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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."
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."
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The ORIGINAL proposition is here:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulat
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Slashdot linked to what Dr. Bostrom called a "Brief, popular synopsis. But read the original paper instead if you can."
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Here is the original paper:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.h
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
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.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
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.
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"?
"Place me in the company of those who seek Truth, but deliver me from those who believe to have found it."
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.
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...
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.