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Mathematician: Is Our Universe a Simulation?
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Mathematician Edward Frenkel writes in the NYT that one fanciful possibility that explains why mathematics seems to permeate our universe is that we live in a computer simulation based on the laws of mathematics — not in what we commonly take to be the real world. According to this theory, some highly advanced computer programmer of the future has devised this simulation, and we are unknowingly part of it. Thus when we discover a mathematical truth, we are simply discovering aspects of the code that the programmer used. This may strike you as very unlikely writes Frenkel but physicists have been creating their own computer simulations of the forces of nature for years — on a tiny scale, the size of an atomic nucleus. They use a three-dimensional grid to model a little chunk of the universe; then they run the program to see what happens. 'Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom has argued that we are more likely to be in such a simulation than not,' writes Frenkel. 'If such simulations are possible in theory, he reasons, then eventually humans will create them — presumably many of them. If this is so, in time there will be many more simulated worlds than nonsimulated ones. Statistically speaking, therefore, we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than the real one.' The question now becomes is there any way to empirically test this hypothesis and the answer surprisingly is yes. In a recent paper, 'Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation,' the physicists Silas R. Beane, Zohreh Davoudi and Martin J. Savage outline a possible method for detecting that our world is actually a computer simulation (PDF). Savage and his colleagues assume that any future simulators would use some of the same techniques current scientists use to run simulations, with the same constraints. The future simulators, Savage indicated, would map their universe on a mathematical lattice or grid, consisting of points and lines. But computer simulations generate slight but distinctive anomalies — certain kinds of asymmetries and they suggest that a closer look at cosmic rays may reveal similar asymmetries. If so, this would indicate that we might — just might — ourselves be in someone else's computer simulation."
That paper is from November 2012. We should have been able to catch it a little bit earlier than this. That, or the person running the simulation missed an important loop bug.
Some possible ways to determine if we're living in a simulation:
Look for signs of optimizations/short cuts in the simulation:
Is there a maximum speed?
Is there a minimum size?
Is there a limit as to determining an object's position and momentum?
etc...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/
This is old news mister slashdot.
This new Beta mode seems pretty unrealistic to me...
*rimshot*
The Matrix is everywhere.
1) physical sciences are based on measurements. all the fancy theory follows from these!
2) measurements are numbers.
3) Profit!
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
God reniced the simulation process to -20 for six days to skip through all the boring stuff.
[Neo sees a black cat walk by them, and then a similar black cat walk by them just like the first one]
Neo: Whoa. Déjà vu.
[Everyone freezes right in their tracks]
Trinity: What did you just say?
Neo: Nothing. Just had a little déjà vu.
Trinity: What did you see?
Cypher: What happened?
Neo: A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it.
Trinity: How much like it? Was it the same cat?
Neo: It might have been. I'm not sure.
Morpheus: Switch! Apoc!
Neo: What is it?
Trinity: A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
According to this theory, some highly advanced computer programmer of the future has devised this simulation, and we are unknowingly part of it.
Wouldn't he have to be a computer programmer of the present, if he wrote this simulation and we're in it RIGHT NOW?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The universe was created and many thought it was a bad idea.....
Cheers, Joe
If we are trapped in a VR, so a tree that fall in a forest when nobody is there to listen wont do any noise because it's it's will be a use of computer power unuseful. Maybe Sartre was right after all.
But, did quark obey to mathematical law ?
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
I am not stressed out by the notion we might live in a simulation because it changes nothing about the fundemental questions about the nature of reality, it only changes the context in which we ask them. It does add a whole new layer of interesting questions to examine, but strip away the stimulation and you are left where you were before. At a deep level, I would hope that our simulation might have the lofty purpose of answering the very questions we ourselves are seeking. In the end my greatest hope would be for transcendence so that I might take what I have learned here and apply to yet a higher reality. All in all, one might say it is more comforting not less as it leaves much more concrete things to aspire to.
So... how much do clothes cost in the Matrix?
What is the definition of "not a simulation".
If I am in a simulation and it seems real to me, what is the opposite of this?
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
In a simulation your lives and events could be run many times over and over in different mathematical scenarios. But in what is known as reality you only get one shot at a lifetime, and failure is messy. This is not a simulation, sorry. Denied.
Was it the same cat?
Not if you take the red pill
But this time for the science minded. It's simulations all the way up!
Oh and this idea is as old as dirt.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Finding anomalies can not prove or disprove our world being a "simulation" or not.
Indeed, until you define what a simulation is and what it is not, this entire hypothesis contain no significant meaning whatsoever.
From a logical perspective, the universe can contain universes within every little part of it, in a fractal way, which before anyone claims ownership of this idea, has also been postulated in the Vedas for thousands of years.
one fanciful possibility that explains why mathematics seems to permeate our universe
How could math not permeate our universe? There has to be some sort of structure or priors. And once, you have that, you have something that math can work on. And once you have that, you have math permeating your universe.
First: humans observed the universe.
Next, humans invented mathematics to model these observations.
Then, humans refined mathematics over time, to even better model these observations.
Then, humans became surprised at how well their model fit the universe, seeming to have forgotten how hard they worked to make it so.
Then, humans started coming with very silly ideas about the model actually being the reality it models.
The inclination to have faith in something fanciful doesn't always come from the religious.
He's not even basing this off a mathematical model, like physicists do when they say things like this, he's basically ranting like a madman on a street corner. He's putting less effort into this than DesCartes did for his Evil Demon.
Here are some other questions, related to this "creationist" theory:
1. In how many dimensions is this supposed simulator living?
2. Is the simulator itself embedded inside another simulator?
3. Why then, do we have only 3 spatial dimensions?
4. What are the chances of us being at the bottom of an infinite chain of simulators?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
If this was a simulation it would be like Second Life. We'd all be carrying giant pink dildos and constantly trying to hump everything.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
It's unclear why a simulation would be necessary since Douglas Adams already revealed the answer: 42.
Even were we to imagine some technology and technology advanced civilization capable of simulating an entire world, the minds within them, and anything that such minds can perceive and be affected by (i.e. we can perceive and be affected by atoms, electrons, quarks, etc but we can not perceive or be affected by an atom or particle say 100 million light years away) - even if we postulate such an enormous computing capacity - the capacity has to be finite. Even were the "computer" running the simulation the size of a world or a star or a galaxy, it is still a finite thing. Thus the simulation (the amount of our universe which we can perceive) must be "digitized" somehow - it can not go on forever and must break down at extremely small scales. So there must be a smallest "distance" or "time unit" and things like that in the universe in which we live. If we lived in a universe where the physics was "analog" or "fractal" (for want of a better word) where regardless of how small a time period we look at (or a distance or an energy unit) there can always be something smaller this would entirely disprove the simulation(I think) theory as the capacity of the computing machine needed to create such a universe would be infinite leaving no room for the "programmers". In our universe we do live with a physics which has smallest possible units of distance, time and energy which does not prove or disprove the simulation theory but does give one something to think about.
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
For this to be true in even the most allegorical sense would require that we stretch the definitions of "computer" and "simulation" well beyond anything we currently understand and well beyond the bounds of our ability to be concise and specific about what the terms mean. Using these terms here is just mixing up apples and oranges.
We might as well, in other words, say that our universe is a blender inside a giant appliance store, a stageplay inside a giant theatre district, a mildewing blow tickler inside a giant hoarder's garage mess, or anything else bearing the one of the rough relationships signal:carrier, content:form, fragment:whole, instance:structure, etc.
I mean, what sort of computer are we talking about here?
What is its nature, not just logically, but physically? Do we even know that we're speaking "physically"? Isn't this the scale at which such quantities break down?
And doesn't our idea of computation and simulation require precisely that mathematical rules apply for these to be carried out in the first place?
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
If the simulation is completely perfect, then it also must have a near infinite amount of memory as well, or else little inconsistencies would be manifest and detected. But philosophically, if one were to create a simulation, and that simulation is perfect and infinite in size and scope, then it is by definition the same as if you had created the universe. So really it doesn't matter, except to mathematicians whether or not it's a simulation or reality. It's fundamentally equivalent at this scale.
So if the simulator is simulating something that is a mathematical truth, then does that not mean the universe of the simulator also obeys the same laws? In that case, their universe may be simulated as well?
simulators all the way down?
If we are living the simulation, then the program has already been written, so it must have been a programmer of the past. There is nothing 'futuristic' about it, except that the programmer might have a better computer than any of ours.
Maybe we are, and maybe we aren't. Without a way to find out, a way to get out, or a way to influence the outside in a way that's useful to us inside, what is the point of this speculation? It's practically equivalent to the philosophical position that it's all a dream, which is something that every culture seems to come with from time to time, and it's always a totally useless theory. It just doesn't lead anywhere; it's a logical dead end.
If you are going to write an article in the NYT, at least pick a subject that could lead to someone somewhere getting some sort of benefit. Well, beyond a paycheck for writing an article in the NYT...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Maybe reality is simulations all the way down? If we are simply part of some advanced civilization's computer simulation, could they be simply part of an even more advanced civilization's simulation? Repeat ad nauseum.
While an interesting thought experiment, somehow I think that the conclusion is irrelevant. If we decide to distinguish between reality and a hyper advanced simulation, what is reality, if not just that? Reality or simulation, this is the universe we live in.
Many people dream every night. Statistically there would be many more dream worlds than real worlds. So therefore this world is more likely to be a dream world than a real world.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I mean, a Designer that watches what you do, and is very interested in your behavior. Has set some rules that you must obey, but won't communicate with you. It's everywhere, can see the past and the future as a single continuum, can change reality, it's omnipotent but has chosen to limit It's own power. ...
No, nothing seems to check.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
"some highly advanced computer programmer of the future" ...of past, surely.
Quantum physics seems to be the ultimate proof that the universe is a simulation.
The universe, intuitively, seems to be analog and continuous. That "feels" right to us. But quantum physics shows that it is actually discrete. But that is exactly how computer simulations work! They use very small time scales to make things appear continuous. We know that below certain time scales, things are essentially random. This is consistent with a computer simulation. You can't accurately simulate something that happens in less time than one "frame" of time. There is a whole area of mathematics that deals with how to make simulations work accurately given the limitation of discrete time scales.
The same happens with physical sizes. Below the Planck scale the universe starts to break-down and become random. This is exactly how things would work if the universe was using binary arithmetic. Suppose that every particle in the universe has a coordinate. You can represent it's position over a vast scale, but only with limited accuracy. The plank scale is that limit, and it indirectly tells us how many bits are in the coordinate field of each particle. When we try to measure the position of something accurately, we find that the position becomes random. And if you try to measure it's speed to more resolution than one "frame" of time, it becomes less accurate. Worse-yet: the only way we can measure the position or speed of a simulated particle is by comparing it to another simulated particule, which introduces yet more error. We are ultimately limited by the accuracy of the simulation.
One side-benefit of this is that we have an awesome source of stastically predictable randomness. Quantum computers are actually using the randomness of the simulator to take advantage of cpu-cycles that are "outside" of our universe. Within the simulator, we can only build a computer that is so fast. But if we find a way to tap into the computing power of the simulator, like by using the side-effects of one of it's built-in functions, then we can compute a result faster than anything we can do ourselves. It is like calling into "native code" while we are running in the interpreted bytecode.
Another indication that we are in a simulation is that quantum physics shows us that wave functions collapse when we observe them. That makes sense: why should the universal simulator waste time calculating quantities that are not currently being measured? Imagine a vast number of inputs, a vast number of calculations that produce outputs, and a smaller number of observers of those outputs. You can easily optimize away things that are not being observed. But we found a way to notice the side-effect of not calculating certain values. It's like a side-channel attack on an encryption algorithm. You can tell how many bits of a password are correct even without the output by seeing how long it took to calculate, or how much power the computer consumed. I wonder if the designers of the simulator didn't know that we could see these kinds of side-effects, or if they are too difficult to fix. Either way, we are seeing side-effects of some of the shortcuts and optimizations.
Perhaps one day one of the programmers will look over at their printer and find a little note from someone way down here inside the simulation. If you could hack a few words outside of the system, what would they be?
There is a flaw in the logic of figuring out how to test if we live in a simulation or not. They presume that it is human scientists that have made the simulation. We all know that it's really machines. I know the truth now! Excuse me while I go try leap from one building to another.
That the cow is a perfect sphere in a vacuum...
[rimshot]
Mathematics, especially simulation, is actually a very weak approach to physical phenomena in themselves. It's good for human insight *about* the phenomena, but in most cases the equations are intractable and a simulation is miserably inefficient at getting the specifics right. A small molecule can assemble itself in picoseconds without mathematics, but a simulation takes a huge supercomputer run. If you'd like to simulate something bigger, you'll find that simulation scales very badly.
A couple of thoughts come to mind: one is what the nature of the simulation (if we accept the simulation argument for a moment ) tell us about the nature of the programmers? Certainly we know that, considering the tens of millions killed in our various recent world wars as well as the millions of innocent children who starve to death every year, that the whatever the "programmers" of our universe are, they have no more consideration for us as we would for various cultures of bacteria killed off to test a new antibiotic. I wonder what else we could infer about the "programmers" simply by observing our own world.
Secondly I wonder if it would be somehow possible for the beings inside the simulation to "hack" the simulation itself somewhat how a computer virus in our machines can cause unexpected/unwanted/unplanned for behaviors in our computer systems. What would you have to do to corrupt and possibly take over the program running the simulation of our universe?
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
To whoever is running this simulation: FUCK YOU for making my goddamn life so shitty.
Apart from the intelligent life that wrote our simulation, if this simulation behaves according to the laws of mathematics, including statistics, then I presume it's safe to conclude that there must be other intelligent life here in our simu-verse.
Now it's just a matter of finding it.
Great...this is going to keep me up all night. Are we in a program within a program...etc.?
Try to get the attention of the guys running the simulation (through prayer, sacrifice, whatever).
If it works - and they enter their debuggers to communicate back - then yup - probably a simulation.
It probably just works for a while, though, since their management will probably enact policies not to flood the worlds too often.
Yeah just try explaining this one in a murder trial. But you see our world is a simulation, there is no way you can try me for murdering something that doesn't exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28Illusion%29
"Klapaucius constructs a massive machine capable of simulating the entire universe"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Hmm. A Deja vue. A glitch in the matrix? Seriously,such ideas are already a cliche. It had already been subject to fascinating contemplations in Hofstadters book of 1981. And progress in virtual reality and computer games since then have only amplified that the idea of a simulation would be hard to detect.
So I have to sing to and praise the ego of the simulation owner to get favors?
Table-ized A.I.
All this sounds very much like Creationism - some intelligence made our perceivable Universe.
And now, we'll have folks trying to legislate the teaching of mathematics in our science classes.
It's called your brain.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
It could explain that weird green diamond thing floating over my head.
Sure it matters. Because now we can start looking for cheat codes...
They're missing one tiny factoid that developers use when writing a program, mock frameworks. If our universe is a simulation and the programmer who made it does not want us to find out that it is, any attempt in our minds to discover that it is a simulation will lead us to perceive that it is will always return false. This means that we will perceive when looking closely at cosmic rays that there are no asymmetries and assume the universe is not a simulation, even if those asymmetries actually exist. Also, we're assuming that the programmer won't rewind the simulation to the point where we discovered the simulation and tweak a few variables to make it impossible for the discovery to occur. For example, spilled coffee on the electronics of the machine that would have worked correctly at detecting the simulation, or the lead scientist getting hit by a car the day before the observation, etc. I remember reading about how when they turned on the LHC a bird flew over it and dropped a piece of bread in the perfect spot among the transformers to knock out the power, so this may have already happened.
Iff simulation, then the feedback loop of global warming is an artifact of humans, who in turn are an artifact of feature creep of the Great Programmer-Of-The-Future.
Does that make God a VC?
Since our universe is expanding and will theoretically start shrinking at its max, is the simulation exhibiting recursive behavior?
Every once in while people claim that the universe works at our current level of technology. Right now we are at the computer and simulation stage. This has been going for years. In fact there are a couple interesting books that posit certain things in our universe, such as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, on the basis of information theory, i.e. that we can only know limited things about the universe as there are only a limited number of bits that can be stored. The flaw in all these hypothesis is that although we have modeled the universe for the past 400 years using math, those models have always been a simplification of our observations. The predication we make from them have always been an projection of what we think exists. In most cases we do not observe these predictions directly, so it may be that we create the formulation we expect to see. This is not to say that science models are not the best we have available. These models allow us to fly to far off planets, build computers, and create complex networks. The practical extent to science cannot be underestimated. But that is actually explains what is happening 'for real'. The is epistemology. It unscientific. It is extrapolating outside of the domain of our knowledge with no real way of testing if the extrapolation is valid.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Diameter of the observable universe is 10e26 meters.
Planck length is just over 10e-35 meters.
Therefore, 61 bits per dimension is enough to represent everything we can see. Add a few bits for various flags, and it fits nicely into a 64 bit register.
Paid Q&A/Research
Mathematician Edward Frenkel writes in the NYT that one fanciful possibility that explains why mathematics seems to permeate our universe is that we live in a computer simulation based on the laws of mathematics
Or we could live a "real" universe based on the laws of mathematics.
http://xkcd.com/435/
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"Kids! Dinner is ready!"
"But mom, we are in the middle of a game."
"I said NOW!"
"Aww, all right."
File->Quit.
Simulation or not, you're going to use math to describe behavior.
We use math and computer simulation to model our understanding of the universe.
And it turns out that when you use math and computer simulation to model the universe, the universe starts to look like a big math problem or computer simulation.
Let's keep in mind that math is merely tokenized information; divide by zero doesn't mean anything merely because for our own benefit we've defined divide by zero to mean nothing. The real universe does not have a division operation nor a zero, merely observable results that can be described using operations and magnitudes described by numerals.
So before making seemingly logical statements like "statistically we're more likely to be in a simulation than not" let's realize that this is a circular statement; a computer simulation may be a simulation to us, but it is only a few electrons moving around to the universe. As far as the universe is concerned, there are zero simulations: a mass of electrons moving around in a metal box is exactly that, electrons moving around in a box. There is nothing simulated about it because it's actually happening 100% in reality. The fact that the screen outputs an image of a humanoid running through a city is, in fact, a screen outputting an image of a humanoid running through a city. That's not a simulation, it's actually being done. The "simulation" is not what's happening inside the computer, but in our suspension of disbelief; that we are not merely looking at an image on a screen (which is entirely real), but looking at a window into another universe (which is false).
In short, this theory conflates simulation with abstraction. The real question is not "are we really in a simulation" but rather "are we really figments of somebody's imagination". And is actually a much less scientific question than it seems. It's basically existential philosophy dressed up with technology.
lives in a world that cannot be understood mathematically. Where therefore something as technologically advanced as computers will never be imagined, let alone invented.
I have often though about the universe being created from a simulation that is based on twos complement signed integers. At the start they are all assigned completely random bits.
During the initial damping down of the system to a steady state, there will be a little excess of negative numbers, as the mean of random n-bit number is always -0.5 (e.g. the range for 8-bit numbers is -128 to 127), and these is what are interact for the rest of the simulation..
It makes as much sense to me as any other theory of the origins of the big bang....
I find it hilarious, though, that people are open to this possibility but so hostile to the idea of creationism.
If you ask me, it's the same shit in a different package. Throughout most of early history, man had a pretty bad understanding of scientific principles and "God made everything" was an answer that fit what was observable at the time. As advances in scientific understanding were made, we've come up with theories as to why we're here that are have a higher likelyhood of being true based on observations (the Big Bang, for example). It's also just as likely we were observing some advance's alien race's fireworks show that predated our known universe, but just because that fits the observation, does not mean it's true.
For example, if I put you in a completely darkened room and you heard meowing, would you know for absolute certain that there was a cat in the room? It could've been a recording of a cat, a person making a meow noise or even a parrot that was trained to meow. You could've said that "I heard a cat, so there is a cat in the room." and it would've fit your observation, but it could still be entirely incorrect. Likewise, these scientists may believe "the universe is a simulation" fits their observations. Just remember, until you can turn on the lights and see for sure - all that meows may not be a cat.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Looping or restarting is one thing, the fact that someone's running us in the background while playing a galactic edition of their favourite strategy game raises a whole other set of existential questions.
Zug-zug, brother.
--- Need web hosting?
"...this is the master control simulation everybody's been talking about..." "Who are you calling simulation, simulation?"
And WE are its programmers. No reason to believe that just because we exist as conscious minds here in the simulation, we are not ALSO conscious minds outside of the simulation. Is it a coincidence that a great amount of "new age" channeled materials essentially make this claim? Check out The Seth Materials, Agartha, and other such writings. Makes for a fascinating perspective, whether or not you buy it.
. . . and (s)he is a computer scientist.
As others have mentioned, this is an old idea, that we might live in a simulation. Anybody ever see "Close To The Truth" episodes on TV? I remember an early one talked about this quite a bit (It'ss a show that has folks like Ray Kurzweil, Alan Guth, and Leonard Susskind as guests, as well as theologians.) I don't remember who, but somebody on that show said that if any one from some universe ever has the ability to do a simulation and follows through, then the odds are that we are in a simulation, because 'most' universes would be simulations.
However, the big question to me is, is the universe discrete or not? Physicists, correct me if I'm wrong, but quantum stuff seems to suggest that it is discrete, while Einstein Space Time seems to be continuous. Continuousness would mean you really could have a perfect circle in the universe for example, with a diameter to circumference ration of pi, and that could not be simulated by a Turing machine style computer.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Love a good sandbox game...
Phew - I'm glad I'm not the only person this thought has occurred to. This doesn't even require a computer, or any sort of intelligence outside the simulation itself.
As anyone who's ever run a simulation knows, if a simulation is deterministic, it will have the same outcome every time you run it with the same starting parameters.
What happens if you don't actually run the simulation? It still would have the same outcome, because that's pre-determined by the starting parameters and the rules of the simulation. Just like the Mandelbrot Set is always there, whether you're taking a picture of it or not.
So an intelligence to press the 'RUN' button isn't required, and neither is a machine to run the calculations. Without the constraints of requiring an actual machine, we can have a universe of infinite size, infinite resolution and infinite duration.
By simply applying Occam's Razor we can easily dismiss "it's all a simulation" and replace it with "it's all just math".
So, it's all a computer program, with blackjack, hookers and ponies? Now I got a pretty good idea of whom the programmer might be.
Looks like this guy needs to read his Plato...
The abstract "exists" regardless of whether any physical universe is simulated or not.
In fact, abstract ideas even exist if physical reality doesn't at all.
Where is the git repo for this simulation?
then there must be maths in the world of the creator who made the simulation. The fact that there is maths in the creator's world implies that their world is a simulation ...
You know what they say about opinions. They're all fabulous!
Can you count to 100? Of course you can. We all can. Can you count to one billion? You could, but you don't have to. You know it's out there. Every number is out there in the grand continuum of numbers.
Consider how much RAM and disk space you have in your computer. It's finite, right? There are a finite number of possible combinations of all those ones and zeroes.
So every possible memory state of your PC is a really big number that's already out there. You don't need to program your PC to count that high to make those numbers real; they're real numbers by definition - and this holds true no matter how much RAM you can imagine.
That means that the outcome of every possible computer simulation is already out there, regardless of whether or not a computer even exists. The idea that a machine exists and is running the simulation as well is completely unnecessary. It's like postulating that there's no such number as 1,000,000,000 unless some intelligent being actually counts that high.
We can just say "the universe may be pure math" and be done with it.
I don't care, if it's a simulation it's working out just fine for me ... nuff said.
We are a pattern recognizing species. Mathematics is but a means of description, of writing out the patterns we see. Another is spoken or written prose, or poetry. Are we a poetic imagining within the mind of a (relatively) god-like Li Bai/Hafez/Yeats. Anthropocentrism by any other name would seem as likely.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Please let this be a simulation. That way, the programmer can reboot us once he's convinced we've destroyed the planet. Maybe she'll leave out the staff of Fox News next time.
I do not believe this, but many people do, so let us take this as an hypothesis and see where it goes.
Such a creator would have had to had a perfect understanding of each alternate universe that he declined to create. The creator would understand the complete history of all beings and objects down to the minutest quantum detail. This is required by the creator's omniscience. The creator would consider all universes which are internally consistent, that is all universes that seem to obey their own laws without flaw. The hypothetical creatures of these internally consistent universes would have no way of determining that they were in an alternate, not chosen for creation universe. This is because of the perfection of the creator's understanding, or if you want to put it that way, the perfection of the creator's "simulation" of alternate universes in the creator's perfect thought.
So the bottom line: you may believe that God created a perfect Universe, but you have no way of knowing that you are in the perfect Universe that God created. For all you know, you are a part of a alternate turd universe that God declined to create.
Of course it is absurd, but refute it if you can, I won't. Many would argue it no more absurd that the original hypothesis.
No, please, Edward Frenkel, don't become a lunatic speculating on nonsense! You were one of the serious, reputable pop math people in the world. You showed people math could be an avocation for people. Your book was great. Your YouTube lectures are great. So please don't start this nonsense. You're better than this. Put the motorcycle away. Let the shark go back into the deep ocean. Don't be a lunatic like this. We don't need wide-eyed nuts speculating on things that can't be proved. There are enough nutjobs around that you don't need to be one.
Great point. I was in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution, and also have written several computers simulations, and I have known about Fredkin's "the universe is a simulation" ideas since the 1980s. As I said before in some Slashdot posts, if you are serious about scientific skepticism, you have to admit is is possible we live in a simulation that has only been running for 6000 (or whatever) simulated years, and was started either from a check pointed version or started from some hand-crafted parameters and data files. Creators of such hand-crafted environments might perhaps be assisted by guided evolutionary processes like used in our PlantStudio 3D software or EvoJazz musical software, where a user picks from a set of variations over and over again to craft something (and originally inspired by Richard Dawkins "Blind Watchmaker" software). Using such tools may muddy the waters of what a "generation" means though, and it also seems likely organisms evolved together to produce their complex interrelationships in ecological webs.
In any case, the universe might be a simulation. It might even just be a game we stepped into for an afternoon, with artificial memories implanted as in some Star Trek Holodeck scenarios. And we may not know until it is over (if then, if our consciousness persists). And even then, how many levels of nesting and branching are they in a multiverse of universes? Maybe C.S. Lewis was right, when characters feel at the end of the Narnia novels that a better heaven even closer to "God" somehow remains "ever inward, ever upward"? Still, does God have a God? And so on? If so, do they all agree on what morality should be in a consistent way? Or is it just turtles some or all the way up and we need to make a morality that promotes life and community? Or is it just exactly the way some specific version of the Christian Bible say, and the fossil record and geological record is a test of faith?
Anyway, I hope considering the universe is a simulation helps more people move beyond a purely materialistic and "scientistic" view of the universe. There are so many interesting questions ignored, denied, or belittled by "materialistic scientism" (to use Charles Tart's phrasing).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://www.noetic.org/search/?...
All that said, on a practical basis we can see evolutionary processes happening all around us (like with the flu virus mutating every year or bacteria become antibiotic resistant over time). As I said above, even if the universe was designed and only running for 6000 simulated years, evolutionary processes may have been be part of tools used to help make it. The fossil record may indeed have been placed there as a test of faith, and yet, would such a god be worthy of worship except out of fear? So, on a practical basis, we have to work with a lot of assumptions about a vast universe in age, extent, and complexity where evolutionary processes are important -- while at the same time honoring the mystery of it all, especially the mystery of consciousness we dwell in every second.
The universe might also have been run for a long time up to a check point (like getting Linux set up nicely in VirtualBox) and then might just be run endlessly from that checkpoint. I'm not sure how "old" that would make this current run of the universe simulation then if the run was started only 6000 simulated years ago, but the check pointed version it was started from was let run for 14 billion simulated years before that?
Anyway, just various interesting speculations on the great mystery which probably is way beyond human-brain-sized comprehending. It is the height of hubris to think we really can understand the universe of universes in
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Well, who would've thought we'd all turn out to be sims?
I had over a period of years formulated my own idea about the nature of the universe largely inspired by Conway's Game of Life simulation. There was speculation that if the space for a Game of Life was large enough and evolved enough, the cellular automata could evolve into true life or intelligent life in their own celluar atomation universe. At some point I had the thought that the the automana didn't need the computer to exist. The mathematical definitions that defined their potential existence gave them a real existence whether we ran the simulation or not on some giant computer. The simulation was like recreating something that already exists. If we assume an infinite number of universes exist as quantum mechanics seems to suggest, then we are just experiencing one branch of a solution, one parametric path, of an immense equation with near infinite or truly infinite independent variables.
Our universe and our existence would be the same. Nothing need exist except the rules of math. You don't ask what comes below the bottom of a parabola, the same with our universe. The start is just where the rules start from a singularity. There is nothing before it because time is just a parameter that has no meaning before the singularity. Just has -1 y means nothing to the parabola y = x^2. The start of the parabola universe is at x=0 and there is nothing before it. However the Parabola Universe is not complex enough to contain sentient creatures such as ourselves. But there are infinitely more definable universe all with real existence in a sense, but then again only those complex enough to contain thinking creatures might be called/perceived as real. Given the infinite universes that then exist, there would indeed be some running simulations that create simulations of our universe, but our existence doesn't depend on those simulations being run, it merely gives those universes a window into ours.
I had started on a few occasion to put pen to paper to write these ideas down, but it appears I was beaten to the punch by Max Tegmark and his Mathematical universe hypothesis
Letter To Iran
If I were in a simulation and tried to prove it, the simulation would probably be smart enough not to let me. If I could hack into the simulation from the inside without being noticed that could lead to interesting possibilities. Still our brains will eventually be simulated but again what is the real difference between a simulated brain and a real brain if reality looks the same?
There is reason to believe that a 'real' universe would not also be describable by mathematics.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
What kind of hardware would these simulations run on ...
Morpheus: "Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?"
Seems like our observations of the universe would make it appear as if it was deterministic relative to our view point. This does not necessarily mean that the universe is deterministic though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unpleasant_Profession_of_Jonathan_Hoag
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_defense
I wish I was kidding.
Most creationists do present their model as an undeniable truth (give or take some of the minor details).
Most evolutionists, particularly those on slashdot, present their model as undeniable truth (give or take some of the minor details).
So using that as an excuse to reject creationism is pure unadulterated hypocritic hogwash. You need a better philosophical basis than that (eg. 'I don't like the idea of a God to whom I am answerable for what I do' would be much more reasonable, and more honest.)
I think WilliamGeorge's observation stands.
So maybe only 32 bits are needed? :-) http://en.memory-alpha.org/wik...
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wik...
Also great Star Trek on a Holodeck simulation confused with "reality":
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wik...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The universe doesn't "obey" "laws" of mathematics. How silly.
Mathematics is simply a modelling tool used by humans to describe and predict the various process going on in the universe.
if we're conflating matter with information or information-processing.
A blender perfectly simulates what happens in a blender, mapping matter to information. It is empirically perfect, in that every possible unit of information is represented by a dedicated unit of matter, without shortcuts; it is a perfect simulation of what happens in the theoretical case of "something being blended" which is a subset of the logically possible set of phenomena connected to the physical manifestations found in an appliance store as a "universe" of a particular kind.
"Ah," goes the response, "but in conventional simulations, the physical nature of the reality being simulated is different from the physical nature of the substance of the simulation, i.e. there is a logical congruence reliant upon some measure of generalization, but not a physical congruence, because the only reason to 'run a simulation' is for the case in which physical resources are inadequate to the computational task with complete fidelity, i.e. the case in which we can not 'simulate the concept' using a perfect and total material instance of it."
So be it. But that's my point. If all of this—you, me, the universe—is just a simulation in a "computer" of a physical order so radically different from it as to be analagous to the physical differences between—say—the simulation of a nuclear explosion and the explosion itself (the sorts of things that we need to run simulations of)—then we're talking about a "real" (i.e. non-computed, non-simulation) space so different from our own as to make the use of our terms ("computer", "simulation", and so on) in it, bound up as they are with our own ontological and epistemological limitations and assumptions, essentially meaningless—or worse, ideological—suggestive of something (by virtue of the intuitive and connotative properties of 'computer' and 'simulation') that simply isn't (and, practically speaking, can't be in any universe that we're familiar with) the case.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
this is becoming surreal, think, please define our universe before you go one step further, and the moment you say our's you are conceding that there are others. define the others. are you seeing the problem in this. slayerwulfe cave
Ok I wasn't supposed to tell you guys this but yeah you live in a simulation. I am one of the programmers. It was all just a clever scheme by the future cable companies to come up with ideas for TV shows.
The Japanese anime Might Gaine (c. 1991?) explored this simulation possibility. At the end of the series, it was revealed that the villain of the series was in fact a 2-D animation character representation of a being from 3-D space, that is to say, a real human or at least some sort of real creature. The entire world of the anime was merely this being's casual game, and all the characters in it were its pawns which it intended to kill.
This ultimate evil concept was created in part because the show animators and the toy company sponsor had gotten into deep disagreement over various things. The animators represented the meddling toy company as a terribly menacing and evil being from beyond who was the shadow in control of the world of the anime.)
While basically just a plot device, it does bring the question of what happens if you find out you really are just a pawn for some other being? And how do you know if you want to do it, or if the the sim simply wants you to think you want to do it? And what it the sim master wants to pull the plug? What do you do? This is what the hero of the show has to face. A flaw in the game master's strategy ultimately leads to victory for the 2-D world and a defeat for the 3-D being.
Carrying on the concept. the final camera shot of the Might Gaine series was an external camera view of an animation cel sheet, representing a view from our 3-D world into the animes 2-D world.
For what was a kids show, the series peered very deeply into itself at times. It is highly recommended, if it's understood the slow beginning of the show is just a setup for various plots that come together in the end. It takes time to put all the pieces into play. Would perhaps be worth watching the start of the final episode to see just how much is at stake (a desperate end-of-the-world scenario) and then begin from episode 1. This would make the stakes much clearer.
A 2-D vision created by 3-D beings who themselves exist in a simulation would entirely makes sense.
Sig for hire.
If we are in a simulation, and it's like any of the games we play or simulations we run for science there's some purpose or driver. Since were simulating at the level life and not just some abstract physics, then it's reasonable that some of the beings here are avatars. Who might those be? Well Duh. Celebreties. Or people who seem to achieve huge success with little effort like say Branson or J.P Diamond.
So go be a groupie. If you aren't interacting with a celebrity then your life is wasted. It's your highest purpose.
Or go on a thrill kill rampage, and get noticed by the game sys admins.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's hard to take these ideas seriously as long as they're always framed as actually running on a computer in a "real" universe somewhere. Even if we can demonstrate that we live in a simulation-like universe, it never followed that a real universe is necessarily non-simulation-like. Therefore, investigating such matters only serves to reveal a deeper character to the description of nature, but doesn't imply anything about things beyond what we can observe.
What a load of crap.
That will get their attention.
Those little pesky humans... Is it a bug or a feature?
... and yet again overlooking the fact that such simulation machines would certainly be more like quantum computers.
Plato's Cave - The n-th sequel. Like most sequels pretty lame really.
...Zenrandom, and I fight for the users. Now make with the light cycles.
But OHHH NO, God forbid we teach creationism as a possible theory in schools. But this, of course.
That the Matrix is an intentionally bad series of movies designed by the machines to discredit the fact that it is real.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Denying that we are in a simulation seems a bit like pre-Galileo conventional wisdom claiming that the Earth was the center of the universe. What is so special about this universe of ours, besides the fact that we're in it?
If a well-financed team of humans could create a simulated "universe" in a computer with sufficient complexity that evolved beings in the simulation exhibit "intelligent" characteristics, then that seems like a good bet that someone could have done that for us. It actually seems much more plausible than the other alternatives. Wait, what are the other alternatives again?
You drank my drink, you drunk!
I hope no one hits CTRL+C
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
Their theory is just the script of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Clearly, we're in a simulation because someone wants to know the question to the answer to life the universe and everything.
Because logical slippage due to the vagaries of language is a decided risk.
Here you're mistaking the location of the dream. Dreams in *our* world, as *we* understand them have these properties. But again (and as I said in my other post) we're talking about another world that we have no reason to assume is not fundamentally different from this one (in fact we might, for many reasons that don't need belaboring here, and that are bound up with the very logic of the proposition in relation to what we understand about our world, have many reasons to assume the opposite—that it *is* fundamentally different from this one).
How does a "dream" behave in another reality in which *this* entire reality can *be* such a "dream?" Who knows. Nothing of what we understand about "dreams" as we know them in practical conception is remotely similar to what we mean when we talk about *our entire reality.*
How does a "computer simulation" behave in another reality in which *this* entire reality can *be* such a "computer simulation?" Who knows. Nothing of what we understand about "computer simulations" as we know them in practical conception is remotely similar to what we mean when we talk about *our entire reality.*
All we have to do to call the universe either a dream or a computer simulation is completely throw out any particular characteristics that are unique and empirically attributable to what we mean when we say "dream" or "computer simulation" as we are able to make use of these terms.
In other words, sure, this universe is a computer simulation or it's a dream...for certain values of "computer simulation" or "dream" that, if we were to accept them as valid, make the terms able to encapsulate *just about any phenomenon*.
This universe could also just be another reality's version of a "jumbo citrus fruit" or of an "Oscar awards ceremony," for the same reasons, and with the same level of practical or logical utility obtaining for these statements. For Slashdot purposes, I propose that we collaboratively write a paper on how this universe is just another encapsulating universe's version of a "Netcraft confirms it, Linux is dying!" press release.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
mathematical laws from? If the most reasonable explanation for ours would be that someone put them there, what kind of über-laws would his world have? And how would they come to be? By that logic, he would himself most likely be part of a larger simulation! And how much resources of his universe would it take to model ours? Surely electrons or quantum states or whatever he would be using don't come free. Much less does an potentially infinite hierarchy of model universes within model universes. I don't think the idea is even new, didn't some french dudes explore this idea?
Are we a simulation of a simulated universe, or are we a simulation of a REAL universe?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
What are vi fans gonna do when they find out the universe is built with emacs?
Table-ized A.I.
Could it be possible that the smallest subatomic particle is made up of its own universe itself containing suns, planets, molecules, atoms and subatomic particles that have their own universe? I mean simulated, of course.
If I'm existing in a simulation, doesn't that make me a mathematical model? If I'm a model shouldn't I eventually appear in a bikini on the Swimsuit Edition of Sports Illustrated?
Some of you may want to put your simulated eyes out first.
Haven't these guys seen the movie The Thirteenth Floor?
Fuck, the hosts file guy is back.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
So much.
It would be impossible for any computer simulator to simulate women as they are. So the proof that the universe is not a simulation=women.
What about relativity? This is just the first thing that comes to mind. Areas of space that have high mass or energy density have a slower rate of time. Also, time passes slower for high speed objects. Are these extremities pushing the finite bounds of this god-like cpu? Slower time could easily be a result of a more complex environement... any player of Minecraft knows this... complex environments mean low tick rate... wait, are minecraft creepers self aware to some extent? We know their code isn't complex enough to develop our level of intelligence, but are they self aware?
Anyway, back to relativity, did Einstein discover the mathematical equations governing the max efficiency of this universal cpu? Is this why behavior of extremely large systems behave so differently, and yet so similarly, to extremely small systems?
Oooh, what do recursion algorithms look like when implemented by this simulation? Instead of building a larger LHC, why not design an experiment that could force recursive algorithms to show up... STACK OVERFLOWS!!! ... well depending on the competency of the programmer. Is he a Q race high school noob? Or is he a Q race Ph.D.? Either way, there are bound to be a couple of bugs in the system... let's exploit them :D
This is the typical: If God is the Creator then who created God argument.
If we are a simulation then who wrote the simulation and are they too inside a simulation written by somebody else.
Absolute non-scientific junk.
Hey human, I've been peeking in at my simulation, and just realized that I messed up a bit with you. I'll do what I can to fix it. Sorry about the mess-up. Also, remember to floss nightly.
You know. I think this has all been predicted already. And the answer is 42.
The first time I heard that album (album!!) 34 years ago, I was thinking, perhaps we all are a program!
And now I have support.
Thanks Doug.
The problem is I don't know how to bring up the console.
the size of the 3D printer they used to make this universe?
Yep, but that external world could be a simulation.
Personally, if I had my own simulation, there would be a god, and it'd be me. I'm sure it'd run slower because of all the omniscient stuff that would have to go an about intent and action, but it'd be worth it to strike evildoers with lightning every time they got out of line. Anyway, slower or not, no one in the simulation would know, because they'd measure time by their own perceptions and environment, which, of course, would also be running slower.
And of course, I'd write it in, uh, c. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That would mean computer programmers in the distant future are unethical, insecure and anti-social... oh wait....
It would also mean Heaven and Hell could be very real, or rather "very simulated" but from our view point real enough.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Seems to me, a simulation might lose its value if its occupants become aware that they are living in a simulation. Perhaps this is a question best left unanswered?
Kirk: And how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn't you say?
Saavik: As I indicated, Admiral, that thought had not occurred to me.
Kirk: Well, now you have something new to think about. Carry on.
I am surprised that a mathematician as eminent as Edward Frenkel would say " Statistically speaking, therefore, we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than the real one", and then go on to reason that because there are more an more "simulations" it is probable that we are living in one. As he well knows, probabilistic spaces are metric and proofs that apply to metric spaces do not necessarily apply to more general topological spaces. Although there are infinities that are countable, such as those for statistics involving Hilbert spaces, there are also many kinds of inifinities that are uncountable, so just because there may be more of such simulations all the time need not imply that we are living in one.
I think it is likely that Professor Frenkel is having some fun with his insufficiently knowledgeable audience.
did some think this in the holodeck
This is a proposition made by a man trapped inside his mind
I humbly beg to differ.
Mathematics may, or may not be a specific set of rules/formulaes.
The way TFA puts it, the mathematicsal "truths" that we discovered are/were but a part of a much larger set of mathematical truths which has been set in the past.
If that statement is true, the progression of the "discovery of mathematical truth" can be said to be "linear".
However, if some of "new fnalged" mathematical truths that we found are not of a part of the future set of formulars, then what we discover today is literarily changing the future
"It's fundamentally equivalent at this scale"
you really pissed me off with this one. The more i read it the angrier i get. It also indicates extreme laziness at the root.
But the part that is worst, is that you actually think you have a witty point.
idiot.
We are beginning to be able to map some parts of the brain. In the very foreseeable future, it may be possible to simulate an entire brain, and to feed it with the world info that may surround it. That (simulated) person will believe it is in a real world, or may believe, like I do and basically like Descartes did, that the question is immaterial. Perhaps some of us are real and some are not, in a sort of Truman Show-like simulation. But there are problems when it comes to simulations at a large scale. Our universe and the knowledge we have is fairly large (to my imagination), so if this was a simulation, that would mean that the simulating universe would have to be infinitely larger. Otherwise there would be the Borges mapping problem: http://3stages.org/c/gq.cgi?fi...
By the way, just got back from the slashcott, and was immediately redirected to the beta. It's awful. It's trying to be like the rest of the new web, e.g. arstecnica, pinterest-style multi-column graphics-heavy at the top, giant text, and tons of scrolling to get thru content. Have you seen Drudge's new design? Nah, didn't think so, because it isn't needed. Google's search methods were nice, but more importantly the simplicity was easy on the eyes.
comments are a double-edged sword. There's a lot of junk on here nowadays, but if you're willing to wade thru it you can still get a lot of good stuff, especially if you ignore the ratings. Ratings used to work, but it seems like they've been gamed and a lot of idiots are holding the reins. Afraid to say it, but it would be nice to socialize it, say, and let you follow half-decent commenters (but definitely not via fb). That actually might incentivize me to log in and contribute to the discussion more often, as opposed to being ignored with low scores while dorks give 3rd-grade level responses and get 5's and insightful.
The depths some people will go to in order to not acknowledge there being an intelligent creator.
Some possible ways to determine if we're living in a simulation
Look for signs of optimizations/short cuts in the simulation
The fact that unqualified individuals such as George Bush Jr and Barack Hussein Obama got elected into the White House, not once, but twice (for both of them) should be one of the strongest signs there is in showing the "optimization" for the fall of the Empire of the United States of America.
Is there a maximum speed?
We can't tell if it qualifies as "maximum speed" yet. Optimum speed, yes, maximum, not yet.
Is there a minimum size?
Hell yes ! By electing A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL into A POSITION of the POTUS (which can lead to MAXIMUM IMPACTS), this couldn't be more of a sure sign of fantastic optimization.
How would you know when you've found a glitch? As a programmer I can look at the world and readily see things that make no sense that make me think if we were living in a simulation then this might be the result of old cruft that really needs refactoring.
For example, in humans:
* The appendix seems to serve no purpose other than to kill us
* The birth canal passes through the pelvis leading to infants heads getting squished, or to mother and baby both dying if the head doesn't fit (at least before the advent of surgical intervention)
* The pharynx being dual-purpose and making it relatively easy to suffocate while eating
* The retina has blood vessels on the surface, rather than behind, giving us a blind spot
* Three muscles would suffice to move the eye around, but we have six
And some non-human examples:
* Flightless birds with wings
* Flying animals (such as bats) having heavy, but sturdy bones while some flightless birds (such as penguins and ostriches) have unstable, light, hollow bones that would be ideally suited for flight.
* Many species have strong instincts to behave in ways that are detrimental, such as moths being attracted to a flame
* Plants are green, but they would absorb more light energy if they were black
Creationists say the gods created the universe. But who created the gods? They always existed, they say. See, unnecessary step. Can simplify it to "Who created the universe? It always existed."
"Greetings Programs!"
Later loses himself in his work. Gets trapped in the Grid.
Loses touch with his family. The only one smart enough to reach out and text or page the REAL world is a program that wants him to die. When his son does show up he still fails to communicate. Some things never change.They flee as a team and a sacrifice is made. He merges with his own creation.The resulting chaos destroys the enemy and his son escapes into the real world with a digital ISO. Question1: If you were going to live as the grandchild of Flynn would it matter to you what world you lived in? You would age faster in the sim than out in the real world, however digital copies and backups in stasis could restore youth if the door swings both ways. Question2: Where is the digital backup of our creator? If the point of any sim is to advance science, tech and entertainment how long has the sim been idle. Civilizations don't typically last forever. If we are sitting in a computer of a long dead society...
Virtual World Error Chose One
Retry / Fail
If this universe isn't real then I'm going to save my money by not repaying my student loan.
Oh wait, money isn't real either, so no need to save it. I'll just spend it instead on booze and hookers.
I took LSD and came up with a similar theory, I made the mistake of telling my parents at 4am when I was a young lad in high school (well screaming in amazement at my findings) high as a kite that the world was programmed by aliens and we are living in a virtual reality.
well I told that to the doctor as well, been on medication ever since. how can that fucker get away with it and I was deemed crazy?
A division by zero and overflow is called a blackhole in our Universe, what are you smoking?!
How can you tell whether the machine you're signed into is a virtualized instance or a physical machine?
How does this differ in anything but name from creationism?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
is it is subject to infinite regress. Let's pretend we are in a computer simulation cooked up by some advanced race of aliens. Who's to say that the advanced race of aliens isn't also locked up in a computer simulation by an even more advanced race of aliens, etc. ad infinitum. Since there is no stopping there is no point in entering. The best response to these idiots is to simply not play the game. Walk away and ignore them.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
How many of these simulations get turned off when the creatures inside prove that its a simulation?
If world simulations are possible, and people create them, then it is likely people teach the creation of them, and even have studied them extensively. Perhaps it is, in fact possible to create simulations from within which it is impossible to prove is a simulation? If so, it may be that our simulation is in fact some student's project; and by proving the world is a simulation; we may actually be exposing a flaw in his design; causing him to fail his world simulation class.
Or perhaps, in trying to model the big bang and formation of the universe, someone wrote such a detailed simulation that simulated life evolved within it. Likely the simulator never even noticed us, not for a while yet until we start spreading out and moving asteroids, eventually cocking up his results in some small way until he finds us, and realized his frame rate has been so slow because the resolution was up way too high if we were able to evolve.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Dudes... someone created THE best Sim adventure ever! To top things off they even made it into a space sim as well, that is if we get off our asses and start doing shit. Just pray to jebus he doesn't unleash all of them disasters, he did already rape the dinosaurus.
Seriously now, it would explain a great many things for example: the lack of anyone else out there. Theoretically, we should have come across or least seen other civs. zipping by in their space ships. Space is huge, that's all fair and good but considering the number of worlds out there we at least should have seen something by now. But when you think of this universe being a simulation we are most likely all there is and the rest of the universe is like an animated skybox.
The seriously messed up question would be, what would happen to us if we, as the simulation, became self-aware? Will they shut down the simulation? Are they going to continue it? Are they going to test us even more harshly? Are they going to make their presence known? SOO many questions.
But then again, it could be all bullshit.
There was a Moody Blues song back in the late 1960 (the name of which I forget offhand), but part of the lyrics, which I will never forget, was "Thanks to the great computer, we are all magnetic ink."... :-)
There is no rhyme or reason for any of this. Some other very smart people have all of this covered. There is no point questioning everything on gods green earth. Do not worry about anything. Everything will be ok.
There is something incredible happening and that's all you need to know about all of this.
There are no more questions just; Information overload. Information overload. Information overload. Information overload.
There is something incredible happening and that's all you need to know about all of this.
There are no more questions just; Information overload. Information overload. Information overload. Information overload.
Why does this keep coming up? Theoretical computer science proved this long ago. Heck, a perfect Turning machine is _defined_ as being able to simulate the universe. In fact, the universe is _defined_ as Turning complete!
This only comes up because Physicists are not trained in Computing Science, and programmers these days aren't either! You may want to read those "Theory of Computer Science" books.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil; This is the tree that God commanded the humans not to eat from. It's effects are becoming knowing of good and evil and death.
The tree of life; This tree was implicitly included in what the humans were given as food. It's effect is granting eternal life.
So had the humans done as they were told, once they would have tried the fruit of the tree of life which they had already been granted access to, they would have become immortal. If a human had the ability to grant eternal life, I'm relatively certain they would demand enslavement in return.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/
You'd get into trouble for flushing a failed experiment? I assume this is an allusion to the flood in Genesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistler_sled_dog_cull
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/09/why-copenhagen-zoo-killed-marius-giraffe
Humans are wiping out entire species through mismanagement and corruption (poaching, etc) as we speak.
The reason given for the flood is found at Genesis 6:11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
Those are only the genocides we have found documentation or archeological evidence for. And we know as a fact that most (if not all) of these genocides have to do with control of resources.
"Corporations would kill to get a PR department like that"
Enough said.
You are correct more than you know.
They are going to tell you to stop asking so many questions and just admire the magnificent universe and all of creation.
If this is a simulation, couldn't the programmer have created a set of conditions for objects that have reached a stage classified as 'conscious' to have that consciousness saved and relegated to a 'heaven' or 'hell' at the point of their 'death'. I wouldn't program a universe without creating conditions for 'life.' Maybe everyone goes to a heaven where all other consciousnesses are stored or maybe the programmer was a sadist and everyone goes to hell regardless of actions or maybe since it's all an experiment what he THOUGHT he was programing as a 'heaven' is actually hell for us.
The Blade Itself
While this is definitely a possibility, neither the detection method nor the explanation why this is likely is convincing. First, any good simulation would include countermeasures against detection from the inside. While Quantum Mechanics looks like a rather obvious such countermeasure, something else could be at work here. Second, for there to be even one simulation including us, human beings would need to be accessible to simulation. With the complete failure so far to simulate or even theoretically model how intelligence could be simulated, that is far from certain. And as soon as that little issue fails, the whole idea goes out the window.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
All these "world as a simulation" models assume that the ones doing the simulating are 1) in "our" future (if that even makes sense), and 2) like us. It would make much more sense to assume that they are not like us and exist in a dimension we cannot possibly imagine. In effect, the question "is our universe a simulation?" is the exact same question as the age old "is there an all powerful god?" And the same logic could be used to prove there's an invisible killer robot from the future living in my cupboard.
We are the x or AI in a computer program with defined rules.
We could be part of a computer program, but I don't see why it has to be a simulation. In fact we already know that computer programs which do not simulate the universe are possible, so it seems much more likely that such a program is not a simulation. Our laws of physics might be representations of something completely abstract in the "host" universe.
Please read about Banach–Tarski paradox and others... ... yet :)
"Mathematics laws" are not perfect and we have ugly ducks here and there mainly because axiomatic model didn't yet got rid of axiom of choice.
In short, world doesn't follow mathematics
If you're going to base reality on future activities, at least make it something more original than a computer simulation.
I suppose that 100 years ago cosmologists would have said that we live in a giant dairy farm.
Why is this even being posted, it's utter tabloid garbage.
If we find out it's just a simulation, it might ruin whatever result the simulator is looking for, and we'll get shut down!
A witty
This is just another iteration of the same pointless bullshit. By very nature, this hypothesis can't be proven right or wrong, and makes no difference either way. Stop fucking around and get back to work.
semantic externalism almost certainly refutes the idea that we or our envoronment are sims.
there are waaay too little bugs.
"we live in a computer simulation based on the laws of mathematics". Yes, but not in the sense this article suggests. We (or more precise, I) is a program/simulation running on biological hardware, the brain. As "I" is built on mathematics, it is only capable of mathematical observations. Any sensory stimuli coming into the brain is sampled and turned into math for our conscious to consume. The "I" in my brain cannot know about anything else but mathematics. This is not too bad though, because mathematics is very capable.
About 35 years ago and without scientific approach. But it might just be interesting to watch http://youtu.be/jXeVgEs4sOo
Follow the white rabbit.
Mathematics fit the universe so well because IT WAS DEVELOPED FOR IT. Universe was first, then humans created way to discuss about things in abstract ways. For example it's just easier to use mathematical notation "2+2=4" than to explain it over and over again. Mathematics isn't something you discover, mathematics is something you create to model the universe. No wonder it fits nicely. Ofcourse, that doesn't mean we aren't in a simulation, but I find it's way more likely math fits the universe because it was devoleped for recording and describing events in the said universe, simulated or not. And being inside the universe, it doesn't even matter.
Wikipedia says there are 4,200 religions in the world. The likelihood that Christianity is the "correct," "true" religions seems scant. So picking 6,000 years isn't logical as I'm sure other religions put the age of the universe at other numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
This changes little, for all intents and purposes there is no difference between a prefect simulation and reality. Basic question remains the same: what kind of exploits can we use?
There are only two "real" dimensions, as I started it all as a 2d project. But after I saw how things kept either disappearing from the edge or getting stuck on corners i decided to make it wrap-around. Later I hacked in this "height" dimension, which is basically nothing more than an ugly hack. There is a real 3d simulation aolso, but I mostly use it to simulate objects in free space. I did map the whole original simulation to be on the outer layer of one of these objects. Can you believe there are still tales in circulation about ships falling off the edge of the world. I mean, It's completely understandable to yabber about flat earth, as the sphere projection is kinda a new thing, and it also pretty much ruined the top and bottom parts, so I had to fill the gaps with ice. But nothing has dropped of the edge of anything for a long time, the warparound has been in place for ages..
Nobody said "jailbreak" yet.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
What do you think is the type of Pi? const ludicrous double?
:wq
We are indeed living in a poor simulation engine that hasn't been maintained for a while. I did some work to fix all of this here : http://aherve.github.io/blog/2014/02/13/we-should-fix-the-physics-engine/
Can't wait for the next patch to be live ! ;)
How would you know how consistant dreams this particular dreamer has? Maybe he is very very intelligent and alien for us, capable of dreaming whole universities. Also, you don't usually notice any missing details when you are still in the dream, as details fill in when needed. After you have read this message I won't exist anymore.
Get a life!!!!
I might be wrong, but it's my interpretation of Gödel's incompleteness theorems.
If you're in the Matrix, you cannot prove you're in the Matrix, if you're in a big simulation, you cannot prove you're part of the simulation.
So the definitive answer to this question is : "Maybe".
I'm not a fan of "we're being similated in some giant computer" arguments, since it goes against reductionism and Occam's Razor: rather than simplifying our understanding of the world, it adds a whole new "outside" world which we must also factor into our explanations.
However, there is a slight modification which makes this an excellent reductionist argument: get rid of the "outside" world. Rather than assuming the existence of a complex universe/multiverse/whatever with some number of dimensions, physical forces, etc. we can just assume the existence of some computational medium and take everything else to be part of its program. Since universal computers are all equivalent, it doesn't matter what the computational medium "is". It certainly doesn't have to be a physical device in some "outside" world, but even if it is, that outside world wouldn't need to be anywhere near as complex as our Universe. It could be a rule 110 cellular automaton, for example.
Boltzmann posed the question, what if the Universe is just a giant gas cloud, and all the structure we see is just a temporary statistical fluctuation? The refutation is that small fluctuations are far more likely than large ones, so when we look somewhere new, the odds are astronomically high that we would just see chaos; but we don't, we find more and more structure, from quarks and gluons all the way up to the cosmic web, implying a larger and larger fluctuation, which is highly unlikely.
However, we can apply the same argument to a cosmological computer: what if the Universe is just a giant computer, and all the structure we see is just a temporary statistical fluctuation *in the program*? In that case, we would expect small programs to be far more likely than large ones. In that case, it is highly likely that when we look somewhere new, we'll see *similar structure to what we've already seen*, since large differences would imply a larger (and less likely) program.
We can then apply the anthropic principle to both scenarios. The simplest gas fluctuation which allows intelligent observers would be a "Boltzmann brain", ie. a lone brain containing the thoughts you're thinking. The simplest computer program which allows intelligent observers would contain a few simple rules (ie. 'physical laws') and would begin with very little data but would rapidly expand to consume more memory once started. With such a limited set of instructions, the intelligence would have to 'emerge' from the interaction of these rules, which would be very unlikely but compensated for by operating on a vast dataset simultaneously. Sound familiar? ;)
I don't know, I was watching my roommate play with his prison sim game and now it all makes sense. Clearly, the dude playing our sim is also a sadist.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
So if none of this is real, let's just ignore Laws and Morals and start doing whatever we want, see if that crashes the program. Why not all band together and send a message to the Simulation to stop killing our Simulated Children with Cancer and the like.
Or maybe this guy has watched the Matrix too many times...
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
Who then programmed the programmer?
Thank you for playing 'Occam's Razor'
Next theory please
Oh great simulation overlords give me one million dollars, one Olympic size pool filled with Vicodin, and CeeLo Green to sing fuck you at my evil succubus wife.
This is why the Mathematicians and Physicist need to leave this to Philosophers. We have already had a look at this a long, long time ago, and determined the answer is: NO (sort of).
More like, the answer does not matter. The "real" World is what it is.
Savage and his colleagues assume ...
Well there's your problem...
How can it be that no one has posted "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" yet?
Those simulating machines already exist, we call them brains. There are currently 7 billiions. Each one is simulating a universe, with its law, its characters, its past and its future..
There is a flaw in the argument: the more simulations, the bigger the probabilities to be inside one of them.
(By simulation, I understand that it tries to hold the biggest degree of similarity with the original)
The hidden premise is that each world, real or simulated, is equiprobably ours, because of their similar complexity/memory.
But in order to be indistinguishable (to mankind's best capacity) from the the original, the simulation must contain as much as the original, and thus itself, recurrently, like infinite matroska.
So this premise requires something like infinite resources, or some hidden loop (where causality and ontology are thus not what we assume).
Otherwise, if the premise doesn't hold, then the simulated worlds are necessarily smaller and less complex than the original, and recursivity is limited. And we can conclude that the future cannot simulate a past with the necessary complexity and fidelity to lead back to a future of similar complexity.
Of course, you can suppose that the original world has an unknown supplementary degree of complexity/memory, lost in the simulation we inhabit. But that's saying something about the containing world, and should be part of the explicit premises.
Zyx.
1. Any computer storage medium capable of storing all of the data in the universe would have to be larger than the universe itself, even if it only stores the basic state (determinate or indeterminate) of all matter in the universe. That's one heck of a computer.
2. We would have no concept of the 'real' world that was not given by this world to us, so we could hardly even suppose that such a world existed. To even hypothesize such a world is almost certainly to reproduce our own world in slightly different terms, and project it onto a mysterious "other." E.g.: Star Trek, women from other planets just happen to be different colors. Hence the idea of a world that is not so mathematically predictable is dependent from the beginning upon our experience of this world and its mathematical characteristics (notwithstanding the complaints that math is not quite so clear-cut as portrayed).
3. This is just a kind of Idealism which, instead of seeing the world of ideas as being more mathematically simplistic, sees it as less. Yet this view is not for that reason any less Idealism.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
Of course it looks that way! All of our programs and simulations are reflections of the universe itself, reproducing it on a small scale using the same rule set. Its akin to looking at a painting and thinking that it looks so real that maybe reality is just a painting.
If simulation is so broadly defined as to be indistinguishable from actual reality (whatever that is), then this is merely yet another way to conclude that God created humans are created in his/her own image, rather than the other way around.
One of the reasons some cite as evidence for a simulation is the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, where all possibilities are open until a measurement/distortion/noise is introduced into the system to "collapse" the wave function. Problem is that the Copenhagen Interpretation isn't backed up by proof.
It's not a simulate in my eyes. Energy != information. Energy = energy. There are heavy and light particles/waves in this universe. Light only would be needed for a simulation. So why then do we have matter that is heavy?
42 Al-Karm The Bountiful, The Generous 27:40, 82:6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Islam
facebook.com/eggselgern
... when you divide by zero.
I don't think the programmers of our simulation are more intelligent than us. Rather, they are quite stupid and created our simulation so that we can solve all kinds of difficult mathematical problems for them. We humans are trying the same all the time with our struggle to create simulated AI.
Also, be careful about claiming we figured it out. Maybe our simulation is one of "let's run this universe until the sims figure out they are in a simulation".
For the love of all mankind, don't turn off the simulation computer!
Wouldn't this imply that the universe running the simulation is also mathematical? Which universe is running that simulated universe? How far down do the turtles go? I call bullocks.
-Bob-
Such thinking can only come from someone for whom nothing really tragic has ever happened.
Proverbs 21:19
We are just prisoners in a cave. Höhlengleichnis (or the Allegory of the Cave) is about the limit of understanding from seeing limited information (shadows on the wall).
Our view of the universe really is just like looking at shadows on the wall. One can come up with so many stories that seem to fit. Science is about eliminating those stories that seem to contradict something. We do this filtering by using our theory to predict something and then try to observe that "shadow" to validate it or fail to observe it to invalidate it.
While we have done a great job eliminating so many theories, the shadows still are so low in information that many theories still seem to fit. This is one that, by definition, would fit since, well, no matter what shadow we see we can claim that it is part of the simulation. In fact, maybe the shadows themselves are all there is to the simulation.
I feel compelled to write a paper to "take seriously" the question of number of advanced civilizations having destroyed themselves by exploiting flaws in the host simulation.
Secondly we should "take seriously" the number of such exploits having lead to cascading destruction of themselves and the simulation of host universe above them.
These questions and more are all knowable by application of hand waving test you could interpret to mean that which creates the most attention to yourself.
Too stupid; didn't read.
/. avoid fairy tales in the future?
This is so goofy I couldn't even get to the end of the summary. Can
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
http://www.interfaith.org/forum/rotating-universe-16602.html#post281469
--
Sheshbazzar
So how long until we find the first exploit and someone hacks the universe?
People are hostile to dogmatic attitudes. Nothing is sacred except will to question everything.
Stupid coward people try to attach themselves to popular opinions and larger groups in search for security and acceptance. They try to that same trick with science and that is the line where they must be stopped.
A story I wrote is based on this idea, in particular, a mathematician working with NSA on quantum cryptography finds that a physical process is being randomized using an eight-bit (think 6502) pseudorandom number generator which he concludes is an example of a legacy code that was never updated (think of the sin() function, when is the last time you looked inside that?).
Of course, the story is about the discovery process more than the discovery itself.
And the movie Thirteenth Floor is a much better look at this idea than the Matrix is.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
We already know that matter and energy are quantized and there is a stupendous, but still finite, number of states that can exist in a given volume of space. So we are already in a discrete machine. I guess one question is weather it's created on purpose by intelligent beings, or weather simulation is run on the hardware with much less memory than the theoretically simulated object. Should we start looking for JPEG compression artifacts?
...it's all around us, even here in this room.
The Matrix has you...
sprints to mind
We'd all be carrying around guns trying to kill each other. I have to say I like your idea better, but I'm not a religious fundamentalist either, which I believe creates some bias against sex and for murder.
Really all that needs to be simulated is one person's perception, you have no way to prove that what you perceive, including other people is actually part of the simulation or all in your head.
And that leads to the idea of alternate universes, where the address of your memory allocation gets corrupted and you end up in an alternate simulation where some small thing has changed, but your recollection of that thing is otherwise.
As an athiest, I think what you're referring to is "agnostic". I'll believe in the "programmer from the future" or "God" or "Q" when I meet him/her, the latter being preferable.
Unless such occurrences are all retroactively changed when the law is changed, which would include changing how we remember perceiving said prior law. A good programmer won't copy a function, they'll link to it, and when that function changes, no other code referencing that function will have an idea that it was ever different than as they currently perceive it. That's what they call retroactive continuity.
"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." - Conan the Barbarian
You're assuming that humanity is the only intelligent life in this simulation. For all we know we could be the newbs, and The Programmer could be just watching macro-statistics of all "life" across the entire simulation.
How would a mathematician run a simulation?
(1) It would not be a QCD simulation of the whole universe, because in most times and places a simpler approximation than QCD would be sufficient.
(2) Special Relativity - helps the simulation, because it constrains the crosstalk between different star systems, different galaxies etc. A full simulation of the entire universe would not be necessary.
(3) Quantum Mechanics - hinders the simulation, by increasing the computational complexity. Incompletely decohered multiple worlds must be simulated, and this is hugely computationally expensive - unless you have a quantum computer.
A corollary of the simulation hypothesis is therefore: if we are living in a computer simulation, then quantum computers are physically possible, at least in the host world.
The article keeps mentioning "we" in this simulated universe. What does that mean exactly?
Just one universe is vastly beyond human imagination in detail to the point of nonsense (except as an abstraction or seen through analogy to something small like a bubble). So, if we accept that things are immensely larger than our local surroundings (perhaps infinitely so beyond the "observable universe"), why should it really make a difference how big a metaverse is in space, time, and variation or entropy, energy, and information? Anything times infinity is infinity (except maybe zero). It's not like someone is paying a bill for AWS EC2 instances for each simulated universe, is it? Or maybe it is on some level?
See also: http://refspace.com/quotes/Dou...
---
"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Seems that http://it.slashdot.org/story/0... could be updated.
Take an 8-slice pizza. Now divide into 0.5 parts. You get 16 half-parts. So 8 / 0.5 = 16. This works out in pizza as it does in math.
What GP did was dividing by zero and then rambling on about the remainder. Which is wrong. Divide an 8-slice pizza by 2 and you have zero slices left as remainder. Divide the pizza by zero and you have all the slices left. But that is just the remainder, not the actual answer to the division.
Dividing by zero is bunk anyway you slice it. It's not infinity, it is undefined. Yes, taking the limit of something approaching zero, that is fine (in most cases).
Lim(x-->+0) 1 / x = infinity; math is cool with that. 1 / 0, not so much.
Perhaps you already got a re-roll, and this is all you where deemed capable of handling, even after arbitrage and considerable though by the elders...
Go to a conference on CFD turbulence, and you will know that there is no way this is a simulation. Most computational models have so many fudge factors in them they could have been thourght up by willy wonker. And even then we dont get close to reality. Shure there are neet tricks, but if you consider the odds and economics of things, the likely hood is we are not in a simulation, there is just too much detail, accross too many scales.
Look at it this way, If we were in a simulation, then it would have to be close to the reality of the programers and scientists who commisioned the simulation, else Why make a simulation with so much detail
At every level you have to simplify
obligetory
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2535
http://xkcd.com/878/
This is probably not the answer. I believe that the simplest answer is usually the correct one.
Good point on asking what's the noticeable difference. Although sometimes we don't notice a difference until we go looking for it. That may require imagination first -- or it might involve taking facts previously stumbled upon and ignored and discarded and arranging them in some new way. For example. as mentioned on slashdot recently:
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
From the article linked in the story: "And here is the rub: the culturally shaped analytic/individualistic mind-sets may partly explain why Western researchers have so dramatically failed to take into account the interplay between culture and cognition. In the end, the goal of boiling down human psychology to hardwiring is not surprising given the type of mind that has been designing the studies. Taking an object (in this case the human mind) out of its context is, after all, what distinguishes the analytic reasoning style prevalent in the West. Similarly, we may have underestimated the impact of culture because the very ideas of being subject to the will of larger historical currents and of unconsciously mimicking the cognition of those around us challenges our Western conception of the self as independent and self-determined. The historical missteps of Western researchers, in other words, have been the predictable consequences of the WEIRD mind doing the thinking."
Also along those lines, here is a book that discusses the systematic ignoring of observed homosexual behavior in animals by biologists for over a century:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
http://books.google.com/books/...
It turns out that most wildlife biologists for decades recorded their data to fit the assumption of heterosexuality in their studies. How many other times have scientists not seen (or reported) things that violate assumptions or cultural taboos? For example, look what happened with cold fusion. A quarter century ago, scientists funded by hot fusion grants claimed (after very little effort) that they could not replicate "cold fusion" and so it could not exist because it conflicted with current dogma, and the topic became verboten among academics. It could not be seen by most academics. Now, decades later, other MIT scientists teach a course on cold fusion and claim to be able to reliably replicate it.
http://www.infinite-energy.com...
http://www.e-catworld.com/2014...
When Google takes a long time to return a search result, is it because the Google servers are slow or because the universe simulation is deciding what the answer should be, including inventing a backstory? :-) Who is going to investigate that? And how? :-)
Also, as a counter example, does it really make a difference (in the short term to Earthly affairs) if there is just one galaxy of billions of them? Yet it is still somehow interesting to know and discuss that. Of course, that was based on verifiable observation. But no doubt there was speculation before that...
http://amazing-space.stsci.edu...
"In the early 1900s, astronomers were debating the makeup of spiral nebulae -- cloudy, spiral-shaped objects found throughout the night sky. Were they gas clouds located within our Milky Way galaxy, or were they vast groups of stars located far beyond our galaxy?
In 1919, American astronomer Edwin Hubble tackled the question. His keen astronomical knowledge was combined with a powerful tool - the Hooker telescope with its 100-inch mirror, on top of Mount Wilson in Cal
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Oh, c'mon... get real!
They send in the naive new guy, all full of good intentions, and he gets thoroughly nailed for his efforts.
'twas ever thus.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... a janitor frees up the wrong plug, so he can polish the server room floor.
We pretty much know that reality is not exactly the model we build in our minds, although that's a terrific approximation at the scales in which humans typically operate. We don't have a clue what reality is that would match what we see at either end of the scale; quantum phenomena to universal scale/big bang. The closest thing we have to those is just the set of mathematical equations that describe parts of them.
So, how different is that from just being a mathematical simulation?
That's why the snow doesn't burn over a lighter flame, but turns black and smells funny. It's all fake, like "The Truman Show".
uh.... It should read "some programmer from the past". Because he would have already executed the code. Also, I want to take a moment to point out that there is no reason to assume that a simulated earth would ever approach the same future, meaning just because the "real" world developed the tech to simulate the entire society of earth and the physical universe in our immediate vicinity, doesn't mean that we (in the simulation) will ever be able to reach that point. Actually, the idea of existing inside of a simulation implies that there are probably upper limits on what we are capable of achieving, because we'd have physical limitations to the computing power available to run our universe. Honestly, its a ridiculous idea.
So, what kind of things are the programmers looking for on this simulation? Maybe somehow to trascend their own existence? To see the outcomes of a lots of "what if's"? To recap the moment in wich the programmers become self-aware of its own existence as a continuum being over the whole spectra of simulations ?
We are in a simulation. I am the programmer that is spoken of, except it is not a simulation as much as a singularity. But to maintain a path for each individual consciousness, this singularity expands to include the concept of time. Doubt causes the singularity to expand and slow down. .pangaia.
Regardless if the universe is a simulation or not. Your mind filters and processes the incoming signals to something that your conscious mind can handle. So its worth keeping in mind that you never actually see reality, you see the simulation of reality that your brain has reconstructed for your conscious mind to interpret.
Tucson, say.
Mathematical truths are not "discovered". Believing so is the purest platonism. Mathematical truths are constructed.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
To programmers; For we are your gods!
No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
SUB: PERCEPTION TO COSMOS VISION
Human Being has limited perception and the simulation of the Universe by Human Nature becomes stale without content in depth.
Cosmology is a borderland between Science and Philosophy. The Oigins-Science of Cosmology vedas provide an opportunity in search of Unity in diversity.
East West Interaction helps Cosmos Vision development.
Vidyrdhi Cosmology [dot] blospot [dot] com:
So somebody else invented mathematics, and used it to write a simulation designed to fool us into thinking WE invented the mathematics we use? Can't we just believe the obvious? We invented the mathematics we use. We don't need to reach beyond that in order to feel good about ourselves. We aren't stupid. We aren't children. We can do things for ourselves.
I think I should clear some common misconceptions here. First of all, quantum mechanics doesn't tell us that everything is discrete as people are yelling here as a proof of a simulation. We have many situations in quantum theory were the acceptable values for energy are continues. The quantisation of energy happens in systems. And after that, the quantisation of time is a proposition, not a fact. Spacetime in continues. Otherwise we will face many problems in even talking about a simple movement, and the momentum will not be a well defined property. On the other side, on the assumption of us being in a simulation, if such an advanced computer exists to be able do calculation (instant calculations, other wise useless) on such vast amount of elements, there is no need for that to be discrete. Even in todays electronics, we have analog adders or simple gates that are readily available, but not used for practical reasons. Even digital integrated circuits are working analog, we only make them in a way to support our digital needs. So being discrete is not even a necessity for a simulation.
Vedic knowledge asserts the unreality of the world - http://www.amazon.com/Concise-Yoga-Vasistha-Swami-Venkatesananda/dp/087395954X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392753733&sr=1-1&keywords=yoga+vasistha
There isn't enough matter in the universe to build a computer that could simulated the universe that extensively and accurately. Think how many atoms are in a computer thats only powerful enough to accurately simulate a single atom and its mechanics. Think of it as a ratio (computers mass) to (simulated mass). With out any research i can tell you its way more more than a 2 to 1 ratio. Meaning it would take more mass than what exists in the universe to accurately simulate a universe, unless we figure out how to make a powerful super computer with a single atom.
... but sadly, Rome-0 lived in Everquest and Julie-8 lived in World of Warcraft.
Forces larger than those between television networks kept them apart...
No, but absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Which is a much more powerful and useful construct. Yours allows for the Easter Bunny. Mine argues against it. See how that works?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I really hate this font and format. May I please have the old slashdot back?
Maybe most of the universe IS a simulation, But I think the Earth is still in Beta.
So... If that its true then he is really found a God.
-no sig today-
It might seem that the end run is to come to the conclusion that we live in some science experiment or we are just part of a computer program like the Matrix. Or you could come to the conclusion that there is order and patterns in all of this and every thing is not as chaotic as you would think things would be if they were all left to just percolate on their own. Maybe just maybe there is a creator of the universe and all of this was created by intelligent design. I"m sorry for pissing off all you heathen's out there in ./ land...
Paul E. Bahre
older, really, since the simulation had to be written first, and /then/ the dirt could be simulated :)
What's funny is that this premise is exactly the same as a belief in a god. Both answer THE question "Where did we come from" with the same answer, someone we can't observe made us with magic. So where did that person with magic powers come from? Well, either that person was always there, come from thin air, or was made by someone else whom they can't observe with even more magical powers. Our existence seems extremely improbably, so explaining our existence by saying someone else made us or made a simulator seems counter intuitive and I don't see a difference at all between this theory and god from a logical stand point.