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We're Not Living in a Computer Simulation, New Research Shows (cosmosmagazine.com)
A reader shares a report: A team of theoretical physicists from Oxford University in the UK has shown that life and reality cannot be merely simulations generated by a massive extraterrestrial computer. The finding -- an unexpectedly definite one -- arose from the discovery of a novel link between gravitational anomalies and computational complexity. In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhi show that constructing a computer simulation of a particular quantum phenomenon that occurs in metals is impossible -- not just practically, but in principle. The pair initially set out to see whether it was possible to use a technique known as quantum Monte Carlo to study the quantum Hall effect -- a phenomenon in physical systems that exhibit strong magnetic fields and very low temperatures, and manifests as an energy current that runs across the temperature gradient. The phenomenon indicates an anomaly in the underlying space-time geometry. [...] They discovered that the complexity of the simulation increased exponentially with the number of particles being simulated. If the complexity grew linearly with the number of particles being simulated, then doubling the number of partices would mean doubling the computing power required. If, however, the complexity grows on an exponential scale -- where the amount of computing power has to double every time a single particle is added -- then the task quickly becomes impossible.
There is no viability to Pro or Con studies for this. We simply would not be capable of knowing if we're simulated as our own thought processes would in fact be governed by the same rules of the system we're attempting to prove or disprove. You're trying prove a proof by using the proof as proof. It's just an exercise in futility as any civilization or system capable of creating such a complete simulation will undoubtedly have put in to place provisions for "what if the simulation starts questioning reality".
The whole point of a perfect simulation is that anyone inside of it will never, EVER be able to know that it is a simulation unless the creators let them know. You don't even need to be a genius or even scientific to understand this basic logical fact.
What if the programmers tricked them into convincing themselves that they're not living in a simulation?
We do not know how to do it with current technology is not proof it cannot be done.
... from ideas about what is possible derived from observing the universe in operation.
This only works if you take this as an axiom: what is possible in our universe is impossible in any possible universe.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
An "unexpectedly definite" finding that someone/something we don't know isn't doing something? Sure...
Either the aliens live in a universe where the rules are different and simulating this is easy, or the scientists being convinced of this is part of the program, or I'm the only one in the universe and me typing on Slashdot is something that the aliens in the zoo find interesting. Nobody can disprove any of that.... assuming anybody exists.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
There's a fundamental problem with this conclusion. It shows that we are incapable, in this universe, of simulating this phenomenon due to its complexity. However, if this universe is a simulation, the laws of this universe do not necessarily apply to the universe in which this simulation resides. We can say nothing as to the characteristics of such a universe, and therefore cannot conclude at all whether we are in a simulation or not. This merely shows that it isn't feasible for us to simulate such an effect should we choose to create our own simulated universes.
then the task quickly becomes improbable.
FTFY - just because their hardware can't handle it doesnt mean the result is a false dichotomy.
God already has quantum computer !
If the simulation exists, which is likely doesn't as this is nothing more than modern Genesis religion, why would the storage be bounded by the simulation and not external to it?
Just because we can't explain something it does not mean it does not exist.
Feynman spoke of the exponential simulation difficulty over 30 years ago:
https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/Feynman.pdf
To think of it another way: you can't simulate the entirety of physical processes, including quantum effects, classically, WITHOUT incurring that exponential penalty. If you could, then you could simulate a quantum computer classically and solve quantum algorithms as fast as you could solve classical algorithms. But you can't.
What they do suggests (but does not prove) that a purely classical simulation would require exponential size. So, nothing here rules out using a quantum computer to efficiently simulate a quantum system. Moreover, they don't give any proof of the claim, just a strong plausibility argument with an identified potential obstruction; rigorously proving what they want would be a stronger claim than P != PSPACE. Here P is the set of problems which can be solved on a classical computer in time polynomial of the input, and PSPACE is the same thing but for space, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSPACE . This is about one step away from the very famous P ?= NP problem. In fact, their claim if they had a proof would be even stronger than P !=PSPACE because it essentially comes down to making what amounts to an argument that P != BQP (where BQP is what a quantum computer can do in polynomial time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BQP). We already have very good evidence that quantum systems cannot be easily classically simulated even without gravitational effects like they are talking about here; In particular, Aaronson and Arkhipov's work on Boson Samplying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boson_sampling strongly suggests that even a system just trying to accurately simulate the behavior of photons cannot be simulated classically without superpolynomial sized resources. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that they don't cite or mention boson sampling at all. It is possible that I'm misinterpreting this new result, but if I'm correct this really isn't a big deal at all.
The computational complexity is undeniably vast - but it's not infinite.
If the simulation hypothesis is true then we know NOTHING WHATEVER about the nature of the "real" universe - only that of our own. We're probably OK with assuming that our mathematics are applicable - but we can determine nothing about the physics of this place.
So, for example, in the real universe, the speed of light might be infinite.
This would allow computers to perform calculations infinitely quickly - and to access memory storage that's as large as a galaxy without any lag. It's also possible that things like atoms are a LOT smaller in the real universe - and that would allow the pan-galactic hyper-beings to have much MUCH denser circuitry.
Sure, we don't know for sure that this is possible in the "real" universe - but there is no conceivable way to prove that it's not possible.
The simulation hypothesis (like the existence of God) is an "unfalsifiable hypothesis" - we can't EVER prove that something is impossible without knowing the laws of physics upon which it depends.
Generally, we tend to ignore falsifiable hypotheses - but that doesn't make them false.
So this research - while undoubtedly fascinating and clever - proves nothing of the sort.
www.sjbaker.org
A sufficiently advanced civilization that is running this simulation would set up parameters that will inhibit our cognition that we are in a simulation. It would take explicit steps to allow for us to prove that we are not in a simulation, so that their simulation results are perfect.
This "proof" that we can not possibly living in a simulation itself is an indication of how advanced that thing running the simulator is.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
True believers of the simulation hypothesis, that there exists some otherworldy all-powerful other responsible for the whole of creation, should sound familiar. They're basically those drawn towards spiritual or other woo-woo thinking, but have been raised in a technological society.
At best they've shown that our universe can't be simulated by a Turing machine. But machines simulating our universe, if they exist, are not constrained to be Turning machines. Indeed, we know nothing of the physics of the universe such machines inhabit, and therefore can't say anything about what physical or mathematical limits they may face. This may be interesting in the sense that it shows limits on what *our* computers can simulate, but it says *nothing* about what God's computers can do.
"Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
But wouldn't you only need to simulate it if it was under direct observation? Otherwise there would be no need to divert system resources to provide that level of simulation. I suppose if it were a difficult problem to simulate one could set up several million closely watched observation points and then monitor to see if any system lag might be noticed within the simulation, but on its own this seems unlikely to have proven anything.
Not true. They deduced it from pure logic.
What it comes down to is this:
A simple thing can not simulate a complex thing. That is inherent in the concept of simluation and complexity.
For this reason, all simulations use complexity as currency - they only use it when they need it.
In a weather pattern simulator, they don't bother to simulate people at high complexity. In a war game, they don't bother to simulate the weather in high complexity.
Our universe has uniform complexity, EVERYTHING is complex, not just one thing. Human actions, thought, fluid dynamics, subatomic reactions, animal behavior, disease, everything. As such we can not be a simulation, because too much simulation ability is being wasted on too many different things.
It's like a house was built out of gold, including the foundation, pipes, everything. You don't do that. You build the parts people see out of gold, and use less expensive stuff for the rest.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Foolish humans.
Had it almost right:
To get the Answer, they did not build just our planet, but the whole (discrete, by the way) universe.
This assumes the super-universe simulating us has physics even remotely like ours. It could be trivial to perform uncounted gooleplex operations a second. Indeed, a cosmic speed limit sounds suspiciously like something one might add to a universe to prevent control over everything.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Clearly it's all part of the simulation. The computer is far more powerful than we can ever comprehend, and the devs are actively patching/updating areas that we keep snooping around in.
Just because something is exponential, that doesn't mean you can't compute it. Maybe our overlords have really, really big computers.
Have you read my blog lately?
But no impossible for our computational overlords.
I believed I used free will to type that, but in fact, I did not.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
until proven possible.
This is just the Agents trying to throw us off the trail. Only Neo can save us and free us from the Matrix.
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Why do people think they can prove what they see and touch are real based on what they see and touch? I don't believe we are in a simulation, but it seems illogical to try to disprove the idea with empiricism.
Since they measured it they changed it.
Suppose the parent universe is one in which computational complexity for any given problem is a constant? Or even where this particular problem can be solved via an operation that is infinitely replicable at zero or near-zero cost? Or even at a non-constant cost? Or perhaps the parent universe is one in which the speed of computation increases with complexity. We don't know the math of the parent universe. We don't even know if the math of the parent universe is consistent with itself.
This study make it less likely we are in a simulation within a similar universe, but the idea that an outer universe is like an inner universe is a bit self-important and might seem in a thousand years like the old idea that the sun rotates around the earth.
Still, we should not assume that we are in a simulation just because it's an easy explanation.
Real lawyers write in C++
Anyone who ever read the Well World novels would be able to reason that if our so-called 'reality' and 'Universe' is all just a simulation, we'd never know it. If true then it would be simple for the 'simulation' to lead us to the conclusion that everything is real.
Creature 9303932 of the Conway Life universe has proven that cats are impossible. "The computational resources required for such a creature are simply impossible. We have glider guns and other structures, but a brain of nearly 10^13 neurons would exceed the total computational capacity of the universe. There is no possible way for this to exist.
Except there is more to the outer universe than the Life creature is even capable of thinking, given the rules of its universe.
WILL believe in absolutely anything else.
What it comes down to is this:
A simple thing can not simulate a complex thing. That is inherent in the concept of simluation and complexity.
A simple thing like Conway's Game of Life can simulate a CPU.
The assumption is that because complexity increases exponentially, it would be infeasible to do a simulation. That assumes finite resources, like time, which is not a given. And it assumes that the simulation cannot take shortcuts like making up data or retroactively change data, which is also not a given.
Rene Decarte was the first to formalize the "evil demon" idea that reality is all an illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon .
It's interesting the idea keeps coming up though. It's a rather pointless exercise if taken to the extreme. But it underlies the very true notion that the world isn't the way we think it is.
Regardless of whether certain aspects of the universe can be seen in discrete terms or represented by continuous functions, "on paper" you can make up any set of rules and you could even build machines which would work in a way that allows to "compute" the stuff in one or the other way. Therefore, you cannot determine if this is a simulation or not a simulation. This is rather a 'is there a god question' than it has something to do with science. To better understand my point, lets ask two questions. (1) What is a simulation? This looks simple, doesn't it. However, we have spatial simulation which step from one point in time to the next, but we also have mathematical models which are not step based or are not based on equidistant steps. In addition, we can create simulations where time progresses continuously, while spatial movements occur in steps. Some simulations are iterative, like climate simulations. Depending on the simulation, on simulated object has a different surrounding. (2) What is the opposite of a simulation? Easy: Reality, you might say. However, what is reality? Reality is that what we perceive. In a simulation, reality also exists for an entity within. Furthermore, lets assume we are in reality. What are the differences between a reality (our existence) and a simulation? Or if you like to assume we are in a simulation: What properties does a reality have, which makes it different from a simulation?
I doubt that you can come up with an proper answer, but I am eager to be proven wrong.
As long as this is not happening, I conclude that this is a nonsensical metaphysical discussion about a deity and therefore belongs in the realm of religion.
WARNING! This universe is copy-protected with Q-Lock(TM) Digital Rights Management. Any attempt to create a copy of the universe without quantum Hall effect will not boot.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Our universe has uniform complexity, EVERYTHING is complex, not just one thing.
True, but most of that doesn't need to be simulated. Only the parts that I interact with are actually relevant. Everything else can be optimized away.
XKCD: https://xkcd.com/505/
As long as our universe's time doesn't run 1:1 with the simulator's universe, our universe could be simulated on a TI-83 calculator.
And stop dividing by zero. You are wasting valuable computer cycles, slowing down the net rate of change in our simulation. Luckily since our thought processes are also calculating slower, it is all relative to us.
The effect could be caused by the simulation. I'd wager it would be almost impossible to ever tell if you were in a simulation unless it had some bugs that were brought to light. However, much like the matrix, those bugs could be fixed and time rolled back. No one would be the wiser.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Well, how much computing power are we talking here?
We already know the simulation doesn't have to make anything 'actual' until you specifically look at it. Even then it is simulating a few photons at a time.
So computing power doubles with the addition of every particle...what is the original computing power required and how many particles can 'YOU' 'ACTUALLY' look at for any given time?
Let me ask you one question.
What proof is there that the host universe from which ours is simulated has the same laws of physics we do? What if our simulation is a post-grad's "What If?" project?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Only stoners watching the matrix think we live in a simulation. We don't and if we do, we have absolutely no possible way to find out, so why bother, just live your life and keep providing power to our overlords.
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Science is not definite, it's only relative to understanding at the moment.
Go back 500 years and see what science was like then.
Good thing we have people questioning science and not all trying to advance an agenda.
...then the task quickly becomes impossible.
But that's what the simulation wants us to think.
Not true. They deduced it from pure logic.
Seemingly with an assumption of a deterministic simulation. If the simulation is not deterministic, not repeatable, then a heuristic that simplifies computation can be substituted for a perfect theoretical computation.
If I instantiate an atom out of view of simulation viewers do I need to have computed the history of all the electrons back to time=0 or can I just allocate them ad hoc, randomly, during instantiation with a reasonable probability distribution? Can I not do the same thing with a deer in the woods before any simulated entity "sees" it? A planet about a star?
A simple thing can not simulate a complex thing
Perhaps not in real time, perhaps not in a practical sense like predicting weather before the weather actually occurs. But do we know "their" real time, we would only know our simulation time ticks.
As far as I know, there is no mathematical algorithm to generate true randomness. So would it be possible to write an algorithm simulating the universe? Would testing the universe to see if it is random or pseudo-random tell us anything about whether it is a simulation or not?
There is no viability to Pro or Con studies for this. We simply would not be capable of knowing if we're simulated as our own thought processes would in fact be governed by the same rules of the system we're attempting to prove or disprove.
What you're proposing is a philosophical proof, and it's not rigorous.
It turns out that we *can* prove or disprove certain statements about our universe. The fundamental fact (to prove, or disprove) is whether the universe is computable.
Computability has a couple of slightly different meanings in the literature depending on certain assumptions, but in general terms it means that the results of a computation can be done with a) a computer, b) using finite memory, and c) in a finite amount of time(*).
The Church-Turing thesis implies that all computers are equivalent, so the type of computer doesn't matter.
What *does* matter is the finite limits on time and memory. You can't use real (in the mathematical sense) numbers, because they take an infinite amount of memory to store, and would take an infinite amount of processing just to load one into a register. This implies that position, if your universe has this as a feature, must be quantized in some way. The amount of information in a particle's position must be finite. Time also has to be quantized.
If time and position are quantized, you might need some sort of "fuzzing" algorithm to avoid jaggies and other artifacts in your universe. Something like Bresenham's algorithm, or some other anti-aliasing method. Maybe use sines and cosines to represent the probability of a position between two quantized locations or something similar.
If we can identify an effect that the universe has that is non-computable, then we could (at that time) definitely state that the universe is not some sort of simulation.
That being said, I don't think this paper rules out computability per-se. The fact that complexity is exponential does not specifically rule out being computable, the thing about exponentiality comes from the post and not the abstract of the paper, the paper abstract itself states that the question is still open, and the paper is speculative and might be subject to re-interpretation or dispute by subsequent papers.
It's also really, really dense.
Whether the universe is computable is a really interesting question. Consider the resolution of the probability values of QM experiments; ie - is there a limit to the resolution one can have on a probability measurement? If it's a finite amount of information, it's kept in a finite number of bits, which means that it has a fundamental fractional resolution.
Is there an experiment that would show this fundamental resolution limit? (Do photons from distant galaxies arrive in tiny quantized angles, for instance?)
(*) With one possible exception, which is the overall program of the universe. The universe itself can run for infinite time, so long as each interaction can be computed in a finite amount of time. Basically, you can have exactly one while(1) in the main() of your universe, and all subroutines must return in a finite amount of time.
... the simulator we live in increases the complexity only when we test the complexity.
exactly what the simulation would want us to think.
Conway's game of life is NOT simple. The software running it is simple, but it requires an incredibly complex hardware to run.
What is actually going on is a piece of very complex hardware called a CPU, is using a very simple software to simulate another complex CPU.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
No fucking shit huh?
When we were looking for a justifiable reason to think everything we've done was "A'OK" because "Hey, we're just a simulation." went wrong; we just had to make an article about it eh?
Can we just finally move to a world where every human-being has a chance through "food/water/then figure it out" kind of world? I'm trying to move towards that and looking at daily news going "Seriously?..."
I tend to rant.
Apparently you've never heard of dwarf fortress. It has complexity where its not even really needed!
TFA misses the point entirely. People who consider the simulation hypothesis don't claim that the quantum effects are part of the simulation.
"The phenomenon indicates an anomaly in the underlying space-time geometry"
Exactly. Quantum effects show the limits of the simulation. They are not being modelling; they are, in essence, errors. Artifacts, not intent. That would also be why the Planck length (smallest possible physical distance) exists: that is the resolution of the simulation.
By exploiting the limits of the simulation, we have the potential to exploit the simulation system itself, or even gain insight into whatever is outside of the simulation.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Stop fucking with this matter or they'll reset the simulation .
The question of whether everything is a simulation or everything was otherwise created by GOD is neither useful nor testable. In fact it's a complete waste of time.
Almost as much as humans imposing constraints on what is or is not possible for GOD to achieve.
At best, they have ruled out certain models of computation from being viable substrates under certain model resolution assumptions. Of note, this does not rule out quantum simulation, nor does it rule out there existing a dual representation that is trivial to calculate, but expensive to extract particular eigenstates, that is, they haven't rules out us being a quantum simulation, but they may have put limits on what can be observed in the simulation from outside of it.
Well, your argument about complexity is essentially circular. "Complexity" refers to the resources needed to produce a thing (program length, storage space, time etc.).
You can prove something is inherently simple by example, but you can't prove it is inherently complex that way. Avoiding that particular pitfall is responsible for a lot of verbal yoga in computer science. Solutions have complexity; problems only have best known solutions.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What this article demonstrates clearly is that most comentators are mostly ignorant about the subject but feel confident in deploying their ignorance to answer the question. This is great news for Man as these are great survival skills when faced with hungry tigers. Sadly it also indicates that societal decision making is now a complete lottery as we all comment whether we understand or not.
No a simulation like the one that a computer game uses will never be able to simulate anything as large as the universe we appear to inhabit and even worse as this study reveals, there are features of our current universe which defy the computational ability of any simulation software. This does mean that silicon valley entreprenurs who have made wacky claims about us being a simulation have for now been disproven. You can revisit the question in about 500 years of course but for now it is dead.
This is the same lack of understanding which keeps the idea of mankind ever visiting the nearest star alive. It is too far and we will not be doing it in the next 500 years. It takes too much energy and would cost more than we have ever paid for anything else in history with almost zero return - the participants will certainly never return.
Remember the qualification that they add to advertisements selling financial products "past performance should not be taken as any indication of future performance"? Well you should understand that to mean that our recent rise from savagery with the industrial revolution and the computer are not about to be repeated ad infinitum. The next big thing is genetic modification which will not assist with simulations or getting to the nearest star. It may confer extreme longevity on the super rich and it may feed the rest of us. Hopefully it might help with critical thinking because we could do with a large dose of that as a species.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
This is still in the realm of "not practical" - very far from "not possible."
It just proves that you can't simulate it the way they modeled it. One (of many) possible interpretation is that the _model_ is bad.
There is no reason to believe that we are in a sim.
That said, if we were in a sim, the simulation could fake the complexity that you're observing, without doing as much computation. You can't disprove the sim hypothesis from "here" in the alleged sim because all of your evidence would be tainted.
The sim hypothesis is just another religion. You can't confirm it or disprove it.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
So the premise of this study is that: our (human) mathematics has proved that no extraterrestrial computer (mathematics) can be powerful enough to simulate our reality.
...also, we, the same humans that once said: 640k should be enough for everybody.
...and the Alien is chuckling as it mumbles "That should keep them confused for a while'
.
How could we know that?
Maybe the E.T. supercomputer spun up some more VM's just for this Oxford University experiment.
To assume that their problem (rather than the first solution they've thought of) is exponential is a bad mistake. Somebody used to big multi-dimensional simulations could re-formulate it down to O(n log n). Now it's still never going to be linear and maybe n log n is still bad enough to make simulating a universe quite hard - but like many others here I'm finding it hard to see this as "proof".
"If the complexity grew linearly with the number of particles being simulated, then doubling the number of partices would mean doubling the computing power required. If, however, the complexity grows on an exponential scale – where the amount of computing power has to double every time a single particle is added – then the task quickly becomes impossible." - cosmosmagazine.com
"Oh that's easy, imagine a computer that could generate that with a procedural algorithm!", exclaimed the geeks, who then stayed glued to their screens in their efforts to prove they're trapped in a computer.
It doesn't really matter, because whether or not we exist in a simulated universe doesn't really answer anything. If a civilization has the computational power to simulate a universe, one that we are living in, so what? My next question would be whether or not that civilization exists in a simulation.
It's not unlike the question asked by those who believe in God, "Don't you wonder where it all came from?" Yes, I do, but that is not evidence of God because my next question would be, "Where did God come from?". If their answer is God has always been, my reply would be why go the extra step for God and just believe the universe has always been.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Can someone enlighten me? Is it correct that this refers to a simulation based on classical computing?
There are other potential types of "computing" and "simulation" that are more complex. Generally speaking though, those are impossible to disprove.
Perhaps it isn't possible to prove we aren't in a simulation from within that same simulation but does this prove that we ourselves could never create a simulation as complex as the one we (possibly) live in?
How you could write this up and not see the obvious counter argument is bizarre...
We are in a simple simulation, and reality is more complex. The limits of our reality are perfectly logical and constrained. Also, our simulation doesn't need to run in real time. There could be one calculation per day, or year, or million years. It wouldn't change your personal reference.
It turns out that we *can* prove or disprove certain statements about our universe. The fundamental fact (to prove, or disprove) is whether the universe is computable.
Possibly, but in this case the "proof" that this aspect of the universe is not computable, it through sensor readings delivered via the possible simulation... any hard proof is similarly done through observations potentially managed by the simulation, so there cannot be absolute proof of simulation/no simulation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
for all these researchers know the results their instruments are returning are hard coded and no actual calculation is happening. they have no way to verify any part of what they think is occurring.
similarly, I have no way to know if anything I'm reading right now isn't the result of a computer simulation for my mind. I cannot tell, nor can any of you tell what you're experiencing.
the chances are truly 50/50.
perhaps some conservative douche bags came up with this because they want to leave open the possibility that god exists.
https://www.trumpsweapon.com/
To do random sampling on problems with lots of degrees of freedom? I've seen it used in plenty of quantum mechanics problems. It basically gives you some kind of probabilistic distribution of where particles can be. Because obviously that can not be determined precisely.
It got quite complicated with 3 particles after a small period, let alone billions of particles.
... the whole quantum theory is nothing more than a modern version of epicycles.
One can implement it with a few gates. There need not be a processor as such.
If you have some kind of processor fetish the processor needed to run the software can be a one-bit one implementable in a few hundred gates. Not complex.
Correct me if I am wrong (and if I am wrong, be gentle -- this is not my field of expertise!), but to me this sounds like a proof that the simulation we are in (if any) is not "recurseable".
Our universe cannot be simulated by a machine that "exists" within our universe, because that machine would have to be built within, and follow the physical rules of, our universe -- which are not rich enough to perform a self-simulation.
Perhaps our universe CAN be simulated by a machine running in a hypothetical "real" universe, whose physical rules are less restrictive than our own.
To me this is (weakly) analogous to some forms of virtualization in computer science. A computer architecture may be used to run an emulation of a different virtualized computer architecture. The virtual architecture being emulated may have an entirely different, probably lesser set of capabilities -- not necessarily rich enough for it in turn to be capable of emulating a virtualized instance of its own architecture.
This is just an applied version of this argument. The reality is that no one has proved or disproved equivalence between these two complexities of computing.
Also even where they are not equal it is posited that an arbitrarily powerful Quantum Computer would be able to deal with the exponential aspect of these computing problems so why would the Overlords not be using a Quantum Computer or computers?
(repeated because the subject was missing for no apparent reason)This is just an applied version of this argument. The reality is that no one has proved or disproved equivalence between these two complexities of computing.
Also even where they are not equal it is posited that an arbitrarily powerful Quantum Computer would be able to deal with the exponential aspect of these computing problems so why would the Overlords not be using a Quantum Computer or computers?
They aren't actually claiming that it is in principle impossible; they are claiming that it is intractable, as it takes storage exponential in the number of particles on a classical computer. It's quite plausible that a quantum computer could handle the problem -- after all, the one thing that quantum computers are known to be good for is simulating quantum mechanical systems!
1. There are certainly physical mechanisms that we do not understand.
2. Therefore there are certainly machines that we could not comprehend.
3. Therefore there are certainly logical constructs that we can never think.
4. Therefore there are theories we can never test.
Simulations are likely one of them. We cannot currently imagine certain mechanical constructs that could perform the simulation.
I can argue that continuing with our current scientific approach we will eventually explore and solve #1. This unlocks #2 and then will allow us to unlock #3 and therefore test theories supported by those logical constructs.
If we continue along this path then one could assume that its a possibility that said simulation "masters" / "sysadmins" could influence theoretical physicists to try and disprove such possibilities. Their research may be sound based upon our current understanding but everything changes once you unlock the secrets of fundamental physics ... unless you're telling me we've solved everything.
This just in from the News Desk: "No goddamn shit." We now return you to your previously running reality, already in progress.
...or can we now prove negatives? If this is all an advanced-enough simulation we'd never know, nor could we, by design. It's like if there was an omniscent
& omnipotent being that made all this instead, by definition of their omnipotence could ensure we'd never know. Some people can't handle dealing with that, and apparently some of them go to Oxford.
The universe is infinite in all directions and time is infinite. And someone believes a simulation is impossible.
This is just proof that the computer running the simulation that we're in does not have the processing power to host a simulation inside of a simulation. Just give it a few years. When our overlords get around to upgrading their super computer, we will see that we do finally possess the power to run such simulations.
Not really, no. We typically run it on complex hardware, but you don't even need a CPU if you were to build an implementation from scratch. It's an undergrad electronics project, if you're into that kind of thing.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
To all the nay-sayers (correctly) pointing out that there could be absolutely any universe whatsoever outside of our universe (if ours is simulated) and so this proof of what's possible in our universe doesn't disprove anything about whether we're in in a simulated universe or not, there is still something important that this disproves, or rather an argument that it undermines, which someone between the researchers and Slashdot have failed to communicate well.
There's a popular argument going around lately that goes like this: If (1) it is theoretically possible for us to simulate our universe, and (2) nothing tends to happen to halt the march of technological progress, and (3) our descendants or some other future technologically-advanced civilization have the inclination to simulate the past of their universe, then (4) we are probably in a simulation, because in that case there would tend to be simulations within simulations within simulations and the odds of being at the top layer are smaller than being in a lower (simulated) layer.
This research claims to disprove premise (1). If it is not theoretically possible for us to simulate our universe, then no matter the march of civilization and the inclinations of our technologically-advanced descendants, there's never going to be nested simulations within simulations within simulations of our universe in our universe, so we have no reason to think we're most likely in one of those simulations.
We could still be in a simulation within some other, wholly alien and unknowable larger universe, but we have no reason to think so.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
All this simulation bullshit's a stupid fucking idea held by morons. Why the fuck?
Bresenham's algorithm is not an anti-aliasing method. It's simply a path approximator for line segments. If you want anti-aliasing, you're going to have to use Wu.
I agree with the broad brush of your post.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
So it can't be explained as us being inside a computer simulation so it has to be explained simply so a God has done it all.
Because so many love and need:
"Monocausotaxophilia. The love of a single explanation for everything." - Ernst Pöppel
You have to only program basic quantum principles (few hundreds lines of code). Everything will
appear automagically and naturally in to existence. Simplicity is the key to the secrets of universe.
Like Hindenburg compensators in Star Trek. Do you think we would notice the difference? If the simulation can't calculate it then we in the simulation couldn't either.
Our universe has uniform complexity, EVERYTHING is complex, not just one thing
This is not necessarily true. We only know about the complexity of what we are actively observing at a given moment. Even if we *think* we have a telescope logging data for us to review, the data may be made up at the time of review. Hell, I can't even be sure the scientists exist at all. A hypothetical simulation could be very very narrow and make up a lot of stuff or feed stuff in.
In a game, they can't synthesize voice convincingly, so they use voice acting. If an NPC declared that voice was not computable, and yet there is voice in the universe, therefore it can't be a simulation, they'd be incorrect because the stuff that couldn't be synthesized was meticulously provided manually by those creating the simulation.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This is a pay to play Journal. Take the paper with the grain of salt, they paid to publish this. If it were truly novel good science, then a more prestigious journal would have accepted the paper and published it.
They will deny it.
Look what Degrasse says about it.
http://bit.ly/2wtDc0u
Slashdot just rammed its final nail into its millennial gee-whiz-I-just-discovered-my-pee-pee-coffin for me. Where do the grownups go? This so beyond absurd I wouldn't even know how to begin commenting in earnest on it. If you guys are the future, then heaven help us all.
Then "they" could adapt all your findings to match your theories.
What makes anyone think that the tick rate of the simulation is the same as the internal observed passage of "real" time?
If time is discrete (at interval of Plank time duration), then each interval of the simulation could be run offline in as much computation time as required to move to the next interval. Those that live within the simulation would never observe the computation time expired. It's like running a program that checks the current time... how does it do that? An assembly routine returns the time from the BIOS clock. From the code's perspective, it's an abstraction of the "real time". Can the program know if the BIOS was bypassed with other hardware that ticks slower? All the program really knows is that the system clock ticked.
To make universe you only have to write program for very basic proto particles. This program is very short. In time it will evaluate and become
something. For example universe as we know it.
So you don't have to go into anything as esoterical as the quantum Hall effect to find that a linear increase in the complexity of a quantum system requires an exponential increase in computing power to simulate.
Several points:
1. The journalist who wrote this article doesn't understand the difference between "impossible in principle" and "intractable." If you read carefully, you find that the researchers claim only that the simulation is intractable -- it would require storage exponential in the number of particles.
2. To actually prove such a claim the researchers would have to solve some important open problems in computational complexity theory (e.g., the P != NP question). That's highly unlikely. At most they proved their claim assuming that one of these open questions has the answer everyone thinks it does.
3. Even if they did all this, at most it would only show that our universe is not a polynomial-time classical computation -- it wouldn't rule out simulation on a quantum computer.
Acknowledgment: 2 and 3 above are my rewording of some commentary I got from a computational complexity theorist; I'm not naming him because I didn't think to ask for permission to quote him.
Then I can act like the biggest asshole ever without guilt. Ah who am I fooling, I feel no guilt even now.
Somewhere, in some kids bedroom, the cooling fan for the PC running this simulation spun up for a few minutes.
universe expansion = who allocate memory for increasing space and
where it is saved ?
lightspeed = limit of the processor speed. No doubt they use multicore Forth-processors.
gravity = some funny effect, usefull for common balance in the universe.
Well that's settled then. I mean, if a team of physicists (I've never met any of them, but I'm sure they are totally real people) from Oxford (where I've never been but am totally sure exists as a real place) say so, who am I to disagree? What a silly idea anyway. Time put such thoughts out of my head and resume my 100% non-simulated life, right guys?
Fist, they have no clue what computing paradigm would be the basis of such a simulation. The theoretical limits we know are only for digital computers in the absence of "magic". And second, what makes them think all that nice stuff they base their reasoning on is not cleverly faked? Have they forgotten what level of control such a simulation would have?
In the end, they have nothing. Just the same as those people claiming we definitely are in a simulation. It is a valid model, but there is no way to show it is accurate or not.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Simulation is not running on a Turning machine using Monte Carlo techniques.
I had not thought that anyone thought that it was. The idea was for a possibly analog quantum computer with some very weird properties for information density. The limits are only really on the outputs so running a simulation in a simulation of the universe doesn't actually count against the memory limits in the base universe.
I still think it is false, but this article does not come remotely close to addressing that.
Sorry, the alpha testing is going on a bit long. Hope you don't mind, I'm going to move to beta soon, and all your in-game gold will disappear.
Going to be fun watching Bill Gates be a hardscrabble farmworker with two kids to support.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The entities running the simulation noticed it was not running as expected as the data showed the start of self awareness of the simulated beings of the simulation so they adjusted the model to meet their expectations. Just like the global warming models... Just don't make waves or your sub-simulation of your being may be removed as an outliers.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
The reality simulator doesn't actually render at that level of complexity unless one of the players is actively looking that closely. What should worry us is the moment when some too smart for his own good scientist ends up crashing the process and the rest of us with it.
Not having read the whole technical article, just the summary here on slashdot....
The fact that YOU cannot find an algorithm that simulates something in linear time, that doesn't mean it's impossible.
Moreover, there are some things that you don't HAVE to be able to calculate. Say the multiple bodies in a gravitational field problem. We can't solve that for N>2 . Do I have to if I'm running a simulation? No! That "being able to solve" would mean that to find the position of Jupiter's moons 10000 years from now, you just put the number 10000 in some formula and out comes an accurate prediction of the positions of those moons. But if you're running a simulation you just have to extrapolate a small step from the current situation for the next time quantum. Even if it is (shown to be) fundamentally unsolvable, that does not hurt the ability to run a simulation.
Isn't one of the anecdotal conclusions of Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem substantially that you cannot prove a system from within it?
I'm not sure I understand how they feel they're able to get around that.
-Styopa
There goes my "rack up all the debt in the world and do a ton of drugs and fuck a lot of hookers because fuck it, it doesn't matter, we're all in a simulation" plan.
Right now we are just experiencing the log printout. Turns out some Jr programmer forgot to account for the infinite value for the variable humanStupidity. They were bound to hit an out of memory issue from the get go. If he was more than just a jr he would have force closed the app already and fixed the code rather than wait for the log print to finish. But at least it proves one thing: error checking is the most important concept in programming because it is literally the reason we still exist.
A simple thing can not simulate a complex thing. That is inherent in the concept of simluation and complexity.
This assumption is already wrong,
Which you would know if you ever had played a computer game AND knew anything about computers/processors.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Just say it loud and clear:
Computer, end program.
Okay, I don't really get what's being claimed here, but if what they're studying is so difficult to compute, why couldn't the people (if they are people) running the simulation just copy the experiment's methodology in the "real" universe and feed in the data?
(incidentally if anyone can explain in a dumbed-down way how something that happens in the universe could not be simulated in any way, I'd like to know more. It just [i]feels[/i] wrong as a claim)
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Ironically, "uniform complexity" is the simplest program of all. Just declare the rules of particle behavior and launch it. Off it goes. No need to "optimize" visible bits to turn gold.
It takes the most processing, of course, to correctly render the actions of every individual quark and gluon, yes. But I don't see why we can't assume a ridiculously large parent universe with a celestial computer, laboriously rendering one tick at a time (ie they had to watch for billions of years as my molecules typed this sentence)
Or assume a different scale of time. Or assume fuck-all-anything, because we're in a fucking blackbox that isn't even real and how can we assume anything about Outside.
Amoebas assuming it's impossible to run a perfect Minecraft simulation because that would require a computer bigger than the entire petri dish.
was a part of simulation program. :-)
"It's impossible using our current state of knowledge, therefore it's impossible". Impeccable logic, isn't it?
Universe is not simulation. Only piece of software is found in primitive proto particles
created after theoretical big-bang. I call it little puff ; no explosion , no violence.
First suns then appeared.
Status of the universe is so at this moment that the software has already been executed ,
executed fully. Universe is like corrupted memory changing slowly it appearnce and shape in to full emptiness and nothingnes. As it expands it looses dimensions and probably
becomes fully 2D projection. Disappearing is alredy running..
No need for huge insane amount of processing power or memory. Just tiny preprogrammed particles on their own.
You decreed they could not access, and also that if you can't access, you can't decree. That's two things you declared, both without qualm of proof. The paper does go into their method and your complaint does not do anything to put holes in that, only proclaims by itself that this cannot be done.
Try actually proving their thesis wrong, not just assert it.
I will let you know if we are living in a simulation once I find access to the console log in.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Only I am living in a simulation, this way only my surroundings need to be simulated. All of you don't exists.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The actual research article written by the physicists say nothing about the universe being simulated.
arxiv link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.038...
It simply states that the particular problem they study is hard to calculate, and scales exponentially with the number of particles involved. This exponential scaling is often found for anything including quantum mechanics, and is nothing new. The new thing is proving how hard these calculations are for the particular problem the authors are studying.
The completely ridiculous conclusion that this somehow means that the universe is not a simulation comes from the author of the popular summary given in cosmos. So the slashdot header: 'research shows' is False. The research paper only showed certain things are hard to calculate.
Wouldn't the quantization of spacetime qualify as a fundamental resolution limit, in and of itself?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
We can't know if our overlords believe in the same God(s) that we do, but we know that God can do anything. Quantum fiddling is child's play for Him (or Her). The only question is this: Can God make a jalapeno so HOT that even He can't eat it?
...omphaloskepsis often...
Religion needs you to believe that there is both magic and reality, so they can sell you magical indulgence for your guilt for real sins (or unreal sins, like Adam's). But any magic system would include reality (being able to make 2 + 2 = 5 gives you the ability to make 2 + 2 = 4, so no need for reality). Obviously you could undo the sin you are guilty of if you could do magic (poof!, Adam didn't eat the apple) without screwing up reality. Guilt evolved as an advantage in a species competing for living space and resources. It cannot be erased by magic unless it itself is magic, and not your fault (you can't do magic). etc.
It is not the case that real numbers in general require an infinite amount of memory/processing power/whatever. It's just that we represent them poorly. For example, I can have an exact representation of the value of e in a finite register as the string "sum(1/n!)_0_inf", perform operations on it, and whatever else you might want.
Randall's Cueball isn't constrained by finite time and space in doing his simulation, or the speed at which the state of the simulation is refreshed:
https://www.xkcd.com/505/
or can it be APPROXIMATED on the macro scales? maybe the actual quantum effect is only every visible at very small scales involving very few visible particles? occlusion culling in other words....
There you go. Just proved a negative by "looking in your shoes for a 5 ton grey pachyderm". Or working out that there's no room in your shoes for an elephant.
Allan Turing and Alonzo Church are rolling in their graves thinking about this. They believed that it was possible to have a machine simulate anything physical, presumably in physics. Thus we could indeed be a simulation! My personal belief is not that Allan or Alonzo thought that we and everything we know is a simulation. I believe they were focused on much more practical applications. That is solving world peace through mathematics.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
..extraterrestrial computers have well over 640K of memory.
In an infinite universe, the probably of a quantum computer version of a boltzman brain spontaneously forming is infinity for a non-zero probability, therefore there are an infinite number capable of simulating an infinite number of universes.
The question remains, are the boltzman quantum computers capable of simulating an actual infinite universe? If so then it's turtles all they way down. if not is it possible that the systems can create a simulation sufficient to internally real. Then we still get an infinite number of non-infinite universes that create an illusion of being infinite. it also answers the antimatter paradox because this is a simulation.
So it seems like, odds are that we're living in a simulation, that may only be an illusion of being an infinite universe--but wait there's more! The odds of a quantum fluctuation occurring which creates an entire universe as a virtual particle is also non-zero, that means an infinite number of universes--and also answers the antimatter paradox because two universes are created at the same time a matter and antimatter.
.
So we have an infinite number of universes and an infinite number of simulation universes. So the actual answer is NaN.
1. What mean "we" are not....cuz, you only need to simulate enough of the universe for one person
2. And it doesn't have to have the fidelity of "real" (whatever that means) physics
3. And why suppose it's running on a kind of "computer" that we presently understand?
But if you're willing to make a lot of assumptions above, then perhaps you can rule out conclusions based on them, and say that we're not living in a simulation. At least that narrows things down enough for some testable theory. Because, either way, it's a metaphysics question whose answer is probably not useful. Up until the day you start talking about the ethics of implementing it yourself.
It's turtles all the way down you bet your sweet ass!
As far as I know, I'm the only conscious being in this simulated universe and nothing else is rendered or precisely computed until I observe it. What appears to be fundamental laws of the universe could very well be high level abstractions that are run at "good enough" quality for my personal experience to be believable, and only have more dedicated and precise simulations when I'm measuring the data personally. And even that could be unreliable. When you live in a system that controls everything, can you trust even your basic observations? Also, if the fundamental laws of physics are determined by a simulation, why would anyone assume that the operators of the simulation would copy their own laws of physics exactly?
It's pretty obvious that we are not in a simulation. Just run the numbers. To simulate an aphid looking up at a faraway star for a millisecond, that requires simulating that photon from star, through millions of years, and its interactions with every particle, photon and field along the way. So you'd need a database of, oh, maybe 10^85 rows, with the velocity, position, and quantum numbers of each particle. That's going to require a HECK of an index to trace that photon, plus computing an awful lot of fields and interactions. And then multiply that by each particle. 10^170 is an awful lot of interactions to simulate, in this or any other universe.
Wtf. Why do these popular science magazines take good work and bs it. It nowhere states in this paper, 'with definity' that the universe is not a simulation. Just that it's an NP hard problem. Duh....
First, Who says p /= np, second who says that NP hard problems can't be solved efficiently in some higher dimension or time scale! WTH!
... the computer running the simulation exists in a higher dimension. This could exponentially increase the computing power for the simulation... especially if it's using quantum computation.
then the task quickly becomes impossible
For who? Us? Or the ETs that are otherwise able to simulate our entire universe?
I for one, am looking forward to getting into the Matrix, Love The Little Romanian Girrl.
Why can't the computer just use a real quantum-hall effect internally to produce the simulated quantum-hall effect?
The idiots should be using blockchain for this.
That only proves that we have a lot of learning to do.
...for the people that wrote this paper, and the people who agree with it.
Proving that simulating our entire unobserved universe in real-time is impossible mean absolutely NOTHING! Any game developer can tell you, you only have to simulate what's being observed.
To question whether this technology is possible or not is totally idiotic. It's nearly possible already! If the worlds computing power was hacked together to make a simulator for a new born baby that was wired into it and forced to grow up in, do you think that baby would have any idea it was growing up in a simulator? Fuck no.
The simulator doesn't need to be powerful enough to simulate 7 billion realities and network them together Matrix style. There might be only one entity in the simulator. There might be only one entity in existence. Maybe the entity created the simulator for itself, because it was so fucking bored and lonely.
Damn, these people are so stupid it hurts.
If they are right, they have only shown there is a computer (nature) that is exponentially faster than a Turing machine. They haven't even disproven the Church Turing thesis, which deals with computability, but even if they had, it wouldn't imply we are living outside a simulation - only that there is a computer (nature) more powerful than a TM.
I guess you could say this proves we aren't being simulated by a single-tape deterministic Turing machine, but I knew that already since I can decide palindromes in linear time.
Seems like simple mistakes. Are these computer scientists or physicists who strayed too far from their competencies?
The underlying science here says something quite different from the headline: it's a claim that quantum computing is fundamentally more efficient than classical computing. It has long been suspected that quantum computing wasn't necessarily more efficient: that the existence of an efficient quantum algorithm might actually imply an efficient classical algorithm must also exist. It's really, really difficult to prove that there is no efficient classical algorithm for a given problem.
What they tried to show is that a specific type of algorithm is fundamentally more efficient on a quantum computer, and can't be done efficiently on a classical computer. I don't know if they succeeded or not. From past experience, I know it's really really hard to prove this kind of thing definitively, so there may be many responses that shoot their conclusion down. But even if their conclusion is correct, it doesn't mean that our universe can't be simulated. If correct, it just means that the simulation must be performed by a quantum computer.
Whose to say how much computational power is available outside our reality?
If you were to create an actual universe and configure it, let's say it similarly to ours, would that be considered a simulation? It seems to me that this must be answered before going too far down the rabbit hole.
If the answer is yes, we can call a "real" universe a simulation, then:
- Surely there is no hope of deducing that we are in one because there should be no limits to test, no difference between "real" and "not-real".
- Maybe it's simulations all the way down. If a smaller universe can exist within a larger one then it's possible this is the way things are.
- Perhaps the universes are natural rather than created.
- It's possible that inner universes are so much smaller than beings that inhabit the outer universe that they don't actually realize they are there, perhaps just being a small particle in their environment they haven't noticed or discovered.
- We could be such beings.
If no, and we define a simulation as necessarily a system running within another system, a few points come to mind:
- Why simulate? Surely a creating a real universe would be more ideal than a fabricated one. Presumably the beings in charge either cannot or choose not to create a real one.
- If it's not a real universe then it must not be identical to a real universe. It must be close however, so perhaps we can try to estimate what a real one is like by looking at our own and considering the differences errors or optimizations.
- The outer universe must be at least several multiples of the size of the inner one because to store the state of the smallest unit of the inner one it must take multiple units of the outer one.
- If (number of units in inner universe) x (outer universe units per inner unit) is an amount manageable by the beings running the simulation, they must be unimaginably large too, probably made up of more units than our universe.
- If running a simulation requires a bigger universe than the one being simulated, that would seem to rule out the idea of simulations within simulations ad infinitum - there must be a lower limit.
- If you consider (number of units in our universe) / (simulation units per universe unit) you probably get a number large enough to simulate many people and a good chunk of universe. That shouldn't be true if we are at the "bottom" of the scale.
- If we are not at the bottom then our universe does contain a simulation. Surely it must be very large; where is it?
And of course the question remains: Are we at the top?
this is total bullshit we live in simulation for sure
Even a Timex Sinclair 1000 could simulate our universe (with access to enough memory), the only catch is that it would simulate it very slowly, such that every picosecond of subjective time in the simulated universe would equate to eons in the "real" universe.
Basically, it seems they're saying that it would be impossible to do, because we don't know how to do it. That brilliant logic has plagued us for centuries. We're living in a world of impossible sciences, according to people who didn't think it could be done.
They make the assumption that every particle in the universe would have to be recorded and mapped. It doesn't have to work that way. A block of space (like extra-atmospheric extra-terrestrial) doesn't need every block mapped. It just needs a sum of parts. 1 cubic meter block of space has an average of ## particles, and all surrounding blocks would behave likewise.
I'm not really arguing that the simulation idea is legitimate. I'm just indicating that their proof isn't proof.
It is cute that they mention an extra-terrestrial computer running the simulation. That makes no sense at all. If it's the computer running the simulation, why or how would it reside inside that simulation? If we were the simulation, wouldn't that mean that it runs on some form of computer, residing on that planet (or whatever unit they'd use)? It would be terrestrial, with all of us, and all of the universe, being on that planet.
I don't know how high anyone had to be to come up with this to start with, but clearly they had a good supply.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
no, the anomaly was introduced as an artifact by the programmers, to trick us into believing we are not in a simulation. we are getting close to ruining their experiement and they are getting desparate.
...Eternity is REALLY long.
And heck, for all you know our simulated universe was powered on just one planck time ago, and all of history and 'prior observations' including your memories are merely programmed in to make you think otherwise.
As always, there's a relevant xkcd here: https://xkcd.com/505/
It rules out simulations that anything within this universe, no matter how advanced, could come up with.
No, it does not. It rules out using the algorithm they tested for simulating it. I'm not aware of any proof that this has to be the most efficient simulation method for this problem.
Even if there were such a proof the next question is would a Quantum Computer be capable of a more efficient simulation? If not then for the claim they made there then needs to be a proof that no possible future computing technology could ever run this simulation more efficiently.
Really all we have now is evidence that suggests the universe is not a simulation run on incremental improvements of existing computing technology which is far, far weaker than what they claim.
Even if the complexity arguments they are trying to make are valid (which seems unlikely), that would still be missing the point. A simulation only needs to be good enough to fool human observers; that is, if you claim "exponential complexity" somewhere, it needs to be distinguishable b human observers from "good enough" approximations.
In fact, it doesn't even need to do that: since humans are part of the simulation, the simulation itself can simply change the brain state of any physicist in such a way that the physicists believes the simulation behaves in whatever way he thinks it ought to behave in.
It assumes that the universe simulating ours is exactly like ours and has the same constraints we do. And, there is the possibility that if we are in a simulation the simulator or those running it noticed that we were trying to detect whether we were inside a simulation and gave us the answer we wanted to see. They could have even just deposited the memory of conducting the experiment in the minds of the researchers.
The simulation can't be extraterrestrial if it includes the Earth.
Besides, we all know that the Earth is just a giant computer created by Deep Thought and is probably simulating the universe in order to determine it's purpose. Are we in the simulation or on top of it? No point in worrying.
You build the parts people see out of gold, and use less expensive stuff for the rest
How do we know that's not what's going on? We only know the universe has uniform complexity from our observations. If WE are the point of the simulation, then it makes sense to simulate everything we observe in high detail. Everything we're not observing is run at low fidelity, or not at all (and made up for with procedural generation when we get around to looking).
They are not real "team of theoretical physicists from Oxford University". They are simply NPCs designed by those who built the simulation to tell us that it's not a simulation.
The paper excludes the possibility of a simulation modelled with Classical computing, as long as there aren't any mathematical shortcuts (which they acknowledge in the last line of the paper). So very likely no simulation based on computers as we know them. Doesn't necessarily exclude quantum computers.
It seems that a logical refutation of their conclusion would be that the perceived exponential growth in complexity could represent the computation heavy side of a trap door algorithm.