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Neil deGrasse Tyson Says It's 'Very Likely' The Universe Is A Simulation (extremetech.com)
mspohr quotes a report from ExtremeTech: At the most recent Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, [scientists gathered to address the question for the year: Is the universe a computer simulation? At the debate, host and celebrity astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson argued that the probability is that we live in a computer simulation.] This is the crux of Tyson's point: if we take it as read that it is, in principle, possible to simulate a universe in some way, at some point in the future, then we have to assume that on an infinite timeline some species, somewhere, will simulate the universe. And if the universe will be perfectly, or near-perfectly, simulated at some point, then we have to examine the possibility that we live inside such a universe. And, on a truly infinite timeline, we might expect an almost infinite number of simulations to arise from an almost infinite number or civilizations -- and indeed, a sophisticated-enough simulation might be able to let its simulated denizens themselves run universal simulations, and at that point all bets are officially off."
Like deGrasse Tyson, "back in the day" I enjoyed LSD as well, when you could get the real thing. These days, I've dialed it down to occasional weed and red wine...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
he is not a scientist.
"This is the crux of Tyson's point: if we take it as read that it is, in principle, possible to simulate a universe in some way, at some point in the future, then we have to assume that on an infinite timeline some species, somewhere, will simulate the universe"
Can we at least try not to sound like Tweedledee and Tweedledum?
What's the fastest way to get the plug pulled on the simulation you're living in? Convince a significant fraction of the population that their existence is pointless because they live in a simulation. This will corrupt whatever experiment that's supposed to be occurring and the outraged grad student will ragequit the simulation and start over. Or maybe he'll restore from decades-old backups and arrange bizarre and agonizing deaths for Tyson and that meddling philosopher Bostrom.
did you poo-poo the existence of an intelligent creator?
O course it's turtles. Who do you think is running the server? ;)
make something wild up and toss it out their as "maybe its real or can become real."
The descent into madness.
Sim theory isnt new. It was thought of because of the breakdowns in math that fail in computer sims also fail in our reality physics.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Computer...arch
Nothing. Clearly he is wrong.
Personally I'm worried about the griefers who are now going to try to crash the sim.
No doubt, yeah.
This is why Sagan was revered. This other guy not at all.
These celebrity scientists are annoying. More proof that just because someone calls themselves a "scientist" doesn't mean they know jack shit about anything.
Ah yes, Neil-Degrasse Tyson, the man who said "There are more stars in our galaxy than there are atoms in the universe!"
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Maybe we're all living in a microverse battery! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Belief does not equal proof. Nobody cares if you believe in zombie Jesus, just stop trying to pass it off as fact until you've got evidence.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Once we've advanced enough that we can create a new universe-simulation within our own, is it possible to also go back *up* a level at that point, and complain to the bosses of our creators?
Basically, is this like a multiversal colonization affair where eventually you break off and make your own "lesser existences", or are we limited as fictional entities to our own level of realism or those below us - but in that case how deeply can it go before it all falls apart, and what would be the 'highest' state that's reading about the people who made a game whose characters wrote a book about making a simulated universe that we're now in? ... I think we all need much more drugs.
My guy reaction was that he was joking. But thinking about it, it makes sense. We live in a universe where it is possible, at least in theory, to simulate a smaller universe. Given the vastness of time and space, if you assume that life has a high enough probability of arising that there are a lot of aliens out there, there are going to be a lot of simulations that are sophisticated enough to contain AIs that don't know they are simulations.
If only 10 alien races create 10 simulations each, that's 101 environments that can contain intelligence (100 simulations plus the one non-simulated universe). The odds then less than 1% that we're in the original non-simulated universe.
It still doesn't sit right with me - my skeptical gut tells me it is silly - but where is the flaw in the logic?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Kinda like looking at the resolution limit of the simulation. Like looking reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally close at your monitor and noticing that all the colors are just reeeeeeeeeally tiny LEDs in RG and B and that none of those other colors really existed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Even if it were true, it amounts to the same thing as intelligent design, which is supposed to be off limits for any self respecting scientist, right?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If you are living in a simulation then somewhere the is also a set of player avatars. And guess what, they are not playing code monkey's. They are people like Steve Jobs or Prince. Gliteratti. Your highest purpose in life is to be a groupie to some rock star. Seriously. Anything else and you are a Orc in Warcraft.
The laws of physics make sense in a simulation. Pixelation for example is the same as the law of diffraction. quantumness is the fact that textures are calculated from hidden variables and only instantiated when you actually look.
The question is, does the real world have the same laws of physics as ours?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Neil Degrassi created that Canadian teen soap opera?
There are many more infinite universes where we aren't a simulation than ones where we are, for each universe may contain a universe simulation but the chances are slim that it does because of the GPU requirements.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
sub Simulate()
call DoStuff
call Simulate
end sub
[The Universe] has gone offline.
That's what they want you to think.
And not a very good simulation at that. Whoever wrote it couldn't even synchronize time, even at a local level. And that hard coded top speed limit? Because "No one in there is ever going to need to go that fast anyway" I bet. And the way it shits itself when you put too much mass in one place? Very sloppy! It's probably just the N-Dimensional equivalent of a potato battery, proudly displayed at "Take your Kindred-Daughter to work day", for a very inefficient method of converting hydrogen into plutonium.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Simulated turtles all the way down, obviously.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
it's LOGO turtles all the way down.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
O course it's turtles. Who do you think is running the server? ;)
But do the turtles run Linux?
There are two arguments for there being an intelligent creator of our simulation:
1) There are no unit tests for our universe. A truly intelligent being has no time for testing, he (yes, we all know someone creating a universe in a basement is going to be whatever concept is closest to "male dweeb" for their species) has things to get done.
2) There are unit tests, but we cannot sense them since our instances would have been terminated in isolation.
Since both situations cover all obsoverd results, we can be sure of an intelligent creator. Just because his friends cool him "loser" does not mean we cannot call him God from inside his own creation, for a sufficiently advanced OCD is indistinguishable from godhood.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sim theory isnt new. It was thought of because of the breakdowns in math that fail in computer sims also fail in our reality physics.
Sim theory (or at least the basic concept) predates computers by hundreds of years. One early example was in the 1600s when Descartes described an "evil demon" that took over all your senses "Matrix" style complete with other fake minds. Computers weren't around but he described all the concepts of "brain in a vat", the matrix, the 13th floor, etc.. perfectly.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The universe is a weird place. At one point in time, the whole thing occupied the same amount of space as my mouse. Where did THAT object come from? I know, we're not supposed to bother thinking about it since conventional wisdom says we can't find out about it.
"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." -- Douglas Adams
The fact that the seeds of life and consciousness - us - are embedded in the fabric of the universe is interesting. A dust devil starts in space, a gravity well forming in a gas and dust cloud, the solar system starts coalescing. Sub-whirlwinds start in the spinning cloud, coalescing into planets. On the third one from the center, life appears. Let it spin for a few billion years more, and here we are, contemplating the mechanism that spawned us.
"A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself." -- Michio Kaku
I find flights of fancies like Tyson's to be rather interesting.
A simulation... for which there is precisely one hypothetical creator Tyson excludes.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Evidence for what? kuzb didn't make any claims about anything existing, so he's got nothing to prove. The onus is on the one who claims there is something.
But every simulation simulates a universe. Its may not be as fancy as the universe we live in but it would look pretty impressive to anything living inside it. A universe which hosts our simulated universe would obviously be much larger than ours.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Peer-reviewed evidence.
There you go. Now you can stop saying there is no evidence. In all likelihood, you knew already there was -evidence-, and were perfectly clear about this in your own mind while you were lying. It's hard to miss the fact that between people contemporaries of Jesus dying rather than recant their experiences (yes, persecution is historical fact), improbabilities of prophecy fulfillment, even if we discard 90% up front as possibly "self fulfilling" or on the basis of other objections, and modern testimony of experiences, there is unquestionably -evidence-.
Yes, I know you'll probably do the standard thing here and conflate "evidence" with "proof" or redefine "evidence" to mean "evidence that satisfies me personally, which I will never allow it to".
Evidence doesn't mean either. Evidence means evidence, and you were just provided with it. Try to avoid the compulsion to simply continue lying about it.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Someone who loves science and hates philosophy so much really should use his inside voice when speaking about such things.
And if the universe will be perfectly, or near-perfectly, simulated at some point
Thats his problem right there, you cant simulate a universe without changing it (or destroying it?), so you have a recursive problem. Or consider the energy use. Im sure there are other ways to poke holes in his attention seeking headline.
Indeed, the idea even of a universe that has a part we see and a part overlayed right on top of it/in it and through it that we cannot see, is much much older than that.
O course it's turtles. Who do you think is running the server? ;)
But do the turtles run Linux?
Of course they do. The permissions are restricted to this universe, though.
This *IS* science. He's forming a hypothesis based on observed evidence.
No this is not science. Science is coming up with a testable hypothesis which explains an observation making the fewest possible additional assumptions (Occam's razor). This is a wild guess which explains nothing, is untestable and requires the existence of a vast chain of increasingly complex universes filled with intelligences each of which have created a simulation of a universe. If this is science then so is every religion we know of since they only assume the existence of one (or more) intelligences with the ability to create universes not a semi-infinite chain of them.
Physicists do this all the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And traveling back in time is impossible because whenever someone invents a time machine, it's eventually used to go back and prevent the invention of the time machine.
odds are that you're not you.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Justin Bieber & Kim Kardashian
While the guy is very personable and obviously well educated he just seems a lot like a glory hound. It seems that as soon as he starts fading from the public limelight he always gets a little bit more crazy with his ideas to try and create sensationalism.
I'm starting to think he's really trying to cope with his own mortality and doing whatever he can to be more firmly etched in the history books.
http://www.simulation-argument... But the idea has far older roots, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
But do the turtles run Linux?
It's Linux all the way down.
The problem with this argument is that it contains several wrong assumptions. First we don't have an infinite timeline because our universe has a finite lifetime and will eventually end in one of a variety of different scenarios e.g. heat death and the "big rip". Next you cannot simulate a universe as complex as ours inside our universe since such a system must have as many possible states as our universe. This would require all the energy and matter in our universe leaving nothing with which to construct the simulator.
This means that each simulation must be simpler than the universe it runs in and so there will be a finite limit on how long the chain can be before the most complex simulation possible resembles Pacman. Hence the assumption that there is an infinite chain running for an infinite time is simply not logically consistent.
You have a source for that? He did say "Thereâ(TM)s as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. We are, each of us, a little universe.â
assuming we are all in a simulation, what's the corollary ? How should I live my life differently ? Other posters have talked about a god, what good does it do to run a simulation and pick out the faithful for what, another simulation ? It simply does not matter if we are in a simulation or not.
Nullius in verba
So maybe I can hack it and get a 14 inch dick...AND a personality
Table-ized A.I.
Heh. All that statement proved is that YOU aren't a scientist... or even know what one is.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
But who's simulating God ?
Even better, maybe we're a simulation in a simulation that figured out how to make simulations too. I wonder how many simulations deep this can go?
I have a question: why would anyone simulate the Universe in the first place? Even if you have the possibility. What's in it for an alien race?
What do NDEs have to do with Jesus ? It's not evidence if it's not even related.
A stoner might have said (and really likely has said this) "Like, we live in a computer simulation, dudes. See, since, like time is infinite, that means and infitinite amount of stuff happens, which means, like anything can happen, which means, like anything you can imagine happens! woooooahh, dude." The thing is, if he posted it on this forum, you guys would have tore him three new assholes, and make him the stuff of memes.
The only reason this is taken remotely seriously is that N. dG. Tyson said it. Since he is famous, otherwise intelligent people will forget all they now of logic, science, and the world and go into full gushing mode. See, the problem is that being famous for something instills this odd belief that it makes one wise in all things. This is seldom the case.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
The article says
"...if we take it as read that it is, in principle, possible to simulate a universe in some way, at some point in the future, then we have to assume that on an infinite timeline some species, somewhere, will simulate the universe...."
But this is impossible since, to simulate a universe completely would require at least the entire resources of the original universe which, due to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, are not all available. Q.E.D
That is, trying to run a true simulation of a universe within an already-extant universe is akin to trying to run a perpetual-motion machine: it ain't gonna happen.
There are other objections, but this is IMO the strongest.
Of course it is related. The theology predicts one will experience what one does indeed experience, with high correlation. Hypothesis proposed, then tested, and validated by results, if you prefer a more scientific-paradigm rendering.
Those experiences as documented and peer-reviewed being well beyond in content what one could plausibly "just happen to happen" as a consistent consequence of brain failure from a naturalistic perspective--including meeting and interacting extensively with deceased relatives.
One may as well claim shorting out your computer will create the interactive experience of playing a pre-release Doom 6.
If you disagree, however, it doesn't matter regarding the issue at hand. An alternate explanation for evidence does not alter its status as evidence for the thing it is clearly evidence of. At most, the evidence then becomes evidence for multiple possibilities. I am not claiming "proof", nor thereby forced-converting you due to the fact you could not choose to not accept proof without going to a mental hospital.
It is evidence, and you already knew that.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
But who's simulating God ?
Nobody. That's a myth, just like Santa Claus, the Year Of Linux On The Desktop, and other bits of wishful thinking. The simulation allows the simulated people in it to have imaginations and to believe in nonsense.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Simulations are created by nerds. If we were living a simulation, nerds would get laid and jocks would live in their moms' basements.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Husbands.
There are logical fallacies here. If we can simulate something in "some" way, we do not necessarily have to assume that we will eventually end up with perfect simulations, even with infinite time. Or that ever growing size of simulations will have to necessarily culminate in universe scale simulations. This optimism is along the idea of Victorian assumptions of progress or along the lines of Cartesian optimism before it was tempered with Lockean empiricism. There will usually be previously unanticipated hard stops... like the speed of light.
Tyson is obviously a master of his subject and I am not a physicist and I don't understand these simulation theories in their native form. But this summary makes it sound like we are getting ahead of ourselves with assumptions.
I think Santa Claus is simulating God on a Linux desktop.
So long as the drugs produce those effects while you're dead, sure.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
infinite number of simulations to arise from an almost infinite number or civilizations
Isn't this about the same thing as saying it's Turtles, all the way down.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The people who report near death experiences weren't dead either. The word "near" should have given you a clue.
CAKE and tequila for dinner today!
What would be an acceptable proof?
Plato's theory of forms predates Descartes by nearly 2000 years. And is a form of sim theory, but like Descartes, falls down because the concepts and langage didn't exist to describe it in modern terms.
Learn to love Alaska
Reading the actual study would give you not just a disingenuous handwaving "clue", but actual knowledge. For the actual states at hand--including conscious perception during EEG flat-line.
"Near" is a broad term that is inclusive of clinical death.
In any case, the drugs issue simply a red-herring, that you perceived something under the influence of a drug does not mean you perceived it correctly, and equivalently doesn't mean you -didn't- perceive it correctly. Furthermore, you are still left with the fact that such a particular distinctive set of experiences is what is perceived "by happenstance" by a failing brain, and that a few out of thousands of chemicals can create phenomena broadly like NDE's, with nowhere near the consistent correlation of what the hallucinations from the drugs are, does not change that. That -these particular- phenomena indicated by religion are 'baked into" our neurology is phenomenally low odds by happenstance.
It's as if you are arguing against gravity by countering the assertion that a dropped object falls, with throwing the object down forcefully and considering that to negate the evidence of gravity. It doesn't. That in the brain's natural state, the event of death so consistently produces the experiential phenomena predicted by theology, is remarkable, regardless of whether those phenomena can be simulated to some degree by other means. And those "other means", as many researchers and practitioners regarding psychoactives have noted, do not negate a spiritual dimension. That one experiences something spiritual does not call for the conclusion that experience means one didn't experience something spiritual. Even if one is a rabid materialist.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Near" is a broad term that is inclusive of clinical death
If you have conscious experiences, and then you wake up, you weren't dead. It's that simple. That these experiences then match the cultural expectations isn't very surprising.
That's what you have to believe as a materialist, sure.
It's just that you're wrong.
And yes, it is astonishing that one has these experiences during brain failure, and thinking it's causally explained by cultural expectations is a complete failure to even attempt to explain it. Particularly given the experiences are had even by those rejecting cultural religious notions or not having been exposed to them.
Again, try reading the study. You'll be in a much better position to win your argument and your goal of inevitable elimination by natural selection. I propose we save time and end the conversation here, since that outcome for you works fine for me as well.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
What are the chances I've slept with your girlfriend? There are effectively infinite potential girlfriends. If we take it as possible that I can pick up girls at all, we must assume that somewhere along the way I become a philandering charlatan, switching girlfriends regularly, and that over a truly infinite timeline, I will sleep with infinite girlfriends. So we must assume that yes, I have slept with your girlfriend, along with everyone elses, ever.
I don't accept the premise that we can establish a theoretical scenario describing the number of real vs simulated universes, postulate that we are a in randomly selected one of those universes, and then satisfactorily conclude that we are probably in one category or the other.
You'll be in a much better position to win your argument
I already won, but you're too stuck in your own crazy world to realize it. Being religious is like being permanently on mind altering drugs. You won't even realize that you're wrong when you die, because there will be nothing.
> I guess they do get jobs outside of McDonald's)
Actually, philosophy grads tend to be highly employable (contrary to popular belief) and contrary to Mike Huckabee's claims are well paid. The average starting salary for a philosophy grad is actually about twice that of a welder (Huckabee has never been one for looking things up before saying them).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Apart from that other sim movie from 1999, you also get The Thirteenth Floor. Don't want to discuss spoilers in case you want to watch it...
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Eh, I'll do just fine with my day job writing software, which I hear is a difficult job to do and get paid well for if crazy.
But, no, you've offered nothing but nonsense here and knee-jerk reactions of someone almost totally ignorant of every aspect of all relevant fields. Eh, I'll write a shell script to thoroughly emulate you, there are plenty of reference points, as your fellow atheists are so banal and plagiarizing your pseudo-thoughts from each other, it'll be trivial to code up your equivalent. Even more time savings.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Agreed. If there is no one running a simulation, then the simulation cannot exist.
So when i read a book, i am doing a rather crude simulation of those protagonists in my head.
Do these fictional chars in my head think about them being simulated?
Congratulations for this short but accurate description of "Thirteenth floor".
Or perhaps you have completely missed the point and dont understand how debating works?
Recently I had an alert (not sure it was this account) that someone had replied to a post. When I clicked the link, it took me to a blank page. I checked my post history and could see where someone had replied, but the post ID was different than what was presented in the alert. Essentially, the post ID apparently changed at some point. I shrugged, thought "humph, database error" and deleted the alert.
If OP thinks the comments are deleted, it might be due to them changing IDs rather than actually being deleted. If you weren't aware of this, then there might be an issue worth looking into.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson skepticism: 1:40
Neil DeGrasse Tyson skepticism and mocking: "So the prospect of this being true didn't freak you out?" 8:18
Neil DeGrasse Tyson mocking: "So you've analogized yourself to Super Mario. This is who you are?" 9:50
Neil DeGrasse Tyson summary of what he's skeptical of: 23:55
Neil DeGrasse Tyson expressing "this is dumb" with his eyes: 24:50
The video is 2 hours long, but within the first 24 minutes, Neil seems skeptical of this crap.
But, no, you've offered nothing but nonsense here and knee-jerk reactions of someone almost totally ignorant of every aspect of all relevant fields
You're probably even more ignorant about the relevant fields relating to easter bunnies, but you still don't want to open your heart and mind to it. You just need to ask, and the easter bunny will save you. Only ignorance is stopping you.
No, The links I posted used to contain the comments I made. They no longer do. The comment is gone. They only show the banners. Normally deletion of the article did not also delete the comments. This is a recent phenomenon. Not cool at all. They could just remove it from the front page. I've been very watchful for this when various ACs started complaining. They were wrong every time. I always found their comments. But now I was able to prove that comments are being deleted. Probably only when the article is, but now we can't be sure anymore. Maybe a policy change is afoot. But without indelible comments, Slashdot completely loses its advantage and uniqueness, it becomes just another clone.
Anyway, I'm done fighting over it, not going to hijack any more threads.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Find me an NDE study featuring extensive recountings of seeing bunnies post-death, across a broad demographic, quantified, and peer-reviewed.
Stop being useless by your painfully bad attempts to think. Again, get collecting with your little time left. It doesn't require much brainpower.
Do that, and eventually, I'll show you the Easter egg--Easter egg.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
This *is* a simulation. Except that the computing substrate is atoms and molecules rather than electrons and transistors. The only remaining questions are, who is running the simulation, and why are we inside of it?
Find me an NDE study featuring extensive recountings of seeing bunnies post-death
I'm afraid those aren't really convincing. You'd just argue that the people who saw bunnies were deluded or lying.
Refer to the study for the facts of the matter. Basing your argument on what is demonstrably not the case neither works scientifically nor logically.
Don't you have someone to call?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
So he thinks we're all bozos on this bus? He needs to go visit the "The Wall of Science". I knew we're all holograms back in 1971.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I prefer to have the study read by people more knowledgable than me, such as Dr Karl Jansen, who said: "Ketamine administered by intravenous injection is capable of reproducing all of the features of the NDE which have been commonly described.". Why won't you read his studies and get your feet back on the ground? You still have time.
You mean him?
"Thus transpersonal events may be possible within the new physics, if subatomic events are involved in consciousness. Ketamine may be a drug which 're-tunes' the brain to allow awareness to enter the quantum sea. If this is indeed the case, then we may have to regard some of the reports of eternity, infinity, multiple universes and linkage with other beings as phenomena demanding a more sophisticated explanation than a brief dismissal as 'hallucinations and mental illness' requiring no further consideration."
So, he rejects your position. Good show. I'll wait for better.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The theology predicts one will experience what one does indeed experience, with high correlation.
The question then becomes: why does theology predict what it predicts? Likely answer: because it hijacked reported experiences and shoe-horned them into the theology.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Butt... What if the simulated universe was huffman coded (or compressed in some other way)? Would it stand to reason that "information storage" in a "natural universe" isn't done at the mathematically optimum level, and therefore compressible? And if we can make the universe use less space, ie resources ie matter (and mass) then can't a simulated universe, in theory, use less energy than a "natural universe"? I know it's almost certainly not that simple, but I'd like to know why I'm wrong.
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
Are you telling me you’ve been playing the prat version of Rimmer for all that time?
it's about time he quit.
A universe which hosts our simulated universe would obviously be much larger than ours.
It doesn't have to be. Our universe appears to be large but all those galaxies Hubble has showed us may not be simulated to anything like the same precision as our local environment (or at least, not while we're not looking at them).
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Read. Just read. Or, stop lying in comically transparent ways.
Both NDE's and ketamine experiences he considers spiritual, and this is totally at odds with your "just hallucinations" position. From that stance, both NDE's and ketamine are a "door" to that spiritual reality, which he considers to involve quantum phenomena as it's underlying "substrate". That aside, in no way is he saying that ketamine experiences refute the spiritual reality of NDE's.
Read.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The Russian Doll Hypothesis
:T:R:A:N:S:
Running a simulation doesn't make you analogous to the commonly understood meaning of "God."
My computer is capable of running simulations - and, in fact, I am capable of programming such simulations - which can result in far more complexity than my human brain is capable of comprehending at once.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
There are legitimate philosophers arguing for this, read them. Ignore NDT - he's not even good at popularizing science, he knows little of philosophy.
From a science standpoint arguing that we are living in a computer simulation is no different than arguing god created the universe. Either way you are saying "Something outside the universe, and greater than it, is responsible for its creation and upkeep." As such it is completely untestable and not science. You can't test for something literally outside of the confines of our reality, especially not presuming that thing is omnipotent as a god or creator of a simulation would be since even if you worked out a test they could change the results, change the parameters, etc.
It really annoys me how the computer simulation crap has become the creation myth for a number of science and geek types. They'll laugh at the silly Christians for believing in some omnipotent being that was able to create all reality, but be perfectly ok with the idea of some effectively omnipotent (from our perspective) being or beings that managed to create all of reality by writing a computer program in some higher order reality. Either way it is invoking a god myth.
If people want to believe in computer-god instead of religious-god ok I guess, but don't try to pretend it is any different and that it is any more than superstition.
Most likely it is a programming/database problem. The site is slowing breaking down as the people who wrote the code have moved on.
It doesn't really matter what he ascribes the evidence to if we accept the base evidence that ketamine reproduces the NDE experience. So, ignore his speculation and concentrate on the evidence.
The point is, ketamine and NDEs can be very similar in the experiences produced.
So either ketamine is a gateway to god or there's nothing special about NDEs.
You can believe the former if you wish, but there's no evidence for it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I’ve seen arguments that we may be in a simulated universe on the basis of the fact that physics looks like information theory. But it makes more sense that information theory is what it is because it’s a function of the nature of the universe we live in.
That doesn’t prove that the universe ISN’T simulated. It just means that we can’t use the nature of information theory as evidence that it is.
Also, something people keep leaving out is that any simulated universe is going to be necessarily simpler than the one containing the simulator.
Which is Simpler:
A) The universe we see is a real universe.
B) Or the universe we see is near perfect simulation nested inside of possibly infinite other simulations, all being run off of a a simulation on a real universe that.
Both theories require the existence of a natural universe, but B requires many further assumptions to be true as well.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Because even if it is imperfect, the beings running it can work around that. They can change things, delete things, roll back things, etc. If they control the hardware and the software that comprises the simulation, then they are gods for our perspectives and can change anything they wish, including suspending or shutting down the whole thing.
Also arguing about an imperfect simulation is rather silly since there is NO evidence of such a thing. That either means it isn't a simulation, is a perfect one, or any time evidence is found things are changed. Either way it all comes down to the same thing of it doesn't matter.
Dressing it up in technology terms doesn't change shit: It is a basic god story. It is a story that some being or beings on a higher order of reality than our own created and run this reality. It is just semantics if you say it is a simulation running on some device (the nature of which we cannot comprehend) or if it is some physical system created by force of will. You are talking about superior beings that exist completely outside of our reality. Gods. Humans have had the myth in various forms for all of our existence. This is just the "geek friendly" version that somehow they've decided is different.
Same shit, different terms.
Because none of our simulations bear any resemblance to something the likes of the universe. Saying "We simulate some stuff so someone is simulating us," is just another creation myth. It is the same shit that people use to argue god: "Everything has a creator in the universe, so the universe itself must have a creator and that creator is god." Same idea, different terminology.
From now on, I'll be busy trying to find the bugs in the simulation software. With an elevation of privilege I'd be satisfied.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
...is kind of a dealbreaker for me. It's still an interesting thought experiment, but that's about it.
No, the universe where the simulation is running just needs to be larger than ours.
Google: The Holographic Universe
That's what Tyson's talking about.
Sounds like segment three of the 15th episode of the mid-80's revival of The Twilight Zone to me. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The comments about religion are petty spot-on, too; in essence, this makes the universe merely a figment of God's imagination..... our the figment of a computer simulation.....
... running Windows ME.
Let's face it, Tyson is not getting any younger.
And humans have shown very clearly that we get quite susceptible to god-talk as we age and face our own mortality. The idea that when we die, that's it. Nada. That's something many people can't face. Ever.
Whether it's religion-god or tech-god is influenced by the point in time at which the fear sets in. He's a scientist and so maybe the tech-god worldview has sway.
I'm not slamming him - I'm suggesting that this thought process has as much to do with emotion as it does science.
Yay! Tyson has (re)discovered the Cartesian dualism :) Does this mean that our universe may be a simulation, within a simulation, within a simulation, ad nauseum? As a flat-earth believing audience member said to Bertrand Russell, "I'm afraid it's turtles all the way down!" (The flat earth rests upon the back of an enormous turtle, which itself is upon an even bigger turtle, and so on). So Tyson believe that it might be simulations all the way down? Sometimes the smartest people say the dumbest things.
this really cannot be repeated enough...
because of their credentials, regular everyday people put alot of creedence into what they say, even if it is way out of their discipline
Thank you Dave Raggett
We already knew we are inside a simulation, sitting on Captain Picard's desk on the Enterprise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A major problem is one of semantics. Does the answer to 'do we live in a computer simulation?' depend on what exactly we mean by 'computer simulation'? If not, why not (has anybody made any kind of coherent case for this?), and if so, who is bothering to give sufficiently precise detail about what they mean that one can give the question a meaningful answer. I tend to lean towards the 'yes' position, but I tend to leave what is meant by 'computer simulation' sufficiently flexible as to be able to fudge things later. One can always fudge a 'no' answer by taking the 'that's not a computer simulation' objection and repeating it ad nauseam like a broken record.
John_Chalisque
This seems to hang on whether it's possible to simulate a universe to the same detail that we observe (or think we are observing), and whether the universe is long-lived enough for such sophisticated simulations to be built and run for long enough to simulate what we observe.
I don't think our universe qualifies for such.
But if we are in a simulation, then we know nothing about the real universe. All bets are off. So it's pure speculation to say that such a simulation is possible in whatever the real universe is. If we are in a simulation, then yes it is possible. If we are not, then this notional "real" universe that we are being simulated in does not exist.
So, it's pure guesswork and speculation with no hope of ever giving an answer. Therefore to say it is likely is pure nonsense. NdGT is brilliant, and I respect him hugely, but on this one I think he's let his mouth flap without properly engaging his brain.
Hoo boy! My friends here would like hearing that! To them I'm the antagonist "lefty".
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They didn't delete any comments, that was just a flaw in the simulation!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It is not if we are a simulation but if we are one what kind of simulation are we?
Or to put it better.
Are we a screensaver and are just one mouse wiggle away from doom?
This is a limit-argument in the sense of a mathematical limit for time towards infinity. There is no reason to believe it is accurate in physical reality. It additionally assumes that if you simulate a human being perfectly, you get the same human being as an earlier copy, and that such a simulation is possible in the first place. It is only if you assume physicalism as ground truth, yet there is no valid scientific reason to do so. In fact, there are a number of unsolved problems with physicalism.
Note that I do not see the variant where religion has hijacked dualism as an alternative: That is a pure result of human shortcomings. Dualism does not need religious ideas in any way. But assuming physicalism is true is not science, but belief, and as such a fundamentally religious thing to do. The current scientific state of the dualism vs. physicalism problem is simple "we do not know", with some indicators pointing to dualism, but nothing solid.
Hence, while it is decidedly possible that the physical universe is a simulation, things are much, much murkier when you add human beings as objects of that simulation and the argument made by Mr. Tyson is actually not a good one at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Try S/N
Free Martian Whores!
It's not a database error or deleting. You commented on a duplicate article that we removed 2 minutes after realizing it was a dupe.
I do. We're already in contact over there. When are they getting D2? :-)
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Are you so insecure with yourself that you resort to insulting people who make incorrect statements or is it that your balls haven't dropped yet and you still find it cool to call people names?
That never happened before. And if it is now the new normal, I respectfully request that you just remove the story from the front page instead of deleting it entirely. It's a small thing, but keeping the archives intact is what makes this place special. Not too many people keep 17 years worth on hand.
Oh, and if you guys do get into unicode, please make backups. One little glitch in the Matrix, and poof! Personally I don't see the need to take such unnecessary risks.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Sorry, but that's nonsense. What breakdowns in math?! All of the physics glitches you see in computer games are either bugs, that didn't get fixed, or due to the fact that you have finite computational resources. You always have to trade off simulation precision against consuming too much CPU and memory resources. And you also have to take care of graphics, sound, AI, gameplay, animation and more graphics, which tend to get priority over physics, unless you games is Kerbal Space Program. There are no breakdowns in math. Given enough computational power, we can simulate physical world perfectly down to atoms. It gets fuzzy from there.
There are a finite number of atomic particles on the universe. To make a universe simulation in ours, every atom would have to have multiple transistors inside a CPU and storage medium like RAM to describe and calculate its position, velocity, etc so we could never make a universe simulation the same size as ours because there aren't enough atoms in the universe the make transistors. So every universe would be significantly smaller than the one before it until one is the size of World of Warcraft or something and it can't be any simpler of a simulation.
Sorry they arent. Its a real problem with fluid sims especially but happens with all physically accurate sims. I dont shit about game sims, just physical dynamics in relation to real world engineering. Do some actual research.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
I have a theory about this, which I choose not to share until I can do so more properly. But I can say this: I don't think the universe is a simulation. Rather, I wonder why it might appear to be. Hint: The comments here about "Simulation" theory being no different from "Turtle" theory assume that our space, time, energy and matter are simulated within some *other* realm of space, time, energy and matter. Let's call those things "STEaM" for short. To break out of the recursion, ultimately, STEaM cannot arise from STEaM. Ask, then, from what it might arise. Perhaps from something we already know of, but if so then surely something we do not consider "real".
Currently, supercomputers using a impressive-sounding technique called lattice quantum chromodynamics, and starting from the fundamental physical laws, can simulate only a very small portion of the universe. The scale is a little larger than the nucleus of an atom, according UW physicist Martin Savage. Mega-computers of the far future could greatly expand the size of the Sim Universe. ANALYSIS: Artificial Universe Created Inside a Supercomputer If we are living in such a program, there could be telltale evidence for the underlying lattice used in modeling the space-time continuum, say the researchers. This signature could show up as a limitation in the energy of cosmic rays. They would travel diagonally across the model universe and not interact equally in all directions, as they otherwise would be expected to do according to present cosmology.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
So we basically live in Yakko's Universe. I find that rather disconcerting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_J5rBxeTIk
In a public discussion with Neil deGrasse Tyson, String Theory physicist Dr. James Gates, stated that he found self-correcting computer error code embedded within the fundamental structure of String Theory, which made him "question if (he) was living in the Matrix."[17]
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Ketamine can produce effects of experiences corresponding to every perception on Earth, all of which can be unquestionably real.
That this is the case for NDE's as well, is irrelevant. The NDE's are remarkable for exactly the reasons stated, and are evidence for exactly the reasons stated. After you again claim it isn't evidence, it will remain exactly the evidence it is.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I'm not a famous person and the memories in my head are of things that on a grand scale, are incredibly unimportant. If for whatever reason, an advanced species decided to simulate a universe, I can't see them deciding that they'd simulate it at the granularity that I exist.
When you keep in mind the laws of thermodynamics and information theory, it will probably never be the case that it is easy to put a super-detailed simulation of the universe in the universe.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
The Matrix has you.
Except that he never said that, it's a Reddit meme.
What he said was (quoted from Cosmos)
“There’s as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. We are, each of us, a little universe.”
I'd image the computational power would be quite high to run even 1 simulation like this. Now imagine the computational power required to run such a simulation if that simulation started running one of its own.
What if they realize that we've become sentient and unplug the system? :(
if you can simulate whatever you want, and there are infinite set of races (and their race-conditions harhar) simulating infinite whatevers (nested it seems), why would they be simulating some "exact" copy of their own universe (other than to find out something interesting, but lets not get boring shall we)?
why not just simulate bob the builder building a house in greendale, with postman pat and his black'n'white cat driving around helping everyone. gosh, that is a much happier place after all.
"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning" - Werner Heisenberg This applies to Tyson's comments, and all other theories about who/what/why we are. All we know is "THAT" we are (Wittgenstein).
I made no incorrect or otherwise false statements. The comments were definitely and verifiably deleted. It may have happened before, but now we have absolute proof.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Even more to the point, is human sleep designed to cut down the rendering cycles by 30%? When you blink, is it because the thread you are running on being 'slept' for a few hundred ms? Is cancer just 'bit rot' on the imperfect storage media you are stored on?
Supposing this is all true, it begs a bigger question, what is the purpose of this simulation? Is it a game? A science project? An artistic endeavor?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Ketamine can produce effects of experiences corresponding to every perception on Earth, all of which can be unquestionably real.
I'm not claiming NDEs aren't real, they most certainly are, but they are nothing more than an effect of the brain.
The NDE's are remarkable for exactly the reasons stated,
They're quite interesting but not remarkable.
and are evidence for exactly the reasons stated,
Evidence of what exactly?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The laws of Thermodynamics are about:
A) Gas
B) Pressure
C) Temperature
D) Volume
In other words: Heat and Brownian movement.
They hardly have anything to do with simulating an universe.
Go back to school.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson skepticism: 1:40
Neil DeGrasse Tyson skepticism and mocking: "So the prospect of this being true didn't freak you out?" 8:18
Neil DeGrasse Tyson mocking: "So you've analogized yourself to Super Mario. This is who you are?" 9:50
Neil DeGrasse Tyson summary of what he's skeptical of: 23:55
Neil DeGrasse Tyson expressing "this is dumb" with his eyes: 24:50
The video is 2 hours long, but within the first 24 minutes, you can tell Neil doesn't believe this crap.
It's very likely that in one of those simulations inside simulations that Neil Degrasse Tyson is wrong.
You won't even realize that you're wrong when you die, because there will be nothing.
You are a bit unscientific. How do you know what is "behind" death? Did you make any tests?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
But Linux is based on POSIX.
Do yourself a favor and look up the definition. That way you may sound quite a bit less-stupid than you do now.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's not a database error or deleting. You commented on a duplicate article that we removed 2 minutes after realizing it was a dupe.
You're taking away our fun. We used to find 2, even 3 dupes (the trifecta) on the front page.
But seriously, deleting dupes is a good thing. Dupes have been a major complaint.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
But if THE universe has infinite mass and energy then it can simulate an infinite number of other universes, including other infinite universes.
By definition such a universe would have to contain an infinite number of regions which look exactly like our universe, and an infinite number of simulations of it too. Hence if we use the same hopelessly stupid maths used to justify the original argument the existence of such a place means there is a 50/50 chance of our universe being a simulation because there are infinite numbers of both.
I think your argument's own assumptions have failed you here, in particular that "real" universe must be finite just because ours appears to be.
No - if you assume a truly infinite universe then the original argument becomes wholly unnecessary as outlined above because you have infinite numbers of regions which will look just like our universe: no need for a simulation at all.
Are you sure about that? What if you only need to simulate the parts that are observed?
Again the logical fails if you take this to the ultimate conclusion. In this case nothing which is not being looked at needs to be simulated in which case anything which is not observed will just disappear. This is then not a universe simulation but a matrix-like illusion. Indeed you could get even dafter: how do we know that the simulation was not started yesterday with false memories to make it feel like it has been around for longer? At this point you are just running around in logical loops getting nowhere. This is not science, it's not even good science fiction (well perhaps one movie's worth of good science fiction).
Yeah, obviously, the amount of work involved in making a simulation able to have visible quantum effects is about the same as making a whole new universe. BUT, the aliens/robots/evil spirits that have us in a simulation are, indeed, a cgi simulation and we've all seen the movies they are in. The other point is that if you were to believe in the universe-as-simulation crap, you'd have to also allow the possibility of an infinite regress of the aliens deceiving us also being in a simulation, the robots deceiving teh aliens deceiving us also being deceived by Decartes Evil Daemon and the Evil Daemon deceiving the robots deceiving the aliens deceiving us are in turn deceived by the turtles. The turtles told me this, and that after them, it's turtles all the way down.
It takes a PHD in Astrophysics to propose a theory of "How Many PC's Can Dance On The Tip Of A Proton". Neil you ran a great theater/gift shop. Leave the science to real scientists.
I'm surprised that no one has brought up the Feynman argument yet. TL;DR version: simulating physics is tough, it can't be done on classical computers.
If this universe is simulated, it is a hell of a simulation.
It's another variant of the problem of infinite universes or multiverses - if it can happen, it will. And once it has happened then the likelihood of anything "interesting" (define "interesting") happening spontaneously is lower than of the same event being simulated (or, arguably, stimulated) by the "brain".
Like panspermia, it's a not-impossibility, but it's also a dead end of an argument. Like "goddidit."
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Approximately 5700 years ago, God started a simulation of the universe. Why?
We can only guess. Perhaps someone asked a question, that was so complex that the only way to determine the answer was to simulate the universe, and determine the answer. Given the huge cost and difficulty that this has resulted in, God has now decided that "Seer of Mind" is just too expensive of an ability, and there will be no more "blind justice seekers" into the future. But the existing "justice is blind" seekers have demonstrated just how crazy the view is.
When the answer is determined, the Seer of mind will know the result of the choice, and will then know whether or not to kill her opponent. Later, someone will retcon the choice and the whole "put down your arms and don't fight" will turn out to be the better choice. Hence the whole "be kind to each other" that is preached and ignored in this simulation -- the truth tries to show itself.
(The scary thing? Homestuck actually _works_ as a religion :-).
Side question: How many pages was it from the Vriska/Terezi showdown until the end of the story?
"That never happened before."
Bullshit. You can download the fucking publicly available SlashCode and see it for your damned self. Quit being full of shit.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
On the possibility we haven't discovered enough to understand a potentially infinite space-time, God might exist and we don't have the knowledge or ability to discover him. u_u
Is the universe a simulation? Is the universe a hologram? Is reality real? Are there uncountable numbers of universes?
Quantum physics is very expensive to calculate and ultimately a simulation requires more energy then the equivalent real universe. Tricks like lazy computation don't work.
People only come up with crazy ideas like these because general relativity is crazy and poisons the rest of the physics 'system'. If 'pure' general relativity is correct then the universe cannot exist making simulation type arguments much stronger. 'Impure' general relativity includes an absolute FTL frame, which means it contains elements which directly contradict each other.. FTL physics is a real mess.. :)
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
A Python!
Running a server on Turtle is just wrong.
Neo deGrasse? Even if it were possible, what would be the reason to do such a thing? The computing power required would be infinite, the cost immeasurable. I hardly think that some advanced civilization would waste their time and resources on a simulation. Unless it was a video game. Imagine the DLC possibilities.
Two things:
1) "simulation might be able to let its simulated denizens themselves run universal simulations", or turtles all the way down etc... Is basically saying that given a really large number (infinite by definition being the largest) it is unlikely (read improbable) that we are either the first or last turtle. Which from a purely conceptual point of view is true, but in reality much like a lottery, while it might be very unlikely to win, someone actually does, meaning that in real terms someone is the turtle or the simulation maker, the first the last, and all things being equal, just because it is a very low probability, doesn't make it untrue.
2) When talking about perfect simulations, and simulations making simulations, the Matrix did it right (though they probably borrowed it from someplace), in that at a certain point the difference between what is reality and what is a "simulation" grows fuzzy and may be a moot point. It all gets rather philosophical at a certain point, the whole I think therefore I am, and if a tree falls in the forest sort of idea, but basically even if a simulation that doesn't necessarily mean in the strictest sense that it is any less real...
Season 2, Episode 6: The Ricks Must Be Crazy. "He knew that once I got back to my car, one of two things were gonna happen-- I was gonna have to toss a broken battery, or the battery wouldn't be broken." Peace among worlds, Rick.
Hi, whipslash, I followed some links and looked into all this to see what is going on. I found very little to be concerned about. I do think it would probably be best if you tried not to call people morons, at least publicly on the site, even if you do feel that they are crazy or stupid or whatever. I'm sure you deal with all sorts of crap, though, so I'll let you make up your own mind about that. :)
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Plato's theory of forms predates Descartes by nearly 2000 years. And is a form of sim theory, but like Descartes, falls down because the concepts and langage didn't exist to describe it in modern terms.
Or, as in the Copenhagen Interpretation, there really is no "real world" outside the cave and those shadows on the wall are all that exist, following their own laws.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
These celebrity scientists are annoying. More proof that just because someone calls themselves a "scientist" doesn't mean they know jack shit about anything.
Ah yes, Neil-Degrasse Tyson, the man who said "There are more stars in our galaxy than there are atoms in the universe!"
Is there any evidence of this other than an amateurish meme?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The basis of all is that that the brain is only linked to the world. Change the reception of the senses, and you change the reality of the brain. Whether it's a sim (shadows on a wall), or a sim (we are a computer program), or real, we couldn't tell the difference.
Learn to love Alaska
...allows its denizens to *even consider* that it might be a simulation? Isn't that what brought down The Matrix? On the other hand, this might be just the thing to allow atheists and theists to peacefully co-exist: the latter can advance the axiom that *everything* is God's will (since it's, presumably, His simulation) -- and the former can relax realizing that *nothing really matters* since it's all just an illusion anyway...
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
And this is the same guy who ridicules religion?
The simulation argument is based on some very reasonable assumptions and simple math that no one disputes
I dispute it. He invents the existence of planet sized computers and then contradicts himself when he says that even these cannot simulate the quantum nature of the universe but that they will simulate the human brain. However that human brain may well need the quantum nature of the universe in order to operate so you do need to simulate its nature.
However the most completely unbelievable part of this utterly preposterous argument is that it assumes that the simulation has no bugs. Not once is the potential for a bug in the simulation code ever discussed. The chances of such a massive program have no bugs is incredibly small. The only exception would of course be if whoever created the simulation was infallible...at which point the creator of the simulation really starts to sound exactly like god.
The servers at our org certainly run at turtle-speed
Table-ized A.I.
If a statement is not falsifiable then it is not science, and we can claim the universe is a simulation started by his Noodlieness last Thrusday.
Boring.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
That's all fine and dandy, but why did it have to be The Sims and not Skyrim? :-(
Sometimes, life feels like Flappy the bird, even...
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
How about genocide all the sims and delete everything, then repurpose the hardware as a bitcoin miner.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation