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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*
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)
[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.
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
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.
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.
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.
If your life and the events thereof had been run through the simulation more than once, without that knowledge being a designed part of the simulation, how would you know? You are, after all, a part of said simulation.
I've given this idea some thought as well, but the conclusion I've come to is that I don't think that we're part of a computer simulation. I do, however, think that whatever it is that makes the universe possible is liable to operate on principles similar to a computer, and may even be somehow artificial.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
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'!"
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.
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...
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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 (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)
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.
Where is the git repo for this simulation?
Who said you're the first instance of "you"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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.
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
About the deterministic part. Quantum mechanics is not deterministic, however if you include all timelines in your simulation and not just a single one, it gets "sort of" deterministic in the way that the outcome is always 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?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unpleasant_Profession_of_Jonathan_Hoag
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.
@anonymous: "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."
There is no simu-verse per se. This planet is simulated to a high degree of resolution, but the star fields we see `out there' are actually point sources on a 2-D plane mapped onto a very big distance. This allows the simulation to expend less processing resources on rendering the rest of the `universe'. When we see a close up of a galaxy group such as is produced by the Hubble, the simulation is temporarily creating the high-res image in the telescope.
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
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.
... 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.
I don't think anyone is proposing putting this idea in an introductory science textbook or discussing the idea seriously in a science classroom.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
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
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.
But this is? Which I think is the above poster's point.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So much.
Even if the universe actually is deterministic, it appears to present us with an illusion of free will, that is, we can analyze a set of data presented before us, and make what we believe is a free willed decision about what to do in the future. This apparent free will is indistinguishable to us from what actual free will may be, and is, in fact, sufficient to suggest that both that free will actually does exist and in turn that the universe is non-deterministic.
Because if the universe were deterministic, then it would be somehow possible to anticipate what its state will be in the future from a given state, but with the appearance of free will, we can still make a decision (that appears to be free willed) with the data of such a prediction, which could, in turn, affect the state and change its outcome from what was predicted, if even only on a scale that is insignificant (for example, determining the color of socks that the person will supposedly wear the next day, and making the decision beforehand to deliberately wear a different color from whatever the prediction indicates). And if we could not choose to do something like this, then it would not be the case that we appear to have free will at all. Therefore we do, and the universe is non-deterministic.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
Yes, it is. From TFS:
If a method exists for determining whether a given theory (well, hypothesis in this case) is correct or not, then the hypothesis is falsifiable, and thus scientific even if it is incorrect.
Furthermore, the OP is dishonestly implying that the hypothesis in question is or is about to be taught in public schools, when nobody is even suggesting that. He is then taking that strawman and using it to make it sound like an obviously inferior alternative to creationism - a false dichotomy.
So in short, you're being far too generous to the OP. He has no point at all, only a deliberately pro-ignorance agenda.
The problem is I don't know how to bring up the console.
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?
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
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.
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
Creationists accept creationism, period. Evolutionists accept evolution, until a better theory comes along.
There may exist a way to test whether if there really is a god or not as well... it's just that you have to be actually dead to find out.... you certainly can't communicate the results to anyone, regardless.
The biblical god could also be considered to be disproved if humanity itself were utterly wiped out. Some future species which may evolve intelligence later, or aliens visiting earth and doing archeological research might stumble across the belief system and would be able to recognize it as false because of the outcome.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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"
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.
I'd rather have death than slavery. Better to die on my feet than live on my knees.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
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.
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.
there are waaay too little bugs.
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...
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
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.
Savage and his colleagues assume ...
Well there's your problem...
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.
So where is this being taught? Where are people proposing it be taught in school?
That's right, nowhere. Nor is anyone proposing it be taught in science classes. As an atheist I would be against this being taught in science class precisely because it is not science, it's merely a philosophical conjecture.
No one is singling out religion for not being taught in science class. In fact I have no problem with Religious Education classes in school since they are a part of human cultural history, we had them in my country and it helped convince me that religions were fundamentally incorrect. However, what I am against teaching is things that are not science in science class. Creationism isn't science and should not be taught in science class. Nor is this simulation conjecture, and it should be left to a general studies class or other class where such philosophical waffle can be debated.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
... when you divide by zero.
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.
So how long until we find the first exploit and someone hacks the universe?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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"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.
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.
Obviously 0.5 does not equal 0.
Now divide a pizza into 0 parts. You have... 0 parts left. This is known. This is obvious. Maybe it is a mystery. Maybe there is an extra step left out of the equation where somebody ate your pizza. That is all very interesting, I'm sure. But you still have 0 parts left.
And the nonsense about "Dividing by zero is bunk anyway you slice it" is totally demonstrably wrong. IEEE defines diving a floating point number by zero as being Infinity. And then in dividing integers by 0, they define it as an error. So it is already defined. As in, not bunk.
I obviously have a different philosophy about what numbers are for, and the purpose of math, than the IEEE. You're welcome to disagree. But good luck debunking.
$ ruby -e 'puts 1/0.0'
Infinity
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.
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 ?
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
I said the biblical god... not just god. There are aspects about the god as described in the bible which, if humanity actually ceased to exist before the universe itself ended, would categorically disprove the existence of such a being. That would not mean there may not be another god, however.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That is exactly what I was saying... In fact, it is why I explicitly used the term "biblical god", as opposed to just "god"... if god happens to exist and the bible is wrong about him, then that still means that the biblical god doesn't exist, because the biblical god, by definition, is a god as described by the bible.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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.
If you got enough details wrong, then yes... I would claim to not be the person that you wrote about.
Humanity no longer existing while the universe carries on is a sufficiently large enough detail to be wrong about when it comes to the biblical notion of who god is and what his plans for the future of humanity allegedly are that it would mean that the biblical god was imaginary, about on par with claiming to write a biography about someone in particular, and saying that they never married or had any children, when the facts actually show that the person was married for 50 years and had 4 children and 7 grandchildren.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
It would still mean that the biblical notion of god was wrong... and that he did not exist....
The Muslim Jesus is not the same person as the Christian Jesus either... since one group describes him as a human prophet, while the other describes him as a deity who came to earth to live in human form. That's a pretty darn fundamental difference.... it doesn't mean Jesus didn't exist, but it does mean that at least one of those two groups is definitely wrong, and the person that they claim to believe in is not real.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's not clear to me that the existence of reincarnation precludes the possibility of the universe existing with simulation-like properties.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
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
May I introduce you to the Michelson Morley experiment, which disproved the existence of the Aether?
Granted, more specifically, it really disproved the existence of an Aether which possessed the properties that it was already presumed to have. It did not disprove the existence of an Aether which may have had other properties... but that was not the point of the experiment.
This is explicitly why I used the phrase "biblical god", because likewise, by making certain assumptions about the nature of God and his alleged plans for humanity and the future of creation, and in particular, those properties ascribed to him in what we commonly know as the bible today, if it really were true that a god with those characteritics and agenda does not actualy exist, then it is entirely possible to disprove the existence of that particular notion of god. It's just that the lengths to which one would have to go to establish such proof is not practical.
That doesn't mean you can't do it.
You can disprove the existence of absolutely anything when you have made a fixed set of specific assumptions about it... when you have disproven any of the assumptions, you have also disproven the existence off something that conforms to those assumptions, since something that actually exists cannot conform to assumptions that can be provably shown to be false (presumably by contradiction).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'