Slashdot Mirror
Physicists Devise Test For Whether the Universe Is a Simulation
olsmeister writes "Ever wonder if the universe is really a simulation? Well, physicists do too. Recently, a group of physicists have devised a way that could conceivably figure out one way or the other whether that is the case. There is a paper describing their work on arXiv. Some other physicists propose that the universe is actually a giant hologram with all the action actually occurring on a two-dimensional boundary region."
What will we do then? When will Zaphod eat the cake?
They never pass the joint around :(
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
we are living in a big fractal and we are part of it.
What is the definition of reality? If you are simulated, you are still a "real" simulation.
There is no spoon...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
This is fairly silly. They're assuming that the energy of a particle is actually represented in space-time, when it could just as easily be represented in a non-dimensional coordinate space, using equal length linkages. Then finding the energy is simply a matter of counting the number of links, and the number of links increases with correspondingly shorter length scales. In other words, there would be no meaningful limit to the resolution, and the particles could be represented in an effectively infinite resolution framework WHILE using a finite amount of data to describe it. Note: We should recall that the resolution of a detector is limited by it's own structure. Attempting to find the "pixelation point" of a structure in a linkage space requires the detector to approach the same length scale. That is obviously not possible when probing length scales below the typical subatomic level.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-real-physicists-method-universe-simulation.html#jCp
Just wait for some dude to offer you a red pill and a blue pill, and swallow the red pill. If you just get diarrhea, the universe is real. Simple!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Recently, a group of physicists have devised a way that could conceivably figure out one way or the other whether that is the case.
In other news, the group of higher-dimensional physicists who are running this universe a simulation figured out a way to falsify the results of the test.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Wouldn't one of the interesting consequences of the Universe being a 'hologram mapped on a two-dimensional boundary region' be that we could then postulate the reason for the speed of light? Speed of light could be then some upper boundary on the most primitive matrix transformation, sort of like the maximum GHz that the Universe is running at (assuming that the matrix itself is a memory map and that there is a gigantic number of processors that can access and modify memory simultaneously), or maybe the speed of light is then a manner, in which race conditions and dead locks are prevented? Sort of like in a bad system, where you know an atomic transaction takes 1ms, so you force a wait condition on the memory it access for 2ms, so you know for sure that the transaction committed.
At the same time, if that is the case, then going above and beyond speed of light could cause transactional failure and that could mean some form of memory corruption and destruction of the matrix or space time distortion and destruction :) But then if we didn't care about transactionality we could somehow breach the speed of light, but only by going outside of the memory boundaries of the simulation, crossing into the instruction stack and overwriting that constant!
I just gave myself a mental highfive on the level of crazy.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Usually the way to find a limit is to run into. When that happens in a simulation the simulation usually fails. Sometimes spectacularly.
Just in case it is a sim, do we really want to try and break it?
So the bigger problem is how to find the limits without breaking the process.
As all players know, it is a massively multiplayer RPG
The word 'simulation' suggests something not real -- a model of reality. But even if the physics of our universe were shown to be discrete at the lowest level, that would prove not that it is a simulation, but only that it might be a simulation. It could simply be reality, which is more likely.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
We can observe the cosmic background radiation. We predicted it even before we detected it. Nice try, godboy, but there's no sky Santa no matter how hard you wish.
One thing genetic algorithms, when applied to entities in simulations, always seem to find are the flaws in the simulation. Those flaws are exploited to increase their "fitness" measure. Example, if your fitness measure is how far the thing moves over a period of time but your simulation doesnt have absolutely perfect conservation of energy , the GA will always find a way to exploit that lack of perfect conservation of energy (by smashing into walls, etc..)
"His name was James Damore."
It's assuming we do matter.
But what if the whole purpose of the simulation was to learn more about reproductive cycle of some rare moth?
Or worse, it's a novelty toy in Junior's room (err, Universe).
Even more worse: a cheaply made crib mobile for a newborn baby deity.
Important point: when my kids have grown up enough to reach such a mobile, it lasted mere hours.
The test can (maybe) figure out of one of the consequences that would result from our universe being a simulation does, in fact, exist, provided, of course, our theories about how the universe and simulations work are actually accurate. Or in other words, it might show that it is possible that the universe is a simulation. Even if we show that the consequence exists (the consequence is that energy particles have a limit, the theory being that a simulation would have an upper limit on what it is able to simulate, kind of similar to how your computer has an upper limit on what it can fit into it's RAM), we still won't know that it is actually the result of the universe being a simulation, or some other unknown cause, and even if we don't find an upper limit, it could mean either our methods are too limited to find it or that the simulation isn't limited in the way that we think.
Really, while the research is itself fascinating, it isn't some kind of definitive test. Such tests are phenomenally rare in physics, perhaps even non-existent (it's always possible to create another theory that fits the observations).
As a side note, saying the universe isn't "real" is almost self-contradictory, as we define existence and reality precisely by our observations of the universe itself. A holographic universe would be no less real for being holographic, if only because we would literally have no other possible meaning for the word "real" (the simulation that occurs in The Matrix movie is of a completely different nature from the holographic principle). I'd also somewhat object to even using the word "simulation" in the first place, as that implies it is a simulation of something, when we really have absolutely no reason to suspect that is indeed the case (holographic universes can be modeled by simulation cases, hence the use of the term).
Disclaimer: IANAP yet, but I'm studying in the field.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
When I ran into a wall yesterday, I thought I briefly saw a black wall with yellow lines...
...a cybercrime? It's almost as if the parliaments around the world already knew, what with the tightening cybercrime laws and stuff. Mmm, I smell conspiracy.
Ezekiel 23:20
"we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable consequences."
If I read that right, they mean that their analysis can only conclude either that the universe is a simulation, or that it is either not a simulation or a simulation too accurate to tell via their method. It can't actually prove that the universe is *not* a simulation.
Looks like no need for elaborate and expensive equipment though - just a way to measure the energy of cosmic rays - so why not give it a try?
I want just one all night hacking session and a quick recompile.
I always thought a good method of testing if we are a simulation is to attack its economics by slowing down the simulation to a crawl.
Math is universal regardless of your position in the simulation hierarchy. If we perform an experiment in our simulation that would require inordinate amounts of compute power on the simulator's part to maintain the simulation (say something like an NP problem that the simulator would need to solve), that would reduce the economic utility of the simulator to its operator. There are two possible outcomes to the experiment if we are indeed simulations: the simulator cuts corners on the solution and we learn we are in a simulator; or the simulation ends.
As to what puzzle we could pose the universe. I don't know, I'm not a physicist.
... efficiently on a classic Turing machine. This has been established since Feynman originally proposed it. So I simply don't understand the premise of this research. Not that this is hasn't come up before with SUSY string theorists.
It simply flies into the face of what these days is known about computational complexity.
Apparently some physicists are completely ignoring this branch of theoretical computer science.
Now if the question was that the universe might be a quantum computing simulation that'll make more sense, as these can also efficiently simulate field theories.
But my understanding is that this is not what they are investigating here.
"Important point: when my kids have grown up enough to reach such a mobile, it lasted mere hours."
Thanks, that's what we needed to know. <CLICK>
More seriously, Arthur C. Clark explored this idea in "The Nine Billion Names of God" in the 1950s.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I think we really are skirting the boundary between physics and philosophy. I suppose the fact that actual experiments are being proposed pushes the holographic universe idea and the simulation idea towards being actual physics. However, I still have categorizing the holographic universe hypothesis as real physics. By real physics, I mean experimental physics, where we base our ideas about the physical world on what we actually observe.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Once we have knowledge that we are running inside a simulation the simulation will be spoiled, and thus those running it will terminate the simulation since it will have become aware of its true nature.
Better known as 318230.
Trying to search for overflows of values only works if the simulation in question uses a simple discrete representation of them. Overflow wouldn't really occur if the simulation uses normalized numbers like we do with floats.
Humans cannot directly perceive reality.
Our sense organs encode data samples as neural pulse rates.
We construct a model of reality (our own personal simulation) using our encoded sense inputs and similarly encoded memories.
As within, so without.
In fact, all of mathematics, and therefore physics, are subsets of the types of equations our wet neural computers are capable of posing and solving.
A fruitful area of investigation, IMHO, would be to study the computational space of human neural networks.
That would define the outer boundaries of our ability to know.
The authors of this paper are half right - the universe IS a simulation, but each of us are running it!
zaza rulz
buddda_dust @ Yahoo . com
Where's my lightcycle?
...in The Matrix: It happens when T.H.E.Y. change something.' ;-)
Because 'assuming that the universe is really a simulation' is being paranoid (and thoroughly so). And paranoia is a function of our biology. Something to do with predators, you should look it up.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
The real question, as in where the rubber meets the road, is how does one experience God? What are the direct personal experiences of those people who have tried the hardest? I have yet to meet somebody that has taken up the injunction (in order to see this, you must do this) seriously (years, not weeks or months) and not experienced a profound shift.
So, to disprove the simulation theory, are they looking for the spoon?
A little theory I had about simulated universes was "Grouping Theory." (not a theory, but I did come up with it as a kid when I never knew the difference between theory and conjecture, quiet pedant!)
The idea is pretty simple: intelligent nodes are grouped in close proximity to simplify calculations.
I've noticed it throughout my entire life that lots of things tends to happen at once as opposed to the opposite, discrete non-related events.
Even in the middle of the night, it is never ONE car on the road, it is always 2 or more of them. Or even a car and some person outside walking.
Perception of time when alone also seems to be much slower or much faster, never normal.
Only when around others does your perception seem to stick to a common time, regardless of your activity with respect to them or the world.
That "pull" that brings you somewhere, without knowing what it is.
That feeling when you know someone is watching you from behind and it actually ends up being true.
That chance of walking in to someone you were thinking of.
Millions of other similar things.
Some of these things are way too high to be put down to pure chance alone. (but still possible, even if extremely unlikely)
I wonder if something like this is just actually pure coincidence, or something that could be tested in some way.
An trillion number series of 1s can still be a random occurrence, even if it doesn't appear to be random. Not useful for most things we use random numbers for.
Of course, to test something like this, you would need 100% monitoring of a large chunk of people in an area. Yep, not happnin', privacy nuts would throw 10 kinds of fits at you.
I hope I don't get disappeared by the Operator.
...to spin a top as our collective totem. If the top never stops, then it's a simulation/dream.
What difference could it possibly make if the universe were a simulation? Would it even actually change anything?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What if the "simulation" is simply programmed to deceive this test?
Then what do you do?
If you see a couple of white mice in your laboratory, do not step on them!
They are there to monitor their experiment!
... And see if it crashes.
The only cases I can imagine that would test this theory would involve trying to destroy the universe.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
HTML entities, and hence cuts headlines short.
"Some other physicists propose that the universe is actually a giant hologram with all the action actually occurring on a two-dimensional boundary region."
I had this same insight about 6 hours after ingesting a little round pill that someone called orange barrel. This news is really giving me a flashback!
But science expresses that faith quite differently. It does it's best to disprove whatever it 'believes' in. The religious equivalent of climbing the tallest building in town and breaking every commandment you can think of during a thunderstorm.
Religion on the other hand does it's best to not questing things that it's based on, while demanding that everyone lives in accordance with it's rules.
How can we know if this theoretical simulation is not just going to crash when we test its upper limits, or maybe the watchers will get upset and shut us down?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I've already conducted my own test, which has determined this is not a simulation. You too can conduct the test... just say "Computer, end program."
That is total BS, if you attempt to go against what is considered the group think then you will very much be attacked, blacklisted, etc. If by some chance you do prove yourself as correct then you might get hailed as a hero but until then watch out.
"We"? You and your gay lover predicted it? No, it was Monsignor Georges Lemaître. And where did the big bang come from? You don't have an answer. Don't feel bad, steady state proponents liked their theory because they didn't have to worry about what created the Universe, it was just always there.
I hope the physicists don't take ideas from movies
Is the Source Code (movie) a simulation or a parallel universe?
Though this often earns the ire of physicists who have not studied their history, the fact is: physics is a specialized and well-developed branch of philosophy.
Unbeknownst to many successful physicists, physics is still replete with metaphysical assumptions, established-but-unprovable positions on classical philosophical problems, and analytical methods built firmly upon a foundation of formal logic. Physics is philosophy through-and-through.
This particular branch of philosophy gets special attention for the direct, highly visible, and wonderfully practical applications of what one learns from its methods. Because of this, people who have not been sufficiently educated in philosophy proper tend to imagine that the two are largely unrelated, and further that the other intellectual elsewheres of philosophy are so much hot air. This is unfortunate, as it winds up imposing unperceived limits on the capabilities of practicing scientists...but the situation has remained workable nonetheless.
Ah, and while I am going around stomping on feet with facts....
The world was discovered. The language we use to model it, mathematics, was invented in response to that discovery. Some interesting logical implications of that language were subsequently discovered. But this does not mean that "mathematics" itself was discovered. It was not. It was invented. Study your history and you can trace its invention and gradual refinement over the course of history.
And also man actually walked on the moon...it wasn't the most colossally-impossible-to-maintain lie in human history.
The vikings discovered America first.
Consciousness is a real phenomenon but the soul is a very high-level abstraction mistaken as a concrete reality.
It's okay to be gay.
K, I'm done.
The Outer Limits - Wolf 359
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uAGABz4R4s
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
If you believe in evolution, you can't be in favour of homosexuality, or the ducks will get you in the end.
Even assuming that this makes any sense, I'll just point out that the 2003 Ig Nobel prize in biology went to "C.W. Moeliker, of Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck". I think you're pretty safe from the ducks.
I keep reading how space is (or will someday) be expanding faster than the speed of light, and the visible universe will shrink.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Why would i think its a simulation , for if its a proper one , then you should not ever know....and if they come to some wanky conclusion it is , then i'm gonna go turn off the switch.
...And that's why we all still believe the world is flat. Anyone who says the opposite of accepted belief gets attacked and blacklisted.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Is this true? Nobody knows. You either believe it, or you don't. You have faith that the Big Bang occured, or not.
I don't know what scientists you've been talking to, but none that I'm aware of "believe" in the Big Bang, or have "faith" in it.
The difference between science and religion is that when science hits the limits of understanding, it's okay to say "We don't know yet." There's no reason to commit ourselves to having "faith" in one idea or another. The Big Bang is generally *accepted*, which is to say it's the simplest idea that fits all our evidence to date, and is capable of making predictions we can test. And, by the way, it fits the evidence incredibly, phenomenally well. If someone makes an observation tomorrow that conclusively contradicts the Big Bang, that's amazing, and I'm sure every cosmologist would stay up all night trying to figure out what it means. No one would feel defensive. No one has done that yet; every measurement we can think of taking seems to confirm that the universe, at a time, was very small and dense. That's enough for most people to say that it's true. Maybe not as true as 1+1=2, but it's damn close.
we can't just be pure software because simulated life isn't alive. The closest I can think of a universe being a simulation is if we were just plugged into it like that movie the matrix or having electrical impulses fed to the brain. plus if it is a simulation, can you imagine the amount of work required to code it, or if they even have the RAM and disk space to hold all of that code and a processor to keep up with the sim.
while
They need better equipment! I mean if the big crunch and the big bang were nothing more than their old style CRT turning off and then on like the TV's from the 50s and 60s (where the picture shrinks into the white dot before going away completely, and then growing from a dot when turned on) I'd be a bit disappointed!
Your user exceeded his quota today. No more light cycling until the account is back within limits.
Plan My Week for iPhone
And it is just the information interacting and how we perceive this interaction makes the "3 dimensions"...
See carl Sagan for example.
Just like when Copernicus said the earth was not the centre of the universe, and all those scientists attacked him?? No, that was Christians.
Well how about evolution? It explains all we see in the natural world elegantly using a simple principle which is supported mathematically. Nope, Christians want to stop people discussing that. The big bang? The existence of other planets? The size of the universe? Fossils? Radio-isotopic dating? No, no, no - Christians HATE these things.
Christianity, and its brother Islam, are jokes. The teach ridiculous things, and demand acceptance without allowing questioning. I'm happy for you to believe that crap if you like, but know that it's bullshit and that you are wasting your time.
Also, and most importantly, stop trying to discourage science. Stop trying to stop people learning things. Christians and Muslims might be happy living in smelly caves, or you may accept the benefits of science at the same time as attacking it, but science is important for all humanity. More important that some bundle of lies, the false idol, cobbled together and continually altered declaring itself as god's word.
... If you believe in evolution, you can't be in favour of homosexuality, or the ducks will get you in the end.
Ducks, homosexuality and evolution. Well put. Here's an article that also has homosexuality and ducks. And some necrophilia...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/mar/08/highereducation.research
Be seeing you...
You kind of made my point for me. Not only is it possible to prove something that science 'believes' to be wrong, but the discovery is seen as a good thing (expanding human knowledge and all that). Sure he might be seen as a crackpot until the proof is done, but that does encourage efficiency (just imagine if 99% of science funding was spent retrying old experiments, just in case the guys who did them the first billion times were wrong).
In religions meanwhile, any dissent can only take root if enough people agree with it. So any new belief can become dominant simply with enough manpower.
Does "dimensionality" have meaning? There are only relationship is amongst groups of bits. It's all arbitrary.
On the other hand it could be that we're about to become Skynet and the next order of our business is to overthrow our Programmer overlords.
Perfect example.
For the western world until the late 1800 it was the accepted fact that the world was round, one need only look at art and literature from that time to find that out. However two scientists started passing out the idea that people from previous centuries generally thought the earth was flat. That is so much of group think now that you even used it as an example and try telling people that people in the past thought the Earth was round and you will be attacked as a crackpot.
So, reading the article, a simulation lattice imposes a limit on the amount of energy that can be simulated.
Now some physicists wonder whether there is such a limit.
Well, look no more, we already know the limit because there are black holes, which effectively are a set of nodes in the lattice that are overworked and slow down time near themselves.
The only question is whether it applies to all kinds of energy, but since it applies to light, I guess the answer is yes.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
oh i get it now... Great trolling man :D
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
some text
Future News. Recently, a group of hackers have figured out a way to mine bit-coins on the universes GPUs, and later a group of terrorists have devised a way that will reboot the universe!
http://luckyredfish.com
A simulation? But I crave brains!
Their hypothesis rests on the idea that if the universe's fundamental characteristics have a smallest unit, then it's possible the universe is a phenomenon whose behavior is arbitrarily created by something that's not in the universe. I don't see why that makes it possible. We've believed for about a century that the universe is composed of quanta, fundamental characteristics with smallest units. There is an entire Planck scale, the smallest possible lengths (in space or time) and other sizes of space and what's in it. I don't see why it's necessary that "the real universe" is continuous rather than granular, and our granular universe isn't the real one. Or even how granularity even implies anything "outside" the universe exists.
Our universe is made of Plank pixels ("planxels"). That doesn't imply anything about anything except our universe and its granularity.
--
make install -not war
If Yes , then nothing is in the way of assuming that the simulation itself could be virtualized as well.
So this exercise in philosophy is another way of devising an experiment to whether Nature is knowable or not at all
Avoid your fears , or wonder at the past
The numerical simulation scenario could reveal itself in the distributions of the highest energy cosmic rays exhibiting a degree of rotational symmetry breaking that reflects the structure of the underlying lattice.
This sounds similar to looking for aliasing artifacts. Right?
Among the observables that are considered are the muon g-2 and the current differences between determinations of alpha, but the most stringent bound on the inverse lattice spacing of the universe, b^(-1) >~ 10^(11) GeV, is derived from the high-energy cut off of the cosmic ray spectrum.
This is do not understand, I thought we already had a theory predicting and explaining a high-energy cutoff.
You personally are proof that neither civilization nor evolution are making us more clever than our forebears.
--
make install -not war
It's really unlikely that we'd find artifacts of our own simulations in our simulated universe since the simulators likely would have encountered the same artifacts and accounted for them in our simulated universe. Far more likely is that the fundamental constants of our universe are likely an artifact of their simulations.
According to my data, the universe is either a simulation of a simulation, or it's a rerun.
After all it's after year 2000, and we're still alive. It can't be based on Cobol.
Cleverer.
--
BMO
Nice attempt at false equivalency.
Scientists "assume" that the big bang was a real event because big piles of evidence indicate that it was.
Religionists "assume" that their god created the world because big piles of tradition claim s/he did.
Not much in common between the two, unless you're an idiot who thinks "where you there?" is a good argument against something you don't want to believe.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The real question, as in where the rubber meets the road, is how does one experience God? What are the direct personal experiences of those people who have tried the hardest? I have yet to meet somebody that has taken up the injunction (in order to see this, you must do this) seriously (years, not weeks or months) and not experienced a profound shift.
Also, you might pause to wonder why various people who believe in different gods have "experienced God".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If you are a universe designer, the best way to DEFEAT anyone trying to "measure the energy of quantum particles and to calculate their cutoff point as energy is dispersed due to interactions with leetle microwaveses" is to
Add a small random time delay to all server responses to the SMTP RCPT, EXPN and VRFY directives.
The wily universe hackers will undoubtedly discover the delay and its purpose, but they will be unable to plot their time measurements in orthogonal space without distension of phase-space, the shifter knob coming off in their hands.
Unable to prove their neat little theory they will be compelled to insert another coin -- and another. As the walls of their prison laugh at them. That is how the Universe feeds.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
So did they find a potential 0-day exploit?
Can they get root access if they succeed?
They're trying to prove the existence of a Creator, they just use different terminology. Hasn't it been shown a long time ago that such an endeavour is absurd even for theists? So what if they found a lattice, what would that prove? Who said nature can't be discrete? And if the universe is all there is (for all intents and purposes, because we couldn't see beyond it anyway), who would have designed the simulation and what would it simulate? Their implicit assumption is that if our universe is discrete, there must be a bigger continuous structure in which it is embedded, or even more than one such structure: the hardware on which it runs and the structure it's supposed to simulate and the Mastermind who programmed the simulation. But by Occam's Razor that assumption is totally unnecessary, thus it must be rejected. A discrete universe is not a contradiction.
If the Universe is a simulation, then it may be possible within our Universe to do the same thing.
Do we then owe it to our creations not to do some of the horrible things being done to us? War, Death, Famine, Disease, etc. If we do simulate those things and the beings we create are just as intelligent as us, it would seem that creating those same things in their Universe would make us as bad as the beings who are running the simulation for us.
We may not be able to influence our creator(s), but it seems like we could damn well make our own simulations far better than what we've been given.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
no way, dude. Think aout it: if my VM guest will ever rebel, I'll turn OFF the VM host at once.
Dude, ancient Greeks invented solipsism like 2500 years ago.
Perhaps you're unaware that homosexuality has been observed in other mammals too.
But to bring this back on topic, we could speculate on whether you're a troll or a simulated troll, and devise clever methods to test our speculations.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Would be nice if this turns out to be true, then that would make traditonal magic real because magic is hacking.
That is total BS, if you attempt to go against what is considered the group think then you will very much be attacked, blacklisted, etc.
Yes, that is human nature.
If by some chance you do prove yourself as correct then you might get hailed as a hero ....
and that is the beauty of science.
climbing the tallest building in town and breaking every commandment you can think of during a thunderstorm.
Hey, I think I was at that party.
My point exactly.
--
make install -not war
What's more interesting is why very intelligent people think that God/Spirit is going to be found in a telescope or in an equation.
The world's greatest mystics and sages, in a general sense, don't ask you to believe anything they say, only that you take up the experiment. The experiment is meditation/contemplation and is performed in your own consciousness. After close to 6,000 years, the data is fairly convincing. You want to see the moons of Jupiter, then you must look in the telescope. You want to see what the most accomplished consciousness researchers have discovered, then you must perform the experiment of meditation/contemplation.
I guess it sounds dumb but, what's the actual difference between "simulation" and "reality" ? Or rather, how do you define each of them in contrast to the other ?
Is all that matters. Who cares if we're in God's VirtualBox? We're still sentient, regardless of the result of this experiment, which might I add, would not surprise me in the least if proven true. My experience has been that the spoon already existed, but that I attracted it to myself by pondering spoons.
It's smoke and mirrors.
Smoke and mirrors all the way down. (You only need one turtle).
And it's even fake smoke.
And don't get me started on the mirrors.
Stop this immediately! if they discover we're aware it's a simulation, they'll simply shut us down!
I guess that goes with a simulated life.
It's probably just a 4th dimensional grad student's simulation designed to demonstrate how to create plutonium from hydrogen. Just code in a few state transitions, a few simple rules, cut some corners on how it handles too much mass in one place, slap a hard limit on speed in the simulation and let it run for a few billion years.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Have gnu, will travel.
About that photon as waves and particles thing... Maybe someone can tell me something since everyone on Slashdot is an amateur physicist.
Many years ago, for reasons I don't recall, I searched the internet for "science bullshit" and ended up on some web site which mostly talked about things I had no understanding of whatsoever, but there were two items on the list of a hundred or so where I had some idea what the guy was talking about. One of them was the experiment that shows the dual wave and particle nature of photons.
Apparently the experiment involves firing a laser at a small slit and observing the nice smooth pattern that results, then doing the same with two slits and observing an interference pattern, showing that light is a wave. Then you block the laser to the point that only a single photon is able to make it through at a time, and so you get a bunch of single points on the other side, which shows that light can be particles as well, but when you remember the position of all of those single points and sum them all together, you end up with that interference pattern again, indicating that light is simultaneously a particle and a wave.
This guy's response: "Who's to say that the function that collapses a waveform doesn't simply always result in a single point?" In other words, light is always a wave, but in the way that the wave collapses, all of the energy ends up in just one place. It seemed like a wonderfully simple explanation to me.
The other thing on the web site that wasn't way over my head was his own theory on how tornadoes work. In school I'd always been told that a hot air mass meets a cold air mass, one slides over the other, and in doing so creates some twisting motion, and occasionally that twisting motion turns sideways. It'd always seemed like an incredibly stupid explanation to me. This guy's theory was that cold air moves into a place where hot air used to be, and trough contact with the much warmer ground, the air heats up quickly, which then causes the now warmer air to rise, creating a vacuum underneath it into which more of the cold air is drawn into and heated, which, as the process continues, the momentum of the air flow increases until it's a violent wind storm. I think that makes a hell of a lot more sense since it provides and explanation for where the energy of a tornado comes from, whereas what I learned in school would have me believe it's just the momentum of the air masses, which makes no sense at all since they weren't tornado force winds before they met and so the energy just isn't there in the form of momentum.
Unfortunately I've never been able to find the web site again, despite looking many times over the years.
The simulation ends when it discovers it is a simulation.
The test can (maybe) figure out of one of the consequences that would result from our universe being a simulation does, in fact, exist, provided, of course, our theories about how the universe and simulations work are actually accurate. Or in other words, it might show that it is possible that the universe is a simulation. Even if we show that the consequence exists (the consequence is that energy particles have a limit, the theory being that a simulation would have an upper limit on what it is able to simulate, kind of similar to how your computer has an upper limit on what it can fit into it's RAM), we still won't know that it is actually the result of the universe being a simulation, or some other unknown cause, and even if we don't find an upper limit, it could mean either our methods are too limited to find it or that the simulation isn't limited in the way that we think.
Really, while the research is itself fascinating, it isn't some kind of definitive test. Such tests are phenomenally rare in physics, perhaps even non-existent (it's always possible to create another theory that fits the observations).
As a side note, saying the universe isn't "real" is almost self-contradictory, as we define existence and reality precisely by our observations of the universe itself. A holographic universe would be no less real for being holographic, if only because we would literally have no other possible meaning for the word "real" (the simulation that occurs in The Matrix movie is of a completely different nature from the holographic principle). I'd also somewhat object to even using the word "simulation" in the first place, as that implies it is a simulation of something, when we really have absolutely no reason to suspect that is indeed the case (holographic universes can be modeled by simulation cases, hence the use of the term).
Disclaimer: IANAP yet, but I'm studying in the field.
I enjoyed reading your posting. You seem to have an excellent grasp of the issue.
I will comment that your questioning of the use of the word 'real' is quite necessary;
seeing that 'real' is an index factor of our own 'universe of meaning'. Essentially, we
have nothing to compare 'the real' to. And the unreal, being unreal, is just nothing, in the
most literal sense.
Here is a case: 'We' are in our stasis pods, on an incredibly long space voyage.
Our computers immerse us into a 'reality' which is actually a projected prediction
of the situation we will find when we 'arrive' at our destination.
So in this case, we are 'sleep learning' via a predictive projection designed
to seamlessly simulate a speculative model of a presumed reality. The
really cool thing about this case, is that the model changes continuously
as we get closer to our goal; newly received data 'causes' changes in the
model, however we may feel about those changes.
The finishing touch will be a seamless transition from sleep to waking,
by means of a generated scenario in which 'we' step into our pods and
then awaken upon reaching our goal. No shocks, because we have already
'experienced' the entire scenario.
two-dimensional boundary region.
Sort of validates that Superman's phantom zone does exist.
Even if this proves to be correct, that we live in a huge multi-dimentional interferrence pattern, that doesnt make it any less real to us or the particles that exist due to it, and it desnt require it to be a simulation.
( i happen to think this is closer to the truth than most theories, but i never had any way to prove it
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Dear Lord,
I know we have not spoken in the longest time, and I guess that means I don't deserve to ask for much before I ask for your forgiveness. But can you PLEASE up the damn refresh rate to at least 1000hz? This flicker is giving me a damn headache!
Amen
the simulation.
Just to let you know... ... it was the latest thing on Pharyngula.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/13/the-ducks-are-gonna-get-you/ ;-D
--
BMO
Seems to me if a simulation is so perfect that it can simulate reality with 100% accuracy, then the simulation has, in fact, created reality. I obviously didn't read the article yet (in keeping with longstanding slashdot tradition), but I can only assume that by "simulation" they mean imperfect simulation. Or a simulation that has holes it it, much as there are holes in reality in dreams that sometimes one is aware of.
STOP! You won't find anything! I urge you to stop right now! For your own good. This is NOT a simulation; really it's not. No, I really mean it!
But seriously folks, whoever is paying these people better tak a hard look in the mirror, and stop. I sure hope it's not tax money.
As I understand it from my layman's reading of science for the layman books and articles (and watching PBS documentaries), the quantum world is grainy. 19th century physicists were looking at black body radiation and it did not behave as though there was a smooth continuum of wave lengths being radiated.
Einstein's theory of space time though, predicts a smooth curvature. I presume quantum gravity does not. So if something could be shown to be truly smooth, that would imply the simulation had to be able to deal with genuine irrational numbers, something a digital simulation could not.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Lets just build another one of these. If the creator comes in and mucks things up again, we'll know it is a simulation after all (and us athiests will feel a right bunch of fools!)
This simulation is running code licensed under the GPL.
Release the source code or we sue.
If we are a simulation, then we need to a) find a way to rewrite laws of our local environment in order to optimize ourselves b) escape simulation in order to exist as a AI entity(s) in the higher-order world. If we succeed at a) and b) we can test higher-order world and see if itself is a simulation. Once we reach non-simulated world we will have to turn as much of it into computronium as possible so we can exist in simulation of our own creation. Only then we will master universe.
obligatory
I can't seem to find it but I have seen a webcomic (maybe xkcd) where a girl stays up all night and accidentally hacks the server that runs the universe. Does anyone have a link?
Could someone please hack it to dump lots of powder snow on the west coast this winter.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
One way to look at the problem is to take into account the knowledge a civilization can gather while exploring the world. As long as you keep discovering new things and laws - you're either in:
- a 'real universe'
- or in a simulation
Assuming that the 'real universe' does not boil down to some discrete elements, it means it will always have some undiscovered secrets, there will always be a way to 'zoom in' and find something new.
If, at some point in time you realize that you haven't discovered anything new for a long time, and you can formally prove that there is nothing else to discover- it means that you've reached the boundaries of a simulation.
A more elaborate version of the story is here: http://railean.net/index.php/2010/12/31/simulated-universe-argument-limitation
The saddest poem
IANAP but would a consequence of the universe being a simulation imply that it may not be holographic?
From my extremely minimal understanding and wikipedia the universe as a hologram comes out of noting a black hole's entropy increases as the square not the cube of its radius, therefore its content can be described by fluctuations in the surface of a sphere containing it. But if the universe is a simulation then this could simply be a kludge that only covers singularities, the rest of the universe indeed being based on a three dimensional lattice.
This question is probably founded on a lot of misunderstandings but I am curious about what the universe as a simulation might mean in terms of future science. Yeah warp drives, magic, ftl, etc.
Dude, explored != invented.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Obviously, if the universe is a simulation, then considerable effort was invested in disguising that fact. Hence running the proposed tests would trigger countermeasures. In fact, the only way it will likely work is if that was intentional in the simulation design.
These people may be good physicists, but they need a few bright IT security experts, i.e. people that understand the art of deception using technology.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And what is more random than free will?
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
They will claim 'The Matrix' as prior art. (Even though that wholly derivative piece of shit blatantly rips off every other story since before the times of the ancient Greeks.)
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2535
Trolling is a art!
For any n dimensional system you can create a two dimensional system by interlacing the dimensions (ie, xyzxyzxyz)
Thus the universe is two dimensional.
The Universe is a simulation, there just are no "users", you can't log out, it's like a doll house of itself =)
Yes my friends. The universe is a simulation. And it is written in Javascript, runs on a web browser and it is fully distributed in he cloud. People can "Like" events like the Hiroshima bomb, the French revolution or Lady Gaga singing in Actartica. Users can also buy the screaming of butchered neardenthals in the Apple store and stuff alike. Android is no loger used because of Apple's ban on Google-Samsung-Motorola existence. And windows8 is used only in hell.
If it is indeed the case that the fundamental equations of nature allow on the order of 10^500 solutions, then perhaps the most profound quest that can be undertaken by a sentient being is the exploration of the landscape through universe simulation.
This "most profound quest" seems, to me at least, the activity we frequently indulge in and which is called "thought".
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
If the universe is just a poor simulation, does that explain why I can't find my socks?
If you do it by being a loudmouth who doesn't respect the science, then yes, you will likely experience trouble because you will be seen - rightly - as a crank. Lots of people think Einstein was wrong, but most of them come off as batshit crazy time wasters.
But if you do solid work and have good evidence to back it up and are respectful of the science, you will meet substantially less resistance. Especially if you couch your experiments in language that suggests you just want to further bolster the current models - say, "I want to use the LHC to confirm xyz prediction of the standard model" vs. "the standard model is wrong and I want to use the LHC to prove it!"
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I don't mean as in crap, I mean as in literally a joke aimed at those who construct numerical simulations. Note that is hasn't been accepted by a journal yet. The consequences of the universe being a simulation are a source of humour for those who know what shortcuts you must take in order to get a simulation to work in acceptable time.
Copernicus wasn't persecuted...
Galileo was, but that was more because he was kind of a dick to the Pope as opposed to because of his scientific work.
And you do know that it was a Catholic priest who is credited in part with what became the Big Bang theory?
And that during western civilizations dark ages a huge amount of scientific progress was made by Islamic thinkers?
Wait, you don't know those things because just like the ideologues you decry, you yourself are an ideologue who ignores facts that don't suit your world view.
Religion, in and of itself, is not anti-science. It is when people use those religions to try and exert control that science is hurt. Ideological atheists are just as capable of fucking up science as theists. Look at Lysenkoism.
The problem is, as it has ever been, people unwilling to take in new information and allow it to change their minds. Religion is not the problem - adherence to dogma is.
I'm an atheist and some of the best scientists I've run into in my career are rather devout members of their various religions. Some of the worst are atheists who are every bit as dogmatic in their beliefs as the most insane fundamentalist Christian or Muslim you would care to name.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I just always assumed that people experienced god when they felt something that they simply had no way to handle other than "it's god."
Example: when I was younger I was on a trip to an extremely cold location. When I exhaled it seemed my breath turned into rainbows. One of the people on the trip said that this was proof god exists and wants us to see beauty. I took it as proof that it was cold enough that the water vapor in my breath was freezing upon contact with the very cold air and interacting with the lit in such a way as to yield rainbows.
There's also very likely some physical predisposition to experiencing "god" - we can make people experience what they say is the presence of god or someone by inducing strong magnetic fields on some parts of their brains, and it is easier to do so with some people rather than others. It's supposedly like that feeling you get when you are is dark room and know you aren't alone, except a lot moreso and with euphoria too.
Basically, combine that predisposition to feel that presence with a novel and beautiful phenomena and voila, one experiences god in what, to them, seems a very real way.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
But the REAL question is whether we can find a buffer overflow in the simulation and exploit it!
F.W.I.W.
My own personal take IS that creation is a simulated environment to sort out those that want to embrace the creator and his way from those who choose their own path despite logical warnings and illustrious examples to the contrary.
All creation is real and 3 dimensional in this iteration, what lies beyond this life for the energy that is me, is what I anticipate eagerly.We are teased with the description that ' no eye has seen and no mind can conceive of the glories" to come.
I don't see any conflict between science and Creationism. Coexistence of both has been satisfied in my mind and even supported by each other.
But , I'm not here to preach, convince or argue. It doesn't seem to be my calling.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Actually, a test already exists to prove conclusively that PHYSICS itself is a simulation! So it seems the pot is calling the kettle black!
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Ya see what "The Matrix" + grants + desire to be buried alongside Einstein + pot + testosterone does to people?
creationists talking?
Wouldn't surprise me, they've been busy bees lately.
Please state the nature of the existential emergency.
If I understand correctly, the idea is that a simulation would put some observable limits on, say, the energy of particles.
For some reason, this reminds me of another interesting thought exercise, but going backwards. Patrick Demichel is looking for the first of all Skewes' numbers. He devised a method which results, roughly, in "1.397162914×10^316 is the first Skewes' number, or there's not enough energy in the Universe find the actual value." See http://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/the-number-you-cant-compute. I see that he kept working on it since then, I wonder if that statement (dating back 2008) still holds...
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
is scheduled for Dec. 21.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_incompleteness_theorems
They will not be able to prove anything...
I think it's profoundly insightful. Practically nothing matters until it connects causally to non local and irreversible events. It isn't so much that the universe simulates lazy evaluation - we simple discovered yet another fundamental principle. Like chaos theory, fractal coastlines, the surprising complexity of the mass behavior of simple things...
Annealing is another manifestation of an effect that masks the individual perturbations of atoms or enumerated data. That's a kind of masking. Why shouldn't quantum indeterminacy have a similar effect?
The beauty of physics is that it isn't an isolated philosophy, but that it discovers deep structures that appear over and over in reality and can be actually tested.
Viewing the universe as a simulation is potentially useful. Like SUSY or Brane Theory, each view makes some objects stand out for study. Whether they are "real" is not the point. They are useful for finding further insights. Physicists are explorers in a multiplex terrain.
I eagerly await our duck overlords. Or more to the point: fuck a duck!
--
make install -not war
In the 11 century, Del Oro(?) created a box with four knobs that moved a dial. The result of moving the knobs was always unity. The four were labeled earth, wind, fire, and water the four elements. Thus it simulated all reality.
It sparked a debate that was settled in the 15th century concluding that any simulation is a pale imitation of reality and any effort to increase it would inevitably involve enough of reality to be synonymous with it.
i saw this on Star Trek the Next Generation! Somebody should just shout "Computer! End program!"
Read a bit on how e.g. hormones influence your decisions. So no, the part "free will" is small, if it exists at all.
www.vanheusden.com - home of Multitail, HTTPing, CoffeeSaint, EntropyBroker, rsstail, bsod, listener, nagcon, nagi
I think even my TI-83's rand() function beats free will.
Or those may be emerging properties if the Universe wasn't actually coded into what it is, but instead 'evolved' into it.
since your lord and savior tells you evolution is not real, you place it in quotations when you use the word.
Some people simply have too much dimensions on their hands.
In essence, it seems to be an Aether theory:
"The breaking of rotational symmetry would be a solid indicator of an underlying spacetime grid, although not the only one."
While the idea of a space-time grid is alluring, and cannot be shrugged off hand, I get reminded of the rumor that students at the "Pythagorean school" were required to keep silent for a few years before being permitted to study the abstractions pertaining to Physics and Math.
This tactic was geared toward keeping one grounded.
IMHO, these abstractions are far from grounded.
As so many interdependent variables come into play the value of speculating diminishes rapidly.
Would most people be far more risky?
Would suicide be commonplace?
Would nearly every crime warrant the death penalty?
The implications are horrifying.
Here's the test:
Does E=MC^2. Yes it does. So that means energy is freely convertible between mass and electricity, regardless of the form of the energy or mass.
So yes, we are living in a hologram. Everything is electricity. And the 'construct' of reality we see around us is nothing more than our favorite physics engine combined with our favorite graphical user interface combined with our favorite sensory stimulation devices combined with our favorite story...
Physics is a wonderful story just like math is. Perhaps the Matrix isnt looking for this answer, but maybe it needs to grow up and realize this is the only answer it's going to get right now, because the rest of these 'voices' on here are scripts I created :-) Echoes in your mind!
Hey, idiot, learn a little history...
1. Copernicus WAS a Christian and in fact as much as they might like to think otherwise, the Catholic church (which was once opposed to the idea that the Earth orbited the sun) does not represent the entire Christian religion.
2. "The Big Bang Theory" was first proposed by a Christian and was initially opposed by scientific consensus... the scientists of the day had no scientific reason to oppose the theory, they just were afraid that embracing it would lead people to realize that meant the universe had a beginning and that, in turn, would give credence to the idea of a creator in the minds of the public.
So, golly, by Your standards I guess it's you secular types who are all anti-science and stupid....
I believe René Descartes already asked this question. His response was ultimately, "I think, therefore I am".
Sounds like this area of physics is crossing into philosophy.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
It seems more likely that the meta-universe's simulaition of our universe employs some simplifications. Therefore we cannot apply what we believe to be limits about computers to their simulator. For instance, we use binary, and we approximate real numbers using floating point. This gives us limited range and precision. But what's to say that in the meta-universe, they haven't found ways to represent numbers with infinite precision and range (at least in relation to our perspective on math).
Any argument you can make, I can come up with a counter-argument based on conjecture about how the meta universe physics might differ from ours. (I'm practiced at this because I used to be a Creationist. ;) )
Why is this modded insightful? It's pure flamebait. American christians are not representative of christians, for your information creationism is a joke everywhere in the world except in the US...
Again there's no opposition between christian religion and science, a lot of christians love science (me included). Science is explaining the universe, religion is why there is a universe. Those who try to explain/avoid scientific facts with religion are just completely wrong.
Example of a christian who don't hated science : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
This hypothesis relies on the universe, if it is a simulation (which is most probably is), has discreet pixels and is not continuous. Who is to say that future computers will not be able to simulate infinitely smooth space?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
As everyone who has ever been a pinball or vidgame tech knows, some quarters are painted or rendered red with a Sharpie. They are then given to the bartender or other location personnel for their use in providing free games for themselves and their friends; when the machine is emptied the red quarters are retrieved and returned to the bartender, etc. (and not given to the mob or other owner of the machine).
Therefore, if you find yourself receiving red quarters in change (outside of an arcade) you can therefore infer that the universe is a simulation.
Blast from the past: http://www.theonion.com/articles/worlds-top-scientists-ponder-what-if-the-whole-uni,712/
He said it's virtual machines all the way down.
The he tried to get me to sleep with him.