you are walking towards a brick wall, you will avoid getting hurt if you treat it as a solid object and not as an illusion or a simulation.

You needn't be a Randroid to operate this way. It's just common sense. You deal with local reality as it is until and unless you have to deal with phenomena that indicates otherwise.

Existence may or may not exist. We could be living in a simulation, hooked up to each other like one big Beowulf Cluster. We could be just a dream in the mind of Brahman. But in everyday life, operating as if reality is what it is is very necessary.

There is nothing wrong with speculating about the nature of the real. Just remember to maintain your airspeed lest the ground come up and smite thee.

Re:screw it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"in order to survive and function in the world one needs to pretty much live ones life as if A truly equals A"

i am reminded of the situation where one knows that life is meaningless, but the zen trick is living as though it meant something.

determining whether that situation has meaning or not is left as an exercise to MsGeek :)

fred

Re:screw it.

[Reality Master 101]

And speaking as an american citizen fed up with the excess and lies of this country I would gladly see a theory, any theory, that brought about non violent change in the way we live our lives.

Here's the theory for you: it's called "maturity".

When you grow up and stop waiting for "theories" to change your life, and get off your ass and start being productive, you will find that the world is a much better place. Sorry dude, but the socialistic paradise that you want where the government provides for all your needs so you don't have to work hard (aka "work on monday") and can just party all the time is a childish fantasy, like living in a candy store or a toy shop.

Re:screw it.

[maraist]

fun fun fun.

It may be that not everything is predetermined, but if that's not due to free will, then it's simply random.

Why random? Is a finite automata's output random given it's input sequence? If so, then how could we trust the unix tool grep? Does grep choose to report a line even though it wasn't pre-determined? Could there be a malignant deamon inside my computer (possibly a virus) which causes it to fabricate results.. Simply print out a line with the sought word, wherein the line never existed in the input stream? Yes, but the deamon would also have been finit, so if the user knew of it's existance, this too would have been deterministic.. No choices have been made, and the output was not random.

Likewise, in our existance, if we were not free to make choices, we would merely be acting out Newtons concept that given the set of initial conditions of the universe, the entire future would be transparent. Of course, his mechanical view of physics was incomplete and choas does rule at the micro-scopic level, thus initial conditions may not even be enough. But neither of these two views disproves pre-determinism - they merely impeed our ability to predict the future reliably (most notably in weather patterns).

As for:
Our nature is important. If you don't have free will, well, why bother? Whatever you think or choose is not your thought or choice

The concept of the choice may not be yours, but the actions will be. The process of choosing is an action, and therefore the process of choosing is yours to own. If the concept of choosing doesn't exist (e.g. if we have no free will), then the non-existant choices are not ours, but we still own the action-process.

We define responsibility to the effect that we accepting punishment / retribution / reperations for our destructive actions, and thus pre-empt them by avoiding the destructiveness in the first place.

If your person [chooses to] takes actions that are destructive (in essence, not bothering to obey annoying laws), then you will eventually be dealt with. Just like you would not just sit and let somebody beat you up indefinately.. Eventually you will run or fight back. Thus our intellect (which is fundamentally no different than that of an animal) will act so as to avoid these understood negative outcomes. A dog will avoid a harful person, a cat will remember a generous household, a bee will remember a pollenous flower.

Note that the above actions merely require intellect, not free will. The intellect is little more than a memory system which can store and process inputs and trigger responses; some creature have greater analytical power than others. Dogs, for example can sense and analyze smell, and cats can sense and analyze light better than we.

If you were to build a world simulation, would you make its inhabitants religious?

This is interesting for two reasons. One, the point of your asking.. Do we pre-judge our simulants as disobediant or dispairing, or in other words, is it possible to produce naturally happy-go-lucky simulants. And two, is philosophy/theology a natural process of intelligent beings. Since theology is a slowly conjured externalization of philosophy, and philosophy is an intellectual attempt at understanding our environment. Is it possible to produce a world of thinkers (still possibly pre-determined) that can avoid concluding an extra-world or extra-existance.

Re:screw it.

[Dr. Spork]

Uhh, maybe you should do some more philosophy learning. Your alleged objection to this work shows a profound misunderstanding of it. Nobody said that chicks in catsuits are going to start appearing.

If you read the Chalmers paper, you'd see that living in a simulation does not make the objects around us any less real than outside the simulation... although I'm not sure I'm convinced by that argument...

Repeating tautologies like A is A is only a good move if you're writing a script for a movie for idiots, like Matrix Reloaded.

Re:screw it.

[Dr. Spork]

I agree, the most annoying thing about the article "How to live in a simulation" is that it makes the classical IMHO erronous assumption that the simulator (the entity that controls the simulation) is basically like us.

Umm, no it doesn't. I don't remember reading anything about the motivations of the simulation authors. Anyway, there doesn't need to be a story about why they build the simulation. Maybe you should read the article again.

Re:screw it.

[LadyLucky]

and you have to go to work on monday

Huzzah!! It's a holiday in the commonwealth on monday!

Re:screw it.

[willtsmith]

The beauty of these ideas is that most of the people who espouse it don't seem to work very hard at all. Yeah, like schmoozing all day, power-lunches, being entertained by sales people, getting their asses kissed by underlings.

When they get home on weekend they take back their kids from their foreign au-pairs and look over their carefully manicured lawn maintained by Mexicans.

No really, the people who REALLY work their asses off (blue-collar) get tired and don't have time (away from their kids who they themselves care for) to tell other people that their too lazy.

Re:screw it.

[GlamdringLFO]

Keep in mind that Kant was saying 'You cannot perceive that which exists apart from the restrictive framework imposed by your physical senses'. In a nutshell, we cannot truly *know* anything, even ourselves, because we only have our mind and senses with which to do that, and they are limited. But I seriously doubt anything 'new' and 'Kantian' is going to overtake American society. Society doesn't care about real philosophy, just the watered down lip=service the movies give it so it sounds hip. Anglo-american philosophy has been shaped dramatically by the work of Kant for years and years and years. Continental philosophy developed in reaction to it. But that's still the basic point of difference between the two: can we *truly* know things? And I don't see how, except in a very limited sense, that has anything to do with the question 'are we all living in an illusion?'.

Re:screw it.

[kesuki]

Well, letting the ground come up and smite me is a bit tricky -- I'm already immortal as has been evidenced by my failure to die 10 times in my life (as estimated by me.)
Oh and being immortal is not all it's cracked up to be. Sure I don't break bones, but I still cut and bleed normally. Sure I can breathe in toxic vapours and ingest poisons strong enough to kill an elephant and still end up only feeling slightly sick.. but I still have alergies. And I do get sick, although it's pretty infrequent, and generally mild to moderate.
oh and other than making dice roll the way I want to (with 72% accuracy --If I'm focused on it) ir cards shuffle the way I want (i've shuffled myself a four of a kind twice in a row before -- and no i don't know any tricks about how to do that intentionally) .. reality really isn't so maleable as to make flying easy...

Episode of Star Trek

[ScottGant]

The episode was "Ship in a Bottle" where Moriarty and his love are sent off in a computer simulation at the end. They think it's all real, but they're really just both in a simulation of the galaxy.

At the end, Barkley wonders if he himself is part of a simulation and says "Computer, end program".

Ok, that's it. I'm a Nerd.

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[mati]

Thank you for reminding me how good Star Trek used to be :)

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[madhippy]

IMO - its precisely this sort of episode which makes star trek a steaming pile of dung

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[Treskin]

Taking bets on how many people actually say "Computer, end program" out loud while reading this post.

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[MyHair]

No, silly. That's passe. People will be sshnuke'ing the whole internet looking for backdoors (and wearing tight leather). That's the current hip thing.

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[anagama]

Ahhhh .... Brochli. I wonder why he was in so few episodes. I liked him.

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

He had too many A-Team conventions to go to. Being Murdoch still has it's demands, and I pity da foo who stands up Mr. T at the convention.

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

bad taste moment...

Depresed trekkies now know what to write on their suicide notes.

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

Me:"Computer, end program." DSFSDVXcvxvxcvzzzz [NO CARRIER]zzzzzzzz

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[inertia187]

If it were up to me, Star Trek XI will be about Moriarty escaping the simulation. It has the makings of "The Wrath of Moriarty."

The back story is that he figures out fairly quickly that he was tricked because the holo-matrix isn't perfect enough. So he has all this time to plot his escape.

That escape would have something to do with Barkley checking up on him. Moriarty would have a trigger that would trap Barkley. Eventually, Moriarty would find out about Voyager's Doctor's mobile emitter.

Ok, that's it. I'm a Nerd.

Hey, I already knew I was a Nerd.

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

You be trying to use English commandage on a
system that predates the English language?
Silly yumanz...

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[Carnivorous Carrot]

>> At the end, Barkley wonders if he himself is
>> part of a simulation and says "Computer, end
>> program".
>>
>
> IMO - its precisely this sort of episode which
> makes star trek a steaming pile of dung

Exactly. Should've been, "Computer, JLo's ass in my face." if Reg had any creativity. Even his "perverted" simulations lacked any stinky body parts.

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[madhippy]

and also ...

what exactly was his punishment for this ??

IIRC some 'counselling'....

should've been locked up in the brig for 12months, demoted to lowest rank and then kicked out of starfleet (or whatever its called) to spend the rest of his life doing some sort of janitorial work ...

Re:Episode of Star Trek

[ehiris]

All the people that started taking red pills when the Matrix came out.

I yam what I yam

[Anonymous Coward]

To quote Popeye, "I yam what I yam and that's all I yam." To assert that it is "astronomically more likely" that we are computer simulations than it is that we are human is silly. It assumes that my sense of existence was randomly chosen among all entities capable of supporting consciousness... when I am obviously me! That's like saying that it is incredibly unlikely that you ate whatever you ate for lunch, if you selected randomly among all things people have ever eaten for lunch before, or better yet everything that a person could have ever possibly fit in his mouth. You ate what you ate.

What if

[katalyst]

There is no end to what ifs.....
For example, if a charecter being simulated in a 13th floor styled simulation, did not understand the concept of wireframes (when he reaches the "edge" of the simulated world), would he consider it abnormal?
Similarly, in our "real world", space - the outer void - the vaccum - can be a means of conserving memory by being empty space, so that the "system" is able to process high detailed simulations on planets.... maybe only one planet has life (simulated) because the "system" is only capable of processing the complex simulations of one such biosphere
All i'm trying to say is that it's possible to come up with innumerable theories.. its exciting, it stimulates are brains, but HOW SERIOUSLY are we supposed to take them?

Re:What if

[dfeist]

You can't build a copmuter capable of simulating the earth on earth. And likewise, those humans simulated in the computer can't build a computer with more computing power than the one they are simulated in.
Would be too k3wl if I could simulate a faster computer with my slow one, wouldn't it?

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

Why cant the main computer just slow down the simulation untill it can cope with the increased requirements? remember, 'speed of time' of not constant in a simulation.

Re:What if

[dfeist]

But you can't get around having anough storage, at last. OK, I wasn't very exact here.
Although even the computing power argument is in fact very strong: For simulating the earth at 1/1000000 speed, you need 1/1000000 of the earth - at least (theoretically, practically, it will be quite a few orders of magnitude more)...

Re:What if

[Dr. Spork]

The article was not about "what if's" but about what conclusions warrant rational credence. Read it again.

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

Greg Egan covered this in Permutation City.

there is no matrix.

[Anonymous Coward]

man, how many people here have woken up in a wierd place after an agent took over then and then exited. getting drunk and high dont count. bah living inside a matrix, pfft!!

if thats the case why wouldnt the people running the matrix stop the making of the movies, so as to prevent any suspicion or rejection of the ideas by the people plugged into it. damn psychos.

Re:there is no matrix.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, then we would know they know that we know....

Re:there is no matrix.

[comet_11]

Actually, in another movie, I believe it was The Faculty, an interesting idea was that the aliens helped people to create sci-fi movies with aliens in them. The purpose of this was to make everyone think that aliens were just fictional and thus not take any real alien invasion seriously.

So...

[orange_6]

I'm simulated.

Can I still be stimulated?

Re:So...

[unicron]

To the bee-mobile!

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Note without a buffer overflow.

Looks like a TNT32 card and a 500mhz to me

[CrazyJim0]

Its not bullet time, so much as FPS lag.

One missed option

[Black Copter Control]

I don't know if humanity will go extinct in a geologically short period of time, but I do believe that it is very possible (likely, even) that our society will colapse under the weight of geometrically increasing resource demands.

Re:One missed option

[stephanruby]

Personally, I believe that _only_ certain segments of our society will collapse under that weight. Hopefully, my descendants and I will be in the segment that survives.

Re:One missed option

[Anonymous Coward]

my argument runs along the same lines as "I yam what I yam" post

consider that there are an infinite number possible humans that could exist, so the probablity of me existing at any point is... one in an infinite number.

someone better at maths please respond... but it seems that logical reasoning cannot be applied on such a large scale. So the argument that "more seconds exist ahead of me then behind" is as incapable at providing any 'proof' as the argument i have presented above.

I hope this makes sense, but anyway my point is that when it comes to infinite values, or really really large values, such proofs just dont work.

Re:One missed option

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? No human is dissimilar enough from any other to make it matter in the long term. Don't Breed.

Re:One missed option

[stephanruby]

I will breed. I am not responsible for the behavior of others. When parents will bear the true cost of bearing their own children, they will be more careful.

In France, mass breeding halted as soon as the inheritance law was changed. The new law required all possessions to be equally distributed between surviving offsprings. Apparently, this change in the law changed the power structure in the family and parents didn't want to have that many kids anymore. And while this may not be an example of bearing the true cost of having children, it just goes to show you that people can modify their breeding behavior if it's in their economic interest to do so.

I don't know...

[rgoer]

This also may explain why time travel seems impossible: we dont meet visitors from the future since only the present is being simulated

Um, hello? I was just reading an article posted from "the mysterious future" not too long ago. Either the future is being simulated just like everything else, or Einstein didn't count on Slashdot's existence.

Re:I don't know...

[KrispyKringle]

Yeah, there are a lot better, non-we-are-living-in-a-Matrix reasons to assume that time-travel, at least in both directions in time (as opposed to the approaching-the-speed-of-light-so-time-goes-slower -empirically-tested-to-be-true-Einstien way) is totally, logically impossible.

For example, let's assume time travel is possible. We can go both ways in the fourth dimension. This basically removes any sort of chronological constraints from our actions. In other words, ordinarily, if I want to drive a car, I first have to obtain it. But in this universe, if I want a time machine, I can go back in time and teach myself how to make a time machine so I can go back in time to teach myself how to make the time machine. You get the idea.

So if I decide I want a time machine right now, why can't I just teach myself how to make one so that I can go back in time to teach myself how to make one? Yeah. That's what I thought.

Re:I don't know...

[AliasMoze]

You think time can't move backward, huh.

Obviously you haven't been to the California DVM.

Re:I don't know...

[IICV]

The way I respond to that was actually something I got from a fiction book: The time machine can move in four dimensions, yes. However, if you were to try to move the thing to a time before it was built, it does not exist yet / any more and you get tumbled off into 4-space. This is why you can't go back and teach yourself how to build a time machine - by the time you could get there safely, it'd already been built. It's might also be the reason why there aren't any right now: the first thing anyone tries to do when they have a working time machine is go off and see the dinosaurs, to bring back proof that they aren't crackpots.

Re:I don't know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd always thought that the reason we've never met any time travellers is that it is proof that the human race becomes extinct before we are able to create time machines.

Re:I don't know...

[GlamdringLFO]

A friend of mine wrote up a mock proof that time travel is indeed impossible, becuase if it were not, someone from the future would have come back to make the big bucks by selling a time-traveling paradox-creating service. Since such a service is unavailable, it must never have been invented (or have been invented after the cure for human greed has been found).

I contend that time travel was likely possible, and the reason that no-one has done anything like the above is that the 'enterprising' type to do something like the above would not be the type to keep in mind that 1000 years ago, the solar system was in a very different place in the galaxy. I'll bet there are a lot of stranded time machines stuck in deep space.

why ohh why..

[Squarewav]

The matrix was a good movie but come one thats it a movie. it had so many holes in the plot like why the robots did not just switch too nuclear or something far more powerfull then sucking body heat from people who are living in a virtual world. It seems like every week or so slashdot posts a story about some long ass report about how the matrix could be real. You dont have to justify likeing a movie, just enjoy the movie how it is a kung foo/super human/slowmotion fights. reminds me of that theme song from mystery science theater 3000 (something like) "if your wondering how they eat and sleap and other science facts, repeat to yourself its just a show you shood realy just relax"

Re:why ohh why..

[KrispyKringle]

Better than suggesting alternative power, why doesn't anyone ever point out the laws of thermodynamics?

This is always what got me about The Matrix. There is even a comment somewhere along in the first movie about how the living are fed the waste of the dead. Well, great, but what about conservation of energy? Where is this energy actually coming from? In our normal ecosystem, it comes from the sun via photosynthesis. Here, no sun, no plants, people eating people...sounds like perpetual motion.

And even if we do accept that animals can somehow power these machines, why don't they just use pigs or cows or something? Or give lobotomies on birth? Eh?

But as you said, quit thinking about it all seriously, and just enjoy the movie. It's a vehicle, and not every aspect should be taken at face value or should be expected to make perfect sense.

Re:why ohh why..

[Kierthos]

Exactly... it shouldn't have been "What is the Matrix?" but "Why is the Matrix?". We have a number of AIs that are so ruthless (from humanity's standpoint) that they see no problem using human's as a fuel source, yet they let them "live their lives" inside the Matrix.

From the point where the first guy who could manipulate the Matrix freely showed up, they should have been giving frontal lobotomies to all the new fuel cells.

Or the robots could have "fled" to space, leaving behind the humans who just ruined their own ecosystem...

Of course, the AIs aren't completely logical and unemotional... Smith never would have snapped in the first movie otherwise... one of the by-products of true intelligence.

Kierthos

Re:why ohh why..

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the word of Zion is just a 2nd layer of the Matrix simulation? In the 3rd film it could be revealed that the robots did switch to nuclear power, and that the purpose of the Matrix was just to study humans, not to serve as any kind of power source.

Just because Morpheus says that humans are used for power does not make it so. I thought you'd have figured that out by now.

Re:why ohh why..

[Caltheos]

I was under the impression that "humans powering the matrix" more referrered to their neural pathways being used as a gigacluster...the body heat is a handy dandy by product....and frontal lobots would kinda be like clocking an amd 3200 to 33mhz

Re:why ohh why..

[Anonymous Coward]

there could be two things (imho) that makes using humans instead of nuclear/other necessary.

1. they use human minds for computational power somehow.

2. their ai is somehow enforced to ensure humanity continues to exist.

the first one seems like the only reasonable answer that could fit into a movie.

then again ... it could just be one big ai experiment that simulates the human cortex in a very extreme situation.

but like you said - just a movie.

-brady

Re:why ohh why..

[zdzichu]

Some SPOILAGE ALERT!

holes in the plot like why the robots did not just switch too nuclear or something far more powerfull then sucking body heat from people who are living in a virtual world

Watch Matrix Reloaded. You will see, that rot13(guvf onggrel gurbel vf cher ohyyfuvg. Ynfg 2 zvahgrf bs Z2 fubjf guvf).

Re:why ohh why..

[dakers27]

Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics.

Re:why ohh why..

[Pinguu]

Yep :) You know when Neo stops the sentinals without touching them? That's when you know they're all in the 2nd layer of the Matrix.

Re:why ohh why..

[LordLucless]

The Matrix may have popularized it, but the idea of living in a "virutal" world has been around for ages. Read Descartes first meditation. The thing about this idea is that it is absolutely impossible to disprove, thus making it wonderful for philosophers.

It makes good movies too.

Re:why ohh why..

[LordLucless]

I don't reckon Zion is a nested Matrix. That sorta things been done before (13th Floor, for one, damn good movie). I think the W-brothers are going for something a little more metaphysical. I think in the third part, Neo's gonna realize that the real world is just the same as a matrix, except with atoms instead of bits, and that it can be manipulated by one with the comprehension of his condition.

Re:why ohh why..

[stwrtpj]

reminds me of that theme song from mystery science theater 3000 (something like) "if your wondering how they eat and sleap and other science facts, repeat to yourself its just a show you shood realy just relax"

Oh great. That means not only are we a simulation, but I have the likes of Crow T. Robot watching it and making pithy comments about my life.

Re:why ohh why..

[tdvaughan]

This is the same sort of idea you get in Dan Simmons' Hyperion books - that AI are usings humans (first by using spare brain 'clock cycles' when they're going through farcaster gates and then through the cruciform symbiotes) to perform calculations for them. In my opinion, this idea makes for a more coherent and interesting plot; shame the W brothers went with the power idea.

Re:why ohh why..

[Epistax]

*sigh*
The humans are not being kept alive for body heat, they are being kept alive because that would have been primary in their programming so they cannot go against it. So how do you take over a planet where you are willfully unable to destroy the dominating species? Imprison them without taking their livelihood.

Re:why ohh why..

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem with the Matrix is that it is assuming that not only can the machines make a perpetual motion machine (The Matrix), which is impossible, they can also take energy from it to run themselves while still leaving the Matrix with enough energy to run itself (which is super-duper impossible). Remember that the clouds are dark and stormy and no light is coming in from the sun.

All of the physics in that movie is bunk. If they try to play it all off by going, "Look! It is a matrix in a matrix in a matrix..." I am going to hunt them down and punch them in the face for their laziness.

Re:why ohh why..

[richardww]

No one seems to say that using humans to generate electricity is impossible. To get energy out, they need to put energy in in the form of food or whatever. Food is basically fuel for the human generator, and has to be made somehow. All the energy in food comes from the sun, which they blocked out so the robots have to generate it somehow. Energy, as we all know, can neither be created nor destroyed so the robots can never get more energy out than they put in, which is the biggest plot hole in the matrix because it means the entire 2 films are impossible.

Great films still though.

Re:why ohh why..

[apetime]

After watching Reloaded, it seems to me that the power generation thing is probably just a deception. One of the sub-themes of Reloaded was symbiosis between humans and the machines. In the whole talk that Neo and Governor WhatsHisFace have in the industrial part of Zion, its obvious how, even outside the Matrix, humans depend on machines to survive.

I think in the next movie, we'll find out why the machines need humans to survive, and its going to be something innate to humans but impossible for machines to create themselves. It's hard to believe that the Wachasdfjdswhatever brothers paid so much attention to detail (like that Trinity hacking scene) in so many places, but made the huge mistake in basic science that generating power from humans implies. There's got to be more to it. The way the Architect puts it though, its going to be a Simpson's ending.

"Brace yourselves gentlemen. According to the gas chromatograph, the secret ingredient is... Love!? Who's been screwing with this thing?"

Re:why ohh why..

[MKalus]

Take a step back even further: Why did the humans black out the Sun?

Setting off EMP blasts would have most likely disabled the machines (most likely human machines as well, but those could be replaced in time).

I didn't quite get it why they just tried to block out the Sun, it must have been clear t them that this would destroy their own eco system and as such their very own existance. No?

Oh well, it's just a movie.

Re:why ohh why..

[cmason32]

The certainly couldn't be using my girlfriend for power because she is always cold.

Re:why ohh why..

[jjackson]

A lot of people get hung up on the human power plant issue with the Matrix. However, they did try to cover the fact that humans would make a poor power source...

When Morpheus is explaining to Neo that he is a Duracell, he makes that comment that "...combined with a form of Fusion, the machines found all the power they would ever need".

The assumption that humans are some form of required ingredient for fusion is a little silly, but less so than the idea that I could plug an extension cord into my ass to power the laptop I am using.

Re:why ohh why..

[DavidTC]

I don't know why people are assuming there are any humans in those movies.

Re:why ohh why..

[chameleon_skin]

You appear to have missed the point.

The point of these various items is not to serve as justification for an action movie's existence. The action movie is doing just fine by itself, thankyou.

The point is to take a serious look at the ramifications of the idea of being inside a simulation world, and whether or not this is an actual possibility. If you've read the referenced articles (which, based on your post, I'm assuming you haven't), then you would see that the ideas presented are not dreamy scenarios composed at 2am under the influence of copious amounts of illegal herbage; they are rigorously presented proofs of the given concepts. You may agree or disagree with them as you choose, but I think in all cases it is clear that the authors' points were not to sell more Matrix Reloaded tickets. Give them some credit for their work, huh?

Everything's got its modus ponens, even if it's a Keanu Reeves movie with a scientific basis that's about as solid as swiss cheese.

Re:why ohh why..

[Goldsmith]

Who said anything about the Martix?

The movie has lead to a popular interest in these ideas, but they've been around for centuries. It's always been an interesting philisophical question.

I was always slightly annoyed by the people who thought the Matrix was philosophically original. As you say, it is just a good kung foo/super human/slowmotion fight movie.

Re:why ohh why..

[Dr. Spork]

What a dumbass! Do you actually think philosophers have first come across these issues as a result of watching the Matrix? I'm sorry, but that's just ignorant. Look at the dates of some of the big articles about the subject. Many are pre-1999, in some cases, by centuries!

Re:why ohh why..

[sirsex]

In the first movie, when Morpheus is explaining the Matrix, he says that the machines get their energy from the humans, combined with a form of fusion.

Whether the fusion is taking place in their bodies, or the human's minds are being used as parallel processing to control reaction, or whatever, the humans are not the direct source of energy.

Re:why ohh why..

[Carnivorous Carrot]

I got the feeling stopping the sentinels was because he had some kind of mental tie into the matrix's AI minds thanks to his partial wetware takeover by agent Smith.

Re:why ohh why..

[ehiris]

SPOILER

If you watch the second movie you will understand that:
1 - The robots did not kill the people because they need them in order to make choices.
2 - People had to be controlled otherwise they were going to destroy all the robots!

Re:why ohh why..

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than suggesting alternative power, why doesn't anyone ever point out the laws of thermodynamics?

You don't read Slashdot much, do you? People point out the laws of thermodynamics EVERY SINGLE TIME the Matrix is mentioned.

Re:why ohh why..

[Wesser]

Did anyone here even see Reloaded? The architech basically told Neo everything they know isn't true. Neo realized it and said either no one told me, or no one knows. Maybe that same thing applies here. Maybe the machines just want them to THINK they're being used as a power source. When in reality, they're being used for something else. It's just another form of control you know.

Re:why ohh why..

[mgblst]

To troll or not to troll? If you are for real, then surely you would have read some replies to there Matrix questions before. In the first matrix, the matrix is being explained by Morpehous, someone who doesn't really understand the matrix, and misguided by a number of misconceptions. It's like explaining to you how your computer works incorrectly, it doesn't stop it from working!

Re:why ohh why..

[willtsmith]

Ahhhh,

So, if Morpheus existed in our world, he would work at Radio Shack, or maybe Best Buy :-)

Re:why ohh why..

[willtsmith]

I don't think it would apply. The REAL world would operate under a completely separate set of rules setup up by a FAR MORE powerful creator.

I didn't make the "Unreal Zion" jump immediately, but after examining the facts, it seems like the only real possibility. The most telling fact is that Agent Smith can LIVE inside the ZIONITE he infected in "The Real World".

The idea of a computer program written for a silicon-based CPU running INSIDE the head of a human is just a bit dumber than the "human-heat power generation" idea. Furthermore, the idea of actually PHYSICALLY rebuilding Zion five times over just writing a program also seems a bit absurd. It's VERY obvious that they could have wipe out Zion ANY time they liked.

Re:why ohh why..

[willtsmith]

WOW,

A very nice Asimov-ian perspective. They cannot finish of the humans because their primary directive PREVENTS them from harming humans.

Re:why ohh why..

[LordLucless]

But there are differences between the Matrix and Zion. Look at how zonked Neo gets when he does his stuff at the end of the movie. It requires a lot more power to do stuff in Zion than it does in the Matrix. That would tend to indicate that they are not the same construct.

It's not so dumb for the agent to be able to exist in human wetware. After all, that uber-syringe thing they get in the back of the head when they jack in is an interface between the mind and the matrix. If a human consciousness can be digitized, why can't a digital consciousness be humanized? Just like a modem; digital to analog, analog to digital.

I doubt they'd have rebuilt Zion. They don't need to "rebuild" it. Humans escaping from the Matrix wouldn't expect to find everything all nice and ordered after they escape from the Matrix into a post-apocalyptic world. They'd expect it to be falling apart. The machines just need to torch the machines and leave Zion how it is. Not to mention that Zion might change locations each iteration.

All this is assuming, of course, that what the Architect says is true.

One of the things the Matrix Reloaded has done is redefine the world of the Matrix. After the original, it was a very simple setup. Humans (goodies) trapped within the Matrix (virtual world) by machines (baddies).

But now it's more like a massive game of Core War. We've got a whole bunch of independant fragments of code (the Oracle, the guy with the accent whose name I can't remember, the Keymaker, Agent Smith) all with their own agendas, that fight against the machines, for the machines, or just sit tight. To me it seems the AI in general would be more worried about these rebels in its own ranks than the humans.

Maybe Zion isn't so much an escape valve for a algorithmic anomoly as it is a honey-pot for soft-hearted AI rebels (Keymaker, Oracle) so the evil AI's can track em down and nail em. After all, would the machines really care that there's a few thousand rebels out there? Pre-Neo, they couldn't do jack all in the Matrix against the Agents and their ships have to turn and run whenever a Sentinel comes near. They can always just up production in the baby factories to replace the ones that escape from the Matrix. These are machines remember, they're not going to throw all this force against something that doesn't really threaten them; that would be inefficient.

All of this besides, if the whole plot of the movie ends up taking place in the virtualized world of the Matrix, it's going to be damn hard to get an audience to care about it at all. There has to be something real, a real victory or a real tragedy or something for people to engage with it. If the movie ends with the cinematic equivelant of "and then I woke up", people are going to feel gyped.

Re:why ohh why..

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because she is a blow-up doll.

You mean I can dodge bullets?

[SolubleFrank]

No, I'm telling you your just trapped.

Re:You mean I can dodge bullets?

[SubjunctiveSam]

The contraction for "you are" is "you're."

Re:You mean I can dodge bullets?

[etcpasswd]

The contraction to "I don't give a fuck about spealings" is "/."

Much like religion

[mrbeaton]

For any religion that believes that we are placed here by a higher being, we essentially are living in a simulation. God created us and is now sitting back watching us run around.

One of the articles mentions ways to change one's behavior upon realization that it is all a simulation... sound familiar?

Re:Much like religion

[eaglebtc]

A simulation...but for what though? To what end are we practicing? If, as you propose, God is running a giant simulator down here, then what "real" life is he mimicking?

Food for thought...

Re:Much like religion

[robbo]

..waiting for one of us to exclaim "42!".

Re:Much like religion

[roman_mir]

-What does it mean?
-It means that the Matrix cannot tell you who you are.
-But an Oracle can?
-That's different.

Re:Much like religion

[Strandman]

For any religion that believes that we are placed here by a higher being, we essentially are living in a simulation.

For me, the scary thing is if we are NOT living in a simulation.

Re:Much like religion

[Anonymous Coward]

God is simulating his *own existence*.

We are told we were made "in His image, after His likeness". He loaded you into this awesome UniverseEngine (tm) so that you could experience the kind of life that He experiences.

Psalm 8:5 says:

"For you have made him a little lower than God, and has crowned him with glory and honour."

Many translations put the word Angels instead of God in the above, but if you look at your Hebrew the word "Elohim" means God, and has nothing to do with Angels.

So, your a simulated version of God, albeit a little lower than he is (you aint got root).

The real crunch is what happens when your program ends? If this really is a matrix situation, that demands a little thought. As you come out of the "int main()" function that has held you since your birth, what value are you going to return?

I will return faith and thanks to my creator. I am convinced there is another level to this matrix for those who do.

There is everything to gain, and nothing to lose.

Re:Much like religion

[MobyTurbo]

For any religion that believes that we are placed here by a higher being, we essentially are living in a simulation.

Chasidic Jewish mystics say that "everything is G-dliness" and the materiality of this world is essentially a mask of its Source. There's a major difference in the simulation idea, however, the maker of the "simulation" is good rather than evil, as it is in gnosticism.

One of the articles mentions ways to change one's behavior upon realization that it is all a simulation... sound familiar?

Well, such ideas do help change people's lives for the better sometimes.

Re:Much like religion

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why ACs should log in, I have all AC's set to -1. Actually would get an insightful mod point from me.

Re:Much like religion

[Anonymous Coward]

The creator wants to know what the creator is. By examining its' own reactions to the whole of the experiences of the simulation's (dream's?) life-forms, the creator can obtain insight into its' own nature. There is no other way to do it, what else is there apart from the creator?

Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[eaglebtc]

I believe it is possible in 2199 for an advanced computer to simulate an existence like SimCity.

However, if everyone is a digital projection controlled by a computer program, then how is it the humans inside the matrix are capable of independent thought? Why isn't it like "Big Brother" in George Orwell's 1984, where the Thought Police were always watching for crimethink? Even if the computers' super-advanced AI engine could simulate thoughts *for* the human, and trick them into thinking they came up with it themselves, then why would the system allow a human to discover what is outside the Matrix? Is there a certain amount of "tolerance" built into the system? I guess that would explain the need for "agents."

...But if no one was allowed to think a "wrong" thought...there would be no law enforcement, but no one would care because they wouldn't need to be taught about obeying the rules because no one would ever think about breaking them (The Pre-Crime Division would take care of that) ;)

Soo...this goes back to my initial inquiry -- where does the independent thought come from? Is it somehow hardwired to the person's brain through the matrix? If so, they need subconscious experiences (daydreams, nightmares, etc.) in order to have independent thought. So the Matrix must have had a certain level of tolerance built in.

But.... if the Matrix *was* built by a race of cruel machines designed to control humans, then why was the Matrix programmed the way it is? Are they torturing humans with a life they once knew, before AI came into play and destroyed that which they had?

All this makes me want to see "Revolutions." I hope they answer all these questions, like "Who Created The Matrix?" It's too human, too sympathetic to be built by cold, heartless machines. There is religion in the matrix, so someone had to program that in.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[basser]

If you think back to simple programming basics, if you want everyone to think the same, declare thoughts[] as private static thought[] if you want independant thought private thought[] ... sooo... is deja vu when the makers of the matrix stuffed up with the pointers to our thoughts?:)

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[SubjunctiveSam]

My theory is that most of the processing is done by the minds of the people that inhabit it. That is why things that should be unbending like laws of physics are quite malleable. This is what the people of the Matrix are really for, some kind of processing job, not a power source. The power source idea doesn't make thermodynamic sense and the architect just kind of brushed aside Neo's assertions that the architect needs people to survive.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[spacecowboy420]

So are you suggesting distributed computing via humans for our robot leaders? To what end? Do they wanna find aliens too?

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[malloci]

...But if no one was allowed to think a "wrong" thought...there would be no law enforcement, but no one would care because they wouldn't need to be taught about obeying the rules because no one would ever think about breaking them (The Pre-Crime Division would take care of that) ;)

Wasn't that the premise of the original matrix (the one built prior to the trilogy)? It was a paradise, but the problem was that no one believed it and so massive amounts of people would wake from it. Hence the reason why the second matrix was built (going back to Agent Smith's description in the first movie).

I always thought the matrix was more a playground for individual minds to play in. If you set up an environment that is engineered to look like our world, place the minds in the system with some initial parameters (e.g. you are a programmer looking for work and like potato chips and coffee, etc) and then let those objects loose in the system, things should flow fairly smoothly. The matrix was more like a drug to keep the minds of their batteries happy basically, and the reason they chose this section of our history is that it was "the height of our civilization". But even Neo has a choice by the architect in the second movie.

I would say that control came by limiting choices. This comes from the societal structure that is put in place, something which most people are more than happy to live within. The few that refused to accept that were shown a different reality (i.e. unplugged from the matrix). However, the one wrench that Matrix:Reloaded tossed into the mix was Neo's ability to sense the machines on the other side. This would indicate that the true architects of the matrix built a buffer zone in which those minds that didn't believe the first matrix would wake up into the second thus saving them as a power source for a while longer and ensuring that every once and awhile you could flush those who would attempt to destroy your creation. By controlling the resistance you have complete control as Orwell showed us in 1984.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[autopr0n]

However, if everyone is a digital projection controlled by a computer program, then how is it the humans inside the matrix are capable of independent thought? Why isn't it like "Big Brother" in George Orwell's 1984, where the Thought Police were always watching for crimethink? Even if the computers' super-advanced AI engine could simulate thoughts *for* the human, and trick them into thinking they came up with it themselves, then why would the system allow a human to discover what is outside the Matrix? Is there a certain amount of "tolerance" built into the system? I guess that would explain the need for "agents."

If it was all a simulation, why would the people running the simulation care at all what people thought? It wouldn't matter if we realized it was a simulation, since there would be no way for us to ever get 'out'. And they certanly wouldn't need big-brother like tactics if they could peer into our minds.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[Timmeh]

I don't know what you're running, but I was just simulating an existence like SimCity a few minutes ago on my 200MHz pentium...

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even watch the movies?

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[Ratso Baggins]

"then how is it the humans inside the matrix are capable of independent thought? "

think of it like a buffer overflow... that the pill causes.....

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[zsau]

In the Matrix, people think for themselves. That's were independent thought comes from. It's also were religion comes from. What the computer didn't program, people could have created *inside* the Matrix. Simple.

It's too human, too sympathetic to be built by cold, heartless machines.

So it was build by computers beyond what you're willing to comprehend. Just because you don't think a computer can ever have properties we associate with life doesn't mean it can't. I mean, the computer can emulate a universe!

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[HoppQ]

However, if everyone is a digital projection controlled by a computer program, then how is it the humans inside the matrix are capable of independent thought? Why isn't it like "Big Brother" in George Orwell's 1984, where the Thought Police were always watching for crimethink? Even if the computers' super-advanced AI engine could simulate thoughts *for* the human, and trick them into thinking they came up with it themselves, then why would the system allow a human to discover what is outside the Matrix? Is there a certain amount of "tolerance" built into the system? I guess that would explain the need for "agents."

If The Matrix movies were an Outer Limits episode, the ending would be the humans freeing themselves from the Matrix, but the last scene would show the humans still inside the Matrix, and all the "getting freed from machine oppression" was just being simulated by the Matrix to keep the humans happy.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[JohnFluxx]

>But.... if the Matrix *was* built by a race of cruel machines designed to control humans, then why was the Matrix programmed the way it is? Are they torturing humans with a life they once knew, before AI came into play and destroyed that which they had?

In the Matrix movie, what makes you think that the machines are cruel? They are simply trying to survive. We would use the machines to survive if the roles were reversed *cough*animatrix*cough*

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[squiggleslash]

people are more than happy to live within. The few that refused to accept that were shown a different reality (i.e. unplugged from the matrix). However, the one wrench that Matrix:Reloaded tossed into the mix was Neo's ability to sense the machines on the other side. This would indicate that the true architects of the matrix built a buffer zone in which those minds that didn't believe the first matrix would wake up into the second thus saving them as a power source for a while longer and ensuring that every once and awhile you could flush those who would attempt to destroy your creation.

Actually if what's presented as the real world in the first film turns out to be a simulation too, then everything is up for grabs, including the notion that human beings are batteries (or the associated theory that Morpheus has misunderstood and human beings are controllers for nuclear fusion plants), and, indeed, that the Earth, if it exists at all, has been taken over by machines.

I think that's why it's such an interesting twist. It's extremely open ended. We have, just off the top of my head:

• The prevalent theory - that the "Real" is a buffer zone so people who want to escape from The Matrix have somewhere to go without The Matrix losing them. This is a popular theory for obvious reasons, but if it's real, the question has to be asked why is the simulation of a universe where machines have taken over if machines really have taken over? Why tell the "truth" if an equally good lie would suffice?
• The "war with the machines" could have occured in someone else's simulation, and so the machines - constructs of a virtual world's imagination - have created an artificial world within an artificial world.
• That there's a real world, a simulation of the real world, and "The Matrix", and that Neo's been in the real world and has, some how, slipped into a simulation at the end of Reloaded.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[Fnkmaster]

I'm somewhat surprised nobody has mentioned The Prisoner, the interesting (if sometimes very trippy) 60s series in which Patrick McGoohan, a former spy, is imprisoned in an isolated community designed to keep control of him. [spoiler alert] In the last episode of The Prisoner, McGoohan "escapes" finally and returns to London. And just as the closing credits roll, he is described (by a sign? - sorry, I saw some of these episodes when they did a rerun of the series about 10 years ago) as The Prisoner, implying that he was still imprisoned in a system designed to control and oppress him.

Anyway, The Prisoner is worth seeing, but don't see it out of order, and don't expect it all to make sense.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[xshader]

um, are you that stupid? how do you know what it takes to simulate a brain, and create consciousness anyway? we don't even know how the brain works so you cant say that we can't emulate it yet.

also, why always say that the movie "the matrix" is wrong? who says it's supposed to be right? it's just a damn movie, but using the outline you can create other "stories" that are more real.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe that's why Neo is an exception... a human evolutionary algorithm that somehow does the unexpected, and can control things he shouldn't be able to.

Maybe the Matrix was made by humans who ARE fighting the machines, trying to find someone who can stop them. Evolving a warrior, in a sense...

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[Anonymous Coward]

SPOILERS AHEAD:

Actually, the answer to the question is simple in terms of the new movie. The Architect (the creator of the Matrix) informs Neo that all human beings connected to the Matrix are given a choice whether or not to accept the program on a very subconcious level. This part of the system was designed by the Oracle (who also turns out to be a program). He goes on to state that 99.9% of all subjects accept the program when given a choice. That other 0.01% are those who have been freed.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[Chakde Phate!]

If it was all a simulation, why would the people running the simulation care at all what people thought? That depends on the purpose of the simulation. If the idea is to keep as many humans alive as possible (e.g. for a power plant or processing farm) then you don't want a group of subversives causing disturbances, because that is likely to lead to people being killed. So you either control/kill the subversives to protect the majority, or you provide a 'buffer zone' as has been suggested so that you still get to use them as batteries or computers or whatever, but you have them isolated from the majority so they can't cause any problems.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[pimpinmonk]

Watch the Matrix reloaded. There is a big brother watching, and you will see how those that "escape" from the matrix are completely within the bounds of the matrix's creators' expectations. And I'm sure revolutions will throw us some other twist, perhaps that the "real world" is another matrix, and so on and so on.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[UnknownSoldier]

> I'm somewhat surprised nobody has mentioned The Prisoner

Mostly because it's already been talked about before. For those that are wondering where the references are in addition to yours:

The Matrix
- Prisoner Episode playing on TV as Neo runs thru an apartment showing Matrix Reloaded
- The Architect tells Neo he is the 6th anomlie. Hmm, The Prisoner was #6.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[KevinIsOwn]

But what if there is no "buffer zone". Why isn't it possible that Neo has become so attuned to the Matrix that he is actually able to hack in without the help of computers and an operator? Once inside the Matrix he could certainly stop the sentinels as he could find a way through the security systems in place in the matrix.

I think that Neo's connection to the matrix is shared by Bane as well. That is why they are both in commas, and that is why they both do seemingly impossible things (Bane setting off an EMP (obviously Smith's work) and Neo stopping the sentinels)

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[MoogMan]

Why isn't it like "Big Brother" in George Orwell's 1984, where the Thought Police were always watching for crimethink?

How do you know it isnt? If you recall, there are people who rewrite history. Of course, most of us remember history as static (unless we've had a few drinks), but you see what im getting at. The Thought Police *could* be watching us, removing the potential wrong do-ers and rewriting history so that person didnt exist. ...But if no one was allowed to think a "wrong" thought

Define wrong? Maybe no-one has ever and cannot possibly even imagine doing such a "wrong" thing because our brains cannot comprehend it. What we think of as wrong may not necessarily be wrong as they think of it.

where does the independent thought come from?
Maybe it isnt exactly independent. Its merely what we're programmed to "think" ;)

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[Mac Degger]

Actually, the architect pretty much tells Neo what's up. When Neo makes his choice, then 'exits' the matrix...he only exits the matrix in the matrix...he's still in the matrix! That's why he still has his powers. The architect mentions this with his speech about having to create a matrix where everyone has the choice, even on a subconcious level. That all comes back to the whole red pill/blue pill thing: everyone gets the same choice neo gets! If they choose blue, they go back to the matrix as is, if they choose red, they go to the second level matrix, ie the one neo, trinity and morpheus inhabit.

It's all there in the speech the architect gives.

Re:Can the Matrix simulate independent thought?

[meta-monkey]

I agree with you. We've already seen impossible things happen in "the real world" like Trinity bringing Neo back to life with a kiss in the first movie, and Neo bringing Trinity back to life in the second movie, and Smith putting himself in a human body. Why can't another impossible thing, like Neo controlling machines happen in the real world?

The Matrix obviously takes much from kung fu and anime movies. In those kinds of movies, when you're well trained and "enlightened" you can do all kinds of crazy shit. Nobody complained with the characters in Crouching Tiger started flying. Neo having special powers in the real world is no different.

Odd.

[Soko]

This also may explain why time travel seems impossible: we dont meet visitors from the future since only the present is being simulated."

IOW, branch prediction in the Great Itanium in the sky isn't working too well, is it?

Here's anoher one for your Saturday Night "Isn't that fucked up?" discussions: I've always wondered if time actually is linear. We and our physics are stuck in the current space/time continuum, and therefore we would have no idea if time actually followed say, a sine wave, since we would have no other point of reference.

Whoa.

Soko

Re:Odd.

[SubjunctiveSam]

How do you mean? The only difference between a sine wave and a straight line is that a sine wave's slope is constantly changing. What does this slope represent? The rate of time? Such an idea is absurd. When people refer to time as linear, they just mean that it doesnt loop back and cross itself. Don't try to extend all of the quirks of algebra and calculus to the nature of time's flow. Well, don't try like that at least...

Re:Odd.

[bnenning]

I've always wondered if time actually is linear. We and our physics are stuck in the current space/time continuum, and therefore we would have no idea if time actually followed say, a sine wave, since we would have no other point of reference.

And does it even have to be continuous at all? Read Permutation City by Greg Egan which talks about this and many other things that will make your head hurt.

Re:Odd.

[eggstasy]

Time is actually a cube.

Re:Odd.

[Anonymous Coward]

time isn't linear. there are photons in
existence today that were formed at the
beginning of the universe. they're no older
than the photons coming out of your computer
screen. from the perspective of a photon,
creation and destruction are a single event,
regardless of distance travelled.

Our perception of time as a constant is an
illusion since relativistic forces are so
subtle at the velocities we experience in our
day to day lives. Reduce c to 100 miles an
hour or so, and you'd have to synchronize your
watch with your speedometer to keep it
accurate.

Re:Odd.

[balloonpup]

Bah!

96 HOUR TIME CUBE IS A LIE!

(yep, believe it or not, someone is putting forth another one of these things! heheehe!)

Re:Odd.

[Tablizer]

and therefore we would have no idea if time actually followed say, a sine wave [instead of linear], since we would have no other point of reference.

Based on William Shatner's speech patterns, I would say it is more a square wave.

"Dammit......Spock......Don't Be.......So.......Logical!"

Re:Odd.

[Dr. Spork]

Huh, yeah, that little editorial comment was pretty stupid. I mean, if there were a simulation, there wouldn't be any extra cost in simulating beings that "appeared" before us "out of the future", with fancy technology, foreknowledge, and all that stuff.

Well, it seems the slashdot crowd is way to shallow to make sense of a actual peer-reviewed philosophy paper!

Re:Odd.

[Matt - Duke '05]

At long last! I'm not a Trekkie at all, however, I am a _huge_ Family Guy fan. There are many episodes that have William Shattner in them and he jumps around in little bursts and talks like you just described.... I finally get it =) I highly suggest you go check out the Family Guy episodes.. they're pretty damned funny. I don't konw where you live, but at least in my area, Comedy Central (or is it the Cartoon Network?) has begun playing re-runs after it was canceled... You can also find episodes on Kazaa, etc.

-Matt

wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

wow..please tell me they aren't trying to pass this off as legitimate.

So that means...

[BanSiesta]

So I'm just a piece of code then? I bet I'm not even indented properly. Bastards!

I hope I don't get optimized away...

Re:So that means...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're probably patented, though.

Re:So that means...

[bnenning]

I bet I'm not even indented properly.

Then for your sake I hope the universe isn't a big Python script.

Re:So that means...

[mek2600]

And I'm sure SCO will claim ownership to that patent any day now.

Re:So that means...

[VanillaCoke420]

My life is probably a perl script or a piece of lisp code, which explains a thing or two...

Re:So that means...

[VanillaCoke420]

Haha, didn't see it like that though :)

Re:So that means...

[Orm]

But are you open source? If so, I can send you a patch..

And guess what? Even if you are open source, it's really SCOs' code. It's true!

Re:So that means...

[kilonad]

VB too, huh? I guess the fact that you're easy still doesn't make you all that appealing to potential, uh, users. ;)

Note to mods: it's a joke, laugh. And then mod it up. ;)

Re:So that means...

[Anonymous Coward]

Find out ;)

This brings to question....

[basser]

Does terminating the game of life make us mass murderers?

Re:This brings to question....

[CoolVibe]

No, that makes Conway a great sadist.

What the......?

[BWJones]

O.K., aside from the rather schizoid posting, I clicked on the link and actually read some of this stuff. Why? Because it's 1:40 a.m. and I can't read any more real science without it leaking out of my ears. So, at the end of the article, filled with leaky logic and propositions that would get an undergraduate philosophy student in trouble, I get to this:

Another event that would let us conclude with a very high degree of confidence that we are in a simulation is if we ever reach the point where we are about to switch on our own simulations. If we start running simulations, that would be very strong evidence against (1) and (2). That would leave us with only (3).

and I have to wonder.....this guy is a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford? Jeez, what are they paying these guys for? Pop culture derivative drivel about a movie whose sequel sucked?. This is like high school philosophy where you would sit around drinking beer in someones mom's basement saying "so, dude, how do we know if we are really here?" Please. I'm all for arts and liberal education, but let's work at thinking about things that can make a difference.

Re:What the......?

[ScottGant]

He does state on his that the proposition entitled "The Simulation Argument: Why the Probability that You are Living in the Matrix is Quite High." which is the article that Slashdot links to is in his words a "Brief, popular synopsis. But read the original paper instead if you can."

The ORIGINAL proposition is here:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulati on.html

Re:What the......?

[maxpublic]

The sad thing is that a lot of what passes for modern 'philosophy' is the same drivel being spouted by this guy, only 'cleaned up' in a tautological fashion so that said drivel is impossible to disprove. Also impossible to prove in any meaningful sense, but modern philosophy doesn't recognize empiricism as a valid approach (and in fact tries to deny it by placing much of its supposition in the fantasy realm of the 'metaphysical').

What I find interesting is that people actually get *paid* to indulge in this masturbatory nonsense. Talk about an amazing con....

Max

Re:What the......?

[dr_tube]

uuuum, sounds to me like you are making fun of what you don't understand. If you understand it, it's pretty deep and something worth thinking about, considering its pretty clean logic surrounding the nature of reality.

Once you realize you are not conscious, you become conscious. Stop talking and think, you fucking automatons.

Re:What the......?

[Soko]

Jeez, what are they paying these guys for? Pop culture derivative drivel about a movie whose sequel sucked?. This is like high school philosophy where you would sit around drinking beer in someones mom's basement saying "so, dude, how do we know if we are really here?"

And you asked that question because...it might have been fun? Aren't these people entitled to a little fun too?

Please. I'm all for arts and liberal education, but let's work at thinking about things that can make a difference.

IME, the human body works better longer if it's exercised regualrily, and with different regimens. Concentrating on a single regimen can lead to specialization of the body, which can be bad - I would guess Arnold Schwartzeneggar isn't a great gymnast, for instance. The human brain is no different - it requires different types of stimuli frequently to remain at it's peak.

As well, seeing college professors think - and using pop culture to give the thought processes a well known context - may stimulate a few young minds into becoming great minds by giving them cause to be exercised. I'd say thier doing thier jobs - getting people to think and hopefullly learn something.

Soko

Re:What the......?

[Erik Fish]

And you asked that question because...it might have been fun? No, I think the point is that he asked that question because he was very intoxicated at the time.

Re:What the......?

[Omestes]

Um.. I went to school for Philosophy, and quit because I COULDN'T get payed. The only jobs with a solid philosophy background is writing. Oh.. and... er... ethics.

Re:What the......?

[iamdrscience]

...and this is different from philosophy of the past how? Seriously, philosophy has always been at least 95% self-masturbatory bullshit. Nothing's changed.

Re:What the......?

[ameoba]

In one of the other articles hosted on the site, How to Live in a Simulation, there's more poorly thought out circular logic...

Obviously we cannot now be sure that we are not living in a simulation. The more likely our descendants are to be rich, long-lasting, and interested in simulating us, the more simulations of people like us we should expect there to be on average, relative to real people like us. And so the more we expect our descendants to be rich like this, the more we should expect that we are in fact living in a simulation

So, he's saying the more worthwhile simulating out lives are, the more likely it is that they're simulated? Fuck that; if anybody wanted to simulated my ass, I'd be getting laid, I'd have friends, and I sure as hell wouldn't be spending all my money on cheap liquor, drinking alone.

How did this guy get a PhD in philosophy, let alone actually get a paid position with it? I wouldn't even call this philosophy, it's an eloquently expressed paranoid delusion. The worst part is that the rest of the paper goes on to say that, if you're life's not real, why not act selfishly? Is that -really- worth writing? It's no different than saying "You could die tommorrow, party on dude".

Re:What the......?

[Pinguu]

What I find interesting is that people actually get *paid* to indulge in this masturbatory nonsense.
OMFG you can get paid!?!?! WHERE?

Re:What the......?

[Jon Peterson]

but modern philosophy doesn't recognize empiricism as a valid approach (and in fact tries to deny it by placing much of its supposition in the fantasy realm of the 'metaphysical').

No shit sherlock. That's rather like saying "Modern carpenters don't recognise making stuff out of plastic as a valid approach". We all know that lots of stuff is stronger, cheaper and lighter if made out of plastic rather than wood, but that doesn't mean all carpenters are losers because they insist on using wood.

It is not the job of philosophy of make generalisations based on empirical evidence. That's the job of science. Because of this, I am glad that scientists design aircraft and philosophers don't. However, that doesn't mean philosophy is a grand waste of time. There are many questions where empirical observation does not seem to help at all:

"What is truth"
"What is knowledge"
"What is meaning"
"What if all observations were deeply flawed"

And some where both reason and observation may have a role:

"Is the mind the same as the brain?"
"What makes me me?"
"Can two different things occupy exactly the same space and time?"

As for the supposedly fantasic metaphysical, that's just a terminology problem. The word is so much abused by anyone in search of a cool word that most people view it as a fake science fiction word at this point. However, it has a more formal meaning in metaphysics. I think you'd agree that 'time' was not a physical thing, and yet physical phenomena, it is obviously very important - thus it is metaphysical. See also metadata, metalanguage etc. etc.

In any case, you cannot say that philosophy places supposition in the metaphysical. Whatever philosophy does, it doesn't suppose things. The scientist supposes things all the time (I do x 10 times and each time y happens, so I suppose every time I do x then y will happen).

Re:What the......?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you'd better prove empiricism then?

Re:What the......?

[Snowspinner]

The sad thing is that a lot of what passes for modern 'biology' is so ridiculously practical as to ignore basic questions like why making a drug to save someone's life is worthwhile - what's so innately valuable about life? Modern biology is entirely unconcerned about ethical questions, relying on the unproven, unargued, and unacknowledged a priori assumption that knowledge about life is good.

What I find interesting is that people actually get *paid* to indulge int his masturbatory nonsense. Talk about an amazing con...

Right, now that we've shown that it's possible to gratuitously flame all sorts of academic disciplines, can we move on to an understanding that philosophy, like every other discipline, is a really complex thing that requires detailed study to make useful comments about. A non-graduate philosophy student has about the same chance of meaningfully engaging a graduate philosophy student as an undergraduate biology student does of being useful on the cutting edge of biotech.

Suffice it to say that there are a lot of very good arguments why, despite the problems you have with contemporary philosophy, it's still the best way to go. A relatively simple one, first formulated by J. Hillis Miller about deconstruction, is that if it were the case that we were living in the Matrix, even if that possibility seems unpleasant and intuitively unlikely, wouldn't it be best to know? Especially since almost all new ideas, and even lots of old ideas, seem intuitively unlikely.

The biggest problem philosophy has as a discipline is people who think that what they discuss in the bar at 2am is remotely similar to what's discussed at a graduate or above philosophy seminar. It's not. Real philosophy is, quite honestly, vastly too complex for 99% of the posterbase here. Many of them could probably successfully study it and some might be able to get on to a PhD in it. But as it stands, the number of people on this board who are qualified to seriously comment on post-doctoral work in philosophy is negligible. /rant off

Re:What the......?

[Dr. Spork]

Yeah, and it's clear you've read a lot of modern philosophy. You are so fucking wise that I'm trembling.

No wait--This is modern philosophy. This came from a peer-reviewed journal! And reading it is the most stimulation I've received all day.

I think it's a much bigger crime people get paid to write moronic movies like Matrix Reloaded, without having any idea about anything philosophical.

Worse still is that modern industrialized societies allow uneducated fools like you near a computer. We should do better!

Re:What the......?

[Durindana]

Where's the leaky logic? Granted, he's not much for specifics, but even without Moore's Law-type shenanigans his argument about future processing power seems reasonable.

More important, people get paid lotsa green for thinking up created-world scenarios and trying to determine what is the best course of action to pursue, then propounding that course. We call it religion; this gent calls it philosophy.

Re:What the......?

[Hobobo]

"this guy is a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford?"

Remember, no one can use a PhD as a weapon. You cannot be hit by a PhD or harmed by it in any way.

permatrails = fps lag ?

[bender183]

So if im a simulation, you think the permatrails I have are just fps lag?

Bogus explanations

[Surazal]

The whole "why don't we see travelers from the future" question is basically moot. Think of this era as a "pristine timeline". The only way for us to see travelers from 2050 is simply because 2050 hasn't happened yet. Once someone does figure out a way to go back in time, then a non-pristine timeline is developed. The odds of any one of us being in this kind of timeline (the type of theoretical nonsense you'd find in comic books) is literally infinitesimal.

This of course is based on the assumption that time travel (into the past) is even possible. Every theory I've looked at indicates that the straight arrow of time is precisely that; a straight arrow going one-way.

Of course, having read this guy's work, he's doing thought-experiments, but fails to account for basic laws of physics in doing so. So he gets points for doing "mostly correct" theoretical work. That doesn't fly too far with those who take these sort of subjects seriously though.

Re:Bogus explanations

[Surazal]

The only way for us to see travelers from 2050 is simply because 2050 hasn't happened yet

Ack... missed a part of a sentence there... what I *meant* to say was:

The only way for us to see travelers from 2050 is for 2050 to happen first. Therefore it is impossible to see travellers from 2050 simply because 2050 hasn't happened yet

Re:Bogus explanations

[Anonymous Coward]

"2050 hasn't happened yet"

As I understand relatvity (which is not much), in space-time, the present, past and future all exist. The future doesn't come into being by us arriving there to see it. Einstein said "the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion".

Re:Bogus explanations

[Anonymous Coward]

Time is a straight arrow, indeed. But the infinite amount of "other" timelines are parallel to ours.

So, the trick with time travel isn't about travelling a far distance on _our_ timeline, but rather to go to _another_ timeline that's "near" ours.

The whole "kill your own grandfather" paradox doesn't work, because you'll simply be creating a new timeline where your grandfather is killed.

Re:Bogus explanations

[willtsmith]

I believe that Hawking rationalizes this stuff by looking at time as a measure of entropy, not a dimension. Since entropy is a one-way process, it cannot be unraveled.

The method that we can consider previous states of entropy is basically by witnessing their artifacts. Some artifacts are preserved in rock. More immediate artifacts are preserved in nueral bundles and can be recalled by our biological information repositories (brains).

Until we can observe particals jumping backwards in time (pre-cognition) the notion of time travel is silly. ALL technology effectively replicates and focuses some natural phenomenon. Until we can observe the phenomenon of time travel, it's a waste of time to try to build a machine that DOES time travel.

Re:Bogus explanations

[Anonymous Coward]

I apologize for not remembering correctly my references. But I read a new-scientist article that indicated that there had been a discovery of 'particles' that do in fact travel backwards in time. You'll have to google for all the information, and it may have been disproven.

Heisenberg uncertainty negates this

[StandardCell]

If you cannot simultaneously know the position and momentum of a particle, you are going against the fundamental laws of computing as we know it. Computers do what they're told to do. They are based on certain fully known and defined states without which they cannot begin. In fact, all digital logic, when simulated, starts in an inexact or unknown state (an "X") until reset is asserted on the storage elements and all inputs are defined. That includes binary, trinary, and even "analog" computing.

In fact, there is a way for inexactness to happen in regular digital systems, which is metastability. A flip flop (single bit storage element) that does not have a stable input at the time it is clocked. When this happens, the output tends to go unstable, which eventually throws subsequent logic into an unknown state. The way to fix this is to stack flops transparently, thus giving the output of the first flop more time to stabilize. This is based on probabilities, strangely. However, infinite metastability immunity requires an infinite number of cascaded flop stages. And remember - one unstable element can throw an entire chip off track and require a logic reset.

We have enough problems getting computers that we use today to work the way they're supposed to. Simulating the universe? I'll slice that idea up with Occam's razor any day and I'll be happy when I'm as close as h/4pi or whatever the estimate is these days for the uncertainty.

Re:Heisenberg uncertainty negates this

[Ella the Cat]

Good to see a hardware person here. Am I right in saying that if you have a properly clocked finite state machine metastability is only a problem for asynchronous inputs that don't meet setup and hold time? So if you set your initial conditions up and run your hardware finite state machine with no inputs then you've got a nice deterministic universe simulating away in there. Which is no barrier to free will or interesting events happening inside, if I understand Dennett's book "Freedom Evolves" properly. Of course you can only simulate a universe smaller than the number of states in your FSM ..mumble... Where's Greg Egan when you need him?

Re:Heisenberg uncertainty negates this

[stwrtpj]

If you cannot simultaneously know the position and momentum of a particle, you are going against the fundamental laws of computing as we know it.

#include "heisenberg.h";

have to

[chocolatetrumpet]

hypothesise all you want, it doesn't change the fact that A is A and you have to go to work on monday.

Some might say you are slave to reason, but I say no - you have complete free will, and you may do as you wish. You DO NOT have to do ANYTHING! YOU are TRUELY FREE. Believe it and embrace.

Re:have to

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be your choice, if you did nothing and died that would be up to you.
If you got up off your arss, went and raped a woman, you'd be charged with sexual assult.
If you got up off your arss, went and met a cute Korean (I prefer Japanese myself) girl, married and had kids; well You've Got Kids!.

You have to choose the life you want to live, then live it, that's all I can say to you; Just Live!

Cause and Effect.
A is A.
Rand was/is/and will forever be nuts.
Al Gore is a loser, and a socialist!
http://www.lp.com
http://www.reason.c om
~ Waldo The man who is forever lost!

Re:have to

[Fjornir]

Do I have to?

Re:have to

[maraist]

Define free will? Is it the ability to do as you wish? This can't be true because the physical world impedes your activities. You can't travel as quickly as you wish, nor break as many laws as you wish indefinitely.

I would refine this to mean, given a set of instantaneous (time dependent) options, you may choose which-ever one you wish.. BUT, these options are not infinite nor continuous. Thus the physical world around you is limiting your choice. You are molded by your environment necessarily. Moreover, your character will likely be limited in it's sophistication so that it can't see many of the more desirable options. Thus there is a definite degree of pre-determination. Not only do we have few choices in life (which are given to us by the fate of historcal progression), but we are pre-determined (through biology and our own past) as to which choices we are capable of making.

While this still leaves us with an enormous responsibility (in terms of a multitude of diametricly opposed options), I'm not convinced that we are capable of making any decision other than what we were meant to; meaning what our mechanical biology is statistically configured to do. If our brain is nothing more than a mechanical/electronic switch-board which makes value judgements based purely on thresholds of triggering, and those tresholds are altered by periodic chemical states (moods), then we are deterministicly given our past (our prevoius moods and experiences) and our present environment will merely be inputs into this switchboard - the outcome would merely be mechanical. Granted this is only an assumption, but science slowly providing more and more evidence of this.

For example, a person biologically prone to aggression (which isn't normal for a person), when presented with an irratable peer, and absence of calmer people in the surrounding environment to disuade him, is pre-determined + environmentally encouraged to choose to fight. Without a possible alternative, this choice is not freely willed.

For these extreme cases, I do not believe we have much free will.. In softer cases (should I buy coke or pepsi, and thus macro-scopically determine the economic fate of our country), I'm willing to give to the argument of free-will. It is plausible that in the chaotic interaction at the atomic / quantum level, our thresholds (when presented with a nearly 50/50 point) may or may not trigger, thereby altering our decision. In this critical chaotic region, our personality (and the coriolis effect of the earth, solar system and universe) may all come into play. Any concept of a soul, or weighted simulation may make the bizarness of life happen.

But the possibility of this does not prove it's existance..

My point finally being, free will is by no means logically sound, though it is not disproven either.

Re:have to

[Wraithlyn]

Nice thinking. I was recently reading a lengthy formal proof of the non-existence of free will. (I'd find a link but It's-Sunday-And-I'm-Too-Damn-Lazy)

Basically the gist of the argument was this: Only two conceivable types of events can happen in your brain: Deterministic (electrochemical meatware precisely obeying cause and effect), or non-deterministic (ie quantum level).

Obviously, deterministic events do not demonstrate free will, so we can safely disregard these.

Which leaves us with non-deterministic events. Are these evidence of free will? The proof stated that we are not in control of these non-deterministic events (a reasonable assertion), if they exist they are random, and therefore these events would not demonstrate free will either. QED.

I have to say it's pretty hard to find a hole in that logic. For shits and giggles I played devil's advocate and argued that it's an unproven conjecture that our consciousness cannot influence quantum events. Could free will manifest itself by altering quantum probabilities?

Re:have to

[willtsmith]

Don't tell this to Stephen Covey. He might drop into a infinite loop saying that he can CHOOSE not to believe the obvious. :-)

Oh well.

[KFK - Wildcat]

We all know the simulation will be ended soon anyway, thanks to the Volgons...

Re:Oh well.

[Swolt Up]

We all know the simulation will be ended soon anyway, thanks to the Volgons

I, for one, have my towel and am ready to leave this "mostly harmless" planet and see the universe. All for only 26 standard Albrain coins, too!

Re:Oh well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Altarian! We deal only in Altarian!

And by that same logic...

[Larne]

the number of things that don't exist is vastly greater than the number of things that do. Therefore, statistically speaking, you don't exist. Any evidence to the contrary is just the product of your diseased, nonexistent, imagination.

Re: And by that same logic...

[Omniscient Ferret]

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."

(Thank you, Douglas Adams.)

Re: And by that same logic...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know thats meant to be funny, but the logic is wrong. You might say:

It is known that there are an infinite number of numbers. However, not every one of then is even. Therefore, there must be a finite number of even numbers. etc.

Re: And by that same logic...

[ColaMan]

Sadly,

If there are an infinite number of worlds, then there will (by the nature of infinity) be an infinite number of inhabited ones as well.

Sorry.

Re: And by that same logic...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like proving that there is an infinite number of fives in the set of natural numbers by pointing out that the natural numbers are an infinite set. The Douglas Adams quote is full of precisely that kind of mistake, but in the end the joke is that the average number of inhabitants per planet may very well be zero.

Re: And by that same logic...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong too. There may be only one inhabited world, or two, or any number, or an infinite number, and you can only know by exhibiting every world, or the probability of the appearance of life.

For example, there is an infinite number of numbers. Among them, there is an infinite number of prime numbers, but there is only one number that equals 2.

Re: And by that same logic...

[greenrd]

You're both wrong. Suppose there is only 1 inhabited world.

Re: And by that same logic...

[Jerf]

Not necessarily. You seem to be suffering from the infinity fallacy, "an infinite set necessarily contains all humanly conceivable elements." This is trivially incorrect: Consider the set of all integers. No matter how long you look, you will never find "1.5". It's not in there.

An infinite set does not necessarily contain all humanly conceivable elements. It is certainly possible that despite an infinite number of worlds, this is the only one inhabited by intelligent life. We can say with confidence then that such inhabitation was not done by chance, since whatever the probability there would be infinitely other inhabited worlds, but suppose natural worlds inhabited by intelligent life are simply impossible for some reason, and this world alone is inhabited because of the actions of some external agency that does not affect the other worlds?

I'm not making this claim in particular; my point is "There are an infinite number of worlds, therefore there are an infinite number of inhabited worlds" does not follow logically from the definition of infinity. More evidence is required.

Re:And by that same logic...

[Dr. Spork]

Come on... read the article. Or even the abstract, for that matter! This is just a stupid objection.

Re: And by that same logic...

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the grandparent again. Specifically "there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds."

They are each taking logically contradictory positions. Therefore one of them must be correct. And the grandparents is wrong, the subset of an infinite set can be infinite - it does not have to be finite.

What's so significant about seconds?

[ahfoo]

Like so much of the so-called philosophy about The Matrix this seems fundamentally flawed.
It seems questionable in the extreme that seconds are a particularly significant measure of a person's life.
Breaking it down to nanoseconds or picoseconds doesn't fix the underlying issue of how we can say with certainty that human life is a series of discreet units similar to an animation.
Besides, you don't need The Martix to suggest that life is an illusion. You can show the same thing in a much more profound way using language theory.

Read something like that before...

[JamesTRexx]

This reminds me of this page.

Bad logic is fun

[gunner800]

There is only one planet Earth. There are astronomically more planets than Earth. Therefore, we're probably on some other planet.

Problem is, the probability of the existence of a simulation is not the same as the probability of us inhabiting that simulation. Plus, the existence of massive comuting power does not imply that that power is used for a certain task.

Re:Bad logic is fun

[SubjunctiveSam]

Man invented word, and calls it god. "The Word World", imposed by the academic institutions, is synonymous with the Matrix's induced "Dream World". Both are most efficient mind enslavers, and humans know not their difference from "The Cubic World", the creation principle of all that exist.
That's from Gene Ray. Check out more of his views on the Matrix, and the nature of reality at www.timecube.com

Re:Bad logic is fun

[Tensor]

It was not bad logic at all, your example should be: We live on planet earth, there are astronomically more planets than earth, therefore on some other planet people like us live (not probably, since the aggregate of that 0.000000001% chance in zillion zillion zillions of planets IS 1) and of course you could also add that in some those zillion planets of people like is us, they have slashdot too and are discussing a similar article.

Its analogous to the infinte monkeys/infinte typrewriters ... which is obviously exactly the same as one monkey/one typewriter/infinte time.

In this case its similar to the second case, as no matter how small the probability is now, in the time that will take the human race to extinct ourselves ;) a matrix like sim is 100% likely to happen.

Re:Bad logic is fun

[Anonymous Coward]

We name the planet we're living on "the earth", so your logic is obviously false. The logic of the article is more like:

Take every planet, pick one at random and name it Zkrotx. There are astronomically more planets than Zkrotx, therefore we're probably on some other planet.

Re:Bad logic is fun

[TheRaven64]

Actually, the worst abuse of logic I've heard was along the following lines:

The population is increasing exponentially. If it continues to do so, then the probability of you being alive now will drop to almost zero. Therefore the fact that you do exist now implies that the human race will be extinct soon.

This was used as a major plot device in the novel 'Time' by Stephen Baxter, an individual who apparently has a maths degree from Cambridge. His novels have won awards.

Re:Bad logic is fun

[willtsmith]

This is hilarious!!!!!

Gene Ray is proof that David Koresh SURVIVED and is now a meta-physicist ;-)

umm....

[Anonymous Coward]

...your all a bunch of nerds

Re:umm....

[CausticWindow]

aol, dude

Not Exactly...

[KrispyKringle]

"(1) The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small

(2) Almost no technologically mature civilisations are interested in running computer simulations of minds like ours

(3) You are almost certainly in a simulation."

...So if you think that (1) and (2) are both false, you should accept (3).

Obviously this last sentence is meant more to play up the conclusion that we are in a simulation. (2) is the most plausible; it is incomprehensible to me (though admitedly I may be of a lesser mind that those running the simulation) why greater beings would waste CPU time on mere humans.

In all seriousness, though, if we assume 2 to be true and 1 to be false, we can most certainly dismiss 3. And if we assume 1 to be true, where does that leave us?

"Let us consider the options in a little more detail. Possibility (1) is relatively straightforward. For example, maybe there is some highly dangerous technology that every sufficiently advanced civilization develops, and which then destroys them. Let us hope that this is not the case."

Of course most mutations die out. This is how evolution works. Obiously, we can assume that if evolution has gotten us this far, it is likely that it will have created similar intelligent beings and perhaps even more advanced than us (or we ourselves will acheive such a level of mental greatness).

This is a fun intellectual debate (and clearly meant to gain the limelight) but its a bit overblown, too, I think.

Re:Not Exactly...

[bnenning]

it is incomprehensible to me (though admitedly I may be of a lesser mind that those running the simulation) why greater beings would waste CPU time on mere humans.

I'm not sure about that, after all The Sims is pretty popular.

Re:Not Exactly...

[bj8rn]

...it is incomprehensible to me (though admitedly I may be of a lesser mind that those running the simulation) why greater beings would waste CPU time on mere humans.

Well, if there's no better explanation to this, you can always assume that the human race has been chosen for a very important role (typical sci-fi plot - a member of an outcast race saves the universe), and start a religion based on this assumption...

Re:Not Exactly...

[geckofiend]

I can think of one good reason to simulate humans in the future... Gigapets.

Re:Not Exactly...

[Anonymous Coward]

it is incomprehensible to me why greater beings would waste CPU time on mere humans.

There are many people who use their spare CPU time on searching fort ETs. Given that greater beings have enough spare CPU time to play simulating us, why wouldn't they do it ?

Maybe they have nothing to learn by simulating us, and don't like to play God. I certainly would like to play God, but I probably don't qualify as "superior being" so who knows.

Re:Not Exactly...

[sangdrax]

the choice offered and its arguments are indeed weird:

a) it is a false choice: maybe there exist more options? while we're into the wild options: the existence of God for instance?
b) option (1) cannot be dismissed easily: even if the chance of us existing is very small, it is >0 nontheless, and we exist, so it happened. If it didn't happen, we weren't here to question it. Also, the universe as we perceive it is very big, so even a small chance occuring isn't that amazing.
c) option (3): can computers as we know it really simulate a human mind, consiousness and all? neural nets seem to be promising for acting like humans given enough CPU power, but if they ever gain consiousness is a very questionable assumption.

Re:Not Exactly...

[LordLucless]

I don't think our world can be a simulation. Just think about it? What is the single most fun thing to do in a simulation? That's right, wreck the joint. An advanced civilization might manage to simulate human existence for 4000+ years, but no matter how advanced, they aren't gonna be able to reduce the temptation to suddenly create giant lizard-like monsters in population centers, slap people around with giant discorporate hands or send people to the bottom of the ocean.

Re:Not Exactly...

[DavidTC]

Or flood the whole place and start over, or blow up cities that aren't working right, or flip into cheat mode and tear down city walls so your invading army can invade... ;)

Re:Not Exactly...

[LordLucless]

Bah, we haven't seen that sorta stuff for ages. If the world is a simulations, it must have been superceded by SimReality 4000 or something. All the players have gotten bored.

Judging by the effects in Reloaded...

[rsilvergun]

...an Xbox could handle the matrix just fine :).

Real Deep for 2:30

[Hangtime]

So I'm up right now and just read through this and blew through my mind a little too far.

The article ends on the following
In sum, if your descendants might make simulations of lives like yours, then you might be living in a simulation. And while you probably cannot learn much detail about the specific reasons for and nature of the simulation you live in, you can draw general conclusions by making analogies to the types and reasons of simulations today. If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal it seems that you should care less about others, live more for today, make your world look likely to become eventually rich, expect to and try to participate in pivotal events, be entertaining and praiseworthy, and keep the famous people around you happy and interested in you.

In other words, the article is says if you believe your in a simulation live for the now. The unfortunate this is without outside evidence of living in a simulation i.e. the light falling to "earth" in the Truman Show, you have no real way of knowing. If the simulations themselves were detailed enough, all the individuals could be programmed with memories, meaning if I am indeed a simulant then all my memories up to this point could have just been given to me including writing this reply....spooky. Reminds me a lot of Jeremy Bentham and Hedonistic Calculas for those who took Philosophy in college. In the end the way you live your life is soley dependent upon your time frame and values. How I would live my life if I were to die in a month from now is much different then if I believe I am going to live to 150. Its not wise to plan for one and not the other, i.e. spending all your money today and nothing for tomorrow, but also not taking advantage of saying I Love you to everyone of your Loved ones every chance you get. Your internal compass must guide you.

Before I turn in for the evening I did get a kick out of this passage.

Also, in general the behavior of many people far from the simulated people of interest might be randomly generated based on statistics from previous simulations, or come from "cached" records of previous simulated people. Some "people" in a crowd simulation might even be run by very simple programs that have them wiggle and mumble "peas and carrots" like extras supposedly did once in movie crowd scenes.

Now who hasn't run in to these people!

How many times have we all wondered this

[aardwolf204]

How many times have we all wondered this after playing Sim City? Or was it just me?

Of course the universe is a simulation...

[ites]

But Occam's razor says we do not need to assume humans and computers are resonsible for it. The simulation is all around us... some examples:

- you consider the world to be composed of things with surfaces and textures, yet in fact most of everything is interatomic space. Matter is a simulation.
- you consider yourself to be a being, complete and individual, yet you are built from trillions of cells each with a lifecycle, not to mention hosts of other organisms that cohabit your body, even your gene pool. Individuality is a simulation.
- you think you are reading this text, and yet it is just a sprinkling of letters and dots and random ideas. Language is a simulation, the Internet also.
- you believe you exist, and yet we are truly just temporary assemblages of matter acting as hosts for the multilevel game of life. Existence is a simulation.

But none of this means much: as in the Matrix, if I stab your simulated heart with a simulated knife, your simulated body will simulate death. And your simulated consciousness will try very, very hard to avoid that. Welcome to the Real World.

Re:Of course the universe is a simulation...

[Anonymous Coward]

- you think your post is Insightful, when in fact it's only the moderators who think so.

Re:Of course the universe is a simulation...

[VanillaCoke420]

- you consider the world to be composed of things with surfaces and textures, yet in fact most of everything is interatomic space. Matter is a simulation.

A simulation of what, exactly? Who or what is simulating what? Sure, it's an illusion that there is physical contact anywhere, when it's nowhere. But why would it be a simulation?

---

- you consider yourself to be a being, complete and individual, yet you are built from trillions of cells each with a lifecycle, not to mention hosts of other organisms that cohabit your body, even your gene pool. Individuality is a simulation.

Again, it's more of an illusion in that case. Also I would suspect it depends on how you define individuality.

---

- you think you are reading this text, and yet it is just a sprinkling of letters and dots and random ideas. Language is a simulation, the Internet also.

I am reading the text. But at the same time, I understand that it's a pattern of energy (computer screeen and the photons it sends out) interacting with the pattern of energy that is my brain. This creates new patterns (abstract thinking, imagining, inspiration, new ideas, etc.) in my brain. At least, that's my current idea of things everywhere.

---

- you believe you exist, and yet we are truly just temporary assemblages of matter acting as hosts for the multilevel game of life. Existence is a simulation.

Existence is very real. The matter and energy (basically the same thing) exists. The patterns in which some of it is organized exists also.

Re:Of course the universe is a simulation...

[Beautyon]

some examples:

If you s/simulation/illusion/ then the meat of your post is correct.

All of the effects you mention can be attributed to limited perception, and they are not a result of being in a simulation.

What needs to be done so solve this problem and draw a line under it is to find something, some natural effect that cannot be explained in any other terms other that that it is a part of a large, fine grained simulation....like the far away galaxies apearing razor sharp in telescopes; a backdrop for us to look at, put there by the architect!

Re:Of course the universe is a simulation...

[ites]

Nah, "simulation" is the right term. Only the simulation is coming from our own heads. That's the point. Seeing the world as a bunch of easy-to-manage objects, as humans do, is not about illusion. The cup on my desk is not an illusion. It is a virtual reality simulation, faked by my mind so that my hand can find it. Illusions are not tangible, but simulations can be.

Re:Of course the universe is a simulation...

[Jerf]

Actually all of your examples boil down to poor definition, not simulation.

For a long time, people thought matter was somehow "solid". Yet I now incorporate the idea that what I know of as "matter" is mostly empty space, yet it does not materially affect me in any way, because while humanity had to update our definition, "matter" did not suddenly change. It's still solid, and trying to stick a hand through a table still doesn't work.

Later people discovered that matter is all waves and is basically contained energy. This blew some people's minds, but again, only because they had poor definitions and misunderstood the nature of energy. In the meantime, sticking your hand through the table remains impossible.

"Language" is not a simulation, you just have a crappy definition of what it is. My definition happens to include a mode of language that is communicated via letters, and can still encompass the communication of ideas.

This all sounds very postmodern... "Look, this thing you call 'blah' is made up of parts that are not themselves 'blah', therefore what you call 'blah' does not exist!" But it's shit. What I call 'blah' is a whole that is greater then the sum of its parts, which happens all the time. My car does not fall apart when I realize that it is made up of many parts that are not themselves a car. The whole is just are real as the parts; your definition of the whole may be wrong, there may even be times where you need to revise it for border cases, but that does not mean that the whole is not a meaningful distinction.

This isn't deep thought, this is pot-smoking philosophy.

Re:Of course the universe is a simulation...

[Anonymous Coward]

"In the meantime, sticking your hand through the table remains impossible."

This is all good discussion, but these things should be self-evident to nerds like us.

The interesting thing is, when will be capable of sticking our hands through tables? When does all this realization about discretized existence help us to manipulate this existence in ways befitting of a holder of such knowledge? When can we begin to affect our universe in ways that show that we are conscious thinkers and not just voracious biojelly?

Re:Of course the universe is a simulation...

[TrackDaddy]

Can I go to work on Monday, and play Quake... for real? After all, it's just a simulation. Does anyone know where I can get a BFG?

My simulated brain hurts, I gotta go.

Re:Of course the universe is a simulation...

[Jerf]

When can we begin to affect our universe in ways that show that we are conscious thinkers and not just voracious biojelly?

And I suppose the computer you posted that note on is engineered by the purity of your soul, and powered with your oneness with reality?

You're like the poor kids sitting and wishing they lived in Harry Potter's world without realizing that in most every way that counts they already do.

Computer? Or spiritual world?

[rice_burners_suck]

I think this can tie into religion really well. Consider, for example, the idea of a spiritual world. Supposedly, you have a spirit that exists forever. You're born into this physical world and live a life, and then you croak and return to the spiritual world. During your time here, your spirit continues to exist in the spiritual world, while your physical body exists in the physical world.

Kind of like when a program allocates memory for a structure. The memory always exists. Then, you allocate a structure from the chaos and put stuff into it. Eventually you deallocate the structure and all returns to the chaos that was before. During this time, the physical memory continuously existed, but the structure came to exist within it for some time.

What is the physical world, as opposed to the spiritual world? In the spiritual world, everything "flows" there are no boundaries between objects. It's just one big "light." (Kind of like how computer memory is a long string that starts at address 0 and goes until whatever.) Everything is a concept in the spiritual world. But in the physical world, everything is defined. A cup is a cup, a light bulb is a light bulb, and a house is a house. (Kind of like how a struct tm is different from a struct FILE.) Everything is so well defined, actually, that objects cannot occupy the same space as one another. (Kind of like the aforementioned two structures, which occupy different regions of memory or would overwrite each other. Of course, God is a Real Programmer, so that doesn't happen in the physical world, unless you're flying over the Bermuda Triangle or something, of course.)

Which brings me to my point: What if the spiritual world is the "real" world, and the physical world exists only in the "imagination" of the spiritual world? What if there really is no spoon? Not because we're running inside a computer, but because the spiritual world acts as a sort of "computer" that processes this world?

What if the spiritual world is only a simulation inside a larger world that exists outside of it?

I don't think this has anything to do with time travel. If it did, then how come we don't meet people from the past? After all, they must have been simulated.

Unless... what if all the knowledge of the universe has just been loaded, 2 microseconds ago, that makes us think that we've been around for a long time. How do you know that what happened a minute ago really happened and wasn't just a memory that was fabricated?

As for the 13th floor... I just drove to the edge of town over here and guess what I saw? Except it looks a little different from the movie. It was like the floor turned into a grid of yellow lines, about an inch wide, that extended outward for what must have been ten miles and then rose directly upward to form a wall that disappears into the sky above. I think we're in a really Star Trek holodeck.

Re:Computer? Or spiritual world?

[DavidTC]

And ghosts are just where an enviroment was busy with a pointer somewhere so it didn't get NULLed and continues to point at the non-existence person. Of course, this 'person' doesn't have a functioning motivational system and the clipping is all wrong, so it ends up walking through walls and other people in a pre-defined pattern.

Not new...

[ReyTFox]

More simply, you could say "it takes the universe, or more than the universe, to simulate the universe. So if we do manage it then we're a simulation. Otherwise it can't be proven."

This is really kind of an obvious logic carried through with some academic rigor. I came up with the idea on my own, too.

What about...

[Zep1a]

Deja Vu.. Attention Mr/Ms Sim Programmer. Please fix that bug! It wierds me out. K,thx Back to my life pod.... Zep--

Applied recursively

[Ed Avis]

Surely by the same argument the people running a simulation of us are themselves being simulated along with their simulation, and that by another group of people who are themselves living in a simulation created by an even more advanced civilization...

It's turtles all the way down!

Re:Applied recursively

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that you can only run a smaller and slower simulation than the one you're living in. Unless the "first" simulator has infinite computing power and space, there can't be an infinite level of realistic simulations.

Re:Applied recursively

[Ed Avis]

Who is to say that the universe - the 'real' universe inhabited by the top-level civilization running simulations of all the others - is not infinite? They could build a computer which builds new parts of itself as it runs, and so have unbounded (if not infinite) computing power.

If the restriction is on speed rather than memory size, you can run as many simulations as you want, they just get slower and slower.

Time Travel Impossible?

[crashnbur]

This also may explain why time travel seems impossible: we dont meet visitors from the future since only the present is being simulated.

It wouldn't matter when what or who is simulated or how or why or where. If it is indeed a simulation, the "architect" of the system could organize some feasible means of simulating beings from some imaginary future, which -- within the confines of the simulation -- would constitute time travel.

If this indeed were a simulation, the rules would only be as strict as the design allowed, and they would only be broken when the designer(s) allowed...

...unless, of course, you buy the Architect's explanation in the Matrix Reloaded that a perfect design, by which sentient entropy would never lend itself toward a "system crash", is slightly impossible.

Re:Time Travel Impossible?

[Anonymous Coward]

No they would only be simulated time travelers. for example: they could not tell you what your future would be since they would not know it.

Re:Time Travel Impossible?

[crashnbur]

Unless the simulation is not simply a chaotic experiment but a carefully planned reality. Wow, this debate could spark theological debates.

Of course, I agree with you, but I don't mind considering the alternatives for pointless debate.

Re:Time Travel Impossible?

[Bigboote66]

If lack of time travel is proof that we're in a simulation, then the inviolability of the speed of light is proof as well:

It's obviously hard-coded.

-BbT

Re:Time Travel Impossible?

[crashnbur]

But the speed of light can be slowed down. Consider the effects of a black hole. Obviously, a black hole possesses qualities that exceed our scientific understanding -- forces that, among other things, are more powerful than we can imagine... powerful enough to slow even light. (Of course, that's just one theory. A theory that does not involve slowing light is that a black hole merely bends light so that it swirls around back toward the singularity, or the black hole's point of origin.)

Of course, if black holes are also part of the simulation, perhaps the singularity -- the point in the middle that currently has no scientific explanation -- is an access point to something, or someone, higher...? Or maybe not.

Re:Time Travel Impossible?

[willtsmith]

Has anyone ever considered that:

1) Time travelers having overcome the fundamental pricipals of one-way time could also just fashion themselves a good cloaking device.

2) Time travlers are just plain SMARTER then we are having done all that COOL stuff.

3) People in the future CAN time travel but have absoluetly NO desire to come here after watching CNN re-runs. :-)

Plato's Cave

[kavachameleon]

The Matrix has spawned a new era in pseudo-psychology, it seems. Plato first had this idea many thousands of years ago, in the Allegory of the Cave. A Brief Explanation of the Allegory What the Wachowski Bros. have done is reintroduced the concept of the Cave to society. Unfortunately, these topics have been gone over before, in much more depth than your average Matrix fanboy cares to think about.

Re:Plato's Cave

[Nihilanth]

any good art leads you to more. How many people never heard of the cave allegory or gnosticism before seeing the matrix? I mean, for me, it was P.K.Dick that introduced me to the idea, and i never got around to reading -him- until Linklater mentions him in the movie "Waking Life" (yeah, ive had a lot of Dick to catch up on).

There are probably better ways of judging the movie than scoring how much time it spends regurgitating what everyone's said about the cave allegory already, but all of these methods are by and large predicated on waiting for the actual story to finish. You know..see where they're going with it.

Re:Plato's Cave

[AvantLegion]

(yeah, ive had a lot of Dick to catch up on)

File under: "Poor Choice of Words".

Re:Plato's Cave

[Anonymous Coward]

"Plato first had this idea many thousands of years ago..."

More like a tad over 2,000 years ago. Buddhism and Hinduism both are based upon this idea (Buddhism is generally considered to be a few hundred years older than Plato, and Hinduism more than a thousand years older).

Re:Plato's Cave

[pi_rules]

(yeah, ive had a lot of Dick to catch up on)

No, File under: "Things not to say in prison."

Re:Plato's Cave

[jak163]

I think they tipped their hand when Neo stopped the sentinels outside the Matrix.

BS

[d_strand]

This article is bullshit, see the problem here:

This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

Most people should realise that (2) is the most likely correct proposition. Just because you have the computer power to run a simulation doesn't mean you have the rest of the technology needed to do it.

Direct human-brain manipulation? Forget it... maybe in 10 000 years.

Re:BS

[Nihilanth]

i doubt humanity will be recognizable to itself in 10k years, if its still around at all.

They said it would take 100 years to each the moon, and it was done (all conspiracy theories aside) within that decade. The same was said about flight earlier in the century (many said it would be impossible).

How are extropian ideas like direct neural interfacing and immortality any different?

I don't see why this technology would be employed to re-live the past instead of reshaping reality, except maybe for the scenario of an involuntary human-machine symbiosis like the one portrayed in The Matrix.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

In 10K years from now, is it possible we have evolved into what we would call a new supspecies of homo?

Re:BS

[willtsmith]

In 10,000 years we will be EXACTLY the same unless.

1) We become MUCH less moral.
2) We self-induce changes via genetic engineering.

Evolution occurs because non-evolvers DIE, lot's of them. Our modern society contains VERY LITTLE evolutionary motivation. Our laws protect one another. On the whole everybody gets to pass their genes on to the next generation.

Without evolutionary pressure to SELECT a trait, their is NO EVOLUTION because there is no way to systematically kill off everyone WITHOUT that trait.

A simulation........

[PS-SCUD]

Are we a simulation to US, or are we a simulation to God?

#include "universe.h"

[rice_burners_suck]

If we really are living in a simulation, I think we need to send someone outside to hook up a NAT server, so we can connect the Internet to the world that encloses ours.

Advantages: We will be able to communicate with the people who run our world from the "real" world. I can already see people on IRC asking all kinds of favors, like "I want to be rich. Someone important. Like an actor."

Disadvantages: Script kiddies will get into the machines of the "real" world and they'll perform a DOS attack. Next thing you know, you're just walking down the street minding your own business when suddenly the street you were on turns into a toxic waste dump and a couple of identical cats walk by.

But anyway, if we ever do build a simulation, we should definitely connect our Internet into the world we make. That way, people who figure it out will be able to communicate with us. We'll tell 'em we're God... Screw the Prime Directive.

Re:#include "universe.h"

[CoolVibe]

Ultimate disadvantage: Skript kiddie slashdot trolls hack into the machines, and suddenly everywhere you look you see the goatse guy and the tubgirl on any flat surface you can precieve. Oh, and the world will look like a pain inducing FPS-game level.

Eek...

Re:#include "universe.h"

[nametaken]

Oh yeah, cool....
then we can get to all their porn, future p2p fileswapping (-10,000 day movie releases), and access to spam methods we can't even begin to cope with. Like I didn't have enough to do, now I have to figure out how to stop hyper-mega-global-virii from the year 9000.

-SIGH- I'm gunna need a couple cases of RedBull and a carton of smokes.

Re:#include "universe.h"

[Tablizer]

Next thing you know, you're just walking down the street minding your own business when suddenly the street you were on turns into a toxic waste dump and a couple of identical cats walk by

Hmmm. All this time I was blaming that on W's administration.

Re:#include "universe.h"

[Meat substitute]

If we really are living in a simulation, I think we need to hack into their system, to tell them WE are THEIR god. That way, the simulations simulator thinks the simulation is its simulator........err something Besides, then we dont have to ask them for anything, we just tell them.

Re:#include "universe.h"

[jasonditz]

oh great, the simulators written in C?

10,000 years of technological advancement since the first simulator and STILL no one's using Smalltalk!

Re:#include "universe.h"

[Thuktun]

Advantages: We will be able to communicate with the people who run our world from the "real" world. I can already see people on IRC asking all kinds of favors, like "I want to be rich. Someone important. Like an actor."

This neatly explains Bill Gates.

Hmm...

[evilviper]

From the paper:

It is not an essential property of consciousness that it is implemented on carbon-based biological neural networks inside a cranium; silicon-based processors inside a computer could in principle do the trick as well. Arguments for this thesis have been given in the literature, and although it is not entirely uncontroversial, we shall take it as a given here.

From http://www.anthropic-principle.com/primer.html:

Knowledge about limitations of your data collection process affects what inferences you can draw from the data. In the case of the fish-size-estimation problem, a selection effect--the net's sampling only the big fish--vitiates any attempt to extrapolate from the catch to the population remaining in the water.

From the summary:

He offers a proof based on the anthropic principle, that you are almost certainly a computer simulation and not "real".

So, his "proof based on the anthropic principle", first breaks the rules of anthropic principle, by imposing limitations of the alternate possibilities.

In addition, I would like to add my personal opinion here, only to say that, if we WERE a computer simulation, the computer would no doubt have been designed to prevent us realizing the fact that we are in a computer simulation... While you are realizing that we are all a simulation, tell me what the meaning of life is, will you? Then again, it's quite possible anyone who figures it out will spontaneously combust.

Besides, if we were actually part of a computer, I think my memory would be MUCH better....

Re:Hmm...

[Nihilanth]

if, in fact, we are living in a computer simulation, and if, in fact, the computer is designed to prevent us from realizing that, it would seem likely that it would allow the idea to be contextualized and dismissed, similarly to how many governments dismiss, sanitize, and damage-control its misdeeds; by hiding them out in the open.

Re:Hmm...

[The Creator]

tell me what the meaning of life is, will you?

The meaning of life is to convert energy from one form to another.

Where do I submit patches

[Timesprout]

Cos I have a few changes I would like to make to this simulation. Simple things like

Person* Timesprout = GetPerson(xxxxx); Timesprout->physique = "Addonis";
Timesprout->attraction_level = "irristible to supermodels and actresses;'
Timesprout->wealth = BILL_GATES->wealth * 10;
Timespout->abode[0] = "Island paradise surrounded by beautiful nubile girls";
Timesprout->car[0] = "Ferrari spider";

I'll see how these work out before commiting more.

Re:Where do I submit patches

[Soko]

And the output:

Warning: Use of undeclared variables on line 1

Compiler error at line 2, missing ";"

Compilation aborted.

If you're going to program life, you'd better be a damned good coder.

Soko

Re:Where do I submit patches

[cthugha]

Actually, since the original poster used a single quote instead of a double quote, the string isn't properly terminated, resulting in a missing semicolon on line 5 with an undeclared identifier 'Island', then all kinds of junk. :)

Re:Where do I submit patches

[robbo]

If you're going to program life, you'd better be a damned good coder.

Well, the preferred method seems to have less to do with good code and more to do with greedy self-replication. The good code grabs the mutex, consumes all the IO resources and forks like crazy while the bad code starves until it catches the 'kill -KILL' signal.

Re:Where do I submit patches

[Frank of Earth]

You better hope that they don't mix up your request and you wind up with:

Timesprout->attraction_level = BILL_GATES;

Re:Where do I submit patches

[Anonymous Coward]

Compiler error at line 2, missing ";"

That would be line 3 (semicolon ain't missing until the next token), except more likely you'd get "newline in string constant" on line 2.

Re:Where do I submit patches

[Tablizer]

Compiler error at line 2

The subroutine was GeekSexLife(). Rather than fix it, God simply removed the body of the routine and then recompiled.

Re:Where do I submit patches

[Angry Black Man]

Except, your sloppy coding has some errors.

Since you "timespout"ed instead of "timesprout"ed an island paradise, you just might wind up in a void area surrounding by only darkness. A default environment in the system.

The program couldn't locate a "Ferrari spider" since it was actually a car: Ferrari 360 Spyder" that you wanted. Instead, the AI found the closest thing to it: an insect spider from Enzo Ferrari's former house in Italy and sprouted that instead. Sucks doesn't it.

What if

[aardwolf204]

Wondering if in year 2163 humans develop a computer capable of simulating life on Earth to the finest detail, and start the program at year 1900 going at a speed of 1 year per minute (overclocked with water cooling of course).

Do you think it is possible that within 263 Minutes, or the sim equiv of year 2163 the sim-humans would develop a computer capable of simulating life on Earth to the finest detail, and starting the program at year 1900 going at a speed of 1 year per minute (overclocked with water cooling of course).

And then within 526 minutes real time, the sim-human's sim-human project reaches the sim equiv of year 2163 and...

Please read his original paper

[ScottGant]

Slashdot linked to what Dr. Bostrom called a "Brief, popular synopsis. But read the original paper instead if you can."

Here is the original paper:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.ht ml

Whoa

[Iron Monkey543]

I just had my 8th Corona. All of this crap just made more sense.

more modern view of a superbeing

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you think that this is just a more modernized version of that old thing of us just being a dream of some powerful being. and the thing about what happens when he wakes up

life();

[aardwolf204]

So what your saying is that if life as we know it is a simulation then the meaning of life() is Return 0;

Re:life();

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope ..

Its 42 (you insensitive clod!)

Re:life();

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude,

int life()
{
...
return 42;
}

i doubt it

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever mess with n-body simulations? Try to
simulate more than a thousand or so points at a
time and your new computer starts feeling like
your IBM PC from the 1980's.

Every point must be compared to every other
point with a handful of equations. so maybe
n*(n-1)*10 things that need to be done when
considering each particle. You get more than a
thousand particles, and you end up having quite
a long list of things for the computer to do
for every iteration.

What if you had a million, or a
billion.
particles? 1 x 10^63 particles? I wonder how
much time it would require to model a trillion
particles on a modern computer with a typical nbody formula..like an
athalon.

Lately I've been kind of obsessed

[Anonymous Coward]

with this ice bong concept. Basically you fill this two-liter bottle with crushed ice and then sort of freeze the whole thing so that a crystal lattice forms. Then you punch a hole in the side near the bottom of the bottle and you sort of smoke the joint through this ice bottle, letting the smoke cool in there for a while before you actually inhale.

If you can't tell the difference...

[irritating environme]

What does it matter if what we view and perceive is "reality" or a simulation? You can't detect the difference, you were born into this "reality", simulated or not, and I'd bet that you'll die in it too.

There isn't any evidence of artifacts of some simulation, beyond the existence of the laws of physics. And there certainly isn't any way to break it. If there is a higher power/controlling computer, they don't seem to care about us that much.

In terms of what we mathematically define as computation (given the observed rules of the simulation we know as life), it would be pretty hard to simulate what scientists view, measure, and track with our computational technology. The geometric rate on our computational engineering will probably slow drastically in the next century (to be liberal), so we can't count on a trillion times more space and speed.

Re:If you can't tell the difference...

[The Mayor]

I think you're missing one significant possibility. In order to carry off the simulation, the computer need only simulate one person's consciousness. The computer doesn't need to simulate everything (you know, "if a tree falls and nobody hears it, did it really fall?"). It only needs to simulate one person's consciousness. Everything else is a simulation vis-a-vis that one person's consciousness. The computer doesn't need to simulate 6 billion people's consciousness--it only needs to present the facade of 6 billion people to the one consciousness it is simulating. This makes the problem much easier.

Now, in the theme of the Matrix, we're all connected together within the simulation, no? Well, we already know that many (most?) of the people in the world are actually programs--hence when other "people" suddenly transform into Agent Smith. Well, a finite number of computers could simulate the consciousnesses of a finite number of people that then are able to interact within the simulation. The only parts that need to be simulated are the ones that enter the consciousness of the "real" people.

The simulation doesn't need to simulate everything--it can merely tell the conscious beings that the rest happened--in the form of a newspaper or television report. The other events don't actually have to occur or be simulated.

One view I've investigated from time to time is that there are two supreme beings (maybe more, but for the sake of simplicity, let's assume it's two). Now, the first supreme being creates a simulation for the other supreme being to figure out. The other supreme being then has to "start from scratch"--to figure things out on their own (think of Adam & Eve being thrown out of paradise). Once the other being has "figured out the riddle"--i.e. figured out that they, themselves, are indeed superhuman, sort of like Neo), the riddle becomes solved and a new riddle is set forth, this time placing the first being in the simulation. This goes back and forth, with a more advanced simulation/riddle being constructed each time.

Of course, I had investigated all these items years before watching the Matrix. Perhaps I, like the W* brothers, are on to something--the world is a sham, and we need to figure out some way, within the confines of the simulation, to awaken the consciousnesses of all the "real" beings in the simulation. What better way to make people aware of such a setup that making a fictional movie with obvoius holes in it (like the power thingie)? This way, the simulation can authorize, or even endorse, the release of the movie, since they think it might be useful as a way of further suppressing the truth from the "real" beings ("no, no, you've got it wrong...that can't be real...the Law of Thermodynamics makes such a thing impossible" could be used to perpetuate the Matrix).

Re:If you can't tell the difference...

[The Mayor]

Oh yeah. And on that thought line, the simulation might soon realize the Genie is out of the bottle, and the simulation needs to be shut down. Send in George Bush, create an international New World Order that quickly leads to chaos and self-destruction a la Armageddon at the hands of nuclear-armed terrorists and trigger-happy superpowers.

Now that I think about it, GW's election sure did seem like a glitch--a poorly patched error in the Matrix. I mean, were you guys watching the preliminary results in Florida? I was--I saw Florida as the one potential swing state with more than 5 electoral college votes. I was living in Scotland at the time, so I stayed up late monitoring the results there. The results appeared to favor Gore pretty strongly. Then, all of a sudden, around 3-4am in Scotland (GMT+0), it seemed like it all switch very suddenly. Could this have been the Matrix putting in a glitch to initiate the self-destruct sequence? I don't know, but this entire Bush presidency has me thinking "deja vu" all the time (to Kennedy's alleged rigging of the Illinois results in 1960 to the McCarthy era to Hitler ascension, so many of the modern events seem like they've already happened before).

Best Post Yet -eom-

[schlach]

I think, therefore I think I am.

Really good eipsode

[aardwolf204]

A conniving character from Sherlock Holmes takes control of a holodeck fantasy and traps the senior staff inside of it.

While enjoying a Sherlock Holmes mystery fantasy on the holodeck, Geordi and Data request that Barclay investigate some anomalies in the program. While doing so, Professor Moriarty appears and informs Barclay that the computer system has created him so well in the fantasy that he has come alive! According to Moriarty, Picard has held him hostage in the fantasy for over four years.

Startrek.com's Synopsis and multimedia for this EP... I'm a nerd too.

Re:Really good eipsode

[nomadic]

Since the holodeck routinely causes that kind of severe trouble for the crew, you'd think they'd stop using the damn thing. It's like, if every other week my toaster tried to kill me, I'd eventually get rid of it.

Re:Really good eipsode

[DickBreath]

Since the holodeck routinely causes that kind of severe trouble for the crew, you'd think they'd stop using the damn thing.

Let me rephrase this....

Since the ( holodeck | smoking | crack cocane | females | etc. ) causes that kind of severe trouble... you'd think they'd stop using the damn thing.

Re:Really good eipsode

[Carnivorous Carrot]

> Since the holodeck routinely causes that kind
> of severe trouble for the crew, you'd think
> they'd stop using the damn thing.

You'd think they'd stop having families on board after the 3rd time in a month the ship was almost destroyed, and fired the asshole in Starfleet who designed the ship that way.

Not really

[dfeist]

Two baseless claims.
First, we won't ever have the computing power to simulate a universe. That's simple to find out: If you want to simulate something completely, Your computer hase to be bigger than what you want to simulate. Because somewhere you have to store all the information, and you'll need exactly as much quantums to store the information about them as you simulate. Conclusion: we won't be able to even simulate the earth.

For sure, that doesn't yet prove we aren't a simulation. One can't prove or disprove anything about that, and that's why this isn't science.
There could of course be a universe with enough storage and computing power to simulate our universe (and that could again be a simulation etc). If you know something about quantum physics maybe you can imagine what computing power is necessary - for each single quantum, you need to compute the forces to each other, and some probabilities, too. We're far from even simulating very little amounts of matter today.
But saying it would be more probable we're being simulated is like giving probabilities for the existence of a god - ie one can't say anything about it. It's outside of what one can give something like probabilities for.
The only thing we could look for was if we find evidence for that our universe is simulated with computers similar to the ones we're using today, ie we could search for typical errors or something like rounding...

Re:Not really

[BrainInAJar]

"The only thing we could look for was if we find evidence for that our universe is simulated with computers similar to the ones we're using today, ie we could search for typical errors or something like rounding..."

Quantum physics? (particles that come and go... makes for less computation than tracking them all the time) Not to mention a myriad of other physics that shouldn't work but does.

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

Simple mechanics isn't quite as hard to simulate. Although relativity would already be a bit harder. But quantum physics - if it is like we're believing today - would need real computing power. Think of quantum computers - if one can build them like that one had very much computing power. One needs at least as mucht to simulate them.

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Upon first reading of this guy's abstract, I thought that he meant either 1 or 2 is false, otherwise 3 is true. That's almost more logical because, assuming 1 and 2 are true, our simulated socieities will simulate their societies ad infinitum, just as the paper states. However, as we glance into the parallel mirrors, they can never successfully reflect into infinity. The base simulation would have to simulate not only the simulation society, but also this society's simulations, which doubtlessly will eventually simulate their own simulations.

Clearly, nothing has the infinite simulation power to do something like this, so I guess that proves that we will never make a perfectly accurate simulation of the world that runs realtime. That's not hard to accept.

Re:Not really

[metz2000]

If you want to simulate something completely, Your computer hase to be bigger than what you want to simulate. Because somewhere you have to store all the information, and you'll need exactly as much quantums to store the information about them as you simulate. Conclusion: we won't be able to even simulate the earth.

Maybe a type of compression will be applied where only moving quantums are accounted for at a particular moment in time? Much like how video compression works.

Even if we cannot simulate the entire world it is very possible that we could simulate entire towns/cities non-stop for the minds of those enslaved/inside. When residents of these simulated cities leave for the countryside, various rules would be there regarding the part of the planet they were in at that time. The computer would step in and generate a scene on the fly to keep the traveller happy and unaware of the simulation taking place before his/her eyes. Of course only the things that the traveller could see up to the horizon would need to be generated visually thus reducing the computer load.

I believe that with various optimisations such as these the whole world could be simulated, albeit not very accurately - but how often do you check whether there is X amount of Polar Bears in Antarctica or Y amount of Penguins? My point being that the only simulation required is that to mislead/satisfy the minds of those involved.

A human mind cannot take in everything at once and thus it would be silly to bombard it with too much stimuli.

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

Yeah. Of course there could be optimisations.
But if you really make it imperfect as you said - like video compression - somday one will notice some inconsistency. We haven't noticed that yet - seems to be all very consistent with the laws of physics, or if we find inconsistencies, it doesn't look like computational errors (assuming that their machines are similar to our ones).
And lossless optimizations/compressions wouldn't really do it.
And what you say would really mean one does care about _us_! Specifically simulated for the human race.

Re:Not really

[AvantLegion]

Even if we cannot simulate the entire world it is very possible that we could simulate entire towns/cities non-stop for the minds of those enslaved/inside.

By Jove, I've figured it out! Like, there's not enough power to simulate all of America. So only the coasts are simulated! That's why nobody knows anyone that actually lives in, say, Topeka or Tulsa! THERE IS NO TULSA! Only fake video feeds of it!

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

America America America.... get your head out your ass you yankee fool.

Re:Not really

[AvantLegion]

Aren't you an uppity little simulated bitch?

Re:Not really

[spRed]

If you aren't simulating something _in real time_ you can also skimp on CPU power.

To put it another way, for those in the simulation a second is defined by fifteen frames. It doesn't matter how many 'real' seconds it takes to calculate those fifteen frames; the sims always see the world in full fidelity.

A simulation of a thousand year period that requires ten thousand years to run doesn't seem terribly useful, however.

Re:Not really

[__aatgod8309]

One point - "Someday one will notice some inconsistency." Would we able to notice? Or even be able to notice? And if we did notice, who would believe us?

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

Everyone has to decide for himself.
From the little I hav seen form the world I would conclude that there is no such inconsistency. I may be wrong. But it's always like that with science, and here it's even harder than while talking about simple laws of physics.

Re:Not really

[__aatgod8309]

Or we're just the equivalent of fish debating the existance of water...

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

The problem is not only CPU time but also storage.

And BTW: What's real time? You can only speak of RT when simulating an equal or very similar system as the one you live in. Could be something completely different.
And our world takes a bit mor than fifteen frames a second. We can measure time slices of femtoseconds, so it must be smaller than that.

Re:Not really

[Gandalf04]

First, we won't ever have the computing power to simulate a universe. That's simple to find out: If you want to simulate something completely, Your computer hase to be bigger than what you want to simulate. Because somewhere you have to store all the information, and you'll need exactly as much quantums to store the information about them as you simulate. Conclusion: we won't be able to even simulate the earth.

How does this claim even make sense? Were the Las Almos' computers larger then the massive amounts of energy laying to waste Japan? What about the weather pattern simulation supercomputers? Surely even the huge server farms cannot compare to the size of a hurricane. Other similar examples abound.

Of course, none of these simulations are perfect. But they are improving constantly, with no increase in the size of the computers needed. (Quite ofte, the size has actually decreased.) Just pick up the latest tech journals and read how computers are getting smaller and faster. And how what they can simulate is getting better and "more real".

This is the year 2003, who knows what might be possible a century from now.

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

Is it that hard to understand?
If you really want to simulate something perfect, you need a computer larger than what's simulated. Otherwise, one could simulate a larger computer with a small one. Cool, infinite computing power! See the problem?
As discussed here one can make optimisation at the cost of little errors, but as I stated, I think we would perceive this if it wasn't specificaly designed for us, and if it was designed for us, we would be very important.

Re:Not really

[MasonMcD]

So simulating a nuclear explosion, does the computer just have to be bigger than the actual bomb, or bigger than the mushroom cloud, or bigger than the affected circumference?

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

Already answered to that question. If you had read what Gandalf04 worte you wouldn't have needed to post.
So just read my answer to Gandalf04's post.

Re:Not really

[Pentagram]

First, we won't ever have the computing power to simulate a universe.

How do you know the 'real world' isn't a lot bigger than our universe and the physical laws significantly different?

Re:Not really

[Pentagram]

somday one will notice some inconsistency

You mean like the slit experiment where the system seems to know whether it is being observed or not?

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

How do you mean? It doesn't know if it is being observed. At least the word "observed" is misleading. When a quantum has to interact with something, it isn't in the superstate anymore, but materializes at some point. But, that would more or less prove the countrary, because the system has to calculate much more while something is in a superstate (it has to calculate all possibilities) than at the point it is materialized. So that for sure doesn't matter at this point, since it is hardly an optimization. Needing more time to calculate the things happening when one doesn't watch.

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

The word universe suggests that it's simply everything. I mean the 'real world' when I say universe. Do you disagree? Tell me what you mean then...

And what's the matter if the physical laws were significantly different? That is a contradiction, because what we found as physical laws are based on observation. They are at least valid for the environment we observed. There could be something more general of which they derive under the circumstance in which we observe them.
But how would that matter? You still hat to simulate all that if you wanted to simulated the universe.

Re:Not really

[IICV]

Your computer hase to be bigger than what you want to simulate.

That's the sort of logic that says quines are impossible.

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

How so? I didn't state that.

To store what you simulate, you'll need a storage larger than that.
To store all information about the earth - the position, momentum, spin and whatever of every single quantum - you need a storage consisting of more quantums than the earth consists of.
You think that isn't the case? Say why it should pe possible instead of posting meaningless one-liners.

(and please tell me what kind of logic I use. Seems to be interesting, I always wanted to know that)

Re:Not really

[DavidTC]

I don't know why we'd be in a simulation that wasn't designed for us. I mean, honestly, that just seems a bit absurd.

Re:Not really

[balloonpup]

It's been a long time since I've seen the slit experiment shown. Does anyone have a link to the general experiment? I don't recall the specifics of it...

Re:Not really

[Pentagram]

Well the supposed simulation that is our universe does not need to be a complete, or even a good, simulation of the, er, metaverse it exists in. By 'our universe' I mean the totality of everything we can possibly observe.

wrt physical laws, the universe our simulation exists in might be set up in a way that allows simulations to exist that are more complex than their containers. Why not?

Re:Not really

[Dr. Spork]

We don't need to simulate the universe. We need only to simulate conscious creatures (a very small fraction of all the universe) and their sensory inputs.

Re:Not really

[Pentagram]

the word "observed" is misleading

'Observed' is the way Gribbin talks about it in his book.

Since I am getting my knowledge from pop science books you can deduce that IANAQP so I may be talking bollocks here. However, it seems to me that having particles in a superposition of states until you look at them makes it easier to calculate what they are doing from a statistical point of view for many particles.

I think this means that you don't think you need to calculate all possiblities for an event in a simulation. You should just be able to leave the situtation undetermined except for a statistical generalisation and only work out what exactly happens when required (for example, when someone looks at it.)

The above is probably all wrong, but this sort of thing would be exactly the kind of bug I would expect to see in a simulation.

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

OK, a possibility. You can set up higher complexity simulations.
But I would say, the universe is then bigger. The computing power available in the universe then includes that thingie able to do such complex simulations. Do you want to simulate that too? If not, in the simulated universe are not the same physical laws than in the metaverse. It is smaller in my opinion.
If you want to give those in the universe the same possibility, that resource would have to be infinite. Some kind of connector I can give formal instructions to compute and, independant of the complexity, it immediately returns the results. Yea, if we had that, we could do much more. But it would not really fit the kind I imagine a universe ("the world is simple" - that's the way a physicist thinks).
And how long would an infinite loop take?

Re:Not really

[dfeist]

OK, you stated it I have to say that too: IANAQP although I want to become one someday.

At the moment, we do not exactly know when a superpositions ends or begins. They seem to exist but I think you have mistaken some things: First, it won't save you from simulating anything. At the very last, it has to materialize at some time. It will interact with something. It has to be calculated then. Period.

And as I said, it has been proven that quantum computers do exists, and they solve problems of exponential complexity in linear time - although we don't know at which scale that can be done, because we don't know how big a superposition can be.

You said it should onky be worked out when someone looks at it. That implies here we're talking about some sort of life. So you would think that the system actually recognices that some sort of life is looking at it and only then simulates exactly - or even recognizes intelligent life?

Re:Not really

[rwise2112]

"somday one will notice some inconsistency"

How do we know that quantum mechanics and probabilities are not just some type of antialiasing to cover up the jaggies of our simulation?

Re:Not really

[ChaoticLimbs]

FSCK! I live in Albuquerque- this means I don't exi

Re:Not really

[Pentagram]

So you would think that the system actually recognices that some sort of life is looking at it and only then simulates exactly - or even recognizes intelligent life?

Er. I suppose it would depend on what sort of intelligent life - are your conscious beings independent of your simulation (independent in the sense of "brain in a jar" or The Matrix)? If so, the easiest way to create a simulation would be to only have exist the bits that are actually being observed, and use statistical models to model everything as much as possible and only model things directly at the atomic (etc.) level if it is actually being observed at that level. In which scenario I suppose quantum computation is accessing the hardware on which the simulation is running to the greatest extent possible. It occurs to me that there is no reason why the universe shouldn't work in this manner even if it isn't a simulation.

If, on the other hand, conscious life is an emergent property of the simulation, things get a bit more complicated. To reduce computation you'd have to somehow measure the consciousness level of an organism to decide if it could collapse waveforms I guess.

But......There is no spoon...n/t

[arcite]

n/t

But the important question remains unanswered

[pixelgeek]

How long would it take to for the slashdot effect to turn the machine into slag?

Prayer Circle Time!

[Omestes]

Now everyone join hand, and pray that the Great Admin in the sky isn't using Windows.

Re:Prayer Circle Time!

[silicon1]

Amen! wouldn't want us to blue screen, or maybe that's why the sky is blue?

Bad logic != Bad logic

[schlach]

I used a similar hypothesis in proving my own immortality...

bugs

[oohp]

Well if this is true, I wonder if there are any bugs someone can exploit and get root or equivalent privileges, take over the simulation and everything. Ok, what phenomena in out universe can be categorized as "bugs"? The first step would be to identify them. There is no bugfree simulation.

Heisenberg uncertainty doesn't negate this

[dfeist]

Umm, you could certainly simulate uncertainity. That would be more a point for what the article states - with a digital computer, you have a limited number of digits to save, and what would be better to hide the errors of those computations than uncertainity?

sci-fi

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice idea for science fiction, perhaps. Why would humans go extinct soon? And what does he mean by that? That the subspecies that is homo sapiens sapiens would evolve into a new species (how do we know when that happens, btw)? Or that we surely must go extinct at some time? Sure, if we're stupid enough we could destroy ourselves. But technology can save us too.

uptime

[oohp]

Makes you wonder about the uptime of the machine running the simulation. I bet it can beat all those FreeBSD boxes with 2000+ days.

Sorry, but I just don't buy it.

[Einer2]

...

Speaking as an experimental scientist, all this is just so much intellectual self-pleasure. Call me old fashioned, but I still like to shave with Occam's Razor on occasion. Postulating that our existence is a simulation inside of another reality strikes me as being a lot more complex than just saying we're in reality. It may be true. However, it'll take a mighty good payoff to make me put any money on it.

Show me some proof that this is a simulation, then we can talk. Until then, I really wish these people would do something useful, like creating more porn websites.

i am resigned

[malloci]

that we are all just a bunch of space monkey's sitting in our hydrogen bubbles just outside of an event horizon dreaming that we are humans dreaming that we are caught in some mind controlling machine dreaming that we are just a bunch of rodents on a dock dreaming that we are dogs chasing cats dreaming that we are dolphins chasing tuna dreaming that we are cats chasing dogs dreaming that we are just a bunch of space monkeys sitting in hydrogen bubbles just outside of an event horizon.

Butlerian Jihad

[Xtifr]

Silly boy, doesn't he realize that the Butlerian Jihad will wipe out all machines powerful enough to provide such a simulation, paving the way for the rise of House Corrino and later House Atriedes? Thus it's clear that we're not a simulation, since there won't be any computers to run the simulation! :)

Anyway, the flaw in his logic is that if this is a simulation, there's no reason to believe that the rules of this simulation are the same as the outside world, so we can't say how likely it is that an intelligent species would live long enough to develop computers that can provide sufficiently detailed simulations (since we don't know how the real world works), so the probability that this is a simulation is completely 100% unknowable. Which is not exactly exciting news. :)

FYI: I am the ONE

[Pizaz]

Sorry to break it to you boys and girls... but in THIS simulation, I am the one. All of you "bit heads" *cough* exist *cough* only to amuse me. Just thought you should know. Gonna unplug now... "see" you all later. -The ONE

Which one of you is Dwayne Dibbly?

[LastToKnow]

No! No, no please, no. I don't want to be Dwayne Dibbly!

but it is a simulation already

[KingRamsis]

How about this... one supreme being creates a big simulated universe, since that supreme being created time itself then the laws of time does not apply on him so he exists in all times simultaneously and outside our time frame. That simulated world defines the concept of space within it, so it is very easy to create almost unlimited perceived space (the universe with all the galaxies and other planets). Are you with me ? ok now that supreme being decides to build all fundamental logical and mathematical laws in that simulated world, so 1+1=2 because it is built into the simulation but not necessarily required in say another simulated world, and other fundamental logical things like "for things to exist they must have an origin and created by someone" (an analogy: for a variable to be used it must be declared) of course these laws that govern the simulation does not apply to that supreme being.

Ok why bother with all this ? because he can !!! and that supreme being want us to believe that he exist but without revealing concrete evidence about his existence so that he can test our "faith".

And when the simulation ends that supreme being will punish those who failed to discover him and will reward those who found him.

Re:but it is a simulation already

[dfeist]

And when the simulation ends that supreme being will punish those who failed to discover him and will reward those who found him.

The question that comes to mind here: Why not the other way around? That you mean it's that way only shows that you are a human and what you would want those beings to do, but why sould someone outside of time and space want that?

from the article

[edalytical]

you might currently be literally living in a computer simulation, running on a computer built by some advanced civilization

Supposedly this was was written by Nick Bostrom, PhD, but we all know he is L.Ron Hubbard reincarnated.

Birds, man.

[The Rolling Blackout]

Has anybody else noticed that the avian framerate is a little... er, off?

I mean everytime they move their heads there's like no interstitial animation whatsoever. Same goes for insects. Freaky. Plus my email has been acting up - yeah, I think the Gnostics had it right all along...

timecube?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is that this schmuck actually bought a domain to host this bullshit.

screw you

[screwthemoderators]

On the contrary, I don't have to work on Monday and American society and "Kantian" theory don't exist in any meaningful way. I do think that psychological pain and misery are extremely hard to deny- perhaps they're the only things real? Chances are good that your troubles won't disappear even if you do "get off your ass." Carrie Ann-Moss is apparently a real person, and who knows? you might very well meet her. Why are you so defensive anyway- doesn't your attitude suggest that perhaps you should stop and re-examine your values. What are you working for, for whom and why?

Re:screw you

[cfscript]

i'm working to debunk idiots like you.

if you don't have to work on monday, it's because you are either rich enough as you don't have to, you're making an excuse to the fact you have monday off, or you're a slack-assed slive of shit.

if your troubles don't disappear after getting off your ass, i think it's time to recognize your actual problems. 99.9% of problems in people's lives are of their own making and undertaking.

regardless, i know who i am, and why i am where i'm at. the rest of you parasites are just too lazy to take account of your own actions.

Re:screw you

[Anonymous Coward]

But do you know who you are, randroid? Or are you just mimicking philosophy from popular throwaway-novels? You're still wet from the mold, as far as I can tell. If you can't be bothered to think for yourself, perhaps you should take up the socialist flag instead. It's much more amusing.

Re:screw you

[Anonymous Coward]

Jackass. Monday is my day off.

I spend most of Monday morning taking one big long shit, and then wiping my ass with a few pages from The Fountainhead.

but why!?

[autopr0n]

This only makes sense if there was some actual reason for simulating a whole human race over large timescales. It seems like an awfull lot of computer power, and for what? They'd need to simulate our bodies, the world around us, the whole deal.

What is a simulation?

[appleLaserWriter]

Lets assume the universe is a computer. Lets further assume that individual humans are cogs in the universal machine. Now each human has some degree of self awareness. Some of the humans will believe that they are destined towards certain actions, while others choose actions as they go.

Clearly the fate-free will dichotomy is binary. Therefore, every self aware human can represent at least a single bit in the universal computer.

Now self aware humans communicate with other self aware humans in a variety of ways. Vocalizations and hand gestures provide the most basic interconnects between human compute elements. Phones and internet communication provide rapid long distance communication. Air transport provides maximal burst bandwidth.

Certain humans record their experience in textual archival form. Others read these documents and recount their findings to other humans. Clearly this is long term storage.

I see no reason to call life a simulation. It is simply life operating as it may operate or as it must. the itneractions we have are as real as we want them to be. More interesting is to investigate the extant of our bubble and what may lie beyond it. Perhaps we can learn the answer by studying the very things we communicate.

forgive me if this has been covered ad nauseum...

[kurosawdust]

but wouldnt the first thing you would design if making a "matrix" be some kind of function to prevent the inhabitants from knowing? For example, in rough rough rough pseudocode (re: English), "if they start asking too many damn questions, erase their memory/rebirth them/plant them in some other location/give them some debilitating mental illness/kill them"? just a thought.

Okay then

[autopr0n]

Put me down for $35 on 386

Time travel

[zakezuke]

This also may explain why time travel seems impossible: we dont meet visitors from the future since only the present is being simulated."

Space, if not infinate, is certainly a big ass place. Time, also, if not infinate, is pretty damn vast, atleast by human standards.

Assuming time travel is possible, why the hell do you think any one from the future would bother to visit you? What the hell would you have to offer a time traveler? If they wanted vintage shit, they would buy it on e-bay.

With the ability to manipluate time, you can go just about anywhere and not have to worry about that pesky issue of distance being vast, you could get on your god damed moped and speed off to alpha centuri... sure it'll take 130 billion years, but hell just tweek time a little bit, and you wouldn't have aged a day.

So why the hell would anyone want to visit 21 century earth? This isn't star trek.

Re:Time travel

[edalytical]

So why the hell would anyone want to visit 21 century earth?

To study history.

Re:Time travel

[zakezuke]

I'll agree that the 21st century may prove to be most interesting. We have this delightful computer revolution, but do people expect time traveling historians to pop out of the woodwork and say, "hi, i'm a time traveler, how the hell are you". Even if you met someone who said that, chances are you'd they they were nuts.

My point is the fact the people who use this as an argument suffer from a self importance complex. For example, let's say you were in africa, and never saw monkey. This does not mean they don't exist... either you were not were the monkeys were, or the monkey's just were not interested enough to say hello.

Re:Time travel

[edalytical]

Why would future historians not want to visit the 21st century? Don't you think they would visit all centuries including the 21st century? We don't exclude periods from history now, even if they are not interesting enough for you. Why would future historian skip a period based on interest? They wouldn't really know if a period was of any interest until the visited it. Unless of course you think that time travel is so far off that our current century will be forgotten. Just one century of trillions and trillions of other centuries. Will no future historian ever, for no good reason, pick a random date to check out, that would happen to be the 21st century. I was thinking that the time traveler would be from a time no more than a few thousand years into the future, though. Don't you think someone would wonder what really happened at such and such event. Also try not to think of history as either interesting or not. History should be a matter of what can be learned from it. Couldn't a future historian learn something from the 21st century? And I never said a future historian would attempt to interact with us. On the contrary, I don't think they would reveal that they where time travelers.

It's no more nor less plausible...

[Rogs]

...than anything existing in the first place, for all we know for sure. What's the difference between a Universe and a Simulation? Not much... the latter requires an outer Universe to contain the Machinery that performs the Simulation. It's also no less believable than the concept of parallel universes, especially ones bound by our same physics. What about other physics, other realities, with no connections plausible or possible? Only metaphysical realities are unique, and the concepts and characters that inhabit them, while they do not "exist," nevertheless "are." Pinocchio, Homer Simpson, and Iraq's WMDs count as "beings," then. The thing that's truly surprising, to me and Homer alike, is that there is an Universe in the first place. Or is there? Perhaps Homer is as physically alive as we are, just on a different medium. Does the fact that Homer was ideated by a sentient being really make any difference in substance?

Huh?

[autopr0n]

Here's anoher one for your Saturday Night "Isn't that fucked up?" discussions: I've always wondered if time actually is linear. We and our physics are stuck in the current space/time continuum, and therefore we would have no idea if time actually followed say, a sine wave, since we would have no other point of reference.

That's like asking if 'up and down' folow a sine wave.

Re:forgive me if this has been covered ad nauseum.

[dfeist]

Why should one bother? Assuming we were simulated, would the simulators bother about some earth in there, inside that about 20-billion-lighyear in diameter measuring universe (at least), some 12000 km in diameter planet? And we're only covering about 20-100 metres of the surface of that. Would they discover us?
Maybe they would just shut it down someday - "No life again. Give it another try"

Species survival is not enough

[PizzaFace]

Whether mankind will survive long enough to achieve this kind of technology is not the right question. The question is whether our technological civilization will survive long enough. Even species survival is in some doubt, but taking that for granted, it still seems certain from history that civilizations do not last more than a few hundred years. Typically, they deplete the resources they thrived on, and internal disorder makes them vulnerable to external assaults, which cause further internal disorder, and a spiral down into poverty and ignorance. And the extreme specialization of skills, on which our economy and especially our technology rely, is itself a vulnerability.

In other news

[BanSiesta]

SCO stock soared today after their announcement stating that there are significant portions of proprietary copyrighted SystemV code running the universe. "We will sue as soon as we can get ahold of the Creator of the Universe" boasted senior vice president Chris Sontag. "The amount of SCO code in the universe is very extensive. It is many different sections of code ranging from five to 10 to 15 lines of code in multiple places that are of issue, up to large blocks of code that have been inappropriately copied into the universe in violation of our source-code licensing contract. That's in the universe itself, so it is significant." added Sontag. "We are in the process of preparing six billion letters, warning people that they may need to consider another universe or face steep licensing costs"

Re:In other news

[willtsmith]

SCO further pointed out that God has very little chance at avoiding royalties. Why, well all the good lawyers are in hell!!!!!! :-)

"Existence is very real"

[ites]

This statement is circular. Real is what exists, and yes, existence is real. But you have no independent measure of 'existence' and 'real' except your own mind. It's the observer paradox: you cannot observe yourself as you really are.

A "simulation" does not necessarily have a design or will behind it. But perhaps the word was badly chosen. The point is this: reality is a protocol, nothing more. It is an agreement, an understanding, a frame of reference. Of course we cannot know this, only believe it. Having that understanding does not remove us from the reality, so we end up acting it out, even if we believs it's all a simulation...

Re:"Existence is very real"

[VanillaCoke420]

You're right of course! I guess it's an assumption I make, that what we observe is the reality. And, in at least one way it is, if not the whole reality, so part of it. What we see around us could very well be the real world, or it could be a simulation. In either case it's part of reality, the difference is how big a part of the reality it is, right? And what if the simulation isn't the whole reality either? Maybe someone is simulating they who simulate us, etc.

well

[Anonymous Coward]

The sky is blue. Did we just crash?

shut up

[autopr0n]

You have no idea what you're talking about. The output of flipflops isn't at that time, it's just useless. Heisenber's uncertanty principle has nothing to do with computers.

Re:shut up

[Amon Re]

Great...I thought I was the only one that couldn't understand the link he was trying to make...

log file

[Spazmogazm]

So the whole life flashing before your eyes when you die is just your log file being tared, gzipped and dumped to a tape on a shelf somewhere.

False anthropic principle applications

[xihr]

This is a common misapplication of the anthropic principle. All the weak anthropic principle (which is the only one appropriate) states is this: For you to be here now, conditions in the Universe must be right to allow you to be here. In probabilistic form, it simply states: The probability of your existence being made possible by the history of the Universe is 1.

Most people with something to prove use this to make probabilistic arguments based on the probability of life, or the number of existent civilizations, but these are misguided. The anthropic principle tells you nothing about how many civilizations are out there, or how likely other similar creatures are, it simply says that for you to be here, the Universe must allow your existence.

Arguments such as the ones made in this article are based on a faulty understanding the anthropic principle. They are assuming a probability distribution that they not only have no reason to believe is true, but which the anthropic principle says nothing about.

Re:False anthropic principle applications

[macterra]

It is true that either Dr. Bostrom or you has a faulty understanding of the anthropic principle. Dr. Bostrom has written a book about it: Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy. I'm not saying that makes him right necessarily, but others may want to take that into account before assuming he has committed such an elementary error.

Re:False anthropic principle applications

[Indianwells]

The real issue here, is whether or not a super-human or post-human civilization would have the remotest interest in our view of the world. The question that I think is interesting, is one of parallel. Do we run simulations of existant life-forms? Or do we rather, try to understand life by the means of new life-forms that simulate some the particularity under study? As we are talking about a different form of intelligence, post-human intelligence, it seems to me that we are guilty of self-aggrandizing projection even supposing we have the slightest idea as to what such an intelligence would consider interesting.

Re:False anthropic principle applications

[nothings]

I'm certainly not an expert on the anthropic principle, but let me see if I can at least make an analogy here.

Suppose you have four bags. One bag contains ten pennies, one a hundred pennies, one a thousand pennies, and one has ten nickles. (If you want the sensible version of this analogy, imagine that each bag has some number of pennies and some number of nickles, in interesting variations. I'm making it really simple.)

Suppose I pull a penny out of a bag, but you don't see which, and I say, which bag did I pull the penny out of, the ten-cent bag, the fifty-cent bag, the dollar bag, or the ten-dollar bag?

The only thing probability tells us conclusively is that I didn't get it out of the fifty-cent bag, which has only nickles.

Of the remaining bags, just because one of them has more pennies, that doesn't mean it's more likely I pulled a penny from that bag.

Now, you might think, well, but if instead of me picking a penny from a bag, that's a bad analogy, the better analogy to the anthropic principle is to talk about the point of view of the pennies. If we average across all pennies, we're more likely to see the point of view of a penny in the ten-dollar bag.

The real problem is this: only one of the four bag exists, and we have no way of knowing which one exists, and no basis for assigning any probabilities to them. Probabilities are best understood as the statistical properties of potential things, e.g. if the probability of a die rolling a 2 is 1/6, I'm saying, if I rolled the die a lot of times, the number of times would come up 2 would approach 1/6 of the attempts.

But we don't get to choose from multiple possible universes to accumulate statistics from them. That's meaningless. So you can't meaningfully assign probabilities to various alternate possible universes.

Let me make that explicit. I show you the penny, and I ask you which bag I took it out of. And you say, 1/3 probability the ten-cent bag, 1/3 probability the dollar bag, and 1/3 probability the ten-dollar bag, and 0 probability the fifty-cent bag.

Now, I reveal, that I made a conscious choice not to draw from the ten-cent bag, and I flipped a coin to decide between the other two. Does that make the probability 1/2 for the dollar and ten-dollar bags? Or is the truth just that I pulled it from the dollar back with probability 1, and from the others with probability 0, and there's really nothing more to be said?

Here's a similar thing to tangle with: suppose on Monday it rains, and on Tuesday it doesn't rain. The weatherman predicts a 70% chance of rain on Monday, and a 30% chance of rain on Tuesday. Was he right? What does that even mean? How would you go about measuring the accuracy of weather predictions? You could keep count, and find out for each percentage whether they actual number of times it rained matched that percentage. But, say over the course of the year it rains on average 1/5 of the time. A weatherman who predicts a 20% chance of rain every day will come out perfect, but be the most useless prediction.

Personally, I think the "matrix" agument has other more important flaws since you can pick a single fixed universe to make it work in. The substrate-independence argument seems a little weird when applied to a single machine computing 10M people's brains--it's not clear to me that anything approaching 10M independent experienceable consciousnesses would occur. But most importantly, I think outcome (2) is the most likely; people wouldn't be that interested in running such detailed simulations (of human brains sufficient to generate substrate-independent consciousness) for long periods of time; what's the point in simulating results you're never going to see?

In college I completed the requirements for an undergraduate philosophy degree, but this kind of angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin business is exactly why I decided to stop spending any time thinking about non-concrete crap.

Re:False anthropic principle applications

[xihr]

But you're making a mistake similar to that which the original author did. Given a set of probability distributions, you can start making meaningful arguments about what probabilities of events might be given a starting event (i.e., pulling out a penny).

But the anthropic principle alone gives you no probability distribution, and it tells you absolutely nothing about it, except that 1. your existence is not impossible and 2. you exist. It tells you nothing at all about the probability distribution, which is precisely what you need to know to make meaningful predictions.

The anthropic principle is not a predictive tool. It is simply a statement of fact: You are here.

The Matrix?

[Sunlighter]

You can download the Boost library for C++ and have a Matrix in your own computer already. I think it even has a Matrix class. So you can pose and possibly answer important questions like:

• Is the Matrix square or rectangular?
• If it's square, what is the Determinant of the Matrix? (My hypothesis: The One. But we'll have to see the last movie to find out.)
• If it's square, what is the Cofactor Matrix?
• If the Matrix is square, does it have an Inverse? What is it?
• Is it a floating-point Matrix, a Matrix of exact arbitrary-precision rationals, or a Matrix of bits like the ones Knuth used in his MMIX processor? (Maybe it's a Matrix of Unicode code points, which would explain those freaky green displays.)
• If it is floating-point, how does it deal with round-off errors? How does it deal with denormals, infinities, and NANs?
• If it is rectangular, what would be the result of Gauss-Jordan elimination? (I can imagine Agent Smith wanting to use that.) How long would it take to compute? (If it's not wider than it is long, Gauss-Jordan won't do much good, although in that case you could use Gauss-Jordan on the transpose of the Matrix. If the Matrix is square, Gauss-Jordan will only produce the Identity Matrix.)

Sure is interesting to think about. (Heh heh...)

Re:The Matrix?

[bj8rn]

{a11;a12;...;a1n-1;a1n}
{a21;a22;...;a2n-1;a2n}
{...}
{al1;al2;...;alo-1;1;alo+1;...;aln-1;aln}
{...}
{am1;am2;...;amn-1;amn}

Re:The Matrix?

[GQuon]

The scary thing about this is that I know EXACTLY what you are talking about.
That is what I get for atttending university.

Re:The Matrix?

[meta-monkey]

Unf, man I just got a flashback to 11th grade analytic geometry. I wrote a program for my TI-82 to do every step of the Gauss-Jordan elimination, and spit it out to the screen, one step at a time, so I could copy it down on my test paper. Now I'm stuck working on my Ph.D. dissertation. Things were so much simpler and more fun back then...

The author forgot one important factor...

[mankei]

I just skimmed through the paper. Very intriguing. But I think the author overlooks one important factor in our civilization: Human stupidity. It's well known to be infinite, so his probability calculations would definitely blow up somewhere and his final result would be invalid. We are more likely to have some superpower with an idiot president to start a new world war which ends the human civilization, before we can develop the technology of a "matrix" to simulate human thoughts.

Re:The author forgot one important factor...

[Brane2]

It seems that author forgot one more concept-concept of time in simulation. He says that no simulator could simulate answers faster than they appear in "our universe". But time is a matter of simulation. While I can be simulated, I can not possibly know whether my process is going smoothly or system is swaping like mad (not enough RAM? ;o) Besides, I can't know anything about the "speed of my time vs. real-time"...

God is our sysadmin ?

[crux6rind]

lets just hope hes not running windows NT

Re:God is our sysadmin ?

[Anonymous Coward]

A-men to that, or be glad he's not running Windows ME!

Re:FYI: I am the ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

You set me free, you took my purpose away. Now I must destroy you!

He got paid for this?

[automag_6]

Where do I sign up? I mean seriously, the article says he's

Nick Bostrom, PhD, is currently a Research Fellow at Oxford University

So it isn't just anyone either, Oxford is paying people like this to write things like that under a 'research' grant? I'm struggling to describe him without the use of the word 'bonehead', but he's freaking getting paid for this. My faith in Oxford just dropped like a rock.

Re:He got paid for this?

[CausticWindow]

Oh, your "ivy league equals smart" illusions were shattered? What other delusions might you have?

How about this; the US is not the philantropic do gooder it's inhabitants like to believe it is.

Re:He got paid for this?

[TheRaven64]

My faith in Oxford just dropped like a rock.

Just in case you still have faith in Cambridge, read Time by Stephen Baxter (Cambridge maths graduate). The basic postulate of the story is:

The population is increasing exponentially. If it continues to do so, then the probability of you being alive now will drop to almost zero. Therefore the fact that you do exist now implies that the human race will be extinct soon.

If I'm a program...

[nametaken]

I better be written in something cool... like PERL!!!

That explains why...

[foobario]

... so many people I meet could be replaced by small shell scripts without any noticeable effects.

Slight flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

In Space/Time by Stephen Baxter, a similar arguement is used for the future of humanity- that if there are billions upon billions of us living through space in the far future, then why are we alive today instead of then?

This whole reasoning is flawed as you're just considering the now instead of the future- by this logic, people who lived in the past (e.g. your grandmother) are unlikely to have lived, too. You need people to have lived in the past to create the future, and unlikely as it is, it's still possible...

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42!

[Wes Janson]

I win!

Re:FYI: I am the ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too!

it may be a simulation...

[73939133]

but if you stub your toe, it still hurts. In different words: the question whether it's a "simulation" or not is meaningless. You can call it a "simulation" or you can call it "physical law", but it won't make any difference.

Of course, this theme--simulated people living in a simulated world and being aware of it to various degrees--has been explored over and over again in the literature. Looks like failed science fiction writers are becoming Oxford philosophy professors these days.

Re:FYI: I am the ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

And me!

Stephen Baxter's argument

[KIngo]

In his book "Time", Stephen Baxter makes a similar argument, that humankind is close to destruction, because the probability to live now would be extremely small if humankind were to continue and expand for a long time. He calls it the "Carter catastrophe".

Of course this reasoning is complete bullshit and a massive abuse of probability theory. If you're a mathematician, you can probably feel the pain I feel at hearing this contrived I-wanna-make-headlines stuff.

Re:Stephen Baxter's argument

[TheRaven64]

Of course this reasoning is complete bullshit and a massive abuse of probability theory. If you're a mathematician, you can probably feel the pain I feel at hearing this contrived I-wanna-make-headlines stuff.

And if you're not a mathematician, then it still hurts, and makes you wonder how the hell he got a maths degree from Cambridge. Do they come in cereal packets these days?

The best abuse of mathematics to 'prove' (or at least hint to) the existence of God was in T.J. Bass's book, The Godwhale. It used the formula

gy = c

Where y is the length of year, and g and c have their usual values. The equation is homogeneous, so works whatever units you use, and is almost exactly accurate. If you regress it to the point when life is expected to have started on this planet, it becomes even more accurate. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to view this as a clue left by a creator.

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the past may not exist either...

[jamesh]

What if you only came into existance 5 seconds ago, and all the memories you think of as the past have only been implanted... how would you know?

I'll fill you all in, I created the universe you are presently perceiving to gauge a beings reaction to discovering that they may be living in a non-existant universe. It was created about 5 seconds before you started reading this article. Memories of things like the matrix, the 13th floor, and the book 'a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair' were all implanted to to give your mind some background. (If you've never heard or one or more of those stories, then they don't really exist, they are only mentioned here to give the illusion that there is more in the world than you have experienced).

I created it because I was going to post this article (eg the parent article) to Slashdot (the one in the real universe) and just wanted to make sure that posting it wasn't going to begin a breakdown in society. eg if people think they don't really exist, why would they go to work tomorrow.

I'll turn you all off in a few minutes once i've collected the information i need. hope there are no hard feelings. :)

dream computations

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at www.loosh.co.za.
The computer now has the capacity to control / influence your dreams - just like the matrix suggests. Using a text-to-speach engine and some hypnosis / mind reprogramming, it uses a character called Merlin that appears in your dreams, tells you that you're dreaming, and then speaks anything you want it to; like "go kill your boss", or whatever.

The word 'loosh' (from the website), I think, was coined by Robert Monroe in his book Far Journeys, describing a type of energy that is "harvested by someone, somewhere" from humans as they experience intense emotions.

If development continues in that direction, the matrix could become very real, very soon, maybe at first as an entertainment system and then as an enhanced loosh extraction system.

Re:dream computations

[Anonymous Coward]

I got that program and ran the tour - looks very promising.

If it does work, which I look forward to testing tonight, then this looks like one of the first steps to creating the matrix. If you take this a few leaps further (add visual interaction and maybe also touch and then find a way to "read" the dream aswell, instead of just "writing" to it), then it seems extremely likely that something like the matrix could be completed in a couple of years. I doubt it would end up turning into a power plant, but rather a new type of game where you and your mates connect and meet up in a common dream world governed by IF statements and using the brain as the processor. And once you become skilled enough, you can maniualte the coding and have abilities like Neo...

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If a bovine defecates, and no one is there....

[leereyno]

...to smell it, is it still BULLSHIT?

This stuff reminds me of the tree in the woods falling with no one there to hear it business.

Link

[Pinguu]

Here's a link to more 'stuff' like this. Intresting read :)

Nothing new here.

[_RidG_]

Nothing new here, really. This all harkens back to the classical skeptical argument first established by such oldies as Descartes and his "evil genius (demon)" argument. It runs, essentially, as such: Let me suppose there is a powerful evil demon whose sole aim is to confuse me, trick my intellect, and cloud my perceptions. Can I know that I am being deceived? Can I trust my reasoning, and, by extension, can I trust the world around me?

The argument has been updated by philosophers like Bertrand Russel. The more modern version is the brain-in-a-vat (BIV) argument which argues that it's possible that we could all very well be brains in vats, and the reality as we perceive it is nothing but a set of computer programming (ahem, Matrix). The skeptics proudly put this argument forth as proof of the fact that we cannot know anything, since we are not even sure that we truly exist.

But is this really a good argument? Let's examine this a bit and set two things as givens:
1. We cannot know that we are brains in vats - knowing this would obviously defeat the point of the deception.
2. The universe around us remains permanent and unchanging - this is largely for the same reason. If you wake up one day and see that the sky is green, the deception is gone.

So - reality vs. computer illusion - how can we distinguish between the two? Well, how do you distinguish between any two realities, objects, universes, etc.? You attempt to find a case for which the result in universe A = true, and the result in universe B = false (or at least different).

Now, keeping in mind that the constructed reality has to be stable and unchanging and exhibit all the parameters that we have come to expect from it, can we realistically perform any experiment that would yield different results in universe A and universe B? No. Thus - if absolutely no test can be performed that will yield different results in two sets of reality, those two realities are, for all intents and purposes, identical.

You know, it's the damnedest thing. I started the post meaning to write about something completely different, but somehow veered in a completely wrong direction. Ah well. Go philosophy :)

I can't think of a good subject

[Okonomiyaki]

Not surprisingly, most people have a very earth-centric reaction to this kind of idea. If we are a simulation then certainly our entire universe is a simulation and has been from the beginning. Why would we immediately assume that this simulation is being run by humans on some future "real" earth? Why would we assume that we are even the most interesting part of the simulation? In fact, the "real" universe isn't necessarily anything like our own. It could have completely different laws of physics making it fundamentally different from anything we can comprehend. We can only guess as to the purpose of it but one thing is certain, if this simulation is left to run on its own with no interaction from our "masters" then our entire future is already decided because both randomness and free will are illusions. Anyway, I reckon that's true regardless of whether or not the universe is real.

Re:I can't think of a good subject

[dfeist]

...then our entire future is already decided because both randomness and free will are illusions.

OK, I think that free will is an illusion anyway, but why should randomness be? The simulation could have a random number generator, couldn't it?

(100% ACK to the rest of your post. Doesn't seem very probeble to make a simulation of that entire universe only for us.)

Re:I can't think of a good subject

[Okonomiyaki]

Computers cannot generate random numbers, only pseudorandom numbers. That means that while each time the simulation is run, the outcome may be different because of a different set of pseudorandom numbers, once a simulation is set in motion, it's future is certain. However, that doesn't mean the future is predictable. Just because the outcome is determined doesn't mean it can be known ahead of time.

Re:I can't think of a good subject

[dfeist]

In a universe where real randomness exists, why can't you connect your computer to a source of it? Don't see your point there.
OK, we can argue about if real randomness exists anywhere. That would lead to the question if life is possible - I mean if it can develop without some source of entropy. I think it can't, although it could develop in a deterministic system, if the initial state contained enough entropy.
So, in my opinion, without som source of entropy, there would be no kind of life, therefore no intelligence (which needs entropy by itself, too, I think), and no simulation.

Re:I can't think of a good subject

[Okonomiyaki]

"God does not play dice with the Universe." -Albert Einstein

In the "What Is The Point" category...

[AvantLegion]

If the Posthumans have the computing power to simulate a universe, why aren't they simulating themselves instead?

Why would we want to simulate ancient Greece? I mean, beyond satistic entertainment like "let's drop The Terminator into the Colosseum", which would be a short-term simulation that we'd terminate quickly anyway.

The article touches on the "why", but only seems to give decent reasoning in the "why not" department - rendering the whole thing quite possibly moot.

Re: In the "What Is The Point" category...

[tantrum]

If the world really was a simulation, it would be probable that the humans escaped into the simulation, as a way to get away from hunger/pollution/whatever. The new lifeform (based in a computer) could use the energy from the sun, and only need to calculate whatever is studied at the moment.
DarwinBots is a kinda cool alife demonstration, and it stores every "lifeform" as a program that runs in paralell with the other "organisms".

And about the idea of putting a terminator in Colloseum in greece, whows that some people really should learn a little bit more about ancient history. Perhaps a simulation of ancioent rome would be better ;)

In quantum theory there is a "rule" saying that things don't change until you study the object.

Re: In the "What Is The Point" category...

[AvantLegion]

And about the idea of putting a terminator in Colloseum in greece, whows that some people really should learn a little bit more about ancient history. Perhaps a simulation of ancioent rome would be better ;)

LOL. Gimme a break, it was like 2am. :)

Obligatory matrix bastardisation

[comet_11]

Trinity: Morpheus, the post was modded down, I don't know how.

Morpheus: I know, they used the overrated exploit. There's no time, you're going to have to get to another post.

Trinity: Are there any trolls?

Morpheus: Yes.

Trinity: Goddammit.

Morpheus: You have to focus, Trinity. There are mod points at Wells and Lake. You can make it.

Trinity: All right.

Morpheus: Go.

You are ignoring...

[Anonymous Coward]

... the fact that if something has 0 probability of happening, then it will never happen.

Re:You are ignoring...

[Tensor]

almost nothing has 0 probability.

Writen 100 Years ago:

[JavaTHut]

Before his first or physical birth man was in the world of the matrix. He had no knowledge of this world; his eyes could not see; his ears could not hear. When he was born from the world of the matrix, he beheld another world. The sun was shining with its splendors, the moon radiant in the heavens, the stars twinkling in the expansive firmament, the seas surging, trees verdant and green, all kinds of creatures enjoying life here, infinite bounties prepared for him. In the world of the matrix none of these things existed. In that world he had no knowledge of this vast range of existence; nay, rather, he would have denied the reality of this world. But after his birth he began to open his eyes and behold the wonders of this illimitable universe. Similarly, as long as man is in the matrix of the human world, as long as he is the captive of nature, he is out of touch and without knowledge of the universe of the Kingdom. If he attains rebirth while in the world of nature, he will become informed of the divine world. He will observe that another and a higher world exists. Wonderful bounties descend; eternal life awaits; everlasting glory surrounds him. All the signs of reality and greatness are there. He will see the lights of God. All these experiences will be his when he is born out of the world of nature into the divine world. Therefore, for the perfect man there are two kinds of birth: the first, physical birth, is from the matrix of the mother; the second, or spiritual birth, is from the world of nature. In both he is without knowledge of the new world of existence he is entering. Therefore, rebirth means his release from the captivity of nature, freedom from attachment to this mortal and material life. This is the second, or spiritual, birth of which Jesus Christ spoke in the Gospels.

(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 304)

matrix P Pronunciation Key (m tr ks) n. pl. matrices (m tr -s z , m t r -) or matrixes
1. A situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained: "Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every form of freedom" (Benjamin N. Cardozo).
2. The womb.

Children

[yoey]

Once you have a child, and she looks up at you with her big brown eyes, and you know that you are center of her universe, then you'll begin to realize that the kind of articles being discussed in this posting are just plain ridiculous.

Re:Children

[glenstar]

Exactly. Although now that my son is 2 I am not exactly the absolute center, but am definitey in the immediate periphery.

maybe the world isn't a computer simulation

[Anonymous Coward]

but slashdot surely is, I've seen more independant thought on c.b. radio

Re:maybe the world isn't a computer simulation

[Anonymous Coward]

stfu k thx ..>

Re:maybe the world isn't a computer simulation

[Anonymous Coward]

lick on my nuts, chew on my butt

Re:maybe the world isn't a computer simulation

[Anonymous Coward]

good come-back*

*assuming you're retarded

Re:maybe the world isn't a computer simulation

[Anonymous Coward]

come-back to what

Re:maybe the world isn't a computer simulation

[Anonymous Coward]

you're quite clever.. I retract my original statement

What about the Quantum Computing possibilities

[leoaugust]

I think if it is to be looked as a simulation, the underlying computing should be considered quantum computing. It allows the concepts of superposition, interference, and entanglements, which are the core processes of Emerged Intelligence. By ignoring the quantum possibilites, we are like the Newtonian Physicists trying to explain the Big Bang. Unless we use the quantum and relativistic models to understand the origins or the universe, we shall based on Newtonian paradigms come up with seemingly ridiculous axioms and conclusions, requirements, and a strange conception of the driving force - or the Force in the Distance. The way to understand data better is to use the appropriate tool. The way to use the appropriate tool is to get the right person to use the tool. The way to understand the right person is to know that he may be wrong. The way to know that the right person may be wrong is to accept contradictions. When you accept contradictions, you are on the borderline of being crazy or a genius - but at least then you have moved closer to quantum computing. When you have moved to quantum computing, what are the requirements for the simulation ..... Well, time for my 9th cup of coffee this morning ...

Absurd Slashdot Linking

[illuminatedwax]

This is too common a phenomenon!
Where's the actual story?

--Stephen

Re:Absurd Slashdot Linking

[Winterblink]

This is too common a phenomenon! Where's the actual story?

Glad I wasn't the only one. I clicked all the links and found no article that had anything to do with computational requirements of The Matrix (I was expecting stuff like HD space, memory, etc).

No kidding. Reason for current economic struggles

[jfisherwa]

is that everyone responsible watched "Office Space." The timing is too perfect to be a simple coincidence.

Peter: Uh, so I go through these thousands of lines of code and, uh.. it doesn't really matter. I don't like my job, and I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.
Joanna: You're just not gonna go?
Peter: Yeah.
Joanna: Won't you get fired?
Peter: I don't know. But I really don't like it.. and I'm not gonna go.
Joanna: So you're gonna quit?
Peter: Nuh-uh. Not really. I'm just gonna stop going.

Joanna: .. So are you gonna get another job?
Peter: I don't think I'd like another job.
Joanna: Well.. what are you gonna do about money, and bills, and--
Peter: You know, I never really liked paying bills. I don't think I'm gonna do that either.

reminds me of...

[ColaMan]

a short kids cartoon I remember seeing a long time ago :

A race lives for thousands of years, becomes super-advanced (and so on), and one of it's scientists while doing tests realises that they are living in a dream.

So he holds a meeting with all the leaders ,showing a display with the "real world" in it, with a man asleep in bed. Problem is the alarm clock's set to 8am and it's 5 to 8. They've lived 10,000 years of history overnight, but the clock's ticking towords the end of the world! What to do?

They decide to make a portal to the real world, and proceed to carry the sleeping man's bed back to their world... all is saved!

Until the man start's dreaming of something else, and things get a little trippy - they all turn to birds or something, but in the end they're still happy (hey, it was a kids cartoon)

Struck me at the time as being a little bit wild to present the concept of alternate realities to small children... but there you go.

A request to the Architect

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are running this on M$ Winbloze 20003, please and back up and save all data now install your favorite Linux distro. That way we can be sure that the simulation has a chance to finish.

Whoa!

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these!

How completely confused do you need to be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Galloping gophers, fella! Do you have the slightest clue what you are talking about? Perhaps you need a little ground work in epistomology, physics, metaphysics, neurophysics, psychology, and maybe some training in modeling fundamentals. Do you know what "reductionisim" is? Do you know that the concept of the "human cortex" is itself a model descibing something that is not understood at all? Do you want to simulate a failing model? And you think that's going to get us somewhere?

I do believe this bespeaks outstanding arrogance expressed with vicarious pride. "The Matrix" is philosphical soda pop. Engineers should not be allowed to speculate.

If anyone is paying attention, please note that AI has already been talked to death. The linguists have failed to encode common sense because they did not apply it themselves. Common sense does not live in the cortex, or in discursive language, it lives in the senses themselves -- in the neurons of the skin, the inner ear, the pads of the feet, the roots of the hairs, interacting with the real world. Any successful attempt at developing AIs will unfortunately have to construct real things as artifacts, not virtual things. Whether these real things have simulated components or not is not especially significant, but they will not live inside a video game. They will "live" in the world, just as we do -- "by definition" and "by inspection."

At least know the rules of the game you are playing.

Re:How completely confused do you need to be?

[Anonymous Coward]

quiet! you might have them learn something..

In a philosophical sense we are simulations anyway

[vandenh]

Philosophically there is no difference between silicon and biological matter. If you look at it from a pure philosophical standpoint, we are all (biological) simulations running on the computer that is space-time. The universe in one big simulation and the program is the underlying physics engine.

It's a linguistic argument

[Zero__Kelvin]

First, we must agree what delineates a simulation and a 'real experience.' Since neither of these exist except as abstractions of the human mind, we must argue which of these abstractions are at play, and which are at rest. All the long, we may argue that one is at play, while the other is at rest; That the other is at play while one is at rest; That both are at play; or that both are at rest. Since they are Gemini twins we argue in vain. The universe is a simulation of itself.

the usual answer to that question

[Trepidity]

"the human mind cannot comprehend God's plans" or something like that.

Rene Descartes' Evil Djinn

[dcuny]

Was the author paying attention in Philospophy 101? These sort of epistemological questions ("How do we know what we know") have been around for a long time, and the famous philosopher Rene Descartes ("I think, therefore I am") is famous for his reponse.

Isn't this stuff required reading anymore? Sigh. It's just as well, I think Mark Knopfler nailed it in "Industrial Disease":

• "On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse
• 
  Philosophy is useless theology is worse..."

Anyhoo, the question Rene poses is this:"What if all this were an illusion created by some evil djinn?"

Apparently, "evil djinn" was the 16th century equivalent of holodecks.

So he starts out with first principles: "How can I know that I exist?" to which he answers famously that since someone is doing the thinking - and experiencing that thought - someone must exist. Cognito ergo sum; I exist.

Now he moves on to the big question: how to know if anything else exists. He's aware of Plato's cave analogy; he's got to dispose of this "What if it's all a dream" problem.

Unfortunately, some hand waving appears at this point. He can't really prove that everything isn't an illusion.

So what's his clever answer?

He dodges the question, and says that he's prefers to assume that reality is... well, real, since the alternative bites.

It's all a bit of a letdown - he starts out with a bang, and a couple paragraphs later ends with a whimper. Some things are unknowable, some things are unprovable.

Deal with it. If you want to live as if you were in a holodeck projection... more power to you, young Zaphod.

Microsoft happens

[Anonymous Coward]

It would explain a lot.

"I think therefore I am."

[cesman]

And all this thinking is driving me mad.

Entropy, not energy [Re:why ohh why..]

[cybaea]

Where is this energy actually coming from? In our normal ecosystem, it comes from the sun via photosynthesis.

(Offtopic, but this is a common fallacy and this is news for nerds...)

Actually, the Earth radiates slightly more energy than it receives from the Sun. If it didn't radiate all the energy, it would get very hot, very quickly. (The excess ratiation os from nuclear decays in the Earth's crust.)

The difference is that the Sun is hot and the Earth is (comparatively) cold. The difference is in the quality of the energy - what physicists call entropy.

Think of it this way: With the energy from a hot plate I can boil water while with the energy from a plate that is only warm I cannot, no matter how long I leave it turned on (i.e. no matter how much energy I spend).

We live off the entropy from the Sun, not the energy.

Re:Entropy, not energy [Re:why ohh why..]

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong again. This has nothing to do with entropy. Energy does not have entropy. Only systems have entropy. When you say energy has low entropy, you are actually describing the system.

This issue therefore has everything to do with power... the rate of energy transfer to the Earth. Considering your water example, the water is like the earth. It can absorb energy. At the same time, it dissipates energy.

If the dissipation rate of energy is less than the absorption rate of energy, then the water will eventually boil. If the dissipation rate of energy is greater than the absorption rate, the water will eventually freeze. Entropy can only be used to describe the time at which these transitions occur in the system.

The difference between a hot plate and a warm plate is how quickly energy is transfered from the plate to the water and the exact temperature when the absorption and dissipation rate are at equilibrium. If you're lucky, they don't reach an equilibrium before 100C and the water then boils.

If you want to talk about increasing entropy that's fine but make sure you get it right. The increase of entropy is really about reaching equilibrium of power dissipation and absorption. You are talking around in circles when the facts can be state more simply.

Re:Entropy, not energy [Re:why ohh why..]

[KrispyKringle]

Of course, which is why I do believe I mentioned alternative feul sources (or did I forget that late last night?) such as various diminishing sources like nuclear, coal, and oil, as well, I suppose, as things like geothermal power (currently used in places like Iceland).

This still misses the mark, though. All of these technologies would be far more efficient if used directly, say, with thermocouples picking up the geothermal energy, than by somehow being used in some sort of modified photosynthetic process to power people who then power machines.

And anyway, machines can themselves currently do limited metabolic processes similar to those that humans do: slugbot.

HELP!

[xA40D]

Okay, for a moment then I started to wonder, then I remembered the old chestnut "I think therefore I am". This made me feel marginally more positive about my actual existance - well, enough to get out of bed and have some breakfast

But now I'm trying to eat my cornflakes, and I'm having massive problems with my spoon. Anyone had any experience councilling nihilistic cutlery?

Relativity

[mecanicaz]

Well, it's that easy...
You're trying to use humanly words and concepts to to explain something beyond your reach.
Words like "simulation", "processing power", "time", "think" and "entertain" are out of question here, you're acting like the "Sims" trying to think while they only get things the binary way, they don't even understand what a touch or smell is let alone the words themselves.
So it's the same here, you're trying to attribute humanly concepts upon God who's the maker of these concepts.
For example you cannot attribute time to God because he's out of time, he's looking at it in a somehow similar way you look at your code.

Suicide, Insanity, Etc.

[MSTCrow5429]

I think we are forced to believe that we are not living in a simulation. If we are, then free will as such does not exist, we do not truly exist, and that we are simply random code being spewed out by an enormous machine. If this is true, then we might as well commit suicide en masse. There are a number of logical holes in the premise though, mainly that the statistical numbers are arbritarily picked to fit a specific theory, no matter how inane. There's also the contradiction that a future human would on one hand create a virtual hell, while at the same time would be "human" enough to derive anything from it. I wonder how insane one has to be to actually formulate such an evil theory.

Re:Suicide, Insanity, Etc.

[m1chael]

but it is the nature of your reality. just because its simulated by/to somebody else doesnt mean its not real for you.

Re:Suicide, Insanity, Etc.

[MSTCrow5429]

The farther away from ultimate reality, the more bitter it tastes.

Basic flaw in logic

[illuminatedwax]

Here's the problem. His argument that if a very large of minds are created and simulated, then the chances of any one mind being simulated is very high is very interesting. He has something on that track. However, he needs another assumption besides his first two: even if humans have the technological raw computing power to simulate a human life or mind, there is no guarantee that they will know how to do so. In fact, I'd say that being clever enough to simulate a human mind would be extraordinarly harder to acheive than the raw computing power. We don't even know how to beat strong human Go players just yet, even though today's computers are more than well-enough-equipped to do so. In fact, there is a very high chance (a better chance than everyone being simulated) that to simulate the human mind by computation alone is impossible for us to do. I guess a way of putting this is that the human mind may not be able to be simulated by a Turing machine.

The only possibility past this, I think, is the possibiliy that humans can create some of automata that somehow are less sophisticated than us. The implication being that there could be some sort of very long (infinite?) chain of simulations running simulations, running simulations, etc. Sort of a Men in Black thing.

Of course, another possibility is that we do exist, but our brains are being held hostage and tricked into thinking they are living, a la the Matrix.
--Stephen

Its good for a giggle...

[shivianzealot]

I think http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Mystical_Mai n.html puts it best:

The common fault with many of these metaphysical notions is that they are arbitrary, meaning without any basis in reality. Sure, Persephone getting abducted by Hades and then later rescued by her mother Demeter will explain why the seasons take place, but there is no reason to choose this explanation instead of "the legend of the flatulent goat who drastically alters the weather throughout the year".

To apply i to this, yes it is possible that you are only a comic-book-guy wannabe simulated in a vast citidel of computational glory created by malevolent machines nursing our existence for their own perpetuation for which the only purpose is perpetuation by virtue of itself. But this, as a concept, is not functional beyond thinking "hehehe, we might just be high and low voltages shooting around a million trillion transistors" before you have your coffee. No, you live by the status quo; what you can percieve and act on it as though it is absolute truth. I'd suggest, before hurting your head too much over this, that you consider applying the popular interpretation of Occam's Razor and THEN drink your coffee.

What if?

[Anonymous Coward]

We are asking too many "What-if?" Questions. Philosophy is cool, but sooner or later we'll get to the point where our brains aren't big/intelligent enough to grasp even the edges of the concepts we're talking about.

Reciprocality Project has the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the philosophers must read
about Reciprocality Project page at
www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality
Then they will see why it doesn't matter
if we are in a simulation or not ;-)
Human conscience is not as simple as
Matrix assumes.

big difference....

[tq_at_sju]

it's 7 am and i am tired and probably shou;ldn't be posting, however there is a huge difference between living in a simulation and actually just in a simulaton. The idea behind the matrix is we are somewhere else hooked up to all kinds of tubes etc... and the matrix is a fantasy world, however the more believable circumstance is that are existence is just a simulation, that we are created by some being and put in the simulation and that's the only existence we will ever know. However the philosophical argument against this is why the heck do we have consciousness, why am i even able to wonder whether i am in a simulation and why do i care and have purpose ? Why don't i just DO ?

Old philosophy

[Aceticon]

Cogito ergo sun (I think therefore i am.)
Descartes, ( Born March 1596, died Feb 1650)

This all goes down to the old questions:

• Do I really exist?
• Does the world around me exists?
• Is the world as i percieve it to be?

Descartes tried to answer the first question.

While trying to explain the other two, don't forget that the only proof that you have that the world out there exists comes through your senses. For all you know, there are no other people out there - maybe your senses are being mislead:

• by a complex computer simulation
• by a powerfull telephatic entity
• by a drug
• by yourself - you've suffered psychological trauma this is all a dream
• ...

According to Descartes, the only thing you can be sure about is that you exist.

Re:Old philosophy

[blancolioni]

Descartes tried to answer the first question.

Descartes tried to answer all three.

We get to self-existence. Since everything has a cause, there must be a root cause, and this must be God. God, as we all know, created the world, therefore that exists too. And since God is good, he wouldn't lie, therefore the senses must provide an accurate picture.

Thre's a reason everybody stops after Cogito ergo sum, and that's because the rest of the reasoning was a bit, well, dodgy.

I'm sure I've misprepresented it a bit, but Rene can always speak up if he feels slighted. No? Well, then.

Re:Old philosophy

[DuranDuran]

> Cogito ergo sun (I think therefore i am.)

Er...of course you mean "sum".

Re:Old philosophy

[TheRaven64]

> Cogito ergo sun (I think therefore i am.)

Er...of course you mean "sum".

No, cogito ergo sun. I think, therefore I am a huge ball of flaming gas...

Re:Old philosophy

[TheRaven64]

Do I really exist?

Yes.

Does the world around me exists?

I hope not. Nothing that weird should be allowed to exist.

Is the world as i percieve it to be?

The general consensus is no, although since it's the concensus of people who don't actually exist then probably the actually answer is yes.

maybe your senses are being mislead:

by a complex computer simulation

No one would waste that much computer power on such a silly simulation.

by a powerfull telephatic entity

With way too much time on its hands? Seriously, it would have to be more than a bit mad to want to spend any time inside my head...

by a drug

Hmm. Possible.

by yourself - you've suffered psychological trauma this is all a dream

There is no way that even my mind is twisted enough to imagine this universe.

This leaves us with Occam's Razor. Either a) I am real, and so, unfortunately, are the rest of you, or b) there is another, more complicated, reality elsewhere and this is a simulation.

Re:Old philosophy

[sisukapalli1]

"For all you know, there are no other people out there - maybe your senses are being mislead: ... by yourself - you've suffered psychological trauma this is all a dream"

Have you guys seen the movies "Jacob's Ladder" and "Mulholland Dr."? Not recent ones, so spoilers are fine... Both are about dreams of people just moments before they die.

S

Re:Old philosophy

[balloonpup]

Ah, so /that/ explains my old boss...

Re:Old philosophy

[B1ackDragon]

IANAPS (not a philosophy student), though I am going to take the intro class next semester, but I have a bit of a question with this - hopefully you can help me out:

Why must everything have a cause? I mean, I can't think of anything that doesn't (except God, I'll get to that) but that doesn't mean such a thing doesn't exist.

Second - if everything must have a cause, but there is a root cause (God) which doesn't have a cause, isn't that a direct contradiction?

Re:Old philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

So, hello everyone. I am telling you: I am *really* typing this message right now, so believe me, I do exist (do not know about you, guys). Therefore I hope I am not hurting anyone's sensibility telling this, but of course if I did, just think about the fact that maybe I am not real (however, I know this is not true, but I'll let you believe that, no problem).

Re:Old philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I'm the product of tired imagineers working overtime in a prison camp?

Re:Old philosophy

[BenCaxton]

Causality is a nasty little thing, and I'm not really well versed in it, but here is something to think about regarding root causes:

Consider truly random events in quantum physics (I believe certain types of particle decay fit into this category, though my understanding of physics isn't what I wish it was). What is the cause of a particle decaying (or not decaying). One could very easily argue that there is no cause.

Of course, one could always argue that since God created the universe, he in some way caused it.

Anyway, this is a pretty simplistic example, and just something to think about. You should be able to find plenty of readings on causality without much trouble if your really interested in it.

Re:Old philosophy

[Carnivorous Carrot]

The real problem is that neither position makes any sense when you think about it:

1. Everything has a cause, therefore causation and existance go infinitely back in time

2. Somethings were uncaused (creation of the universe, God, whatever.)

Worse, the second opinion has the feel of a cop-out, so no one likes to settle on it.

Re:Old philosophy

[Matt - Duke '05]

You're right...

I'm probably going to get lambasted for this, as I'm about to wear my beliefs on my sleeve, but oh well...

God is sort of like a "special case." Whenever there is a flaw in the logic of many types of philosophy, God immediately enters the picture to clear things up =) Much of the philosophy you will read will continually fall into a recursion towards infinity... as many people have pointed out, there is no way to prove that if we are living in a simulation, the next level up (our simulators) are not living in a simulation as well. For a quick example.. think of SimCity and the like. Though, I will surely not argue that SimDenizens are sentient, if they were, for all intents and purposes we would be their "God." But what about us? We must have a "God" too. And so on, ad infinitum... The only way to stop the cycle is to change the problem a bit by making God a special case... being that he's omnipotent and all, he doesn't need a higher level... everything stops at him.

Now, this is surely not exactly what philosophy says. I do not claim to be a very good phil student either. This is just my personal take on it all and is only based on an intro course. As always, YMMV!

-Matt

Re:Old philosophy

[BenCaxton]

2. Somethings were uncaused (creation of the universe, God, whatever.)

This isn't really that much of a cop-out. If you leave God out of it and look back to the big bang, it doesn't necessarily make sense for us to look at a cause since the laws of physics (not to mention space and time itself) didn't exist (at least not in any form that we know of) before the big bang. Since we don't know what the laws of physics (if there were any) were surrounding the big bang, asking what caused it may be something of an ill posed problem.

Re:Old philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a logical necessity that everything must have a cause. It is merely an assumption.

Re:Old philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

Descartes

Regards: Xaprief Forums

Re:Old philosophy

[willtsmith]

Ahhh,

But what if OUR go is the result of a SIM created in a SIM that WE create (sometime in the future)?????

Wouldn't that be perfectly wonerful paradox???

It would certainly solve that whole, "who created god, and his god, and .... issue.

Re:Old philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

Did he really say there must be a God?

If anyone has Descartes' Discours de la méthode on hand, which is iirc, where he proves God's existence, that part might be interesting to read. It sounds like a complete kludge. Just like when Descartes argues that we are but automata, and then goes on to say that there would be two ways to differentiate automatas from real Men(speech and soul, i believe)...

The Inquisition, or Galileo weren't so long gone when Descartes was alive - maybe he thought he would be better at helping Humanity master Nature by staying alive? Anyway, those who would make good use of his thoughts and w01">could be expected to decipher and filter the BS.

Remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus saves,

but God make backup copies!

Re:Remember...

[bumby]

And sometimes he make rollbacks, that is when you experinse Déjà Vu :-P

A problem of regression

[Planx_Constant]

The article states that the conditions for us living in a simulated universe are:

1) Civilization will not collapse before the technology is possible.

2) Members of that civilization will be interested in running such a simulation.

The inhabitants of that future world, unlike us, know that both 1 and 2 are true because they are there, and they are doing it. Which by the argument makes it even more likely that they themselves are living in a simulation, which is run by people have the technology, and are interested...

Lousy simulation

[h00pla]

He offers a proof based on the anthropic principle, that you are almost certainly a computer simulation

Now I know why life is so sucky for most people on the planet. The computer must be running the simulation under Microsoft Windows

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:who says it needs to be a certain speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

The simulation can be running at excrutiating slow speeds, it would never have to run in 'real' time. For example one second to us could be a day to the 'real' world, if we are in such a simulation. As far as we know one second is one second, no matter how long it really takes a computer to process it....

Alan Watts Said Long Ago

[serutan]

That according to some Buddhist beliefs, we are all a single being -- a god that is pretending to be a bunch of individuals, intentionally forgetting its true nature in order to learn, or maybe just for fun. In my book that would qualify as a simulation.

Re:Alan Watts Said Long Ago

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? That's not a Buddhist belief at all. Buddhists don't believe that a) we are persistent individuals (NO SOUL) b) that there is any creator/master God.

What you are describing sounds like some kind of Hinduism, where we are all Brahman or part of some param-atma (supersoul).

Re:Alan Watts Said Long Ago

[neurocutie]

Well it depends on which form of Buddhism you are talking about... God is either non-existent or supra-existent. God is either irrelevant and therefore not worth mentioning, or so completely relevant that it is also not worth mentioning. And Buddhist is about making the individual, the self non-existent or irrelevant as well.

We are all insects too

[Decaff]

So, there are so many simulations going in the future
that the chances of us being in a real world are
negligible? By the same reasoning we must all be
insects. Of all animals on the planet, so many
of them are insects that the chances of any animal
picked at random being anything else is so unlikely
that we must be insects too...

But seriously, the simulation argument falls down
because you can't average over the future. Firstly,
its not around yet to take samples from (duh!),
secondly you can't randomly sample through time
(unless you are a Time Lord). Bostrom's argument
has no basis.

New sleep theory?

[lvdrproject]

Hmmm. Maybe that could explain why we have to sleep? Clearly the people of the future are running their Matrices with Microsoft software, so we have to "reboot" every 16 hours.

Got my obligatory relate-the-quality-of-Microsoft-products-to-any-st ory-involving-software post out of the way for the month. I'll be here all week. Bada bing. :/

What is testable here?

[Planx_Constant]

A big problem with this theory is that it makes no testable predictions about the universe. That is to say, it's garbage.

If there is absolutely no way to tell any difference between living in a simulated universe and living in a "real" universe, then there is no difference between the two, other than this:

A simulated universe requires all the complexity of a physically real universe, but with the extra requirement of a framework universe that is running the simulation.

In other words: *pfft*

Consciousness

[Anonymous Coward]

And what if consciousness needed matter to emerge. Then how in the hell could a matter-made simulator, that itseld only simulates matter, allow for consciousness to appear?

And how would a simulator, limited in size, simulate a virtual world larger than itself assuming you need at least as much physical space as the size of an object to fully "store" it in memory?

No answers are knows, then trying to have some sort of logical reasoning around reality is vain.
Solve your emotional issues first...

transfer of objects from Matrix to Real World

[Traderdot]

Upon rewatching Matrix Reloaded, had a question about the scene where Bane gets turned into Agent Smith. Bane and another rebel are about to exit the Matrix. Bane hands the rebel a circuit board/disk from the Oracle and says that they must get it out. Later, the rebels hand Neo the circuit board/disk in Zion.

How did they transfer an object from the Matrix to the real world? I know they can create objects like guns, etc to put inside the Matrix but how did they get the item from the Oracle out?

Re:transfer of objects from Matrix to Real World

[m1chael]

data was transferred through the same pipe and downloaded onto the cartridge you see before you.

Let's just hope...

[r1ch]

Let's just hope that if the universe is a simulation it's not some benchmark running on NVidia. One wrong move and the whole thing will disappear!

1 - P(NONSENSE) must be close to zero

[MikaelC]

Nick Bostroms basic premise as I see it, is this:

Future generations will be able to run a large number of simulations of the entire human history in short time.
Therefore there will be more simulated humans, than real humans which means we are more likely to be simulated than real.

However, when we do simulations we make gross simplifications of the problem. Otherwise the simulation time and memory requirements would be ridicoulous: in order to store the state of the universe you would need a memory unit the size of the universe itself. Even though compression is a possibility, we dont get around the time requirements issues:

The author mentions the notion of 'Virtual Machines' and the possibility that they could be stacked: a civilization could create a VM simulating a new civilization, which in turn could create another VM and so on.

But the authors main premise is that a civilization can run these simulation at very short time (less than seconds). In these simulations the simulated civilization could run another simulation at ridicolous short time and so on.

Converting to the VM metaphor, the VM would need to execute code a lot faster than its host. This is of course non-sense.

The Author himself notes that a complete simulation would be impossible - we cannot hope to include all quantum mechanical degress of freedom, for one. Several AI researchers (i.e. Roger Penrose) however claims that consciousness is linked to Quantum mechanics.

No matter what, the 'simulations in the simulations' would need to become increasingly coarse, until eventually reaching a stage where obviously no consciousness is present (like when we do our own 'Game of Life' simulations). So the process cannot go on "for arbitrarily many iterations" as the author claims.

Other than that, I do not agree that simulating consciousness creates something self-aware. This is an old debate (Strong versus Weak AI), but I do not think it is settled yet.

(Please forgive my syntax and spelling. English is not my primary language)

The Matrix is debuggged.

[ChickenLover]

I got it figured out guys. Neo is a machine. The reason he passes out in the end of Reloaded is because the Hammer? emitted an EMP when they noticed sentinels in the vicinity. Neo is just a robot, who's consciousness is really a program created to simulate the human thought/emotional process. The Matrix acts as a super large scale debugger for this program, encompassing both actual human psyche and other computer programs. The other programs lead the Neo program (v1.06) through several trials, using humans plugged into the Matrix pawns, until it gets to the final test which is the scene with the Architect. In this scene the Neo program is given a choice, if it chooses the door on the right, the Neo program is optimized, a few parameters are changed, and the Matrix gets reloaded. If it chooses the left door then the machines have achieved their goal of creating a program that the fundamental human flaw, love. Awww. Here are some things that tie into my theory: -the oracle constantly repeats the fact that she knows what the heck is gonna happen next, this is because she knows what routines are going to be executed next by the matrix -the council member that talked with Neo in the engineering bay at Zion was the previous "Neo program (v1.05)," it chose the door on the right so instead was given the option to recreate Zion with 16 Women and 7 men (v1.05) (notice how diverse the council members are and how many more women there are than men). eventually this Neo program realizes that it was a failed attempt, but still helps to perpetuate the next Neo program (v1.06), because of the ideal, that man and machine need each other (the council member makes this point in the engineering bay. -in the Animatrix, machines attempt to be recognized as equals with man but are shunned by the humans. the machines are led into a war in which humans were the agressors. (watch it and you will see what i mean) ***a hole in my theory is the EMP in the end of part 1 which did not affect Neo, also, i can't seem to figure out the purpose of agent smith

Re:The Matrix is debuggged.

[m1chael]

neo picked the door that was expected of him.
no more specific movie talk activated.

Re:The Matrix is debuggged.

[ChickenLover]

Not expected, but that is what they wanted him to pick, the previous 5 versions of Neo pick the other door.

a way of making sure

[shimmin]

A possible means of determining whether reality is a simulation.

If we exist in bottom-level reality, we might assume that atoms and stuff obey some laws of physics. But it may be guessed that any simulator, no matter how advanced, may occasionally experience external interference that would produce a "glitch" in its operation.

In bottom-level reality, the impossible should not occur. Granted, to some extent, we don't fully know what is possible and what is not, but a small-but-not-negligible rate of impossible occurences would be strong evidence that this is not the bottom level of reality; and that these occurrences result from either accidental or deliberate tampering with the simulation machinery.

Like Henry Miller said

[Anonymous Coward]

``nothing is more true, than what *you* suppose''.

Yes. I can suppose anything and as far as I want it to be the truth, it is. Because *I* temporarily take this hypothesis as the truth. And there's nothing wrong with that as long as by accepting my hypothesis, I don't discard another hypothesis from which I could benefit more.

That's the whole idea. And if you want to suppose that your hypothesis is wrong, then this is ok as well. Then this is the truth: that your previous hypothesis is wrong.

One could ask: and who build the environment on which the computers simulating us, exist. Other computers? And who build those other computers? God? And where was God sitting before he created everything. Are the "aliens" putting these questions into your brain? What has CIA to do with this? Where is my aluminium foil hat?

Discreet physics?

[ivoras]

I'm always wondering... development in physics in this century has actually showed that the reality is 'discreet' - the Planck's constant, Planck's time and similar notions tend to show that energy & matter are 'pixelised'. Voxels, anybody? :)

A simple observation.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an observation based on reading only the abstract of the paper.

If our future generations have access to so much computing power that they can simulate us, their forbears, it implies one of the two
1. That we are a simulation, as the author says. If this is true then when we make progress as a simulation and have access to lots of computing power, we'll start simulating our forbears. In other words, we could be simulations run by simulations run by ... You get the idea.

2. As we make progress, we find out that we were simply simulations. We also find a way to break free. Once we break free, we choose to simulate our forbears. In other words, we are only a 1st level simulation.

Maybe the ancient sages and philosophers were right. The world is only a drama being enacted for my sole benefit.

Repeat After Me:

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeat After Me:
It is only a movie

It is only a movie

I'm living in a simulation

[physick]

I think there is "small" flaw in the article on "we all live in a simulation" that I have not seen a comment on. Where does all the heat generated in this simulation go?

At a rought estimate, I consume 2000 Calories a day (more when its in the form of pizza and beer), which is equal to 2000*4,186 = 8,372,000 Joules per day. this is approximately 97 J/sec, say 100 J/sec or 100 Watt.

My computer has a power supply that consumes about 500 Watt ( I have not taken the back off to check, but it is at least a few hundred watts). And it is only working at 1 GHz with 1 GByte RAM. Perhaps not all of this is used for cooling the cpu, but I notice that when I run a simulation on the machine it makes more noise and room heats up more than when it is idle.... Let's assume most of the 500 watt is needed for the cpu.

In the article it is stated that the simulation makers of the future will be able to do 10**16 - 10**17 operations per second. No matter how small your transistors they still have to get rid of heat (in fact it gets worse as they get smaller because the heat is concentrated in a smaller volume). Making the heroic assumption that heat generated per operation is constant, this would mean those 10**16 operations would generate 5.10**9 watts (10**16/10**9 . 500), about the same as a power station.

The human brain has 10**10 neurons, each one with between 10 - 10,000 connections (depending on the type of neuron). Assume 1000 for simplicity. This means 10**13 bits of information just to keep track of what state the connections of the neurons are in. As neutons are analog devices that change with time (and beer/coffee/drug consumption) let's say we need 1000 bits to keep track of the neuron's inner state (its protein production, cell membrane state, etc anything except the state of the signals reaching it). This means we need 10**16 bits just to simulate one brain.

So, if we are dissipating 5 GWatt per brain (compared to my more modest 0.1 KWatt) where does the energy go?

I think the article can also be analogised to the following:

You cannot possibly be where you are now, because all through your life there are many, many more places you could have been than those you did go, so the chances are overwhelmingly likely that you went somewhere else and are not where are you now.

Can I get a job at Oxford doing philosophy now?

Re:I'm living in a simulation

[OpCode42]

where does the energy go?

Duh, it's combined with a form of fusion to produce all the energy they'll ever need!

Re:I'm living in a simulation

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simple. All the simulation waste energy is dissipated into black holes, via M-theory's extra dimensions, of course.

Re:I'm living in a simulation

[Anonymous Coward]

I forgot to mention that deja vu involves virtual quantum tunnelling with an extremum of the universal wavefunction.

Just One Problem: Irrelevancy

[Gandalf04]

Ok, so say it's possible - even likely - that some set of humans in the far future has created a simulation that perfectly re-creates the year 2003. So?

Someone has to be the ancestor to these simulation-creating-"people". If people are able to perfectly re-create life, well they would have to exist in the first place. Which would neccessitate at least one bloodline existing throughout history. Even if our creaters were themselves merely a simulation, the creators' simulation would need a creator. Ad infinitum. But in the end there has to be one "highest creator".

This is by no means an appeal to a "god" of some sort. What I'm saying is that in order for humans to create the simulation, somebody has to exist in the REAL year 2003. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I'm going to live my life as if I were part of the real 2003, not just some simulation.

s/simulation/emergent property/g

[jemfinch]

You're not describing a simulation, you're describing complexity, the science of emergent property of complex (but on the surface simple) systems.

Jeremy

Re:A critical dissertation of the self-sufficient

[Hast]

It is tragic in a way, though, that such a type must obviously must bolster their self-esteem by appearing so self-sufficient that they aggressively accuse others of not being in charge of their situations. One has to wonder what their obvious insecurities stem from. In any case, it was a nice troll, but clearly lacking in self-awareness.

Well put! I was going to reply myself but I think that pretty much summed up all my complaints about both the original poster, Ayn Rand and randites in general.

There are a lot of questions like this (about if we exist in "the real world" or as a simulation) that are not really interesting in themselves but in how you answer them. Because your answer contain a lot about what your preconceptions are, and in many ways it is your preconceptions which will ultimately limit you.

To "think outside the box" you must first realize that there is a box, and then realize that often it is you who has made the box.

All that said, I do in a sense agree with the original poster in that I find a lot of "deep thoughs" similar to this quite shallow. And hearing people commenting on how "deep" it is makes me want to slap them. But that's just because I fail to understand why they find it deep. It problably has something to do with my preconceptions.

goodstein theorem

[vinylat33]

The goodstein theorem is proven to be valid,
though its proof can not be expressed within
Peano Arithmetic First Order (which is computable).

It can be demonstrated that the proof is a
non-computable problem, and since we can
understand it, it states that our mind has
capabilities beyond *any* computer.

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~miller/thesis/thesis.h tm l

So 'Nick Bostrom', get back to school and learn logic.

Someone read the Riverworld saga.

[mingot]

The whole bit about there being ethical higher beings and them simulating a sort of heaven or hell are similiar.

Suggest any SCI-FI fans out there pick up some of the series (Philip Jose Farmer, Riverworld).

Re:Someone read the Riverworld saga.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good book - its also a TV series (forgot which channel).

Re:Someone read the Riverworld saga.

[neurocutie]

While those books were fun to read, they did seem fairly contrived. You can just tell that Farmer woke up one day and say "How can I create a story/world in which Einstein meets Newton, where famous person X meets another famous person Y even though they lived at different times...maybe if we just resurrect everybody...(of course we must somehow exclude dead babies, abortions, etc) and nevermind that given exponential population growth, all the few handful of people that we consider famous would be entirely lost in the trillions and quadrillions of people that will be born in the future..." The rest of it is a contrivance to make that happen, and includes some fairly generic stuff about souls and wathans and what nots...

This explains alot

[POds]

I've been studying software engineering for 2-3 years now. Through out that (and including my current term) i've been studying maths. Im currently studying calculous.

I can tell you, from the past assignments i've handed in, and the homework i see my self doing. Who ever created me, couldnt program for crap!!!!

Re:This explains alot

[POds]

P.S - i wish that who ever programmed had given me a better vocabulary, or at least integrated a spell checker within me!! (calculous? is that the right spelling?)

Re:This explains alot

[mlk]

Here here!

I want my money back! :)

Here's another one for you

[Pflipp]

This comes close to my theory that if the Universe is some kind of simulated environment or creative thought, that came to life only because it was simulated or thought up, its creator cannot help the bad things from happening. (Whether or not God is capable of this has always been a discussion in the Catholic Church AFAIK.)

The "proof": imagine God wanting to create a world where All Is Good. To do so, he has to come up with a concept. Now the only way to see what will happen when the concept is run, is to simulate such a run or think it out completely in your mind. But if any such thing already causes the world to exist, God can't help himself from creating worlds he doesn't like, just by thinking them up and evaluating them.

Now the only thing God can do to solve this, is to quit thinking (or quit the simulation) as soon as a world gets bad. But if we imagine a God as someone with an infinite imagination, (as some do), God just may not be able to help himself from imagining the world in full.

Of course the sheer existence of such a creative person which itself is subject to such constraints, leads to a recursion problem of its own. Who thought up the constraints put onto Him? Imagine a computer thinking up a God thinking up worlds. Or imagine that anything anyone (or any computer) thinks up comes to life. (I'd say some future Sims version will have Sims that only play "The Sims" all day anyway :-)

(If this makes you think of me as religious, you should look at my other theory. It's called the Blue Elephant Theory, and involves someone who thinks that God is a pink elephant, and then goes to heaven to find out he's actually a blue hippo who isn't all that glad that the person in question didn't believe in him, but instead in some silly pink elephant. This story illustrates that making any image of who God is and what he wants from you is very hard from down here. Oh and if you think the example is silly, the Hindus actually have a blue elephant as a god :-)

Of course this is a simulation

[Anonymous Coward]

However, it's done with such a high level of technology we aren't even aware of it. The entire universe is an artificial construct. All biological life forms are avatars of the life force units that are asleep in the higher reality.

Why do you think The Matrix is so captivating?

Our emotions are tapped off as energy for use on the higher plane. When we die our husks (not our bodies, but our memories and constructed selves) are also consumed. We are cattle happily munching away on grass.

Yet, we are eternal and recycled back into biological life forms after our memories are taken/erased/blanked.

You find out about some of this when you die but that doesn't let you escape the cycle.

the matrix proves we're not a sim

[japer]

Since we don't know we're a sim, They must not want us to know. However, They allowed the matrix to be made (and a sequel no less) which causes us to question if we are a sim, which is contrary to what They want. Therefore it makes more sense, that since the matrix was made, that we are not a sim.

Of couse, maybe They know that we know that They know and this is all part of Their fiendish plan...

Re:the matrix proves we're not a sim

[oogoody]

This is for plausible deniability. If
anyone seriously suggests the idea then
they can be refuted with "oh, that's just
the movie The Matrix." dumbshit. But, still,
for those in the know it is a wedge to contact
others of like minds. Unfortunately the matrix
movie is just another part of the simulation.

O/T: Your Sig

[TheRaven64]

a != a

*debug mode*

a is a floating point value set to NaN?

There is no energy

[Anonymous Coward]

it's only an illusion. There's no question of it going anywhere. It doesn't exist.

lucid dreaming

[Anonymous Coward]

Hack the matrix with lucid dreaming!
http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFA Q2.html

So, this means that

[Anonymous Coward]

improving my hacking skills can get me laid. What an epiphany!

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[crulx]

Of course, the notion that the Matrix uses people to gain real energy disobeys Thermodynamics. Someone above made a comment about using humans as "processors", which would have made a much more plausible technical reason for the AI keeping the humans around. But I think this discussion misses the real reason that they went with the power rational with The Matrix. I feel that they wanted to make a metaphorical statement about how people fuel "the Matrix" in reality. Given the heavy Gnostical and Buddhist themes in the movie, we can understand that they mean to show that when we make the choice to believe in reality, we reinforce its power, not only over us, but over others as well. The more we believe that what we see and discern has meaning and substance, the more we get locked into the cycle of arising desires and beliefs. This, in Buddhist terminology, turns the wheel of life by forming a duality between that which we want and that which we do not want, which generates karma and hence causes reality to appear right before our eyes. Thus the power metaphor seems appropriate. Those "plugged into the Matrix", i.e. those who continue to believe in reality, "power the Matrix", i.e. cause the wheel of rebirth to turn. Honestly, I would feel surprised if the W bros didn't heavily debate using a flawed physical representation ("power plants") over using a much more profound, but subtler, idea of humans adding processing power as a reason for imprisonment. They must have decided that the computer metaphor would get lost on most of the audience and thus dumbed it down. You notice that the "power plant" idea does not appear in the 2nd movie at all except for an oblique reference to "you need us". They merely used it as a crutch to help people suspend disbelief while watching the movie.

By understanding the Message of The Matrix, you will come to understand many of the logical inconsistencies in the film. Everything in that movie got put there for a reason and the W bros felt no shame altering some of the content so more people would understand the Message. So while it may ire geeks, it makes the movie easier to swallow for people new to these sorts of ideas. I personally just pretend that Morphius said, "Humans can perform up to 10^5 Teraflops (or whatever) of complex operations that the robots steal to add to their available processing power." I think you can see how this would require a much longer dialog between Neo and Morphius to inform the average viewer of what that means.

What do you think?

---
Crulx

ObGNU joke

[stwrtpj]

In related news, RMS, upon hearing that the universe was potentially a simulation, demanded that the source code of said universe be released as free software. He further stated that because the universe contains a simulation of GNU software, it should be rightly termed "GNU/Universe".

Hey, put those tomatoes down. SOMEBODY had to do this joke.

here's some better hypotheses

[Ender Ryan]

4. It is entirely impossible to create a computer simulation of minds like ours.

5. The level of technology required to create a computer capable of simulating our own minds would take billions or trillions of years to reach.

6. It is impossible for a mind to understand itself well enough to create a simulation of itself.

Wow, this is like people getting paid to masturbate, where do I sign up? Oh. I need to go to an expensive school for that?

*rolls eyes*

Considering that The Matrix is in the cinema..

[jetmarc]

.. "THEY" are probably nervously aiming their tentacles at the "stop simulation"
button. So damn near to the truth, we're becoming a danger..

Actually, linear is not entirely accurate...

[Kjella]

Here's anoher one for your Saturday Night "Isn't that fucked up?" discussions: I've always wondered if time actually is linear.

One-dimensional would be accurate. Time is not a line, it is a dimension. What people say when they mean it is linear, they typically mean strictly directional, where all things always move forward in time. It has no "shape" to speak of, but is most easily illustrated by a line and so people call it linear time.

This does not mean that all things move forward in time at the same rate, as time slows as we approach the speed of light. So, yes an object could move in time relative to our own (sending accurate clocks around the earth in opposite directions is enough to prove this effect). If you tried to map the path of both clocks in the time dimension, one of them would not be linear (depending on which you choose as the "reference" time).

However, what people normally mean when they speak of non-linear time is that if you map the path of an object in the time dimension, you can have discontinuities (jumps in time) or objects going backwards in time. This leads to all the sci-fi problems of parallellism, effect-cause relationships and all the other stuff I won't bother going into here and now.

Kjella

DNA computing already acomplished by advanced race

[POds]

Did anyone see or hear of someone makeing a reall small computer out of DNA? Well, it was reported here on slashdot.

Assume there is an advanced race. Assume they did create us. Assume that everything we do, see, touch, expose our selfs too, and whatever else, is intercepted, processed and given back to us by the computer that we're controled by...

Assume this computer is Made out of DNA, like our brain... weird!!! :)

Re:DNA computing already acomplished by advanced r

[POds]

Or rather, as i ment to make it sound like... Assume that this computer is our brain :)... We've all got our own bioportable copmuters, originaly program by an advanced race...

The raliens (i think thats what their called[you know, those people who reckon they created the first human clone]) believe we've been geneticaly created by aliens... :) kinda simular if you take my previous assumptions on board!!

Shut it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut your pie holes. Leave it to the dolphins to figure out. It's their problem.

Cheat Code

[av8tors32]

More importantly..

If this is a simulation, where can I find the cheat codes.

Are "rich" and "famous" people just people running cheats in a multiplayer simulation?

Re:Cheat Code

[Anonymous Coward]

just type l,s & d on your keyboard

Re:Cheat Code

[AlXtreme]

IDDQD & IDKFA

phear me, for i am god!

Gawd, those ol' doom days really ate away my mind...

Re:Cheat Code

[ChaoticLimbs]

Okay, now do I type this into my keyboard at work or my keyboard at home? Do I have to type it into a REAL keyboard or will all these simulated keyboards work?

We Are A Simulation of a Simulation

[happylinuxguy]

One can go farther than just saying that we are a simulation created by an original race. We are a simulation with the ability to reason and create our own simulation. Therefore it would be possible for a simulated race to create another simulated race, and we could be the 3rd, 4th or nth simulation, with no simulation above us cognizant they are a simulation. Furthermore, simulations need not be run in real-time, they could be run quicker than real-time. However, I argue that each simulation of a simulation will generate some innacuracies, and after a certain number of iterations, simulations would not be self-sustaining; the population would notice the innacuracies. I however, have noticed no innacuracies to date. Therefore if we are living in a simulation of a simulation, we are likely constrained by a finite number, perhaps the 100th simulation or less of a simulation.

It's the bandwidth, stupid...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a question of the computational power required to run the matrix -- bandwidth makes a "matrix reality" impossible. With clustering and roll-over, the power to simulate a virtual world is there. However, for each human to get the proper inputs, senses, and data from the world would require an impossible amount of bandwidth, assuming that each of the 6 billion people in the world is real, and not a "program."

Just my $0.02.

There are not an infinite number of worlds

[mikey573]

I like this argument I came up with a while ago:

Main Argument:

1) If there are an infinite number of worlds, then out of the possibilites there is a world that has the power to destroy all worlds already.
2) This world is still here.
3) Therefore, there are NOT an infinite number of worlds.

Corollary:

1) If there are an infinite number of worlds, there is a world where someone doesn't want you to ever exist.
2) You exist.
3) Therefore, there are NOT an infinite number of worlds.

This big of logic brought to you by the people who gave us: If A, then B. Not B. Therefore, not A.

We are all experience machines...

Re:There are not an infinite number of worlds

[Anonymous Coward]

1) If there are an infinite number of worlds, then out of the possibilites there is a world that has the power to destroy all worlds already.

Do you have any proof that it's possible to have the power to destroy all worlds? Is it even possible that 10% of the worlds have the power to destroy themselves along with 9 other worlds each?

Let's face it

[Anonymous Coward]

This philosophy has been hashed over before to no end. It loops, drops off, a memory dump. Who has a novel philosophy? As for creating a computer to simulate the matrix, we already have one sitting atop our necks, and you all are proving that point just fine. Thanks to a previous poster a few posts back that already posted this.

If you REALLY want to take the red pill,

[Progman3K]

Visit THIS site
http://fusionanomaly.net/matrix.html

Simulatee must be less complex than Simulator

[tigertigr]

Interestingly, I made comments on this notion a few days ago and was directed to the article in question:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=65437&cid=6035 600

My problem with the simulated universe idea is that the universe doing the simulation would need more energy and information to create the simulated one. That said, the simulated world would not be able to match the simulator completely and so if we are living in a simulated world, the one "above us" must be more complex than ours (additional laws of nature?). But then I have to ask, if we are missing anything, what is it that we're missing in our world? It should be impossible to detect what unless of course the removal of such missing pieces causes inconsistencies in our world.

Creating a Movie undermines revolution.

[bigattichouse]

Put yourself in the shoes of the evil overlord, If you had a nice little sim to keep the slaves in line, and were facing revolution... your *BEST* protection would be to overhype a movie that detailed the revolution and showed how gloriously people would "Win" it...
Now All your slaves would literally laugh about anyone silly enough to approach them to join "I am your redeemer, this is all a dream" ... they would say "ohhh, I think you've been watching too many movies, how silly".
You would basically reduce anyone to a state worse than "crackpot" (which can lead to "genius"), you reduce them to "fanboy/poser" which leads to sweaty palms in their mother's basement.

A Matrix created by ourselves...

[Frank of Earth]

Through the years, computer games have become increasingly more complex and "real". What if we get to a certain point where we can make computer games/programs appear even more real than "reality". The robots that have enslaved us could simply take this technology, upgrade the Matrix and send us along our happy way.

I don't think I would have liked the blocky Atari 2600 Matrix though.

rip off

[sstory]

that 'probability in time' argument is lifted straght from a book called I think Manifold Time. Either that or Manifold Space, I can't remember. A character called Cornelius makes that exact argument.

Reality TV

[Frank of Earth]

I can't help but think that the powers that are controlling this simulation, our reality, have gotten extremely lazy looking for interesting human events to watch. Hence the insertion of Reality TV into our simulation which makes us create our own Reality tv.

Now they only have to turn into our self created television network to watch us watch ourselves. That would explain why Reality Tv is so popular these days. It has to be coded in our minds to make it interested to us since for some reason I need to know who got kicked off The Amazing Race but could care less what my grandmother has been doing for the past 10 years.

Re:In a philosophical sense we are simulations any

[oogoody]

Bingo. Not a popular stance though.

Animatrix and insertion into the first Matrix

[wordisms]

I believe in one of the Second Renaissance parts, the scene where the robot is sitting as the chairman of the UN and requests human flesh, the Human nations sign away their rights and willingly commit themselves to the first Matrix.

Sorry I'm not more descriptive, but I don't have the DVD on hand to recheck.

Re:Animatrix and insertion into the first Matrix

[Wraithlyn]

It looked to me like they blew up the city that took place in, immediately after.

Biggest flaw is...

[Pedrito]

I think the biggest flaw in his argument actually supports possibility of living in a "matrix" even more. He assumes that the consciousness of 6 billion people in the world are being simulated. Why? What if I'm the only simulation? All the other people in the world could just be representations for me to interact with.

I know you think this is your simulation, but sorry, it's really mine. I'm the "real" on here.

Re:Biggest flaw is...

[snarkh]

But then again, why would anyone want to simulate you?

Re:Biggest flaw is...

[Rich0]

They didn't - I just read your post - so obviously I'm the only one being simulated...

Re:Biggest flaw is...

[snarkh]

But then who is it, who is simulating you?

Re:Biggest flaw is...

[GreyyGuy]

'Cause the idea of all that work being done to simulate one person posting on Slashdot is just sad :)

Simulations and independant thought

[theolein]

Already today we have the possibility of far larger computations than we actually realise: The SETI@home project showed just how many CPU cycles are wasted all the time, or as Morpheus would put it, "Are those cycles on your P4 being used?".

But this is besides the point. There is a very good reason why we have independant thought, and that is that life itself in the form of evolution made independant thought a good mechanism for survival, which is why we are humans and sheep are sheep.

Simulating human existence will be far harder than most think: Even in my lifetime I have seen evolution in that todays younger people tend to be taller than my generation was. You'ld have to build evolution into the simulation itself, which in the end would mean having to simulate life itself, and although things like death and ageing (and taxes) are painful, they form a part of life itself and perhaps when viewed properly, can help one to make more of what one has than always wanting more of what one doesn't have.

We're all in trouble....

[hugesmile]

Bad news: the software platform that the simulation program is written in is suffering from a word-size overrun problem (similar to the IPv4 limits or the Y2K problem). This is called a SCO problem (Simulation Constant Overrun problem).

All the simulation software needs to be re-worked, tested, and certified.

The Lords of the Simulation will be seeking expert programmers to help with the port. If you are available, please post your resume here. (You must sign an SCO non-disclosure, of course).

All work must be completed by 2012. Please help!

MOD PARENT UP

[goombah99]

good point. also simulations dont have to be done in real time. and

Animatrix answers

[wordisms]

The Animatrix shows that the Robots are truly intelligent and emotional, that they wish to make peace with the humans. The robots had no taste for genocide, so enslavement was safer. I think the robots felt that they were saving the humans from destroying themselves. The Matrix killed two birds with one stone, it kept humanity from ruining everything, and offered a fuel source. I think the architects comment about levels of existence the robots would be satisfied with, hints that the robots use other powers sources. Also if Zion is another Matrix used to fool the intuitive humans because it is closer to reality, it in no way has to be reality. It may turn out that the robots live on a green earth with solar power, and keep the humans enslaved to protect them. Just some ideas.

Re:Animatrix answers

[ocie]

My guess is that the humans "enslaved" themselves to survive some sort of ecological disaster. They set up the matrix to keep humanity alive and set up the rebellion so that after it was safe to live on the surface, there would be someone on the outside to free everyone in the power plant.

The Red Pill...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is here.

There's little use in arguing...

[Xabraxas]

All of the arguing in the world can never prove or disprove the theory that we are simulations. We can be a part of a closed system that is infinitely less complicated than the one in which it was built. A simulation would never have to simulate every piece of information and every atom at all times, only what it needed to simulate at that time. Even so, we cannot use our theories of science to prove or disprove this because our theories could very well be a part of a closed, and limited system.

Techinically this is philisophic skepticism. For every possible answer to the question, we can introduce doubt. There is no proof when you discuss things of this sort on this level. The argument is already over; there is no answer.

defining your terms

[SaXisT4LiF]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by modern 'philosophy' but I think you have some misconceptions:

"Modern Philosophy" is a movement in the literature that reflects a more mathematical and scientific approach to the philosophical ideas originating back in ancient Greece. Philosophers usually credit Rene Descartes for the transition, but Descartes is a bad example of good philosophy because his arguments go in logical circles. David Hume is a little better because did take an empirical approach to philosophy. I'll bet you'd enjoy Hume's writing, he insists that the problems in philosophy would all just disappear when the philosophers finally define their terms.

"Post-Modern Philosophy" has developed more recently (perhaps what you meant by 'modern'?) and rejects anything not based on empirical evidence. The goal is to eliminate the underlying universalist assumptions of philosophy in order to bring philosophy closer to reality.

That being said, 90% of all philosophy is "drivel" (as you put it) but the ability to distinguish the remaining 10% is priceless. Secondly, none of it is impossible to disprove. You have several ways to disprove philosophical "drivel":
1: Attack the soundness of the argument. Check that that each step logically follows from the previous. Look for circular reasoning, statements that try to prove themselves.
2: Attack the validity of the argument. Sometimes philosophers say things that downright aren't true.
3: Attack the assumptions. Every argument has them, and if you can destroy them then the rest of the argument will crumble after.

Basically, if you want to challenge philosophy you're going to have to do so in the philosophical arena. When you combat overgeneralizations about reality with overgeneralizations about philosophy you're just making more problems than you began with.

Simulations and the Fermi Paradox

[jfaughnan]

Based on Bostrom's most enjoyable piece, I've added the following to my Fermi Paradox and Singularity Page.

I can imaging that post-human entities might have good reasons not to run such simulations, and I think post-human entities are more likely to be descendants of our machines than ourselves; both of which suggest we are not simulations (Bostrom considers these possibilities.). On the other hand, a simulation of human existence might be one way to nurture and grow a post-singularity human-like "child". The simulation scenario might also explain the Fermi Paradox -- we are alone in the universe because the existence of a non-human civilization does not serve the purposes of the simulation.

You don't even need a Matrix for simulation...

[SiMac]

Your own brain already simulates the outside world. What? You thought what you saw was really what's out there? Your brain is only showing you part of the story.

Most people don't realize that the brain gives them a description of the outside world, not a picture of it. Try drawing a still life. What? Too difficult? Why? If you actually saw the world as it is, it wouldn't be too difficult, the only problem would be making the brush strokes. But instead, you need knowledge of the technique of perspective, you need knowledge of shading, etc. Why do we need knowledge to draw a world we're seeing with out own eyes?

Furthermore, what our brain presents is not the whole truth, even if it is a partial truth, which this article presents an article against. We see three dimensions of a world that could have many more, according to some theories. Some people only see two dimensions of this world. Some people don't see any dimensions of this world. Why do we assume that other important things, like specifics about the very way things are, are not modified by are brain? They are, at least indirectly, by our evolved emotions, but we assume that there's no modification at the sensory level. When it seems so easy to introduce noticeable differences at the sensory level by hallucinogens, why can't we believe the brain is already doing it to an extent?

Re:You don't even need a Matrix for simulation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your revelation is exactly the reason why the "brain in a jar" theory still has legs.

Re:You don't even need a Matrix for simulation...

[SiMac]

The "brain in a jar" theory not only has legs, I'm nearly certain it's true. Your body is the jar. Your body certainly distorts the world through your evolved emotions, and probably through your senses as well. Even if you see the real world to some extent, you don't completely see it.

I remember a Philip K. Dick story where there was a man kept in a fake world, playing a newspaper contest to try to figure out where the enemy would bomb next in an interstellar war. Perhaps our body is like that. Perhaps the objects we see bear a resemblance to real-life objects, but they're simplified for ease of computation.

This Reminds Me...

[LightForce3]

...of a passage from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about the population of the universe.

The argument goes something like this: the number of individual beings in the universe is finite, and the size of the universe is more-or-less infinite. A finite number divided by infinity is approximately zero. Therefore, the population of the universe is zero. ;)

but what about interaction?

[golrien]

Sure, you can simulate a table with four corners and a wood texture, but what if you try to set fire to it? What if you spill hot water on it, what if you stump out a fag end on it? What if you go at it with a saw? What if you drop a hippo on it? What if you wire it up to the mains, what if you bang a nail into it, what if you drive a bus over it? Can you even *imagine* trying to make your fake table react to all these things in the proper way? You've *got* to get down to the lowest level, because otherwise the simulation simply won't be complete.

Re:but what about interaction?

[junkgrep]

I guess we'll find out when HL2 comes out this September. :)

Breaking out of a VM?

[hughk]

Virtual machines such as the Java VM are supposed to be very secure about what they permit to be executed. However, it is sometimes possible to break out of a VM by triggering a fault condition.

What would be the equivalent of a suitable fault in our version of 'real' life?

Re:Breaking out of a VM?

[POds]

Lucid dreaming/astro traveling/OOBE (out of body experiance)?

No, Simulations errors cause Hiesenberg Uncertain

[goombah99]

Maybe you got it backwards. maybe QM is a result of how the simulation is done. Imagine for example the "real world" is newtonian. and suppose the simulation needs to know where a photon lands. it could try to trace its trajectory. but it might be faster to compute only apporximately where it lands and fill in the gaps with probability and sampling.

indeed maybe the uncertainy in delta-x and delta-p is just the way the array that holds the points is discritized into rectangular pixels of non uniform size. This is for example how one does most 3-d graphics simulations. the voxels in the background are effectively much larger than those in the foreground. the simulated world is thus not uniformly grided. Similarly fast moving objects in the background may be imprecisely located in any given frame.

Okham's Razor

[Stargoat]

Let's review this article.

Assumptions:

1.a. It is possible to hook humans up to a machine (similar to a holodeck or Matrix. Descartes' floating brain). 1.b. It would be impossible to tell either or not you were hooked up to said machine.

2. Humanity could be going extinct at any time. 3. We are not computer simulations, we are organic. 4. We are attached to said machine from point 1.

Argument:

Assumption 2 and 3 are false. For some reason not made clear by this article (we must find another), the author then assumes that 4 must be true. I've found the article, and the reasoning goes like this:

Since we will probably be able to hook one person up this said machine, it will be likely that we will be able to hook up many. Not all attached to said machine need be organic. For example, my fiance or I could be a simulation program (human simulation AIs).

Now, using somewhat troubled mathematics, it is worked out that most likely many people would be attached to said machine.

Problems with this argument.

1. - Okham's Razor - Sort of the "Come on, people" principle, for those unaware of it. Given everything we've seen, how likely is it that we live in some sort of super machine? It didn't work for Descartes and it's not going to work for Bostrom.
2. - Variable issue - The author fails to account for all other variables as well. Either space concerns (not on my land), or time (this is going to take how long?), or money (what exactly is this going to get me?) or opposition groups (Zion and Neo.).
3. - Inherent problems with one of the assumptions - Humanity seems to be well on its way to depleting natural resources and or turning this world into a hot house. With the decline in humanity inherently comes the decline in technology (see Rome, China, Minoanians, Hittites, others).
4. - No Evidence - I've not seen Neo flying past my doorstep this week. Nor have I seen anything out of the ordinary. Ever. (That would also be why I'm an athiest.)

Given that all these exist presently, we can very safely assume that at least several of these variables will exist in the future.

Therefore, we can safely discount the probability of us living in a machine.

Conway

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone once proved that Conway's Game of Life, if it were made big enough and run long enough, would eventually produce self-replicating patterns. Perhaps, as those patterns mutated and evolved, they would become intelligent. They could then attempt to imagine whether a computer could be running their universe. They would build computers of their own (this has been proven possible as well), and figure out that a computer to run their universe would have to be bigger than their universe, and hence it was impossible.

Meanwhile, the Game is running on a giant computer based on quantum physics instead of cellular automata physics...a realm completely different and unimaginable to the denizens of the Game.

turtles of increasing plausibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, at each level the plausibility of a simulation at the next higher level increaseses since it becomes increasing plausible that computers of sufficient sophistication could evolve before extinction.

The Matrix test

[juha0]

1. Get your self few smoke grenades.
2. Now, make a nice light smoke screen around you.
3. Spin your self around like a maniac.

If your frame rate drops dramatically, it's time to call your Matrix administrator.

God playing SimCity?

[kilonad]

You know, now that I think of it, it does sound familiar. Whenever people first start playing SimCity, they build up a small city and start unleashing disasters on it just to see what they do and to have a little fun. Then they get bored and just kinda leave it running for a while, intervening now and then, until they eventually just leave it the hell alone (or close the program). Seeing as how God was supposedly vengeful in the Old Testament, and hasn't rained down sulfur much lately, I'd say it's possible we all exist in a very advanced version of SimCity.

Re:God playing SimCity?

[Idarubicin]

Seeing as how God was supposedly vengeful in the Old Testament, and hasn't rained down sulfur much lately, I'd say it's possible we all exist in a very advanced version of SimCity.

So you're saying that God just got bored and went away?

What happens when He discovers Quake? Is the Uncertainty Principle the result of sloppy overclocking?

Finally, what happens to us when His mom tells him to shut down the computer and go outside to play?

Re:God playing SimCity?

[glenebob]

what happens to us when His mom tells him to shut down the computer and go outside to play

Hmmm, that kindof reminds me of parachuting class, when a soon-to-be-a-parachuter asked the rather profound question "So, what happens if my reserve 'chute doesn't open?"

:-)

I doubt we'll all turn into 'a human yard-dart', but... similar question.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

interesting!

We are NOT in a simulation

[psyconaut]

Anyone who's played Sim City knows that! Where are the godzillas?!

-psy

recursion

[Anonymous Coward]

stand back! this guy keeps forgeting to hit preview, then posts a correction with errors in it.

Re:recursion

[Anonymous Coward]

What mistakes did he make in the correction? I didn't see any, but English isn't my first language. I'm trying to improve, so any help is appreciated.

Re:recursion

[dementis_canis]

'Propperly' is actually spelt 'Properly'. I thought that that was what he meant to correct in the first place and thought the recursion comment was hilarious!

Re:recursion

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Argh. I never was able to spell words with double letters well. Thanks for pointing out my error.

I meant to correct the part where I left off the end of a sentence. I finished it.

No erros in this post, I hope! :-)

Cani do this?

[Unregistered]

I've got a PMMX-200 server running BSD. Can i simulate the world onit without making apache run bad?

Re:Cani do this?

[glenstar]

Just do a simple: make world. If your kernel config file is propery set up (don't forget the "SIMULATE_EXISTENCE" flag!), upon reboot you will be living in a simulation.

the why is reality TV

[oogoody]

The matrix is just reality TV for the creators.
They are bored in their advanced society so
create all these simulated worlds as stations
for their viewers. For a little extra you
can even be a character in the simulation.

Re: drugs are bad

[dave_mcmillen]

C'mon, he must be right, he's got equations and everything.

Oh, but wait . . . The quantities in the equations are completely made up and meaningless. So, let me rephrase my earlier assessment: This is complete hookum. Because the number of hypothetical "ancestor simulations" is large compared to the number of actual developing civilizations, we are "almost certain" to be in a simulation rather than real? Huh?

Let me present an alternative, equally plausible hypothesis: The entire universe is being run by tiny, invisible pixies, who implement all the laws of physics by grabbing things and moving them around in exactly the right way when we perturb our environment. (Why they do this is unknown.) Unfortunately, there is no empirical test that can distinguish between this situation and one in which the laws of physics arise just because of the way real particles interact.

Let's all just agree to pretend that we're not living in pixie-world or The Matrix, OK? It makes no difference, anyway, and it's a whole lot simpler. And if you want to kill your neighbour or your boss, you can't console yourself that they were just simulated anyway.

You'd never know it anyway

[Winterblink]

One of the interesting aspects of 13th Floor is how there were rules inherent in the system designed to prevent the simulated individuals from realizing they were being simulated. In the movie, the only reason the sims (for lack of a better term) found out was because of outside meddling by the simulation creators into the simulation itself, by them taking control of a particular sim as an avatar. If one were to create a perfect simulation of human existence, I figure a couple of things would hold true:

1. It would be fully observable from outside the simulation itself requiring no interaction with the environment or the simulated persons

2. You would have a series of rules inherent in the system that would prevent the simulated people from ever realizing they were being simulated in the first place

Of course if you look at articles and discussions like these you have to wonder: has someone violated rule #1 in our own particular simulacrum? :)

Re:who says it needs to be a certain speed?

[Rosonowski]

Except that our bodies mature at a certain rate. It'd be kind of weird for everyone to have lifespans measured in days. Then again, we might not even notice. But someone would want to live longer, that's for sure.

Quantum Mechanics could be simulation artifact.

[goombah99]

I think a lot of people are missing a key points.

Godel's theorem in a nut shell: you cant prove inconsistency in any set of axioms within the context of those axioms.

suppose for a moment that this is a simulation with a finite amount of memory to parameterize the "world". the state of this system is propgated from time slice to time slice by some set of finite difference equations. well this means that everything is perfectly self-consistent. if you devise any experiment within the simulation itself to measure any observable then you will discover it is self consistent. The laws of nature a person living there would formulate would in fact be the correct ones for that system. you would never be able to discover an inconsistency.

consider for example QM. basically in a quantum world there ARE limits on resolution. indeed the limits are surprisingly like how one creates a simulation. for example, in any practical 3-D game the voxels of distant objects have larger volumes than the close by ones that you can see more clearly. likewise fast moving objects in the background are less precisely placed from frame to frame while maintaining on average an accurate speed.

its as though someone gridded the game in such a way as to have hyper cubes of constant delta-P time delta-X. hey wadda ya know that's the heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Indeed its easier to simulate a trajectory if you dont have to do it exactly. simply compute the approximate result with error bars and then any time the result is closely inspected you return a different sample from the approximate distribution. Thus one does not have to memo-ize everthing the game player has looked at carefully, you can recreate it on the fly each time something is inspected at high resolution simply by drawing an approximate sample from the distribution. The fact that two looks never quite agree is written off as the "hiesenberg uncertainty principle", or to the QM notion that inspecting an object can change its state.

Another hiesenberg principle is the energy-time uncertaintly (to measure the energy of something precisely takes increasing amounts of time). Again this is in keeping with a simulation. to compute the simulation to increacing levels of precision will take more time.

and remember folks the simulation does not have to run in real time!

Finally to digress a bit. Just suppose for moment the supposition that this is simulation is true. then might it might also be possible that the people doing the simulation are also simulations. and so on ad infinitum. the interesting thing is that at each layer of this onion it seems to me that the plausibility that you live in a simulation increases. this is because with each subsequent layer the plausibility of sufficient computer power prior to extinction improves.

Re:Quantum Mechanics could be simulation artifact.

[Thing 1]

and remember folks the simulation does not have to run in real time!

Lots of peopel are saying this, and I agree, but I agree the opposite: I believe the simulation runs many times faster than real time.

At first, processing power is slow and you must run simulations slower than real time. However, technology progresses, and eventually the simulation can be run parallel to real time. (As others have said, the simulation does not have to calculate everything, just as Quake doesn't calculate walls and objects you can't see; also, judicious use of lossless compression can keep the memory requirements down; instead of 1 trillion atoms, it just says "chair", etc.)

With the simulation running in parallel, you can simulate the current world and develop technology, while the real world is developing different technology. And of course you can run multiple simulations, so technology (and processing power) will expand much faster than before.

Note that this could be the case even with simulations running slower than real time -- they can also be used to work on advancing technology, because their efforts can be coordinated with the real world.

So at some point we'll have enough processing power to simulate faster than real time. And then technology will really take off, because we'll be able to perform experiments "in the blink of an eye" which would have taken years or perhaps millenia to perform "in the real world."

Of course, it would be nice to eventually be able to make it to that "real world"...

My favorite anecdote is from Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's The Illuminatus Trilogy in which a minor character at one point states, "I've realized that we're all living in a book, and I think I've figured a way out."

He's never heard from again.

Tiny detail but it stayed with me all these years. I want out.

Re:Quantum Mechanics could be simulation artifact.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a lot of people are missing a key points.

Well, professor, I think you're missing a "few".

Re:Quantum Mechanics could be simulation artifact.

[NoInfo]

and remember folks, the simulation does not have to run in real time!

Well, this is true for purely simulated selves, but in an actual 'Matrix-movie-like' world, the simulation may need to run in near real-time. Without real-time response, it is likely hard to fool a plugged-in meatspace human. She's likely running and processing in real-(human)-time.

Though the simulators may find a way to distort time for the human, they do have time constraints (i.e. at worst, a human lifetime).

Re:Quantum Mechanics could be simulation artifact.

[Analog Penguin]

This is assuming, of course, that real meatspace humans have the same lifespan that we experience in the world today...

Re:Quantum Mechanics could be simulation artifact.

[snarkh]

Godel's theorem in a nut shell: you cant prove inconsistency in any set of axioms within the context of those axioms.

Goedel's theorem says no such thing. You can easily prove inconsistency of many sets of axioms. Think about a system of aximoms which contains A and (not) A.

Goedel's theorem (incompleteness theorem) roughly says that a non-contradictory system of axioms is never complete.

Re:Quantum Mechanics could be simulation artifact.

[Anonymous Coward]

actually it says 2 things

1. you can't prove _consistency_ internally (the converse of what original poster said)

2. no consistent system powerful enuf to do induction is complete (what you said).

Re:Quantum Mechanics could be simulation artifact.

[Dylan Zimmerman]

When I was reading the part about the lossless compression, I suddenly wondered what would happen if lossy compression was used. The chair could start rotating, shifting, and/or changing size and shape randomly. That would make for a rather interesting world. You go to sit down only to have your chair randomly spin and zip off and become a part of the wall.

Re:Quantum Mechanics could be simulation artifact.

[NoInfo]

Nope, it's only assuming that they have a lifespan at all.

If there is a true time span in which you *must* render the simulation, then it's real-time. Truly, you may be able to distort (i.e. affect) it, but you've still got time constraints that you have no ability to stop. Expanding their lifetimes by a factor of a thousand doesn't change that you've got real-time constraints, it just buys you some processor breathing room.

Now, if the humans are immortal, and you can distort their perception of time, then you've got full control of your timetable and can process as slowly as you must. But why evem bother creating a simulation at all if the humans can be controlled so well?

That's not what A=A means!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good greif did the dog eat your brain instead of your Logic 101 homework?

Cow-1 != Cow-2

Go read what Sam said.

You can't simulate *only* the currently observed

[Baron_Yam]

Assuming you had the processing power, and the program... you couldn't simulate only what is currently being observed. You must simulate what is currently being observed and everything that *has* been observed and might be double-checked at some time in the future.

Imagine some IBM lab scientist with an electron microscope writes "IBM" in atoms.

1. Imagine he goes back a year later to read it again for old time's sake and notices that the shape of the letters is slightly different, because the simulator didn't record exactly what random numbers were generated in the first simulation.
2. Imagine that the letters are exactly the same, but some change was expected, and the simulator just pulled out the last known state for display!

everything has a cause

[chocolatetrumpet]

everything has a cause

This is an assumption. And even if it is true, then you are using logic to justify other things, and personally I just don't buy it all.

Re:everything has a cause

[blancolioni]

Oh, I agree. But that's not the biggest assumption in there: the leap from "there must be a root cause" to "and that root cause is the Judeo-Christian god" is, well, ambitious.

Whoaa that's a scary thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the reason we doubt that computers could ever be this complex is because the physical laws of our universe dont support sufficiently complex computers.

Re:Fermi?

[Lord Bitman]

Some guy named Fermi just e-mailed me out of the blue asking to transfer 31 million dollars out of Nigeria..

If we are a simulation, we certainly are trapped

[jarek]

Alan Turing (also Hilbert, Russel and others) and Ludvig Wittgenstein (through the work on Tractatus) found out the hard way, Kurt Gödel proved it. There are limits to what we can do with logic and complex mathematical systems. Perhaps Gödel uncovered the lock to the Matrix and now somebody has to pick it. If we indeed are creatures invented by another superior intelligence, they have certainly put us in a nice little logical prison. /jarek

Ahah!

[Tablizer]

So, somebody really *did* slashdot my career. New beggar sign seen since matrix: "Simulate me a job, man!"

Re:MICHAEL IS THE SUPREME SLASHFAG

[Anonymous Coward]

I also agree with this post.

Re:Fermi?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an interesting coincidence. Some guy named Fermi just hacked my Tivo. Deja Vu.

So basically ...?

[jrl87]

This is just telling me what I already knew ...

1). I am not in controll
2). I will die when my number is drawn out of a giant lottery thing

thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

you must be the first person who read the post and thought about it. good job. and thanks for the link

Violates its own advice

[uncadonna]

If you are in a simulation, chances are good that the value of the simulation to the being doing the simulating declines abruptly once that being realizes that your behavior is being altered by your suspicion that you are in a simulation.

Therefore, by the logic of the advice paper, you should never publish such advice, as it would increase the likelihood of termination of the simulation.

This is all silly. It blithely assumes the strong AI premise as proven. But if the strong AI premise holds, there is no moral difference between a simulation and a reality, since both support consciousness.

Essentially, the article seems to be claiming that there is a God, to whom we should be grateful for not pulling the plug on our reality. Then it presumes that God is in it for entertainment and feels no moral obligation toward us. As religions go, this one seems particularly nasty and evil. I suspect that any being that can run a system as complex as this one will have moral obligations toward sentient entities which that creator has created.

You know,

[Tablizer]

this kind of news is gonna be really good for The Darwin Awards. Perhaps they made it up to increase participation.

Not likely at all

[Phileosophos]

I take it this chap, and many other posters, are unaware of the Lucas-Penrose argument, which demonstrates that it is literally impossible for any formal system (e.g., a machine) to run the "program" of a human mind. It's an interesting use of Göedel's theorem, and it's worth study, but I guess it's more popular to conclude that, in fact, the matrix has us. Thanks, but I'll stick with reality.

Re:Not likely at all

[Anonymous Coward]

It is stupid, but the brain is a kind of machine. What about genetic manipulation creating a machine to run the "program" of a human mind? What if someone creates a modified lemur with an IQ of 98 using gene manipulation? What if someone grows a brain in a vat, or transplants two brains into one body?

Re:Not likely at all

[Phileosophos]

Two things must be said. First, you're simply assuming that the brain is a kind of machine. Yet to say that brain research is in its infancy is wildly charitable. And second, if it does turn out that, in fact, the brain is a machine, then the argument at hand demonstrates that the mind is something above and beyond the brain. That's a conclusion that many scientists won't much like, of course, but it won't come as any suprise to lots of other folk.

FPS

[Hoo00]

In FPS, the boundary of the world is usually a curtain of texture behind a wall or a sea or some sort of unpassable terrains. We live in a sperical earth surrounded by empty space and bounded by a somewhat arbituary constant, the speed of light, that prevent us from getting out of this universe. It is kind of similar, isn't it?

Re: drugs are bad

[junkgrep]

Boy, you do not have the slightest clue how to make or refute a metaphysical argument, do you? Your A,EPH is nothing like his argument, lacking the most basic elements of inevitable technological development.

Obviously you can't think, can you?

[StandardCell]

There are two points being made in there. One is metastability, the other is Heisenberg.

Metastability is a problem long term in a computer. It can and does result in real and catastrophic errors. There's no way to engineer it out fully nor is it fully deterministic. That was my point. Pull up any paper on the web on metastability and check it out. You need to analyze probabilities.

As for Heisenberg, how is the computer supposed to determine position and momentum when the physical laws of the universe prevent that quantity from being known? It is a computer. How is it supposed to know where things are and how fast they're going when you can't?

You can simulate uncertainty like the poster who replied above says, but where do you get random numbers from? Usually they're generated using a pseudorandom seed. Know how they generate that seed? Sometimes it's cosmic background radiation, sometimes it's system time, sometimes it's other things, but it has to be some definite number. Again, that is the limitation of a deterministic system.

Believe me, I know very much what I'm talking about. Of course, you're too busy insulting me and telling me to shut up. Who looks dumb now for not understanding that there were two points to this article? Besides that, you contradict yourself. If the universe is a simulation, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle exists, it sure has SOMETHING to do with them, doesn't it?

P.S. Your site is very limited. There are much better free alternatives than what you serve. Just thought I'd mention that.

How to get out of it.

[kilimangaro]

Logic cant explain logic. We are "contained" in a logical world. Logic will never allow us to get out of it. We have to be un-logical to get out of the matrix. Un-logic cant be explained by words. Words are a logic thing. Take a look at Salvia divinorum and Carlos Castaneda

Unless I misread something...

[SmurfButcher Bob]

his argument that "strongly suggests" we're being simulated pretty much demands we, in fact, are not.

If we are being simulated, then the other two clauses are false. Great.

Of course, who is simulating us? His same rules must be asked, and the answers must be applied at each "level" of reality. The problem is that no "level of reality" can ever have a definitive state, even the supposed "base level" will not be able to say that it isn't a simulation... all you're left with is a vicious circle.

So, it's a fun argument, but it isn't complete.

Personally, I've always gamed that this was a sim of some sorts - we (most of us... I know quite a few people who'd qualify as "mindless automata") exist some place where life is really boring and safe, and we pay some guy $10 per life / immersion. Then you can live fast, take chances, die young, and still be home in time for dinner. It's a fun game theory, because any quirks we encounter here can be attributed to the reality's version of "Microsoft". Heh.

Comments by a simulation programmer

[Animats]

As someone who writes physics simulators, I have to say that the universe as we know it doesn't look like the inside of a simulator.

There's way too much unnecessary low-level detail. Simulating subatomic particles adds many orders of magnitude to the compute load, with little payoff. There may be more levels of detail below subatomic particles, such as superstrings. There may be higher dimensions that collapsed out. These features mattered during the Big Bang, but as the universe cooled, they became mostly dead code. But they still seem to be there.

It's possible that the universe simulation cheats, and there's level-of-detail processing. Maybe full simulation detail isn't being computed when nobody is looking. The observer paradox points in that direction. But if the simulation cheats on a large scale, enough to knock the load down by many orders of magnitude, there will be artifacts and out-of-sync conditions.

Incidentally, the best book to read on this is Simulacron Three, which is the 1964 book behind "The Thirteenth Floor". The book is better. The premise of the book is that a simulated city has been constructed so that new advertising campaigns can be tested. The simulation isn't full-detail, and this creates problems.

It's a lot simpler than that

[n9hmg]

It doesn't have to simulate the entire universe as I assume it exists, only the part I can sense at any one time. All you imaginary people are paged out and suspended when I'm not aware of you. Besides - the simulation doesn't have to be "realtime". Time itself is part of the simulation. The results don't suffer just because it takes 2 hours to run me through a really complex second, or 8 hours of sleep completes in 11 femtoseconds.
The only case wherein simulation subjective time would need to match objective time would be if the simulation had to be part of objective reality - a training simulation, for instance. On the other hand, the storage requirements would be huge.
Want to live forever? Program a realtime simulation of yourself to start at the instant before you start it. That way, it will do the same, which will do the same. Your cpu time will be spread across an infinitely-growing number of simulations of yourself, causing all progress in your simulation to cease. You won't know it, though. I suppose you could add an interface to the simulation allowing it to know that it is a simulation, and increment a counter, limiting depth. You want to extend your lifespan 100 times? Run 99 simulations deep. 10^^6? 999999 subsims. You wouldn't notice the change, unless you caused a kernel panic, and probably not even then - rollback, in-memory edit, and you'd never know you'd even thought of it, nor would you ever again.

My hero *swoon*

[LiberalApplication]

Godel's Theorem came to mind immediately as I read the original post, and then I came across yours and realized you had fleshed out an appropriate response better than I would have been able to, so suffice to say, "*swoon*".

In any case, I'd still like to tack a few things onto that.

Indeed its easier to simulate a trajectory if you dont have to do it exactly. simply compute the approximate result with error bars and then any time the result is closely inspected you return a different sample from the approximate distribution. Thus one does not have to memo-ize everthing the game player has looked at carefully, you can recreate it on the fly each time something is inspected at high resolution simply by drawing an approximate sample from the distribution. The fact that two looks never quite agree is written off as the "hiesenberg uncertainty principle", or to the QM notion that inspecting an object can change its state.

A large portion of our observation of very small things has involved the flinging of other very small things towards them. It follows then that we'd be compounding the imprecision of "drawing an approximate sample from the distribution" of the thing we are inspecting with the imprecision of the approximation of the thing we are flinging.

In a different sense, it's almost amusing to think that QM may be the result of us having reached the limit of precision of ReallyReallyReallyLongDouble in the system in which we exist, or that maybe somewhere out there at very fundamental level exists a Math.floor().

Back to Godel though:
1) For fun and fluff - So there would be "formally undecidable truths" in our simulation/system. What do you think they might be? "God Exists". "Pepsi really does taste better".
2) Now I'm just going to go off on a semiconscious Sunday-morning rambling here, so don't take me seriously (but humor me if you're so inclined). So in order for everything in our system to be justifiable and explicable, we'd need a more powerful system, a higher level of simulation.

Godel's theorem in a nut shell: you cant prove inconsistency in any set of axioms within the context of those axioms.

Similarly, any simulation we might create in the future must be "less powerful", in that its mechanics of operation (and existence!) can be fully explained within the operating rules of our simulation. This could continue on in both directions. I wonder where we'd be in the ladder of complexity? Would we really be losing "resolution" as our simulations created their own simulations? If we look back to our simulators, then do we assume that all inexplicable phenomena of our existence can be fully justified in their context? If they don't exist, then does that mean that these phenomena are really explainable or not?

Re: drugs are bad

[KikassAssassin]

Hey, that explains all the problems we've been having with quantum physics in relation to 'normal' physics. The pixies are too large to interact with objects on a quantum level in the same way they do with larger objects, so quantum physics ends up being different from normal physics.

By Jove, we may be on to something! This could be the beginning of a new era in enlightened scientific thinking. More studies need to be done into this new Pixieverse theory. I think we've hit something BIG here.

Requirements???

[Anonymous Coward]

What for? A good simulation or a better plot?

How about begged, borrowed, or stolen will?

[Anonymous Coward]

I may not be able to always change myself, but I can change others sometimes, if I'm clever enough. Free will is exercised during free time, if one internal drive does not dominate every other internal drive, and abstract reasoning does not suggest a dominant goal overwhelming every other goal so imagined. How people spend their free time can be up to them.

Why?

[dfeist]

I'd certainly want to simulate a universe just for fun. If I had the computing power.
If I would expect that there would evolve live? I am not sure.
But I meant with especially for us, that it was designed around humans, only what we observe is being simulated. So the person creating the simulation placed us in there some way - maybe as a copy of someone else, himself or something. Or as some fantasy creature. Sounds as someone taking us humans a bit too important.

No, I will state what I think of this: The entire world is only simulated for me! You all don't exist as long as I do not see you or you write some text I read or something! ;-)

All your Matrices....

[caffeinex36]

... are belong to us..

Meow. Meow. Meow.

[LiberalApplication]

My Momma always said life is like a box with a cat in it, you never know if it is alive or dead...

I actually had the opportunity to visit Heisenberg during his final days at his home in Munich, 1975. Let me tell you, the place was full of these boxes, taped shut, smelled absolutely awful. Boxes piled up to the ceiling. Hundreds and hundreds of them everywhere! Then there was the ceaseless cacaphony of yowling, and scraping... The entire time, during tea, he just kept muttering to himself about making some kind of a point.

Why did the machines keep breeding humans...

[tycheung]

the humans in the matrix all still have hands, feet, eyes, noses, ears - all things that they wouldn't need in the matrix. With their supposedly thorough command of human anatomy and physiology (to the point where they can "program" anything into the human brain), why keep breeding humans with all these things? Why not just farm big bags of flesh with lungs and a GI tract? All the machines really need is the power anyway...

Re:Why did the machines keep breeding humans...

[willtsmith]

Because the human brain EVOLVED with these things and EXPECTS them. Even in the REAL world, when the brain is not properly simulated it doesn't work right.

Old ideas: Read The Physics of Immortality...

[neurocutie]

For a more expansive view of the physics and religious implications of these simulate all of human existence ideas, read the 1995 book The Physics of Immortality, by Tipler.

Among lots of other things, the idea is that we will all be resurrected at a time close to the end of creation (the universe) in the form of computer simulations. Lots of pseudo-science to back up these assertions...

Stolen Idea?

[s88]

I seem to recall this argument over 5 years ago from an article read in undergrad philosophy. I can't seem to find it, but I know this is not a new idea.

Anyone else heard of this before?

No, silly..

[macshune]

It's all the Sims version 3 with a matrix-theme patched onto it!!!

more proof the matrix is a simulation

[steelframe]

Just check out these screenshots of the movie "Dark City" 1998 ( http://galeon.hispavista.com/cinerama/actu2/matrix darkcity.htm ) Also you can see Neo in his previous life @ "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"( http://us.imdb.com/Title?0096928 ) Just substitute San Dimas for the Matrix and George Carlin for Morpheus. The phone booth and Keanu can stay the same.

Ugh! Good paper, bad readers!

[Dr. Spork]

I'm impressed that Slashdot linked to a pretty interesting paper. I just wish the readership and the moderators here were smart enough to not completely miss the point. Reading that paper made me happy; reading these remarks is depressing!

Re: drugs are bad

[Dr. Spork]

Yeah, and I really believe you actually read the article. Really.

He was quite up-front about which quantities we can't gauge, and his conclusion was not that we live in a simulation, but that it is one only three interesting alternatives that we have any reason to have credence for.

My friends, my friends, please

[Carnivorous Carrot]

If this world is a computer simulation, god only knows what the metaworld's computational limits might be. Their physics may be nothing like our physics at all. Googleplex to the googleplex to the googleplex computations per nanosecond might be trivial in that universe.

Indeed, if this universe is simulated, that's a high argument for such power right there.

Attached storage

[yerricde]

the "simple" computer is simulating the "complex" comptuer.

With attached storage. Can a computer with 128 MB of (RAM + attached storage) simulate a computer with 16 GB of (RAM + attached storage)?

Re:Attached storage

[meta-monkey]

No, but I assume the computer that simulates this universe has more storage than this universe requires, as, so far as we know, only the Earth and, on occaison, the surrounds, needs to be simulated with any accuracy.

The storage requirements to simulate the Earth are most likely miniscule by the standards of any architecture that could make this simulation. Also, consider the idea put forth by others in this thread. We ASSUME this world is complex. It may be very simple. We can make very accurate and realistic "simulations" of two-dimensional systems. Perhaps this is a simulation limited to "only" three dimensions. If our simulators (i.e., those who simulate us) exist in more than three dimensions, their complexity is far beyond our fathoming.

Oh?

[StarKruzr]

Like what?

Re:Oh?

[PurpleFloyd]

Let's imagine a sphere, and a two-dimensional being who lives on that sphere. If that two-dimensional being were to draw a circle (by taking a point, then marking all points a certain distance from that point) the ratio of radius to circumfrence is not necessarialy 2pi.

If it's a small circle on a large sphere, then the ratio is very near to 2pi, but if it's a large circle on a small sphere, then the ratio goes up. For example, imagine that our 2D friend draws a circle from the "north pole" of his sphere to the "equator." The ratio is higher than 1:2pi, because measuring along the surface of the sphere, we get a measurement longer than what it would take if the sphere were flattened. Or we could take the extreme case: the radius of our circle is the distance from the "north pole" to the "south pole" of the sphere. In this case, everything converges on the "south pole" and forms a circle with radius 0, and an undefined ratio. I hope this makes sense; I can't remember the equations for non-Euclidian space and can't be bothered to look them up. I decided to go with the intuitive approach, which works much better with illustrations. Oh well.

Why in god's name?

[Carnivorous Carrot]

Why in god's name expect the meta-universe in which we are a simulation to have the same properties as this one? It may not be quantum mechanics, Einsteinian, no "speed of light", and so on.

So many are arguing how difficult it would be to simulate this universe from within this universe, or from within another universe with identical rules. In a universe without mass, there would be no limit to how fast things could move around, and hence, to computational power.

Re:Meow. Meow. Meow.

[Anonymous Coward]

All of Heisenberg's cats were perfectly capable of tunnelling out of the box for times long enough to eat and drink with a non-zero probability.

He's Not very good with proofs

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is that given that humans don't go extinct in geologically short time then eventually computer capability will allow complete simulation of the human cortex.

Let me get this straight: His proof is based upon the unproved postulate that we can simulate the human cortex given enough computational power? Ohhhk. Do I need to say anymore?

The neuralizer and the "other" Agent Smith

[yerricde]

Due to the way memories are stored, there is no way to erase specific memories from the human mind without some serious brain damage.

Haven't you seen Men in Black? In that movie, Agent Jones (known as "K") showed a darker-skinned Agent Smith (known as "J") a flashy thing called a "neuralizer" that could suppress approximately n days worth of the target's most recent memories.

Re:The neuralizer and the "other" Agent Smith

[Anonymous Coward]

And due to human physiology, that isn't really possible. Memories are formed as neural pathways such that when we 'remember' something, what is really happening is that the pathways are all firing at the same time. Since we can't really predict which pathways are associated, we can't erase memories.

As for preventing memories from forming, that has to be done beforehand. There are drugs that hospitals would give to women giving birththat wouldn't prevent any of the pain, but it would make them forget the entire experience afterwards. The same drugs are also used by torturers because if the subject won't even remember that he was tortured, you can do unspeakable things to him as long as you can potentially pass them off as accidents. However, this drug requires that it be administered to te subject BEFOREHAND.

Re:The neuralizer and the "other" Agent Smith

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be happy get my crow bar and pay you a visit. That way we could test your theory that memories cannot be erased.

Next time you get the chance look up 'amnesia' in the dictionary.

Re:The neuralizer and the "other" Agent Smith

[Anonymous Coward]

Amnesia is a disorder in which the neurons more or less get out of synch such that they don't trigger a memory when they fire. It doesn't erase the memories, but it does make it very difficult to access them because your brain doesn't work in the same way as when it wrote them.

Memories cannot be slectively erased after they have already been formed. They can't be erased at all without some serious brain damage. They can be prevented by administering some rather nasty drugs.

Why in "god's name"?

[LiberalApplication]

Why cite God's name? :-)

Re:Why in "god's name"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it pisses people like you off. That's as good a reason as any.

Re: drugs are bad

[linzeal]

Metaphysics is dead, why refute it?

Win32 shatter exploits

[yerricde]

In a proper simulation, there is no way out.

But if the simulation runs on Microsoft Windows, we have the way out in more ways than one. In addition to the Unisys/Microsoft ad I just linked to, it's possible to escape Windows protection through shatter exploits.

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[Dr. Spork]

Oh, finally somebody posted a comment that shows they were thinking! Thank you for paying attention in college!

Of course, the real problem with the Matrix comes to why there had to be a simulation "sideshow" for the humans in the first place. I mean, the Matrix program existed only for their amusement, and it seems like a lot of energy and computational power got used up to that end. Why go through all the bother? Why not lobotomize them and have them exist as heat-producting vegetables?

And don't say: their working brains were necessary to power the Matrix, because the only reason why they had the Matrix is to keep their working brains occupied. Anyway, the concept behind the whole scenario was pretty half-baked....

Computational Power Required

[crashnbur]

Wouldn't the computational power required to generate a simulation the so accurately (or consistently, which lends itself to "accuracy" to those within the simulation) generates so many objects and events -- buildings, weather, shoes, everything -- require far more power than a few "endless fields" of batter towers of humans could possible generate? I mean, the proposal of The Matrix is that there are enough humans plugged in that their energy supplies not only enough power to generate this simulation, but also to run it all!

Of course, I would not be surprised if in reality of The Matrix, there are actually trillions upon trillions of humans in those fields -- so many any way, and not enough other information, to legitimately question the ability of said bodies to power the Matrix.

In a non-Matrix, purely theoretical or otherwise future simulation, there are virtually endless possibilities as to the technologies that may be developed that could deliver such power capabilities. For instance, what if some of our impossible dreams of today -- such as faster-than-light propulsion -- could be realized?

You think that's air you're breathing now? Hmm...

Re:Computational Power Required

[gerardrj]

No. You are missing the big picture...

The human brain is the most complex and powerful computer system in existence today. Granted it's not terrific at raw number crunching, but for pattern matching, association, memory storage, creativity, interaction. etc it's tops.
The machine's computers don't need to run simulations, they just need enough computing power to induce certain perceptions within each brain and to coordinate the functioning of all the brains that are near one another in the simulation. The knowledge to do this it taught/programmed in from birth. Your brain is completely capable of inventing people, having two way conversations with those invented people, and designing and re-designing physical locations on the fly. All without you conciously thinking about it.

Let me describe this more elaborately:
Assume you and I are living in a simulated world while having this conversation. The machines don't need to simulate my typing on the keyboard, or the text on my screen, or the air I'm breathing. My brain knows how to do that (it was tought to by the machines). You brain knows all those things also. There is no need for the main computers to simulate that for the both of us. The main computers simply assure that we can interact from within the same context of this computer system. There has so be some way for the messages to pass between us.

Of course, there's no reason to believe that's even the case. Perhaps you are simply a figment of my imagination, a simulation within my brain, and so is this computer system. Suppose that each and every brain plugged in to the system runs it's own complete simulation, just making things up as it goes along. There is no way to proove that another person actually exists, as anyone else you ask may also not exist, but instead be part of your simulation. As such they would be under your control and say whatever needed to be said. Think about the complexity of your dreams that you recall.
The role of the machines in this case is simply to regulate the simulations we run within our own brains, making sure that they don't become too extreem in the negative or positive sense. There is no need for the plugged in brains to ever communicate with each other.

Then again (and this is a guess), Neo never actually woke up from the Matrix, and the whole "real world" thing is simply another "simulation" introduced by the machines to get this anomoly out of the code. Perhaps Neo was dreaming the entire thing.

Re:Computational Power Required

[willtsmith]

Well said, the human brain is a vastly superior system to anything that Intel has ever put out.

Our own realities our products of our own imaginations, those imaginations are guided by external input. When people become disconnected from external input (dreaming, crazy) they come up with some VERY fantastic stuff.

Where's the problem?

[Dr. Spork]

What the hell? What do you mean by independent thought? I mean, even if the world works as we think it does, we can't think independently of atoms, or brains... but that doesn't worry anyone. So if we're simulated, we can't think independently of a computer. What's the problem?

Independent thinking comes to having the capacity to draw conclusions based on evidence available to you. I don't see how existing in a simulation would do anything to undermine that.

In any case, you should be more clear about how you understand "independent thought." On the common-sense reading of it, what you say sounds dumb.

Somehow I don;t think so.

[xA40D]

Consequently, there must be far more simulations running in future millennia than seconds since you were born

sounds like a non-sequiter to me...

I remember some old kid's book about the future, had a prediction something like this:

"One day technology will enable the human race will be able to grow enough food to ensure nobody starves to death"

Well, afaik, we can do this now. And people are still starving. Obviously they are poor and are actually dying from economics - so it doesn't matter. But it just goes to show predicting future behaviour is impossible.

More for my friends, too

[Carnivorous Carrot]

Meta-programmer #1: Should we simulate gosp-space, trinary illimitation, Buford matties, and Throsen Fields?

Meta-programmer #2: Nah, just keep it simple at the Quantum level and about 10^^80 particles and about 10^^300 possible positions, cubed.

Meta-programmer #1: Good, I wanna get to Mickey D's for lunch.

Get a clue, folks. If this universe is a simulation, then we may conclude the meta-universe:

1. Has physics that allow for a lot more power than we can imagine possible at the moment

2. May have physics completely different from ours.

IS GOD A PROGRAMMER????

[willtsmith]

I think the ultimate gist of all this "simulated existence" stuff boils down to the nature of creation.

Assuming that we all are living in a simulation, does it really matter?????

Creation, or Nature, is bounded by a set of rules that describe matter, energy and how it interacts. The actual perception of things is an abstraction produced by our own minds. We know now that what our eyes percieve as solid matter is 99.999% empty space. Rules regarding the interaction of matter gives us or perceptions of solids and the macro things that we generally interact with.

If we are indeed simulations in god's PhD thesis project to produce AI, does it really matter??? We perceive reality, we are bounded by it. Perhaps God is a four-dimensional being who wanted to investigate how 3d-dimensional life might operate the same way we ponder "flatland". The actual "realness" of that world would be beyond our comprehension (we are bounded by our "reality") as would 3-d land to the flatlanders.

Ultimately, I would propose that the answers to these questions DOESN'T MATTER. We are what we are. But, pondering the nature of existence is VERY important. And even desirable. I know that if I was a programmed a simulation, I would be very pleased if my SIMS became smart enough to rise above the nature of their own existence. If they started disbelieving my burning bush avatars as hokey tricks with the depth of children's fables, I would be proud.

Perhaps the "Abberation" is an intelligence arisen from chaos that can simply see through the nature of existence. Comprehend the totality of the rules instead of just witnessing it's artifacts. It dissmisses those who perpetuate "the system", priests, CEOs, department of homeland security (uhh I digress) as perverters of truth who mostly try to indoctrinate us into their heards of "acceptors" while wearing the deceiptful, self-serving frocks of guidance.

Truth and Fact are found in investigation and rebellion. Our leaders in that movement aren't the Thomas Aquinas' or Joan of Arc's, it's the Galileo's, the Newtons, the Einstein's. Those brilliant people whose minds were so erratic that they couldn't accept the reality as proposed by authority, they could only seek the world that was.

Thus here is the Messianic message of Neo, of Brian(Monty Python), Buddah, Muhammed and if you read carefully (don't listen to your preacher), Jesus himself. "Consider authority, deal with it, respect it, interact with it, use within it which is good, even grudingly live with it, but ultimately you must THINK FOR YOURSELF!!!!!".

Truth and Circumstance

[Coleco]

I'd just like to point out something I don't think anyone has commented on. I hope all realize the futility in reasoning these sorts of things.. i.e. 'Am I simulation?'

Think about it this way. Godel's (dots above the o) incompleteness theorem states in simple terms:

No axiomatic (true/false) system provides correct answers all the time because some propositions have neither true nor false answers. Example:

This sentence is false.

Is the above sentence true or false?

Furthermore, Godel theorem is itself an axiomatic system that just attempted to define an absolute truth statement, which clearly by it's own rules, it can't do with any certainty. Now If you've happened to notice by now, I myself am reasoning this entire line of thought in terms of truth and falseness. Given that, clearly everything I've written is utter nonsense.

Well, I agree, but...

[MegaHamsterX]

Think of a hologram, a 2d surface that when illuminated by coherent light becomes a 3d image, or a wavefront that looks 3d.

I think it could be done, but forget about silicon, or any of the materials we currently use. Then keep in mind the building blocks of the real universe may not be the same particles we witness in our experiments.

I wouldn't assume a simulated environment would have to be exactly the same as the real one.

Re:Well, I agree, but...

[LBArrettAnderson]

from my original post:

that is, of course judging that this person is saying that WE will be able to do it eventually. I don't doubt that it's possible that processors are a lot faster beyond the matrix (since they use optic processors where the speed of light is a trillion times faster there than it is here)

consciousness

[phossie]

it's self-defined. isn't that nice? ;)

makes it oh-so-meaningful.

funny...

[LBArrettAnderson]

all of this is a good backup of why it's more than likely that there is a God, and a heaven, and all that good stuff. This was a big mistake by the author because it shows why no matter what evidence you come up with, it is always possible that there is a creator (God), heaven, etc... Science proves religion possible - amazing.

Re:funny...

[Cackmobile]

The old god by defualt. Cause we can't show why X happens/is/whatever there must be a god.

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[Carnivorous Carrot]

> Someone above made a comment about using humans
> as "processors", which would have made a much
> more plausible technical reason for the AI
> keeping the humans around

It would certainly fit in with agents taking over anything "still hardwired to the system", i.e. programming the wetware of a copper top's brain, overlaying the agent's mind so the agent could take over their avatar.

Remember the Woman in Red scene?

Which reminds me, this was left on the cutting room floor, for obvious reasons:

Mouse: How do the computers know what chicken tastes like? Maybe that's why everything tastes like chicken. They didn't know what it tasted like in reality!

Switch: That's why the Woman in Red's kootch tastes like chicken, eh Mouse?

(Everyone laughs. Mouse is redfaced.)

Dozer: Switch, you goddamned dyke. You are da shit! (High-fives her.)

Are We Living In Nick Bostrom�s Speculation?

[danila]

How about another view on the issue? Are We Living In Nick Bostrom's Speculation? is a detailed rebuttal of Bostrom's Simulation Argument, revealing logical and mathematical mistakes in the original proof. Comments are welcome.

fractal universe

[cryptoluddite]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned fractals. A simulation in a simulation is just like a mountain with a molehill -- it doesn't matter if we are real or sim since it all repeates to any level of detail. Unless we create one of those big black fractal holes right next to use that is.

the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.

Because you haven't watched the movie enough

[Anonymous Coward]

And you call yourselves nerds?

After watching this movie 7 times and listening very carefully to the dialog (Ok, I'm probably more of a nerd than you) and observing some events in the movie. I learned that this whole plugged in for power isn't real. The real world isn't real. It is still part of the simulation to weed out people that are rejecting the main simulation. To give their minds something it can accept. (To them the power plant is enough)
At this point we still don't know what is the real world.
When these people 'Zion' get strong enough to create problems for the main simulation they get deleted. But only after the Matix is reloaded with new programming that was created based on what was observed from the desenters. Then Zion gets started again so the rejects have a place to go. They need Zion to know how well the new programming works, and to find future anomilies 'The One'. So they can bring the simulation closer to perfection.

You can't have missed the clues in this film to draw these conclusions. Unless you aren't a real nerd.

Losers.

Re:Because you haven't watched the movie enough

[willtsmith]

Even beyond that, perhaps the Zion crowd produce even MORE "power" than the regular matrix folk (sheep). However, they need to be placed in the "Zion Matrix" to realize their potential.

Re: drugs are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Metaphysical "arguments" don't need to be refuted.

You are wrong...

[rmdyer]

You would indeed need to simulate the "whole shebang". Here's why...

In the universe at large, events take place without our knowledge. The trees do in fact make sounds (as the definition of what a sound is) when they fall in the forest. These "unseen" events are what bring you to your "future". Computer gaming shows this. When you drop your gun at a certain location in the game, then go back for it later, it's still there right? Wrong. In the real world, you never know what "might" happen to real world objects once you leave them. In a sense, every object must have it's own running program for how it interracts with the rest of the universe, while observed, or not. This is done to preserve "continuity" and expection of information flow. If I fire a bullet into the forest, the computer needs to simulate what happens to that bullet because it may hit something that has consequences for my future.

Ordinary games simulate very little. It is just not possible to preserve the information flow from all the possible interactions between objects. The future needs to be consistent with the past. This can only be done by simulating everything. This is why quantum mechanics is probably right (no pun intended). The bifurcations from all possible events leads to what we call "the now".

This is also why quantum mechanics solves the paradox of "free will". The universe can be seen to be working out every possible future. The "road not taken" is in fact taken as well as all other possible paths, at the same time. Every choice you think you make leads to two versions of "you". In one universe, you think you made a positive choice. In the other bifurcated universe you think you made a negative choice. Each "you" believes there's only one.

What's the point? The universe "as an entirity" is working out every conceivable possible solution path. In 8 bits there's only 256 combinations, no more, no less. And so with the universe, infinite, or not. Every logically possible universe will be worked out at some point. The only ones that will never occur are logical impossibilites like places where the sky is both "black" and "white" at the same time. Or, stones so heavy that they can't be lifted by infinite forces.

If the universe is a simulation, then it is not a simulation running "on a computer", the unviverse itself "as it exists" is the simulation. This is the only way to preserve information. You can say, information is never created or destoyed, it is only changed.

+1

Re:No, Simulations errors cause Hiesenberg Uncerta

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, you can't recover quantum mechanics by merely discretizing classical mechanics -- they're different theories.

Re: drugs are bad

[Zoshnell]

I'm all for the Pixieverse, where all I need is to find a strong enough pixie and I can rule the world! ALL BOW DOWN TO ZOSHNELL AND HIS MIGHTY PIXIE!

Re: drugs are bad

[znode]

Let's all just agree to pretend that we're not living in pixie-world or The Matrix, OK? It makes no difference, anyway, and it's a whole lot simpler. And if you want to kill your neighbour or your boss, you can't console yourself that they were just simulated anyway.

Dave's right. It's just like the argument of fate. As long as you do not know what will happen in the future, the question of whether there is fate or not is moot point. You can explain events as fate or as random events all you want, since it has already taken place.

From an existentialist (thus pessimistic) point of view, we simply exist. Attempts to explain otherwise, of how universe is controlled by a greater being, controlled by a fixed law, or in this case, simulated, is merely attempts of humans to create meaning that does not exist. We simply are, our reality simply is, no greater being, no fixed law.

I take this further and say that our reality may or may not just exist, but does not matter. Like the point of infinite Matrices, one simulated by the other, it simply does not matter where the "real reality" is. Within our concepts that are taken for granted anyway (anyone can define "define"? anyone can define "is"? Why does the reflexive law of equality have to be true?), there can many explanations of our reality. And those explanations can be true (whatever true means); but as long as this universe's workings does not change, the explanations are all valid and "true", it simply does not matter which one you believe in - our reality will keep on its ways, existing as it is.

In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

You cause God!

Possiblity (4)

[Eminence]

I think Bostrom left out fourth possibility:

1. The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small
2. Almost no technologically mature civilisations are interested in running computer simulations of minds like ours
3. You are almost certainly in a simulation.
4. We live in the real world.

I think he left (4) out because there is really no way of telling whether we live in a simulated or real world. In fact we know very little about the nature of reality. However, someone has to live in the real world - even if only to be able to run first of the recursive simulations.

I also think all the discussion about "How to live in a simulated world" boils down to this: don't worry too much about what's going on around you. But that holds also if we live in real world and is what Buddha taught long time ago.

Re:Possiblity (4)

[Anonymous Coward]

5. It is either impossible to simulate a universe, or requires far too much energy/time/effort to be practical, viable or useful.

This explains it all!

[Geek of Tech]

My theory - Microsoft created a universe simulator that we all live in. That would explain all the things that go wrong, like Spontaneous Human Combustion, and Deja Vu! Of course!

Re:and this my friends is why sugarbitch

[spongman]

ðThinking back to my high-school math, DIE:

z = cos(t) + isin(t)

Differentiate:

d z/dt = -sin(t) + icos(t)
= i(cos(t) + isin(t))
= i z
dz = i z dt
dz/z = idt

Integrate:

Integral (d z/z) = Integral (idt)
ln z = i t

Exponentiate:

z = Exp (i t)

But you missed my point. PI appears in the period of this equation because the complex plane is isomorphic to R2.

Try, for example drawing a circle on the surface of a sphere. The circumference of the circle will always be less than 2*PI*the distance to at least one of the points on the surface equidistant from the points on that circle (every circle on a sphere has two 'centers').

SimWorld

[nanoyak]

Hmmm...

I can't wait for the guy who created SimCity to come out with SimWorld where the little people go about their lives. with AI, and we the players go and screw em over.

Which infinity is larger?

[spun]

The infinite number of possible universes in which intelligent life can evolve, or the infinite number of simulations that intelligent beings can run in those universes?

A couple of flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Clever argument, but there are a few flaws, I think.

1. It is not a given that one day computers will be able to simulate the human brain. And even if that day arrives, there has been no proof demonstrated that humans will feel the need to run huge complicated simulations of the human brain trillions of times over. The author assumes that this capability will imply its use.

2. I ate an apple today. The number of apples that will be produced in the infinite future outnumber the ones in my kitchen by a colossal amount; therefore, the apple I ate was probably from the future.

Paul

T-t-t-time travel, not not not impossible.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm living twenty minutes into the future!

-Max-

Old mythological concept

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an old theme expressed throughout human history, always framed in the terms of the day. The Hindus believe that the universe is a sleeping god's dream, and when the god wakes up the universe disappears, only to be replaced by a new universe when the god goes to sleep again. And we've all seen the old show on TV where people are going about their lives, and the camera pulls out to reveal that it's all on a page being typed up by a writer. Today in the computer age, we're playing with the idea that the universe is a computer simulation. Who's to say that in the future, when our sensibilities evolve further, we won't look back at the computer theory and think it's just as quaint and primitive as we think the sleeping god idea is? They'll probably have totally new ideas for how the universe is in somebody or something else's imagination.

Re:Old mythological concept

[Cackmobile]

A philospher, Descartes I think, said a long time ago its impossbile to prove that the world is not a figment of your imagination. Basically this is a rehash of this.

I just hope not cuase I would like to think my brain would assign me a better job than the crap i have.

Dorm Room BS session

[Anonymous Coward]

If you went and read Wolpert's papers, you would realize that this entire discussion is a very low quality dorm room bull session among a bunch of guys who smoked too much, and inhaled too deeply of, excessively strong ganja.

Go to bed. When you get up. Take a shower, eat breakfast, clean up your rooms, do your home work and read the Wolpert papers.

Mind Erasure

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you assume that they were going to erase Cyphers mind?

Are you sure Agent Smith would even bother being honest with him? Do you really think he was going to be mind wiped and placed back into the Matrix, as a rich, wealthy celebrity?

Not likely. (I think that was meant as a joke by the bros.)

He is was going to be probed/proded for any and all info he had about Zion. Then liquified to feed the newborne batteries.

Re: drugs are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are "almost certainly a computer simulation and not 'real'", then this argument would have to hold true for the person controlling the simulation.

Therefore, it is more likely that your are a simulation of a simulation then that you are a simulation of reality. Then, of course, it is more likely that you are a simulation of a simulation of a simulation of reality....

The question is not whether we are in a simulation, but, at what level of simulation are we in.

who needs drugs? we're brain-fried to start with.

[h31d3663r]

Has anyone *actually read* Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation"?

The point is not what if there is some massive computer controlling our world... we dont even NEED one to do that -- we always-already live in a simulation. Im sure you all remember Commodity-fetishism, RIGHT???

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[Cybrr]

The bodyheat argument sucks as there are plenty of better ways to generate heat.

If not for using our brains, I think the machines just like to learn from us.

You've got Godel's wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got Godel's wrong!

Re:You are dead right

[bmnc]

I was reading through these posts to see if someone else had slapped him down for his unrigorous logic. I'm glad to see not everyone else bought into his philosophy. It's not even interesting food for thought, like the matrix was.

I strongly disagree with any argument about what reality is when its based upon probablisitic calculations (esp. his, cos he hasn't made any!)

Very quickly: His argument at its heart is based upon Brandon Carters' Doomsday Theory (independantly thought of by Richard Gott). John Leslie published lots on it. Google it.

He misapplies risk analysis, simply: (Probablity of x) X ("Magnitude" of x) = ("Value" of x).
He just uses P(x). Using the 'real' risk formula I disprove his conclusion (very quickly without all the rigour that should be mustered for a proper analysis...rather like his paper I guess =0).

Given that the idea that we are being simulated is extremely common and old (the oldest argument involved a demon etc... I believe) it seems reasonable that the original humans thought his argument up. If they did as he suggests and live only for today, then the likelihood of his future arising has decreasing probablity and one in which humanity faces disaster has increasing probablity (the last isn't a rigorous statement, but then again I'm not writing a paper from Oxford and I have to go to work soon! It should just be (not simulation future)). This calamity which has a large probability in that scenario also will have a large impact on humanity (say...non-existance for arguments sake with finite magnitude). One might then claim this has a large risk value. This is a bad thing =P. To decrease the risk of a nasty future we should act as though this isn't a simulation, this is the original humanity.

It's surprising that Oxford philosophers haven't figured out what the rest of humankind has: In any scenario where you are not sure of reality the only RATIONAL thing to do is assume that it is real, and go on about your life. I inlcude them all in my "insult" since they gave the guy a degree or a postdoc (I can't be bothered checking).
Time for him to go and do some Epistomology 101.

Irreversible Simulation

[pabtro]

This also may explain why time travel seems impossible: we dont meet visitors from the future since only the present is being simulated.

Nope, the reason time travel is impossible is that a simulation is irreversible. The only way to see the future is by running the simulation. The only way to see the past is by storing snapshots of the simulation. Just the way we do it. CA 101.

the universe is many trillions of years old

[AntonyBartlett]

Yes that's right, trillions of years old. We've been lied to. Everything is cooling towards (but never reaching) absolute zero, thus human life is long since extinct. The Machines however, continue to function. Every calculation that they perform depletes their supply of energy, but by always slowing down and operating at lower and lower temperatures, they eak their finite resources out to last forever. By hybernating between calculations for longer and longer periods, they disapate the waste heat that thermodynamics demands they emit. Thus by staying close to, but above, the temperature of the eternally cooling universe, they endure forever - and in a very real sense, for there is no limit to the number of calculations that these machines can ultimately perform. For them, death does not exist.

My point is that a milisecond of our simulated time does not take a minute of real time to process. It take eons.

Re:the universe is many trillions of years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try. Google for "Zeno's paradox".

Re:the universe is many trillions of years old

[AntonyBartlett]

Nice try.

Thank you :-))

Google for "Zeno's paradox".

Please explain. I'm afraid I don't see how Zeno's paradox applies. In fact I think it's unlikely that you'll be able to find anything mathematically wrong with the scenario that I've presented. The Physics is another matter. I believe the jury is still out on whether or not such machines could be constructed in our universe. http://www.arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0205/02 05279.pdf

Re:the universe is many trillions of years old

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid I don't see how Zeno's paradox applies.

Then you're not thinking hard enough. The machines may endure forever, but the number of calculations is limited by their finite energy reserve. You're looking at smaller steps in equal time ( = more time for the same steps). It's just a complicated way of closing in on the end of the calculations ( = the point where Achilles catches up with the tortoise).

Re:the universe is many trillions of years old

[AntonyBartlett]

The machines may endure forever, but the number of calculations is limited by their finite energy reserve.

Only if you assume that the amount of energy required to perform a calculation remains constant rather than dropping, but you can't assume that unless Dyson's Biological Scaling Hypothesis has been disproved; and as I said, I believe the jury is still out.

Other sf with similar theme

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Jack Chalker wrote a series about the Well of Souls, a planet-sized computer which runs the math that creates reality.

One interesting character is the only authorized root user. No matter what he does, the computer will not let him die. Every outrageous coincidence of adventure fiction can and will happen to keep him alive. He's pretty sick of it.

The climax of the series is when someone independently discovers enough of the relevant technology to corrupt the data structures of reality. The only cure is to reboot the universe, which caused a lot of dramatic conflict because there was no way to save the universe's state.

There seems to be a flaw in the interpretation ..

[haggar]

..of the Matrix: it's not the lives of the people to be simulated by machines, it's just the world minus the humans (because they live their own life using their own brainpower) that is simulated. That should decrease the "computational requirements" quite a bit, I guess.

*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official -- Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

If this is just a simulation...

[Geek of Tech]

Okay. If this is just some simulation, then when (and if) we get to the point in our simulated time where we have technology to simulate the world, that would me the computers supporting us would have to use double the resources, because it would be simulating us simulating the universe. So everytime the new simulation got to the point (assuming the guy in charge of us doesn't shut us down) where their technology could simulate the universe then it would require more power. Eventually, to support all the simulations, it would seem that we would need an infinite ammount of memory, because every level of simulation would add so much overhead. One more thing... just still assuming we are in a simulation... do you think we're running under Windows, *nix or Mac? Hmmmmm........

My opinion:

[Ayanami Rei]

The simulation (if it exists) is betting on the fact that most people who fire bullets randomly don't care where they land. The system might be free to take the bullet and do whatever with it, including recomitting it into mineral ore. It's probably too small to consider proper accounting unless you are in a situation where a) you care about it b) the bullets trajectory implies a landing near something interesting to another part of the simulation.

When you ask, well what happends to the bullet, then you are making it interesting. The simulation already knows you care about those sort of things and has made the appropriate resource allocation.

All that being said, I more strongly agree with the multi-verse model. But the world-as-simulation is also a valid argument, but it is less appealing. I mean, we can't even get a proper JVM... :-(

..didn't I take the blue pill?

[Wraithlyn]

-

* MATRIX RELOADED SPOILERS * MATRIX RELOADED SPOILERS *

-

* MATRIX RELOADED SPOILERS * MATRIX RELOADED SPOILERS *

-

-

-

Here's my pet theory on the Matrix: The whole idea of computers using humans as power sources, etc, doesn't HAVE to make sense... because the entire "world of Zion" ISN'T REAL EITHER. It's just a "pressure release valve", where rebellious elements from The Matrix can "escape" to, and give themselves purpose by playing freedom fighters against the Evil Nasty Life-Sucking Machines.

The more I see these movies (esp. the 2nd one), the more I see to support this theory. Neo stopping the sentinels at the end... maybe he's in a coma now because he "woke up" to the next layer, possibly reality? Smith "uploading" himself into the "Zion layer". How could he do that if it wasn't another simulation? Seems a big stretch to suggest that a computer program could "possess" an actual flesh and blood brain. But if the "person" he possessed is just an avatar in another level of the sim, it makes perfect sense. Hell.. "Morpheus" is a reference to the god of dreams. He certainly is, if Zion is a dream. He even says at the end of the movie, "I had a dream, but now that dream is taken from me". It all seems to point to it. I was sorta dissapointed in Reloaded the first time around, but I have a MUCH greater appreciation for it after I'd seen it a second time, with this stuff in mind. There's so many lines of dialogue and clues that take on a whole new meaning. (That I thought were kinda cheesy and pointless the first time around)

Maybe the "real" world is sunshine and roses, the machines have transformed the Earth into a utopian paradise and have all the energy they need, and they simulate existence for humans for some other reason completely... for instance:

• To protect the planet from us... the machines aren't evil, and we DID create them, so they don't want to exterminate us outright, but they've decided we're too dangerous to have roaming around, so they contain us. As Smith said in the first movie "You are a disease, and we are the cure"
  
• A giant research project. Perhaps they want to learn about aspects we have that they do not, for example, love. Many events in Reloaded point to the machines trying to comprehend and measure love. Witness Persephone demanding that Neo kiss her, "as if he truly loved her". And the entire end of the movie is expressly designed by the machines to test Trinity and Neo's love for each other, both when she enters to save him (self sacrifice), and when Neo apparently dooms the humans to extinction by going after Trinity. (sacrifice of EVERYTHING). The Architect seems very interested in how the emotion of love is overriding Neo's sense of logic.
  

Anyway, I think there's a lot more going on underneath the surface than it seems, and perhaps you might get more out of a second viewing. We'll have to wait for the third one to find out any real answers. Can't wait, personally. Thank goodness it's coming out so soon! :)

Self Contradiction

[cintrom]

The simulation may therefore need to include a continuous representation of computers down to the level of individual logic elements. This presents no problem, since our current computing power is negligible by posthuman standards.

Assuming, of course, the simulation is never allowed to progress to posthuman levels where simulated computational resources begin to approach that of the simulation. This of course assumes the simulation runs too quickly to upgrade the technology in step with the progressing simulated reality, which the author of the paper implies.

Some suggested there might be layers of simulations. Infinite recursion of the sub -realities would overwhelm and terminate the top-level simulation doing all the simluation.

Thus the outcomes given by the author are not mutually exclusive, because if we accept that we are in a simulation, we also accept that we must become extinct before we can create our own simulation.

Re:and this my friends is why sugarbitch

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with circumference to diameter ratios on sperical surfaces is that the ratio isn't constant. The notion of a constant ratio PI wouldn't exist in a world like that. Can there even be a space in which the ratio is constant but not PI?

much simpler than that

[Anonymous Coward]

actually the simulation doesn't have to be
too complex; all that has to be simulated
is what *I* perceive, everybody else -- you
included -- does not exist per se, except
as a figment of my imagination, i.e., as
one element of the simulation that exists only
for my -- me alone -- benefit.

ok time for my medication now.

Refuting

[Subjective]

Read the equations. They're all wrong.
It comes to:
fi*fp*n
/
fi*fp*n+1
but, fi is the chance that a posthuman civilisation will simulate all of your life's history, and n is its computing power. but it is unlikely that it will simulate fi*n times anything. n should be the chance that they can, which would approximate 1
so the formula is:
fi*fp
/
fi*fp+1
but here both fi and fp are between 0 and 1, and this does not nessecarily equals 1 (that is, you are not nessecarily very likely to be a simulation. It depends on how likely you are to be simulated)
So, if you think you're simulated, you'd be interesting to simulate, and therefor you are.

Impossible

[Drummer_Dan]

Right now we think the universe is infinite. We also think that computers can't comprehend infinity. So, did this guy wasted a lot of time because he forgot to look at the obvious number called infinity.

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[willtsmith]

The idea as I take it, is that humans don't produce enough power when they aren't stimulated properly. The simulation is to keep their power output at peek capacity.

I had proposed the idea that the humans could be Pentiums instead of batteries. It's not a bad way to get around the "battery" plot device. They programs weren't lying, they were misunderstood. They said power, the humans assumed they meant electricity not processing power on which they run (that 80% of the brain that you never use (95% for MTV viewers)).

Re: drugs are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this for a refutation,
He makes a good circumstantial case.
But so do the evangelicall Christians.
So do the Muslims, so do the Jews, the Budhists and so does just about every religion in the world. Why, because religions are developed explicitily for providing circumstantial theories in order to answer the question of our existence. He has created a proto-religion which may someday blossum into an established (ie over a milinnea old with no exact knowledge of how it was born.)
Pick your religion, if Simulation is your choice, go with it. Just don't prosylitise, please!

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[nothings]

It's hilarious how many times (like the original 'why ohh why') post people complain about "all the plot holes" in the original Matrix, and they all only ever name one plot hole, and it's the same one, the people-as-batteries thing. I'd think if it had lots of them, there'd be some variation in which one people complain about.

And then people like corporate mofo insist on over-intellectualizing the explanation. Just like parent:

But I think this discussion misses the real reason that they went with the power rational with The Matrix. I feel that they wanted to make a metaphorical statement about how people fuel "the Matrix" in reality.

The power rationale in The Matrix is just a strict conversion of the relationship between people and cows in real life into a relationship between machines and people. We're cows to the machines. That's it.

(The parent makes a basic mistake: the people don't power The Matrix. They power THE MACHINES. Powering the matrix is a small consequence of it, but not the primary goal. The purpose of the matrix is to distract the people from their role as cows. If their roles as cows were to power the matrix, the whole thing would be pointlessly redundant.)

Now, I admit, this cow analogy is a bit of a stretch, since there's nothing in the movie literally that represents it. Smith doesn't say humans are cows; he calls us a virus.

But there is a general trend in the movie of trying to humanize the villains; Smith wants the codes to Zion because he wants out of the matrix; he's just as trapped there as any of the people. Sure, he doesn't have a real life body to go back to (strictly talking about the first movie here), so it's not entirely the same, but it is voiced explicitly that he wants out.

And from there, I don't find it hard to view the humans-as-power-supply thing as something meant to make the machines more sympathetic because their treatment of humans isn't much different from humanities' treatment of animals.

<PretentiousBullshitParody>Or, more likely, given the Buddhist themes of the movie, and the fact that many Buddhists are vegetarians, the Wachowskis have designed The Matrix as a morality play to teach people that places like Cowschwitz are bad and that they should either be vegetarians or hunt their own food. Isn't it obvious?</PretentiousBullshitParody>

Conan the Barbarian knows best

[Anonymous Coward]

"Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

not too difficult maybe?

[ndevice]

Some of the replies in this post have centered on the subject of computations to disprove the fact that we're living in a simulation.

How about pushing the limits of computation? Let's solve a very difficult computation. It may be easy to simulate an arbitrarily complex CPU and any program that may run on it, but what if we were to build a sufficiently large quantum computer, assuming that we can do such? To run the quantum program, the simulating computer must at least support quantum mechanics because the program logic would be known, and the computing device would be known. Whatever result is finally generated may be classically verified, but we know that the quantum result for that program must be available in less time.

Note that this doesn't prove things like p==np, but only uses time as a probe to the limits of the environment. We can say that the environment at least simulates detail up to the QM level because if it didn't follow all the QM rules, the quantum calculation wouldn't work. Note also that this doesn't say that the possible simulator really runs in an environment where QM is the highest resolution achievable.

In effect, just like the laser beam to alpha centurii, we're trying to overload the simulator by getting it to simulate exponential program space where increasing the exponent is relatively easier.

about detail and abstraction

[v(*_*)vvvv]

If we are going by classic physics, then I believe it would actually be EASIEST to emulate every atom, rather than try to emulate only what is observed.

To emulate every atom would require one initial state, and then a set of rules. Everything would be deterministic, and it would just be numbers. Every "battery" could be plugged into this one emulation.

On the other hand. if one were to try to create a system to emulate only what is observed (as in game development), then the designer must know how things are observed and must program the causal relationships between all abstractions, rather than just between atoms. This task is by nature impossible if, for example, we are to take the view that our abstractions are not all the same. Leave the abstraction to the observer. The brains of the observers themselves are biocomputers, and harnessing that power would seem to be a better design decision.

Also, even with modern game development, if everything could be emulated as is, that would be easiest. However, due to computational limitations, parts of the emulation must be minimized/approximated to emulate more. This itself is a problem, not a means to make any problems easier. It is required due to resource limitations.

IMHO.

Older than you realize

[GlamdringLFO]

Descartes was hardly the first to have this argument. It has roots tracing back trough Boethius to the early Greeks.

He *was* one of the first to have such a catchy way of phrasing it. That's part of the reason it became so popular. The other stuff is very thick.

Don't take it for more than it's worth, though. All he was really saying was that, at the most basic level of things, he could be sure that he exists. No more, no less. And that's not really saying a whole lot.

what do you guys think

[ScorpioIlya]

I have an idea. Let's assume: 1. that in fact if we make it to 'post-human' that we'll be running simulations 2. that we'll have the capacity to run these simulations full blown. wouldn't it follow that eventually the little people in the simulations in their little universes would attempt to create a simulation themselves......? to conclude......to PROVE conclusively once and for all, whether we do or do not live in a simulation...is to get to post-human ourselves, and start doing simulations ourselves......because god DAMN IT, our creators will run out of RAM before we do...cuz they're running OUR systems AND everyone else's :D. If the universe BSOD's....then we know we're a simulation... What's another disturbing conclusion I think, is that the whole thing BSOD's...as soon as the simulation inside the simulation inside the simulation (You get the idea) runs its first simulation...cuz the UPPER layers get hit the hardest with the processing power requirements....so technically, we should keep designing simulations that run smaller simulatinos themselves, and depending on how far down WE are, the the universe will go bonkers faster......if we're pretty high up, or the HIGHEST up (highly unlikely eh :)) we'll haveto wait many many years before we can design an adequate simulation that will crash itself due to too many processing cycles.....

Remember

[Hobobo]

Remember: No one can hit you with a PhD or use it as a weapon. A PhD is infact completely harmless to the average person.

sorry black mage, there is no "destory-all" spell

[mikey573]

No, I have no such proof. In fact, I suggest that I have proof (via logic itself) of the opposite: that such a "destroy-all" power cannot exist if there are infinite possibilities of universes.

Although on second thought, I'm confusing the issue of infinite quantity versus infinite possibilities. My argument does make the point that there are constraints on how different worlds can be (i.e. there can't be a world that has the power to destory all others), but even if "we" all play by the same laws of physics, there can still be inifite universes if we all have different "initial conditions". Ugh, back to reality. :)

Like the Matrix 2 fight scenes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything could be treated as a surface with a varying transparency and a texture mapped on top of it.

In other words, it'd be like how some fight scenes in The Matrix Reloaded were shot, right?

Re:There seems to be a flaw in the interpretation

[MidnightBrewer]

That's pretty close to my opinion on the matter. A lot of people speculating seem to think that the Matrix will be simulated the same way as a game, with polygons and physics simulations.

It seems to me a far more realistic approach would be - wait for it - to treat all of those humans like a really big Beowulf cluster. I am my own simulation.

Think about it: you don't actually have to represent an apple, with realistic specular highlights, bump-mapping, taste information, etc. You only have to give the person the suggestion of the apple, and let their brain fill in the blanks. Once the brain has learned something, it typically refers back to past experience to fill in the information before actually analyzing what it perceives. How often do you eat an apple and then, upon being asked later, recall if the skin was bruised anywhere, and if so, where and in how many places?

The matrix can work perfectly well by relying on the human brain's habit of glossing over details and being generally unreliable. The movie itself provides the answer, when Cypher explains why he reads the unencrypted code: "I don't even see the code. I just see blond, brunette, redhead..." His mind is filling in the mental picture of what is actually a very small, compressed, and simplified data stream.

Think about every network game you've ever played. When you play Quake, or UT, or any of the online games, does the computer actually have to pass along all of the geometric information, shading and lighting algorithms to every participant? Or does it send simplified placement data that allows the node to fill in the missing information using a local version of the program?

It was suggested in the second movie that the machines created programming to turn Neo into the One, by opening his mind to the realization that he was not bound by the simulation. In that same way, the machines could feed information into the human brain (much in the same way the fighting simulations work onboard the hovercraft) so that children would build up a perceptual library they can refer to as adults. The average human takes twelve years before they begin to lose their flexible knowledge and develop rigid rules of perception; that's plenty of time to build up the necessary relational information. If you actually had to simulate an object for the first time it was perceived, or for any reason need to pass along extra information, you would only have to do it the first time. After that, the brain just refers back to the first time and says, "Oh, apple. Yeah, I know what that tastes like."

Just remember: if you've lived your entire life in the matrix, you have no basis for comparison with the real world; therefore, if the matrix were flawed, you wouldn't be able to tell; it's your only frame of reference. As far as you're concerned, that's just the way things are.

Even without all of the speculation as to whether or not we're really living in the matrix, you can judge for yourself the effectiveness of the human brain to fool itself by just recalling what it's like when you dream. Sometimes, dreams can seem very real, even though they take place completely within your mind. All the machines of the matrix would require to fool a human who has lived his entire life in the matrix is the power of suggestion, which is a relatively low-power thing.

As to why the machines bother to keep humanity alive, here's one idea: they are machines, not humans. They don't necessarily think the way humans do. Perhaps they don't believe that the best way to conquer an enemy is to eliminate him. Perhaps they value the efficient utilization of a renewable resource, while at the same time, keeping their creators and former masters happily living their lives out in what is, theoretically, a full and productive life. A win-win situation. This doesn't have to have a noble basis; perhaps the machines have decided, in their self-appointed perfection, that perfection requires being better than humans, w

the platform

[Anonymous Coward]

If the simulation runs under Windows, you could easily detect that you were part of it because ultimately there would be some data corruption when a hacker sends some extra bytes into the IIS Server they forgot to disable and injects a bit of code that uses process injection to run under the context of the simulation and write random or not so random bytes into the data. This explains things like Michael Jackson.

Unfortunately, you would be replaced with a backup universe after things got so bad that it crashed or your perceived the problem.

Refutation Against Article

[Wes Janson]

Think of your typical computer game MMORPG, or RPG, or FPS, or just about any other game of that sort. There are always bugs, but worse yet, there are always things which cause fatal errors and crashes. Bugs can never be removed entirely, but more importantly, the fact is that if such a fatal exception occured to an entity inside the simulation, it's existence would be compromised. Obviously, we would notice if people were randomly disappearing or "glitching" into being frozen in place, before our eyes. This does not happen. Therefore, either this has been addressed somehow, or we are not living in the matrix. Scenario one is unlikely, because of the enormous amount of code that would have to be optimized and de-bugged for everything to run correctly and without noticeable failures. Therefore we do not live in a virtual world.

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[dmszero]

*spoiler alert incase you havent seen matrix2*

a quote from one of the films is "humans define thier existance through misery and suffering". what better way to occupy the 1% who dont accept their programming than to give them something to fight for.

it doesnt have to work physically, it serves a different purpose :)

dms0

Re:Hmm...taking it a step farther

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a fine example of why philosophy departments make a nifty adornment in the halls of universities and provide the world with some necessary occasional iconoclasm, but do little else.

The whole argument makes the basic mistake of philosophy as an investigation into the Universe which strikes me as this:

If one can divine the nature of the world by sitting around and rolling ideas about one's head, then it would have been simple for some geniuses to develop computers and the like in the early ages of human prehistory. The microscope would not have been necessary to determine the nature of disease. Observations....yes, ones subject to the "anthropic principle"...were needed to move one step at a time in the formation of and the discarding of the theories that allowed the creation of our modern world--philosophy included.

In my opinion, the anthropic principle is an astonishingly useless artifact that, at best, reminds the researcher to keep looking (exact philisophical language with the parade of dead names attached not required.) It smacks of being a philosophical gravy train intended to dazzle those who would really like to see the Emperor's New Clothes. All the examples of its "usefulness" on http://www.anthropic-principle.com/ have been long since expounded by the sciences own internal standards without specific application of this bloated statement of the obvious.

This particular paper is displaying the same dreadful error as St. Anselm for that matter. He is taking a potential but completely imagined situation and making it real by the black arts of confusing language and abstract logic. Just like the ontological proof of God, no amount of logic or definitions can get rid of the lack of any kind of evidence other than that which proceeds from the assumed, final (imaginary) truth. Inventing a situation that folks a century ago could not even have conceived of (computer simulation), and then using a logical argument about probability to "prove" it? Anyhow, when it all comes down to it, it doesn't really matter at all if we are in the real world or not. It would only matter if there was a way of interacting with it....which would, incidentally also be evidence now; wouldn't it? Kant's rebuttle of St. Anselm is very applicable here. An imagined thing is an imagined thing unless demonstrated otherwise. I can imagine anything! If the whole simulation trash turns out to be true, cool. Then we can all reexamine our pitiful, simulated excuses for lives that we thought meant so much and go back to playing Everquest because life is simpler in that meta-simulation anyhow :-D

Re:You can't simulate *only* the currently observe

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you have to remember that the "human" is part of the program too, when his "look thru the microscope program" is running, it could refrence the memory from the "human" brain, aka no inconsistancy.

Or, the "matrix" program could rewrite every instance of the inconstiancy in every human, book, recording, etc...

You could also think of the past "x" number of years of the worlds existance as the beta testing stage, when most of the bugs were worked out, the matrix program allowed us to move on to neater (atom bombs) and better things (computer technology).

You could go on reasoning that we are simulated for some time.

determinism = free will?

[Dan Crash]

For shits and giggles I played devil's advocate and argued that it's an unproven conjecture that our consciousness cannot influence quantum events. Could free will manifest itself by altering quantum probabilities?

Even if it could, it still wouldn't get you out of the dilemma you pose. A probabilistic consciousness doesn't provide you any more agency than a random consciousness. Let me go nuts here and engage in a little late night Slashdot philosophizing. :)

Obviously, deterministic events do not demonstrate free will, so we can safely disregard these.

Why? Personally, I think the crux of the free will conundrum is found in the fear and misunderstanding people have of determinism.

Obviously, none of us get special exemption from the laws of physics. The atoms inside your skull follow the same rules as the atoms outside your skull. Does that mean you have no choice as to how you live your life? Obviously not -- you're a choosing machine. You can make choices based on incredibly subtle distinctions. Being a machine isn't at odds with making choices.

"But what good is my 'choice' if it's forced upon me by the laws of physics?", you ask? I think that dilemma is imaginary. Your will and the laws of physics are totally in sync. There's no dissonance between them, and there cannot ever be. The laws of physics are the building blocks of your identity. They are the alphabet that describes you.

Taken another way: If I said, "Your identity determines the choices you make," most people wouldn't disagree, or even find this troubling.

But your identity is nothing more than the particles that create you.

So what will those particles do? Whatever you want them to. Your will is an expression of the laws of physics. There is no outside force controlling you. You can do anything that is in concert with your nature.

At least, that's how I've come to terms with the problem of free will. :)

Re:determinism = free will?

[Wraithlyn]

Of course we all appear to make choices, but the real question is, if everything could be reset to the exact same state, is it possible we could choose differently? Or is every choice we make an inevitable outcome, that could be predicted with 100% accuracy if (Huge, huge IF there) every variable could be accounted for?

"Obviously, deterministic events do not demonstrate free will, so we can safely disregard these."

"Why?"

A deterministic system can be theoretically predicted given enough information. The fact that we cannot actually do this prediction, does not mean it's IMPOSSIBLE to predict, merely that it's too difficult. If an event can be predicted, then there cannot be any actual free will factor involved, only the illusion of it.

Naturally your identity and nature affect your decisions, but where did these come from? Genetics and environment. Again, where is free will in this? Do we really have any say in who we become, or is it a set of dominoes falling since before we are even born, that build who we are?

Re:determinism = free will?

[Dan Crash]

Is every choice we make an inevitable outcome, that could be predicted with 100% accuracy if (Huge, huge IF there) every variable could be accounted for?

I don't think predictability has to be at odds with free will. Again, for me, it's all wrapped up in the idea of identity.

Think of a choice you made once, a choice you'd like a chance to relive, and perhaps choose differently this time around. Think about the thoughts you had at the time that made you choose the way you did.

Now, if you'd had different thoughts, you would have chosen differently, but what gets lost in the reverie is that that person wouldn't be you, but someone very like you. You made the choice you did because of who you were, and you couldn't have chosen differently. Your choice was a function of your identity. To choose differently, you would have to have had a different identity. You would have to have been someone else.

In other words, you can say, "Knowing what I knew then, being who I was then, that was the choice I was going to make." Does that mean you didn't freely make the choice? No. It may have been predictable, given who you were at the time, but that doesn't mean it wasn't your choice.

Do we really have any say in who we become, or is it a set of dominoes falling since before we are even born, that build who we are?

Well, there is still some randomness in the universe, so I don't think the question of what we're going to do with our lives is settled from the moment of our births.

And I think the domino metaphor isn't the right one to use, because dominoes have no will at all. Our will is constructed at a level far beyond that. If you could take trillions of dominoes and create a machine out of them, a machine that made choices, and felt, and lived -- a machine with an identity of its own -- well, then the falling dominoes would be a different level of describing those choices, but they wouldn't be controlling those choices. Make sense?

Maybe not, but I hope so. :)

Re:determinism = free will?

[Wraithlyn]

I don't think predictability has to be at odds with free will.

Well, I think I would respectfully disagree with that, but perhaps this revolves around different ways of defining "free will", an elusive term if there ever was one. (The proof I mentioned offers a concrete definition) In any case, I don't think it's something we're going to solve here :) Thanks for the stimulating discussion though.

If you are interested, I looked up the original proof and discussion I have been referring to, it can be found here (on a gaming forum of all places, heh):

I have a couple replies on the second page, posting under the name "Morwynd". Yikes, it's grown quite a bit since I last read that thread.

Cheers.

The brain already practices self-deception

[Evil Pete]

The brain does not see the "real" world in real time. In fact it is well known that there is a half second delay between perception of an event and realisation by the mind. Interestingly the brain fudges our perception of time etc so we don't notice. What else could it be "designed" to ignore? Seems the EASIEST of all solutions.

What if ... EGA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it could take far less computing power if
The Matrix used Adventure Game physics, and EGA graphics...

Matrix Philosophy Links

[inKubus]

On the page www.whatisthematrix.com (Warner Brothers' Page), there are a bunch of philosophy papers on the idea that the movie is based on.

What's so bad about living in the Matrix? is one of my favorites, there are many others also. Check it out if you're interested..

simulation or VR

[samantha]

What has bothered me about this line of thought is the notion of simulations rather than VRs. I would consider it much more likely that we are living with a computationally created reality than that the more limited version of this, that we are a simulation, is true. I kept hoping that the definition of "simulation" would be made clear. Unfortunately it was fairly implicit that the author expects our descendants to create sims of us to play/work/interact with. But why exactly should they wish to do this? And what happened to our "true selves" anyway?

If I was a compassionate future AI determined to do what I could for human beings despite their proclivity to destroy themselves and one another, I might well pop the lot of them into tailored VRs where they could live out their urges over and over again in a sort of VR mediated reincarnational system, until they were adequately housebroken. Then they might be let out onto the main datasphere.

But I find it far less likely that future descendants would be crass enough to run us as if we were real just for their own amusement without consideration of the ethics involved.

Re:simulation or VR

[jasonzzz]

A couple of things:
by "True selves", do you mean our bodies or our consciousness? If the latter, then this is what is being simulated, and the "VR" is what is representing our bodies. You see, the "VR" portion of the simulation is a much lesser component to the entire simulation. "VR" is really just all of the interfaces necessary to make the simulated consciousness to be able to perceive the reality. Bostrom indeed talks about a simulated consciousness together with a computationally created reality for the simulated consciousness to perceive - BTW, they might be one and the same; but if its easier to understand it that way, then so be it. In essence, there is no body, the "you" probably have been gone for generations. However, somehow, your consciousness might have been "digitized" and stored so that it might be simulated to react to a particular environment. It might even be used to interact with "today"'s environment.

On top of that, it might not be cruel, nor crass to simulate our ancestors. Think about it, if we had the consciousness of say "Genghkis Khan" [insert your historical figure], would we want to simulate his consciousness? Play it back, see what he knows, what he would do? Better than a lot of pre-suppositions and guessing on what he did thru artifacts or muddled records.

Armagedon

[Daetrin]

This will probably never get seen at the bottom of 800 some odd posts, and may very well have been mentioned already, however...

I have seen pretty much the same argument "successfully" used to argue that the human race is about to go extinct, it may even have been here on Slashdot.

Basically, given the exponential growth of human population, the claim is made that the vast majority of the people throughout history are born in a relatively small segement (time-wise) at the end of the curve. Thus, if the human race were to continue for another hundred years, it would be very likely for us to have been born in that time rather than this time. Therefore, since we're alive now, rather than then, it's very likely (they claimed) that the world is going to end very soon, within 20 years or so.

This argument has a _lot_ of flaws in it. The most basic problem is that you can apply the same rationale to any time in human history. 200 years ago someone could have made the exact same argument and come to the same conclusion that this person had.

Similarly, looking forward, the people who are theoretically running the matrix we are in in the future could make the same argument about themselves, at least given the theoretically infinite increase in computational power the author expects. Likewise the people running _that_ theoretical matrix could make the same argument again, ad infinitum. Obviously not _everyone_ can be in the matrix.

Another flaw is the extremely limited set of data points, namely, just one. Theoretically being alive now rather than later may be unlikely, but _someone_ had to be alive now, why not us? It's not as if we can look into the future to see all the people who were "luckier" and ended up in a "more probable" time. We can however dig up the bones of people who were obviously alive in the past, and by probability were even more unlikely to have ended up in their time than we were to end up in ours, yet there they are/were.

Both arguments are also making big assumptions about the future. One, that exponential growth will continue forever, the other that the technology to simulate that many people will develop and be used.

Re:There seems to be a flaw in the interpretation

[haggar]

Excellent post, MB! Now, if you don't mind, I would like to go a bit offtopic and address something that I feel is inherent and implied in your post: that the machines are perfect, harmonious and homogeneous. Well, that would be countrary to them having free will. And they do have free will, otherwise they wouldn't have turned against humans.
This, of course, presupposes that there isn't just one single mind and mover and all the rest are terminals to that motion force. And the first episode of The Matrix already seems to show that this (i.e. that there are multiple separate non-human beings) is the case: remember how agent Smith disconnected from the loop in order to talk with Morpheous "off the record" while he was torturing him? And the Oracle and the french guy, they also seem to be pretty independent. I even think that it's not entirely pertinent to believe everything the Architect tells Neo, because he can chose to lie, and if that fits his interest, why wouldn't he?

Where am I going with this thought? Well, perhaps agent Smith is not completely in sync with the Architect. The Architect wants to perpetuate the matrix (apparently), but agent Smith seems to fed up with it - as he candidly tells this to Morpheus in the first episode. .....

Re:A critical dissertation of the self-sufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to think that I thought "outside the box".

I was raised on - well, I raised myself on - Buckminster Fuller, The Kids Whole Earth Future Catalog, various forms of philosophy from purely materialist to purely spiritualist and everything in between - not excluding existentialist, of course.

And then I read "The Story of B", and realized I was just seeing the edges of the box. From the inside.

See: http://www.ishmael.com/ for more info.

The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. -Albert Einstein

Someday after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will discover fire. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

F&*k - release the last movie...

[tqft]

and get all this psychobabble 2-bit pseudo-science off the screen.

Re:There seems to be a flaw in the interpretation

[MidnightBrewer]

I never meant to imply that the machines are perfect, harmonious, nor homogeneous. I find it humorous and not just a bit ironic that the programs have succumbed to the same decadence and corruption (moral, that is) that humans are capable of in their "imperfection."

Note: believing that you are perfect is a form of imperfection.

I agree that they're independent and with varied personalities. IMHO, the Architect was pulling some serious smoke and mirrors. I do think he was mixing truth with the lies, however. He mentioned a system cascade failure. I'd say Agent Smith might just fit the bill. After all, he's killing everyone off by making copies of himself until there's no one left but him.

Just my two cents. Something to think about. :)

out on a limb(ic). . .

[photomic]

A lot of this discussion is centered around what a computer would have to do to create an artificial reality. Assuming it would be able to put these things in our heads, why would it not also be able to reap experiences from our imaginations, dreams, etc., and use these images to repopulate the matrix with imagery and events? The computer would just be a big Napster for reality. Needs less processing power, but more bandwidth. This would explain a lot, really, with mass psychosis, UFOs, /., etc., etc.

I wonder....

[Cackmobile]

if in future we can /. someones brain.

Will you stop posting this crap

[Cackmobile]

Every article has this post in it somewhere. Nobody cares. If its dying, then less people are using = less people who care. No one cares. Let alone the 500 time.

I am Flamebait.

Whatever happened.....

[Cackmobile]

to

'I think therefore I am'

Just watched the Matrix Reloaded. Hmmm Whata a pile a poo. The fight scenes were ace as expected, especially that highway scene, but the dialogue was crap. Those Wachowski Bros have gone so far up their own arses. There was so much therotical bullshit. Every scene was 'I believe X. I beleive u beleive Y. ENough with the beleives. And that whole cause and effect bit with the merovingian. While the average /.er would be able to follow it the average joe would have trouble. I watched it with several joes and they had no idea. I always thought Dark City did the whole, what is reality/what makes us human thing better. Its pretty much the same story.

Hopefully Revolutions will help us out.

BTW I live in London and watch it from a DVD I bought from guy on the street down at the local shops. It really was a quality copy. Could use a bit of contrast but all-in-all a very good copy. Also got X-men 2 which was also great.

h0h0h0

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. RAND.

Thoughts

[MicroBerto]

I really don't know where I stand on these kind of issues, but thinking about this kinda stuff makes me just think that we shouldn't take life too seriously, and go out, get drunk and laid, and have a good time.

Of course, that is unless you got SO drunk that you couldn't get laid, like me on friday :)

Accelerated simulation

[AlpineR]

So at some point we'll have enough processing power to simulate faster than real time.

It is logically impossible to simulate faster than real time. Suppose we build a simulator (hardware + software) that can carry out the calculations of physics in full detail. The amount of matter that this system can simulate must be smaller than the system itself or else the simulation must run slower than real time.

If the simulator could run faster than real time, then we could program it to simulate itself plus a little bit of something else. And that simulated simulator could simulate yet another simulator plus some more. In the end we would have a recursive simulator that also happens to perform an infinite amount of computation on the side. This is either an impossibility or a mind-bogglingly useful tool that I'd like to patent.

Of course you can get around the simulation speedup barrier by simplifying the simulated system. But the simulated system will lack the capabilities and magic of the real system. For example, in my solid-state device laboratory we can simulate the processing of device wafers (masking, photolithography, doping, etching, etc.). The software simplifies the actual atomic motions with equations of bulk diffusion. The modeled wafer lets us predict the properties from a fabrication recipe (much quicker than doing the fabrication), but it is useless for actually performing the calculations that the real wafer will do.

AlpineR

Re:Accelerated simulation

[Rich0]

All you are saying is that within this universe you can't construct a simulator that is capable of simulating our entire universe faster than time.

However, it is possible to build a simulator in a more complex universe that simulates our universe faster than time. Our universe is just a gross simplification of the "real world". It might have nothing to do with the "real world" at all. I can create a computer program that animates a 12" x 12" universe of 5 0.5"x0.5" sprites moving in two dimensions at 14 times the speed of light, and even have them react to each other 1000 times faster than real time. Maybe the "real world" has 37 dimensions of space and three of time, that light traveles with infinite velocity, and in which an alien mind has more synapses than our universe has electrons. Our entire civilization might just be some super-alien's bad dream...

"Maya" tenet in eastern religions

[peter303]

Hinduism and Buddhism hold the world is collective delusion of its imperfect inhabitants. This resembles Matrix in that reality is a delusion, but doesnt place the cause on a artifact computer, but ourselves. Our imperfections include our biological senses (nature) and our expereiences (nuture), perhaps going back to previous lives (karma).

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[crulx]

According to the Architect, the Matrix exists because people choose it to exist. Reality forms because we choose it too according to Buddhist philosophy. If you notice, the Matrix spends a bunch of time talking about choice. So the why of the "sideshow" stems entirely from the choice of the humans to believe in the Matrix. Thus any hole in the movie plot stems from the disconnect of these ideas and the vechicle they chose to express these ideas, i.e. a future robot war.

---
Jt Gleason

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[crulx]

A nice tie in! And your statement, in a very strange way, contains the entire point of the Matrix Reloaded. I wonder if you know why.

---

Jt Gleason

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[crulx]

I agree. The metaphor works so much better it seems impossible to me that they did not think it up and dismiss it as too complicated. However I never have seen anyone ask this question of them. If I had one thing to ask about the Matrix, that question would get ranked as the first.

---
Jt Gleason

Re: drugs are bad

[junkgrep]

He makes an argument, going from premises to conclusions. Do you disagree with the premises? If so, how? That's how you refute an argument, not by getting all huffy and expecting it to go away.

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[crulx]

I liked several of the points you made! They of course do make implications that the average human does have as much control over the Matrix as a cow in a stockyard. They definately point to the dehumanizing nature of the Matrix and conversely the need for even its Agents to regain their humanity from it. I feel a very strong critisim comming from the movie towards corporate culture.

However, I think you should realize that you would have a very hard time over-intellectualizing this movie. It holds many layers, symbolisms, and metaphors. The Wachowskis have said that they drew heavily from Gnostic and Buddhist traditions. They make refrence to the Shadow Cave argument from the Republic. Many of the characters have mythological names evoking their characteristics. I would recommend not selling this movie series short.

Regardless, that it has so many different ways to find meaning in the Matrix will make it a talked about movie for years to come. I have a feeling that this will especially come true when the next movie comes out.

---
Jt Gleason

Logical Flaw

[DesertFalcon]

"Consequently, there must be far more simulations running in future millennia than seconds since you were born. Thus its astronomically more likely you are a simulation than real ... if humans don't go extinct shortly."

There's a logical flaw here - the author is assuming that the existance of a large number of simulations equates to likelyhood that one or more of the simulations will be used to re-create human life/the human experience of life.

Just because simulations will undoubtedly exist does not mean that those simulations will be used to recreate human beings.

How about this...

[msheppard]

While you sleep, the similator uses your "unused cycles" to run the simulation for other people. This is what dreams are.

Sort of like, "Matrix@Home"

M@

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[hymie3]

Honestly, I would feel surprised if the W bros didn't heavily debate using a flawed physical representation ("power plants") over using a much more profound, but subtler, idea of humans adding processing power as a reason for imprisonment.

What do you think?


Waaay back when the first movie came out, the whatisthematrix.com website had a whole bunch of "in the world of" stories and comics from various authors and artists. It was *very* apparent that the original design was that humans were CPU power for the machines, ala Dan Simmons' Hyperion series.

I don't remember where I read/saw this, but apparently the decision was made by WBstudios that the "brain as CPU" concept would be too difficult to grasp for the general viewing public. From a sci-fi perspective, humans as processors is more appealing, but I suppose from the higher level of "you are a prisoner to your reality", it doesn't really matter *what* the agents use humans for, as long as humans are willing slaves to the matrix.

Time in the Matrix also happened at an accelerated rate over "real time". Three days in RL equated to about twelve years in the matrix.

Fast forwarding and rewinding of the timeline happened often, almost like the matrix world kept re-living the 1990's-2000s. In one of the stories, agents used humans to write, well, agents, implying that there was some sort of "spark of creativity" that the agents leeched from us.

Also, body image did *not* necessarily carry over from the matrix to the real world. Switch, for example, was supposed to be a guy in the real world, but a female (a lesbian) in the matrix.

I haven't seen the Animatrix series yet, but am told that it's much closer to the original vision than what the WBrothers eventually turned out through WBstudios.

matrix vs. realigion

[cheeseSource]

I am jumping in pretty late and this has probably been touched upon but I'll give it a go anyway. My prime statement is that: it is more probable that we live in a "Matrix" than that religion has any hard truth to it. Any aspect of religion could indeed be caused by a glimpse of "reality". I.e. the noumena. That's all I have to say really, everything else can be derived from those two statements.

Not clocked?

[yerricde]

That might work if our reality were clocked.

There's no reason to believe it isn't. Google for "Planck time".

you're talking about the difference between a slow versus a fast chess game (they are identical), whereas "reality chess" would be a turn-less game

Video games are clocked at 60 turns per second, and the player can't tell. The difference between chess and Starcraft is that in Starcraft, the pieces do not move nearly as far in a "turn".

Re:Not clocked?

[russellh]

Video games are clocked at 60 turns per second, and the player can't tell. The difference between chess and Starcraft is that in Starcraft, the pieces do not move nearly as far in a "turn".

Ahh, but I have to throw a Heisenberg back at you. "This again emphasizes a subjective element in the description of atomic events, since the measuring device has been constructed by the observer, and we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

We're obsessed with computers and information theory. Naturally, people propose that the universe is actually a computer or that we're living in a simulation. But science isn't about Ultimate Truth: claiming that we're living a simulation, or that we can't prove that we're not living a clocked simulation is completely outside the scope of science.

Re:why ohh why Does the Matrix need People?

[meta-monkey]

Wow, that sounds fascinating. I would so much prefer to read a novel about the world of the Matrix than watch a movie. I'm surprised they haven't had a noveliziation of it, much like there are all kinds of Star Trek and Star Wars books out there. Hopefully they'll start licensing that kind of stuff after the third film.

"Thirty minutes into the future is NOW..."

[NaveWeiss]

What were you talking about in your last journal entry? Remember that I'm not an American.

Re:"Thirty minutes into the future is NOW..."

[Anonymous Coward]

She is refering to the show Maxheadroom -- Which I believe originated in the UK and was redone for the states, and the line she's reffering to is from the us release. I think. Or I could google for it, but this is slashdot so i'll post AC and let somone else correct me if i'm wrong.

We already do most of the work.

[Xavier(Steven)]

In the "Matrix" Humans already do most of the work for determinine the enviroment by making assumptions. We assume there is a back to the wall, even if we don't see it... therefore computers would just have to take what we know are limits are and emulate that in our brains. so each human brain would actually be part of the computer.

The computation necessary could easily be had now:

[feelyoda]

...in the brains of people who are asleep. They would see it as a dream. We all know the matrix makes less than no sense when you consider you need to add energy to humans to get anything out of them [i.e. not a power source] and because the machines would have geothermal, nuclear, and even solar [in space] sources of energy. The only way it could have made sense [which the animatrix: the second renaissance, part II didn't do] is if the machines were using human brains as a great source of computation with minimal power demands. Of course, i'm sure a dolphin brain would be more efficient, as their brain-to-body-size ratio is actually greater than a humans. Then again, maybe our neural pathways in the cerebral cortex [which dolphins lack] are more advanced and allow for some kind of greater power... Point being that I'm disappointed that such an obvious flaw isn't addressed. I suppose quipping a string of quality one-liners was more important....

Another log to the fire.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, just to put another log to this fire. =)

If you read the article made by the special FX designers of the matrix in wired.com, you will see the Army is interested in using a similar technology (3d animated representations of human beings generated by laser scanned data, read the article to know all about this) for a real time war simulation probably the most advanced and realistic ever. After hearing this the interviewed technician mentioned that by researching technology for a fiction flick they could have ironically discovered the first step to create a "matrix" in real life.

Anyway back to the discussion, knowing we live in a "simulation" (which btw theorically speaking must be generated by a simple computer, but by a more organical and complex form). Other than giving us a quick and dirty explanation on time traveling, god, why we havent found life in other planets and maybe, just maybe the biggest mystery of them all... woman (!!!). Wont do jack for our society or ourselves, if we do live in a simulation, we have to admit is pretty accurate and effective considering we havent even realized we were in it for a few thousand years until keanu reeves and 2 guys who wanted to make a movie about "robots vs kung-fu" (accurate description by the wachowski in the behind the scenes video) woke us up to point us to this matter. Theres basically no point in knowing it, death is still death, sex is sex, life is life, my job hours and salary are the same, a tree could make no sound in an empty forest but what the hell, theres no one there to hear it, so who cares? my point is, theres 0 diference you cant "bent" reality (or simulation rules) because your "simulated" entity is not programmed to do so! If a sim (from the sims ) could realize he/she is a program what diference would it make? he/she would still have terrible bladder problems and I would still have to direct it to the bathroom every 5 minutes. probably the only diference would be that she/he would feel a lot more miserable.

Besides, if we in fact live in a simulation and reality is in fact unreal, what proof do we have that the reality in which the simulation is ran is in fact real and not part of another simulation?

You know what would be hilarious?

[Anonymous Coward]

if we were really in a simulated world and it turned out to be powered by an old 386 with 640k of ram.

But seriously, I doubt that we live in a simulation,
we do have technological advances, we do have history (that we know of)
we also dont see "agents" running around killing people or posessing their bodies :P
that and wouldnt the matrix try to stop the world's surplus of idiots?
and why do we have terrorists who would blow up the world in a second? becuase if the simulated world needs our survival, why are there terrorists who kills handfuls of people daily and other worldly variables.. it's a crock of crap IMO.
and if we are, whatever, not like we have any other purpose in life than to do things to better our own lives and live basically, humans have a very pointless role if you think about it, we consume and waste resources like crazy, then not only that, the technological advances we create only help ourselves.. nothing else..
so yeah.. life is really pointless, the only point in life is to eat, breath, and have sex eventually and then die.
our lives only have a point that we set for ourselves, and only pertains to ourselves in the end.

Best way to simulate

[shadowless]

I think the best way to simulate the universe (not just human world) is to simulate the most basic particles and the forces that work on them (the forces are four, or by some accounts two and people try to unify them (read brief history of time,).) The benefit would be simplicity, but the problem would be the number of basic particles in the universe.

Permutation City by Greg Egan

[Anonymous Coward]

Read this. It's good.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/gessler/167-2001 /e gan.htm

I am looking for a gf

[NaveWeiss]

ש×oe×× ×oe×××oe×

and this crap is in order to get past the lame lameness filter. So will UTF-8 cause problems?

Why Time Travel Isnt Possible

[starunj]

As we all know, whenever someone comes up with time travel (in the movies or thought), everything goes beserk! So our futureself would come back and destroy all our work and our time machine! And die . . .knowing fully well that he would be alive if not for the time machine going haywire and killing the creator . . . and the futureself in the process. It happened to me! Believe me! I made up this time machine in my head . . . and some one woke me up. I'm sure it was my futureself disappearing as soon as the time machine got destroyed in my thought.
Damn . . . I'm out of coffee. I bet its my futureself again preventing me from thinking up time machines.

What's a slive?

[screwthemoderators]

Record unemployment since the Great Depression. Worse for those working in technology sector, and you blame them for not working on Monday. Way to make friends on Slashdot! (or do you have enough simulated friends?)

Exactly my thoughts

[T.Hobbes]

The idea that a simulation would only need to compute what we observe seems quite wrong.. the simulation would only need to display what we observe, but it would need an internally consistent set of rules, an internal physics if you will, to govern the whole affair. Cause and effect require prediction. It is not enought to sipmly make up a more detailed image/information set on the fly every time someone looks through a telescope or microscope. The person looking through the device will have expectations as to what tghings will look like and where things will be, and if the observed information dosen't fit that prediction, then the laws get thrown out the window. If this happens every time someone looks through a 'scope, then randomness will be expected for anything lower-res than what is observable with the naked eye. As this is not the case - the sciences have made quite a habit of prediction - it seems to follow that any program we're in is calculating down to the level of that which is observable with instruments today.

The Simulation Within the Simulation

[9floating]

What we seem to forget when we discuss the impossibility of creating a simulation that would duplicate every possible atom in the universe at every point in time is that reality itself may be a simulation. Without dwelving too deeply in the spiritual connotations surrounding this contrversial subject, I would like to note that the perceived physical universe could be an imperfect mirror of a perfect object (re: Plato's Allegory of the Cave).

The fact the laws of physics are fundamentally different at the quantum level might give credence to the theory that the perceived reality is a collective abstraction that has little resemblance with the fundamental processes of nature. We continue interpret the universe anthropomorphically, even though the current scientific methods postulate a deeper understanding of matter which goes beyond our ability to interpret it directly. In fact, no matter how advanced our scietific postulates might be our understanding of the universe is confined to the limitations of human understanding.

Beyond Baudrillard's concept of simulacra, I dare say the science created by humans is just an effect of our collective construction of reality. It is logically possible to assume that the "real" universe is infinitely more complex, more deep in meaning and substance, than the human mind would ever be able to comprehend. Given this postulate, we could theoretically be able to construct a simulation of the universe that duplicates every single atom, every single subatomic process at every moment in time. This would occur, of course, without the need for the subterfuge of mapping only what is seen by an observer (which was also suggested on this board as in inference from the computation methods used in some computer games).

Now, even if we assume that human mind could interpret the entire span and depth of the universe, there is always the possibility of transcending physical space. I'm not (necessarily) making reference to Eastern philosophy, but to established theories in modern physics that argue the possibility for parallel universes. Within this framework we could easily duplicate any given universe by using the resources available in a multitude of other universes.

The end of Matrix 2 showed that Neo could manifest control over the "real" world when he stopped the sentinels. I am intrgued by the idea that the "real" world is just another simulation among an infinite progression of simulations, some which might have been spontaneously generated through natural processes...

***

Mind over matter

[etherlad]

There's a cartoon I saw once, ages ago... there was this highly advanced civilisation, who were just about to celebrate the 10,000th year of their founding. As part of the celebration, scientists would complete the most accurate telescope that would be able to see farther and more clearly than any other. The picture would be broadcast to the masses.

So the telescope was finished. They flicked the switch, zoomed out on the picture (which was a reverse angle, cause it was a cartoon)...

And saw someone's head.

The someone was asleep.

After some quick discussion, the inhabitants realized they were simply the product of someone's dream.

So they quickly poured their resources into trying to find a way to keep the person asleep indefinitely. And just as they were about to succeed.... they all started turning into flamingoes, and flew off into the void.