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No, We Probably Don't Live in a Computer Simulation, Says Physicist (gizmodo.com)
Science doesn't have all the answers. There are plenty of things it may never prove, like whether there's a God. Or whether we're living in a computer simulation, something proposed by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. From an article on Gizmodo: This kind of thinking made at least one person angry, theoretical physicist and science writer Sabine Hossenfelder from the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany. Last week, she took to her blog Backreactions to vent. It's not the statement "we're living in a simulation" that upsets Hossenfelder. It's the fact that philosophers are making assertions that, if true, should most certainly manifest themselves in our laws of physics. "I'm not saying it's impossible," Hossenfelder told Gizmodo. "But I want to see some backup for this claim." Backup to prove such a claim would require a lot of work and a lot of math, enough to solve some of the most complex problems in theoretical physics.
In other words, "the universe is a simulation" is an unevidenced assertion, much like the multiverse. Yes, there may be some extrapolations of the underlying math that might point in such a direction, but at the moment, it's simply a cool-sounding idea with absolutely no experimental evidence at all. Of course, I feel the same way about string theory, though one thing string theory has produced is some pretty useful mathematical tools, so even when a theory is wrong or indemonstrable, it can still be of some use.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
None like the various religions depict, at least.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
If life was a simulation, it was probably located in God's big toe. Yeah... Monty Python was a bad philosophical influence.
Scientists have been trying to prove unified theory for a VERY long time. And there is MOUNTAINS of evidence for it. Unified theory would also provide STRONG evidence for our living in a simulation. If it has a master equation, the likelihood of our reality being "Programmed" goes up many thousands of percent.... We need to stick to Einstein and others pioneering work in unified theory and try to prove it once and for all. The LHC and CERN are the likely place for this to be proven. Stick to the hard science, and prove this. Because it IS very likely... Just consider the duality in ALL things... Its startling. Consider the precision it takes just to walk across a room. WE need to be more open minded about creation and reality. Its facts are likely to be the things of human fiction and fantasy. Time to Think WAY outside the box. IMO.
The objection in question ignores Bostrom's basic argument. Bostrom's primary argument for being in a simulation boils down to the observation that it is very likely that an advanced civilization would have the ability to run very accurate simulations. Moreover, one of the things they'd be obviously interested in would be their own past ancestors; if that's the case, then over the very long period that such civilizations will exist one will expect many more "copies" of people on ancient Earth than any of the originals, unless one expects civilization to die out well before we get to that technology level. If the laws of physics are simulated badly enough that we can notice, then they aren't doing an effective ancestor simulation, so the objection here doesn't make sense.
There are a lot of issues with Bostrom's argument; for example, one might question whether simulations of that level of detail will ever be able to be made on a large scale. But the argument being made here doesn't grapple with the fundamental issues.
That she demands proof is equivalent to others demanding proof that we do not live in a simulation. It is likely impossible to prove unless you're the one running the simulation.
What's needed are ways to falsify either theory, not to prove either.
And it may be that neither can be falsified either.
I just wish I could restore from backup.
At least currently, energy states and organization of energy into matter appear to be discrete rather than analog.
Like bits.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They used to use Christianity, god chose their parents (and their grandparents, great grandparents) to be wealthy or them specifically to be extremely successful financially. Since this simulation idea has made its way into the mainstream, some now want to believe in it. Nothing negative that happens in this world matters because it's all a game and they, or the entity behind their life, are winning the game.
Since you are reading this topic, you might enjoy the movies "The 13th Floor" and "Dark City". Less on this topic, but still good, I would recommend "Source Code" and "Moon".
A dingo ate my sig...
good thing we got that solved was about to go all matrix i still am "the one" though lol.
This is exactly what an Agent would say.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Just like religion, the simulation idea is a hypothesis. Just like religion, there's no evidence either for or against the hypothesis. I know what that is called: FICTION! Makes for a good story until some dude decides to beat, torture and kill other people based on the text. (Anybody up for subjugating people in the name of our Lord and Saviour, Harry Potter, peace be upon him?)
If we can calculate how reality "should" act, we've per definition calculated how to simulate it. So the only thing we could catch is a bad simulation. But that would assume they don't have error margins, if we start looking at something with an electron microscope then it starts simulating that particular part of reality to that detail. Just like a pair of VR glasses doesn't have to simulate more than I can see.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Great, so my Neon bike is useless?
President Trump is your fault, people, not a software bug. Own it.
Sounds like, "I'm a physicist and I disagree to disagree because I believe I'm better than a philosopher".
I don't hold physics in contempt, in fact I love and respect it, but such statements make average people question physics and its methods. Please, don't do it unless you have a proof in your hands.
I skimmed Feynman's paper, mentioned in another thread, where he spoke of the possibilities and difficulties of simulating physics, including quantum mechanics, with classical computers. One interesting thing about simulating a universe with a computer is the anisotropies that show up if you treat space as a 3-dimensional lattice due to using some amount of bits to describe the positions of particles.
Sabine is right and the universe-is-a-simulation notions are wild fanciful speculation.
Sorry to hear you haven't been able to let go of religious thinking entirely. "Yeah, those Abrahamic religions are bullshit. Reality is, we live in a simulation obviously made by some god or gods in the real area of existence, which I'll call Hevin."
Or her husband does.
Either way, I'm sure she'll feel better about all this when she wakes up in her bed after a good night's sleep...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Wealth Christianity isn't a real religion. If you're wealthier than your fellow Christians, it doesn't mean that you're better than they are because God "blessed" you more. All your worldly possession will still burn in the cleansing fire when the sun expands to a red giant and Jupiter becomes the new Mercury in four billion years.
Tech Billionaires say the universe is a simulation.
Sabine Hossenfelder is conflating "living in a simulation" and "spacetime is discrete". For fucks sake, she is saying that we should see evidence of discretization via violations of Lorentz symmetry. Yes, this is true, a discrete universe is not compatible with the continuity of Lorentz transforms, but this has nothing to do with their simulatability. Lorentz transforms are trivial to simulate. Heck, all of physics we know can be simulated even in a classical computer, they are just differential equations.
Just because she's wrong it doesn't mean that the simulation argument is right, however. Personally, I think the simulation argument is uninteresting, because it is unfalsifiable, and therefore unscientific.
entropy happens
A previous slashdot commenter (I don't remember which, sorry) said it best. It's apparently ignorant and backwards to believe that God created the universe, but quite forward-thinking and intellectual to think a computer programmer did.
Personally the fact that recently we have found the EM drive may actually work says were are in a simulation. We just found a bug in the physics engine. That or we need to rethink many of our basic assumptions of physics.
She and other simulation-sceptics probably have had a mind-manipulating intervention done by our Simulator, as an attempt to hide the fact that we do live in one.
I find it more probable that we do live in one. There might even be a person somewhere, that is an avatar for the Simulator, just to get a 1'st person view in simulation game.
You would know if you read the EULA. Use at your own risk.
The difference is that a simulation would have to respect a set number of rules of physics, whereas the commonly held properties of gods allows them to tamper with high level objects as they please.
Evolution hides all that stuff from us. We, as humans, only see what we need to see in order to better serve/carry forth our off spring. In the same way a computer desktop, and all it's icons, hide the inner workings of a computer from us (who would really want to deal with all that just to perform the simple act of opening a word document, there's a reason we got away from DOS haha).... while still allowing us to use miracles like the internet to communicate with people all around the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY
All scientists can do is determine the physical laws of the universe. They can't determine whether those laws are original or set by a computer simulation in some "parent" universe. Doing so would require making a whole slew of (necessarily uncertain) assumptions about the properties of that parent universe.
If the universe is a simulation then one can speculate on the purpose of the simulation. A good bet, based on our own world, would be it's a role playing game. If so the "players" are presumably the Elites in the game. A logical conclusion for any non-player character, such as yourself would then be that your highest calling in life is to become a groupie. That role is the only role that has any meaning beyond window dressing.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
When I first heard about this idea of our existence being nothing more than a computer simulation and was then given some credibility by other technological luminaries, I assumed that the original idea started with physics. To my surprise, I learned here today that the notion started with a philosopher. There's nothing wrong with philosophy per se, but this particular thought experiment strikes me as particularly nihilistic in nature. When Christians and humanists debate the meaning of our existences, it becomes a question of whether we are working hard in this life to save our souls, or to save each other. The philosophy of simulation would seem to inherently mandate that neither argument from Christians or humanists is in the least bit relevant, as our existence is nothing more than a lie. I have to believe that Nick Bostrom is likely a very depressed human being who proferred a notion that fits with his world view but is unable to support it with any verifiable evidence.
The physicist mentioned in this article is at least saying that such an extraordinary claim requires some sort of evidence to demonstrate that our lives are perhaps not worth living.
No scientist is trying to prove or disprove God. That's completely outside the realm of science.
Oh, and it's simulations all the way down.
That is what it is simulated to do. Basically can you simulate so that the simulated think they are not simulated? It is a very high order captcha for the higher dimensional beings.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"I'm not saying it's impossible," Hossenfelder told Gizmodo. "But I want to see some backup for this claim."
Prove we're *not* in a computer simulation. I imagine that, for any sufficiently well designed/implemented simulation, proving the case either way may be impossible. Might as well ask to prove we're all alive or that we all exist or, to quote HHGTTG, we're not all products of a deranged imagination.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
She falls into the same trap that most do who think about this problem -- that the super-universe in which our simulation is embedded has physics anything like what is being simulated for us (or with us as a side effect.)
If it can do uncounted googleplex operations per second, with similar abailability of storage space (or equivalent for an analog computer!) then none of her speed concerns are valid. Indeed, the cosmic speed limit here is a curious oddity, perhaps deliberately ala Vinge's Zones of Thought.
As for Bell's inequality and hidden variables, again, if it is all simulated, none of that matters. Hidden variables is only an issue if you need to maintain Einstein's concept of reality, that there are real objects "out there" with real, measurable properties. If one gives up on that reality, one can base quantum mechanics on a deeper classical realism with no problems whatsoever.
But even that need not be the ultimate reality. But her concerns are only issues if one, needlessly, and I submit oddly, wants to maintain that that parent computer's physics is anything like the physics being sinulated.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There are a lot of crap science blogs out there, and most of the at least okay ones are usually just press release aggregators. Sabine Hossenfelder's is excellent.
backreaction.blogspot.com/
just to give her another incoming link.
This, "we are living in a simulation" is nothing new. While at Russel's tea house, some good friends and I discussed this in full. Bertrand said he wanted proof that this simulation existed. René pointed out that a consciousness can not be simulated to itself. Then stonerfish smiled. He knew the green tea contained more than just Camellia Sinensis
Science does not, nor has ever, "proven" anything. The article linked demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding as well. The scientific method entails formulating a hypothesis and failing to disprove it, only becoming useful as a theory when it leads to new discovery and understanding.
There isn't even a need for each particle to have a specific value, a simulation isn't limited to a binary operation in this universe much less any conceivable one. Nor is computational complexity a way to explain it away as there would be no way to tell how much time flows on this side of the simulation with respect to the other from our perspective. All that could ever be accomplished is to show that the simulation would need to be at least of complexity/size X and run for Y operations which at this point would likely correlate with the surface area of the visible universe. Further this would have to come with a caveat that it's only basic rule based and not sentient based as it would be trivial to then overwrite peoples minds/data or start it from any point at which point it generates no useful information, even if correct.
Tldr pseudoscience
Those scientists saying there is a multiverse are working on finding out how it's true, how it would be testable, and how it could be falsified or supported by measurement or experiment, and what the consequence of it would be.
Meanwhile those propounding "We're living in a simulation" are the solipsists and armchair philosophers who just circle-jerk this into nothing other than assertion. Where's the tests for it? What would it change? How could we find out? And that, very correctly, is what this scientist is asking those lazy arseholes to do. Do some fucking work and treat it like a scientific theory or stop pretending it's scientific at all.
One side is trying to find out if they're right, the other one just showing off.
Descartes proved self existence. "I think, therefor I am". It is simple, brilliant, and is not challenged by these wacky theories. If you take the theory of living in a simulation to it's logical conclusion, there is no self determination or self reliance. Life is predetermined, and there is nothing you can do to improve your position in life.
People who believe in no self determination and no self reliance are quite disturbing. This is an extreme view supporting communist ideology.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The Universe is NOT a computer simulation. What a silly idea!
It's a virtual machine. in fact it's an infinite stack of virtual machines (running in a container).
Are not simulations created by some intelligent being?
Not necessarily, no. It is possible for emulations to evolve. You dream, don't you?
And one big difference is that religion presupposes that the creator is willing to intervene and modify the simulation.
A lot of religious ideas and speculation can be explained by the "God of the Gaps" theory. That is, before human beings had acquired a worthwhile body of reliable scientific knowledge, interesting or scary things that were otherwise inexplicable were attributed to God. Like thunder and lightning, for instance. The more science has advanced, the more that kind of theological phenomenon has been squeezed out.
Much the same is true of philosophy. Since the Enlightenment or even before - say the time of Francis Bacon - science has been building up an increasingly large and fairly coherent body of reliable knowledge. That has irritated many philosophers, because the things they used to muse and pontificate about are now off limits - or, at least, explained by science to most people's satisfaction.
That's why, about a century ago, philosophy suffered an uncomfortable "fork". A lot of people who called themselves philosophers focused more and more tightly on an analysis of language and epistemology - for example, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and a majority of 20th century British philosophers. Others saw this as an admission of defeat and confinement to mere analysis of words, and tried to aim higher. Karl Popper, for instance, tried to lay down rules for what scientists could, and could not, legitimately do.
So today, when they are so hemmed in by well-established scientific knowledge, some philosophers are delighted to find such promising topics as whether the universe is a simulation. It's not so very different from the preoccupation of the pre-Socratics who argued interminably about whether the world was ultimately made of water, air, earth, or the unknowable "apeiron". Not much progress, you might say; but then it's always been one of the delightful (or irritating, according to your temperament) aspects of philosophy that it never really comes to any final conclusions.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Is it me, or does it seem like those who argument so adamantly against the concept of a supreme being are perfectly happy to entertain the idea that we are part of a stimulation?
Your assertion would imply that Sabine Hossenfelder is at least a deist. Do you have evidence for that?
More importantly, if the Universe is a simulation, that -- by definition -- means that there are supernatural beings (aka "gods") out there, which would totally crush atheism.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
There is no way to tell.
We have no evidence whatsoever in one way or the other.
Something unprovable like god.
It just doesn't matter.
The only people who think we do are known for being fucking idiots.
.... then the evidence for it is in the laws of physics themselves, since the simulation would follow a fixed set of rules, what we happen to call the "laws of physics" would just be our perceived way of modelling the behaviour in the universe that we observe. The reason we wouldn't find anomalies in a properly done simulation is because the simulation runs on a set of rules that do not contain any way to perceive such an anomaly, even if it were to happen, and we, as part of that simulation are still constrained to operate within the parameters that are defined by the simulation. Even if what we call free will itself were somehow modelled within that simulation, we could no more "free-will" ourselves to think beyond the simulation that we could "free-will" ourselves to be in an alternative place and time than that which we appear to be living in. the hypothesis that the universe is a simulation is just as unfalsifiable as the notion that there is a god. You can't disprove the existence of something whose scope exceeds the boundaries of what is humanly possible to define. It therefore cannot be studied in any useful scientific way any more than a theistic assertion may be.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In other words, "the universe is a simulation" is an unevidenced assertion, much like the multiverse.
It is far worse than that because unless we find the programmer(s) (or possibly a bug/exploit!) there will never be any evidence of the simulation. In this way believing in a simulation is just like a religion - there is literally no difference because the only way to scientifically prove a religion is to find evidence of god. Everything which religious fundamentalists explain as "god creating it that way" a simulation can explain by "the programmer(s) creating it that way" and QM is not a problem in that regard if you are simulating the universe itself because outside the simulation we have no idea what the physical laws are so we can literally just invoke magic.
The arguments made in the article about QM are not obstacles (and in some cases very poorly explained e.g. the spin of an electron is exactly known at all times because it is a fermion and has a spin-1/2, what is not known is the direction the spin vector points) because even if we restrict ourselves to the type of computers we know about they are easily solved by simply saying that the simulation is pre-determined. You can reproduce all QM phenomena, and indeed any phenomena you can imagine, this way. However since the simulation runs in a universe we know nothing about the limitations on such a computer are utterly unknown. Hence belief in a simulation is unfalsifiable and so not a scientific theory but a belief.
Seriously? We don't. How this retarded notion ever came to be taken even a little bit seriously shows that the first world waaaaaay too much time and money on its hands. I blame millennials and their *inherently* retarded thinking. I guarantee you the second they have real responsibilities, assuming they don't run away, ideas like this will vanish instantaneously. Really tired of watching this generation grow up (if only they would. Groan) in public. I may become a 'disruptor' myself by doing random walk-by spankings.
the assumption that the creators of the simulation would be in any way supernatural is nothing more than a wild assumption. If indeed we are in a simulation, then our status cannot be assumed to be the base level of "natural" and the simulations creators status cannot be assumed to be "supernatural". It would be more correct to label them as "natural" and us as "sub natural" or "artificial". In fact if we are in a simulation, then we are likely to be AI's. Would you start calling the folks at IBM "Gods" because they created watson and dropped him into a simulated world like world of warcraft? No. Atheism does not hinge on the idea there is nothing different than us. Granted most atheists would have a hard time with us being in a simulation, since there is no evidence of that which cannot be explained in other ways. In fact you cannot even safely assume that the creators of the simulation we might be in are smarter or better than us in any way, the only thing we can postulate about them is that their civilization, in whatever form it takes, was sufficiently advanced to create this simulation. It does not make them Gods at all or even place them higher than us on the hierarchy....
I'm glad we got that sorted out.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Now just sit back and enjoy the next episode on How the Earth Turns!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This whole debate is kind of fun, but shouldn't be taken as seriously as it is. The most important principle in modern philosophy is that this kind of thing is potentially unknowable. The claim that there should be evidence in the laws of physics is mistaken, because if we do live in a simulation then we literally know nothing about the world outside of that simulation. Normal laws of logic, mathematics and general raionality which work here may not apply there. Time and space may not be sensible concepts there, or the basic rules may be the same as they are here. We don't know, because we have no point of reference. Remember, this is a question about a world that is meta to everything that humans have ever experienced or thought.
Positive claims in either direction on this issue are completely baseless. It is simply a rehash of the dream argument, the evil demon and the brains-in-a-vat. These are 101-level topics in philosophy and have been for centuries.
"More likely, we will see a future in which rich nations can afford raising one or two artificial consciousnesses and then consult them on questions of importance."
Yes, they'll be so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own one.
Not to say that there's any sort of scientific or evidence-based reason to believe the simulation theory, but really, who among us can't envision the following scenario:
GM: welcome all, I hope you enjoy playing in this universe I've created. I've been working on it for the last 14 billion years, and I think it's pretty awesome. Now, I've provided you all with the complete set of rules for this universe, but it can get complicated at times, and I'm sure you haven't read through all of them and that's fine. {chuckle}. So, Bob, what character class will you be rolling tonight?
Bob: Scientist.
GM: Really? You don't want to play something more interesting, like maybe Prophet, Eccentric Billionaire, World Leader, maybe we could even make up some sort of weird hybrid class?
Bob: Scientist.
GM: OK, well whatever floats your boat. Now, what's your character doing?
Bob: shining a laser through two slits and looking at the pattern the light makes behind them.
GM: Uhhhhh.... OK, you see the interference pattern that the light waves make.
Bob: Really? I do? Because I remember reading in your rule book about how "light" in your universe is conveyed by these "photon" particles. Wanna explain how these particles are making interference patterns?
GM: {sigh} Fuck you Bob. I'm just trying to run a fun game here. Why do you have to bring your rules-lawyering BS to every damn session? I mean, seriously you guys are no fun. Whatever. I'm retconning everything so that light is now a wavicle that's a wave until you look at it, when it becomes a particle. Happy now?
Bob: OK. My character is now going to invent a new branch of scientific research to study the underlying forces of the universe.
GM: This is gonna suck. I mean really, my last group was *so* much more fun. I could just plop down some burning shrubbery and have it tell them things and they'd be all like "sure, that's cool." and run with it. I don't even know why I game with you anymore. So sure, let's go right ahead, but I'm warning you, I'm starting to think that everything in this universe is based on what I'm calling "string theory" and it's 100% untestable. So suck it.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
The creator of anything does not have to respect any rules unless it would endanger the stability of the simulation.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Simulation = emulation?
A simulation is artificial by definition. Something had to create it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Can we design an experiment to rule it out, or at least point us one way or the other? More pertinent, what could we potentially learn just by trying?
The difference is that a simulation would have to respect a set number of rules of physics, whereas the commonly held properties of gods allows them to tamper with high level objects as they please.
Of course, no programmer ever makes exceptions in their software...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I do not mention her at all.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Kinda like quantum mechanics?
Is it me, or does it seem like those who argument so adamantly against the concept of a supreme being are perfectly happy to entertain the idea that we are part of a stimulation?
It is you. Many of us who argue so adamantly against the concept of a supreme being think that the simulation thing is nonsensical garbage^H^H^H^H^H^Hspeculation.
Wolfram gave a good presentation on this last year. The good stuff is in the last twenty minutes.
It would be more correct to label them as "natural" and us as "sub natural" or "artificial".
It's all a matter of the frame of reference.
Would you start calling the folks at IBM "Gods" because they created watson and dropped him into a simulated world like world of warcraft?
I sure wouldn't, but Watson would.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Is it me, or does it seem like those who argument so adamantly against the concept of a supreme being are perfectly happy to entertain the idea that we are part of a stimulation?
It's you.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Until there is scientific evidence, it's a philosophic question and not a scientific one. From many philosophic standpoints, it's a bit of a nonsense question.
The basic problem that you're likely to run into philosophically is that, regardless of whether the universe is a simulation, it is our universe. There's no reason to think that it being a simulation would have any consequence for us, or that it would be detectable. Even if you were to find some artifact of the simulation, it would be indistinguishable from a weird quirk in physics. You could argue, for example, that the reason quantum mechanics is indeterminate is that the simulation doesn't actually calculate the location at particles at the smallest level until that level of accuracy is needed. It's a neat idea, but indistinguishable from "That's just the way physics works."
If this were a simulation, we have no access out to the larger "real" world outside of it, including the "computer" running the simulation, and therefore would have no grounds to make assertions about what that world would look like or how the simulation should work. We have no reason to think this supposed "real world" contains people, or creatures anything like what we've imagined. This supposed world might have entirely different rules of physics. The simulation might run on a "computer" that is not a computer, and is unlike anything we understand. Not only do we not know about these things, but we have no reason to believe the tiniest scrap of information about the supposed world is discoverable.
If we were to assume that our universe is a simulation of a sort that we know about, we should guess that the only way we would discover this deeper truth would be a revelation made by its creator. For example, there's no possibility of a character in Grand Theft Auto to learn that he's in a video game unless the developer programs the character to know it. Without the intervention of the developer to make this information available, the GTA character would have no way of figuring out whether the game is running on an AMD processor or Intel.
So given that, even if we assume for the sake of argument that we are in a simulation, we have every reason to believe that we can never discover evidence of it, and our existence in the simulation is indistinguishable from what our existence would be if we existed in reality. It's a distinction without a difference. Our simulated universe is still as real to us as the real universe would be to us if we were real. The whole thing turns into a broader philosophic question of, "What if the nature of the universe is actually unlike anything we understand, or are capable of understanding, and everything we think we understand is illusory?" It's a somewhat interesting question to ponder for a few moments, but it makes no sense to try to answer it. If it's the case that we're incapable of understanding reality, then there's no further use for inquiry.
You mean programmers can't pause their simulations and change variables at a whim? So, what I did for my Master's thesis didn't actually happen?
What is being applied in these simulation theories is analogous to the operation of free energy machines. Emulation of systems within systems leads to less powerful systems not the other way around. There is always equal or less computational power available when you do this never more and hence zero reason to waste the power you do have.
Sure you can run an n-body simulation of the evolution of the entire universe over billions of years. You can use computers to outcompete nature at biological evolution. You can do all kinds of shit but high fidelity undetectable simulations of every grain of sand, every cell, every atom is a waste of monumental proportions.
Sure one could go on to assert these simulations are designed to trick clueless bags of mostly water to believe they are not in a simulated universe while implementing undetectable shortcuts. You just can't know it because the simulation is more clever than you are. Personally I would rather watch paint dry than waste my time with this level of religious manure.
Perhaps the real universe is a quadrillion times larger.
The "real universe" is also a simulation.
It's simulations all the way down.
Don't you mean "It's simulations all the way up".
Someone doesn't understand philosophy, more at ten.
Whether it is stimulated in our own minds, or otherwise, is the real question.
This whole discussion is like discussing if there's a God or not - it has no possible point and no possible resolution. No, you can't prove it nor can you prove it's not true. No matter what you think you prove you could say "well, the simulation is just that good!". Absolutely anything.
It's just more modern theoretical physics wank off material.
nope, no 13th floor.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Again, yay!, a physicist that isn't a pompous comic fanboi. Seriously, I cruise physics and astro sites regularly and it's almost embarrassing how many comic book concepts are written about as if they were reality on just the barest of mathematical hints.
We don't need to know how stuff works in order for it to be simulated in a simulator not written by us. She seems to be saying that it can't be a simulation because we don't know how it works. Saying that makes no sense. It's like saying I can't possibly play a video game because I don't know how to program a video game. Or I can't have eaten lasagna because I don't know how to make lasagna. For crying out loud, she says you can't simulate quantum mechanics because our computers use 1s and 0s. Does she even understand computers or computer programming in the least? She's a physicist. Some of that should be elementary to her. But is it? She seems pretty clueless in that arena.
"If you try to build the universe from classical bits, you won’t get quantum effects, so forget about this – it doesn’t work." Yeah, because it would be impossible to write an algorithm that simulates quantum effects. *eyeroll* Never mind that this statement of hers also assumes any potential simulation would have to be running on computers like we're using right now. Because other kinds of computers couldn't possibly exist. Because otherwise we'd have them, too. Heh. How this is over her head is beyond me, and yet, somehow, it is.
Rick and Morty has covered this many times
Roy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szzVlQ653as
Car Battery : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqEgMLDS5CM
More importantly, if the Universe is a simulation, that -- by definition -- means that there are supernatural beings (aka "gods") out there, which would totally crush atheism.
It's quite possible that we live in a *natural* simulation. Like the allegory of the cave, reality as we understand it could merely be the "shadows" or a natural simulation of an objective reality (if there is such a thing) that we cannot understand or comprehend. It isn't required that it be setup by "beings". However as with this allegory, it might be impossible to describe this objective reality in the language of our reality, so projecting this description down to our reality, things might get lost in translation. What to one person might be atheism, to another is a god of nature (e.g., the God of Deism)...
In many ways, even our best Quantum view of the world can be considered as projecting a shadow on cave for what most people think of as objective reality. It doesn't really make total sense at all and we already know that it isn't even accurate enough to describe what we observe in enough detail.
On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.
-- Richard Feynman
Many kinds of tampering would be noticeable, and we haven't noticed them.
I know when my brother got onto the computer while running a SIM game all sorts of disasters would happen to mess things up.
Does this explain Trump?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
It all ends up the same...
Haven't we?
Entire religions are built on someone tampering with the rules, no?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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If the universe is a simulation, there perhaps could be some way of hacking the code from the inside, like the exploits that affect things outside of a virtual machine.
Of course, once you do that, the folks running the simulation say "Oh, crap, not again!", fix the bug that allowed the exploit, and re-start the simulation from the last checkpoint, and we'll never know.
If this was a simulation...
When the simulation theory began making the rounds, I realized that this could explain part of the uncertainty principle where a particle does not achieve a definite state until it is observed. How would a particle know that it's being observed, after all? If we're living in a simulation, though, the uncertainty principle becomes a rendering optimization: why compute the final state of a particle that nobody is observing or interacting with? In other words, the particle doesn't know if it's being observed, but the simulation does.
If you think about it, there's no way--even in principle--to find the programmer or a bug in the simulation. It'd simply be impossible to distinguish between that and arbitrarily odd observed natural behavior. At best, you might (might!) be able to observe the universe acting in an unexpected way.
As the Greeks mused, we're simply living in a dream of sorts, with no hope of ever knowing the true nature of reality.
Aww is the poor physicist butt hurt? I would be too if I spent as much time and money on a shame full of theory and no actual knowledge. She should have studied electricity, it gives a better view of how the universe works. Electric Universe could explain how we live in a simulation, replace the big bang with the original boot and treat gravity as a weak electrical magnetic force which can also repel.
... she's just a woman.
The article might have a good point about being unable to run a classical computer and get quantum effects, I don't know, but if you DID try to simulate quantum effects with a classical computer, wouldn't you have to enforce limits that would manifest as our uncertainty principle and its derivatives like plank distance and time?
The article's second objection is the high difficulty with which the programmer would have to be able to anticipate and avoid a simulant discovering the simulation via errors in physics. Why? Any casual gamer knows you reload an old save after crap goes sideways. Also, so what if the zoo animals become conscious of their cage, happens all the time, makes them depressed and neurotic. Sentients discovering the simulation before interstellar flight would even answer the Fermi paradox.
The article's final objection is that "The programmer could of course just simulate the whole universe (or multiverse?) but that again doesn’t work for the simulation argument. Problem is, in this case it would have to be possible to encode a whole universe in part of another universe, and parts of the simulation would attempt to run their own simulation, and so on. This has the effect of attempting to reproduce the laws on shorter and shorter distance scales. That, too, isn’t compatible with what we know about the laws of nature." Why would the nested universe would have to reproduce the laws... wouldn't all possible laws get simulated? As another counterpoint, consider that geometrogenesis theorizes that spacetime is not fundamental... if true, the smaller distance argument is invalidated.
To the Sims in SimCity the programmer would always be "supernatural" because he/she is outside of the simulation. The Programmer of the simulation, that is the universe, is also outside of this universe. The owner of a fish aquarium resides outside of the aquarium, but can also interact with things inside the aquarium.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
If you think reality is just a computer simulation, you have probably been toking a bong while watching The Matrix. Put the bong down.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
That's JUST what an avatar for the runner of the simulation would say!
Does anyone else remember the fake news ticker at the bottom of Sim City? Does this not seem like something you would read there?
Do , Or do not ! There is no probably ..
One of the things we've learned over the millennia of doing physics is that everyone likes to come up with all sorts of crap about what physics should be, but it turns out physics is not a democracy, it's a race. This is the kind of race we're happy to run, even if you don't think we're competing.
Generally, we in physics don't care if other people go down philosophical rabbit holes. That just means you're that much further behind us in understanding. We like being ahead; it's our business to stay ahead.
So, go ahead and think that the universe is a simulation, that your decisions spawn multiple universes, or in the tooth fairy. There's plenty of money and fame in fiction, but there's no physics to be developed in arguing about it.
Gizmodo. No thanks. I'll believe it when I hear it from a reputable news source.
The thing that doesn't work for me with the simulation theory is that it would take a huge amount of computations to simulate the universe to the level of detail that we see. Computations take energy. Enough energy bends space-time. And if we had all of the required energy packed into a simulation machine, surely it'd be so much that it'd collapse in on itself into a black hole tearing apart the machine.
:)
Now, I suppose we could spread the energy out by causing the simulation to run slower than real-time speed, but I imagine that to spread it out thinly enough so that you don't cause a black hole might surpass the half-lives of the materials that make the machine, thereby making it impossible to pull-off in practice in this manner too.
But then there's always the idea that the universe that houses the simulation has different laws of physics. For this, I say we create simulations of how a universe with different laws of physics would turn out
I don't see how that rules out simulation. Just because we "mortals" cannot see the probability computations doesn't mean they are not part of the simulation.
Further, some argue quantum physics supports the idea of simulation because it allows the details to remain fuzzy until somebody actually observes it. This is a common game strategy to avoid pre-building the details of an entire world: only fill in the details when the players get close to or enter something.
Table-ized A.I.
Wait, so this Nick Bostrum guy watches The Matrix, and four years later writes an abstract about how we might be living in a computer simulation, and he's the one that gets credit for hypothesizing the idea?
"Among the first of Bostrom’s questions was this: If the universe turns out to contain an infinite number of beings, then how could any single person’s action affect the cosmic balance of suffering and happiness?"
source: http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
Claim that God did all of this, and you have people coming out of the woodwork screaming about how crazy you are to even consider such a thing. Claiming the same thing, but blaming it on a computer simulation, and suddenly it is a rational theory that deserves consideration.
Well, maybe it's all running on God's computer!
What constitutes a simulation? Perhaps our imaginations are being limited by the nature our nascent and primitive computer experience.
Try this "simulation" scenario on:
Per Einstein's Relativity Physics (STR, the Special Theory of Relativity), which is certainly settled physics at this more-than-a-century-removed point, we live in a Spacetime of three dimensions of space and one temporal dimension, often called Minkowski Spacetime. Spacetime is also referred to as the Block Universe, in which everything exists (or perdures to use the philosophical terminology). There is no flowing time - time does not exist. Everything we consider "past" and "future" is there - it's all there in spacetime. Everything. Nothing changes. Nothing can change in spacetime.
Most physicists believe in the reality of the Block Universe (BU) but apparently aren't inclined to think or write about it. Lee Smolin now hates it - see his "Time Reborn" - but his book provides an instructive overview of the physics. Dr. Smolin is agitated about the non-existence of free will, the ever-silly naivety, but, in fact, the obvious immediate implication of the BU containing conscious beings is that we all re-experience our lives (these very same lives we're living) repeatedly and eternally (or until spacetime ceases to exist). I've acronym'd that hypothesis as ERL - the Eternal Re-experiencing of Life. Interestingly, Einstein seems to have believed in ERL, which he referred to as the "Mystery of the Eternity of Life".
The BU containing conscious organisms presents us with a fascinating architecture for a Virtual Reality ... our Real Reality:
Briefly, consider the unchanging BU as The Data ... talk about Big Data! Now consider that consciousness is a "feeling", a meta-feeling if you like, but it's a biologically produced characteristic of a system of "meatware" of organic construction. Consciousness "flows" - it's the "movie-in-the-brain" per neuroscientist Antonio Damasio - the "flowing" experience we mistake for a "flow of time" (which doesn't exist in the BU). Our sense of "now" is not a sense of a time, by the way, but is rather a default charasteristic of conscious experience - all of our conscious experiences happen "now" and all of our "nows" are like frames in the "movie-in-the-brain".
Some of the fixed events in fixed spacetime act as sensations - the inputs to our body-shaped system of meat electronics. Some as yet undetermined brain structure, most likely the brainstem (the "reptilian brain"), creates consciousness from this input as an output - a feeling that is an analog "reality" simulation, the feeling of being centered in a world. The brain is the VR Headgear, producing the continuous, flowing simulation of a reality that is the experiencing of our lives. Significantly, our subjective VR experience of reality is nothing at all like the external world - it is completely different from The Data. In spacetime there is no sound, no color, no ... (add an endless list of the elements of our conscious experience to complete this qualia list).
So there you have it. The Block Universe is not a simulation as we currently conceive one, but the direct implication that it was created or constructed in its entirety as an implementation of eternal conscious experience is a fascinating one. You likely believe this must be case ... if you believe in the validity of Relativity Physics (do you use your GPS much?) and believe that the brain creates consciousness (regardless of what you believe consciousness to be) then you believe in ERL, a hypothesis I am so far unable to falsify.
I think the only real answer is: "It's Simulations all the way down!!". 8-P
Or "up" as the case may be ...
8-}
and simultaneously crush all religions. except the mormons
There seem to be many crazy theories around, like the string theory - which on paper (the math) look plausible, yet the theory predicts nothing. I think the genius of Einstein's theory is that it is able to predict stuff that we're just able to grasp in the XXI century. Now when I think about the simulation theory, what would it predict? Quantized stuff at the lowest scale, finite amount of "stuff". This pretty much matches well established predictions that a) in QM world stuff is quantized and b) total amount of particles in the universe is finite. The logical fallacy people make when arguing against the simulation theory is as follows: "but all the software bugz! Where are they?! Nothing breaks/glitches randomly hence simulation theory is false!". I think the answer to this is pretty much basic - the simulation is simulating only the finite particles quantum world, and all the remaining stuff (the "macro" world) is just a by-product of it which just happens to be, because the simulation was going for long enough. On the lowest level QM world would be very simple to simulate without bugs due to its probabilistic nature. The simulation defines some initial conditions ("big bang"), some constants/limits (speed of light or more precisely speed of causality, dark energy) and then you just have to let it run. If stuff is simulated only on the relatively simple Quantum scale (simple because it has built-in randomness) you don't have to worry about "software glitches" like the ones we have in simulations that we run ourselves. Also, it seems that the EM drive is exploiting one hell of a glitch in this case, sorry - had to!
Currently, Simulation did it = Wizard did it = God did it.
Recursive ray tracing can produce wonderfully realistic images. But most video games don't use it, because they don't need to use it. They can get a 'good enough' image using short cuts (such as imposters) for most of it.
If we were living in a simulation of the planet Earth, would the Architect need to use a full implementation of quantum mechanics on every atom of the Earth in order to fool us? Or could large bits of it be done by cheaper approximations, except for the short time periods when they are being looked at in detail by the instruments of physicists?