Is Physical Law an Alien Intelligence? (nautil.us)

What if alien life were so advanced that its powers were indistinguishable from physics? It's the one-year anniversary of a startling article which appeared in Nautilus magazine. Long-time Slashdot reader wjcofkc writes: Caleb Scharf, astronomer and the director of the multidisciplinary Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University presents an intriguing thought experiment.

"Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke was being uncharacteristically unambitious. He once pointed out that any sufficiently advanced technology is going to be indistinguishable from magic. If you dropped in on a bunch of Paleolithic farmers with your iPhone and a pair of sneakers, you'd undoubtedly seem pretty magical. But the contrast is only middling: The farmers would still recognize you as basically like them, and before long they'd be taking selfies. But what if life has moved so far on that it doesn't just appear magical, but appears like physics?"
The original submitter included their own counterarguments against the idea, but the astronomer follows his proposal to its ultimate conclusion.

"Perhaps hyper-advanced life isn't just external. Perhaps it's already all around. It is embedded in what we perceive to be physics itself, from the root behavior of particles and fields to the phenomena of complexity and emergence."

Comments

Someone already thought of it

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have a name for their possible existence: god.

Quick questions

[Okian Warrior]

Some quick questions:

1) Does this hypothesis have testable predictions,

2) Does the theory imply observations that we could make that would invalidate the theory?

I'm a fan of "Hey, Martha!" stories, they're entertaining and thought provoking, but I don't know how much serious consideration such a proposal warrants. (Compared to, say, the survivability of "The Martian" or whether aspects of the "Star Trek" universe are physically realizable.)

Re:Quick questions

[ShanghaiBill]

1) Does this hypothesis have testable predictions,

Yes. The aliens would likely implement physics with some specific features to conserve resources. Here are some predictions:

1. To localize causality, the propagation of information will have a speed limit rather than happening instantaneously.

2. At the lowest levels, reality will be discrete, or "quantum", rather than continuous. The degree of quantum granularity will depend on the size of the floating point registers in the alien computers. Planck's Constant is 6.626e-34, which implies a binary mantissa of at least 115 bits.

3. To limit computation, reality would be held in a fuzzy probabilistic "superposition" state until it is actually observed, similar to how a GPU running OpenGL will skip the generation of hidden polygons. Since only an infinitesimal portion of the Universe is actually observed, this is a huge optimization win.

All of these are actually true of our Universe. Ergo, we are just alien puppets, and our only purpose in "life" is to provide them with entertainment.

Re:What if the physics of our alien was alien too?

[arth1]

And what if the physicis of the physics-alien of our physics-alien was an alien intelligence also?

The alien intelligences will converge to being turtles, all the way down.

Good response

[Okian Warrior]

It's the same as "we're all living in a sim", isn't it?

That's a very good question.

So far as I can tell, there are testable predictions that the sim theory makes. These are predictions that are not required by the theory, but that, if we see them, would be good indications of the sim.

Consider scanning a color document, separating the color channels into R, G, and B, and then doing a histogram of each channel.

If the envelope of the red histogram is smooth and goes to zero at each end (at R=0 and R=255). then we might conclude that the scanner spans the entire range of "red".

If the envelope is smooth but has discontinuous jumps at zero and 255, it means that there are intensities of red smaller than the minimum value the scanner can distinguish, and intensities higher than the highest value. Basically, all the high intensity pixels in the image max out the A/D converter in the scanner, and all the low intensity pixels register as zero even though there is significant variation.

The discontinuities at either end of the measurement imply that there is information outside the measurement range of the scanner.

We can apply that logic to certain astrophysical measurements in the universe in certain cases. If we see measurement distributions which are smooth, but have discontinuous jumps at either end it might indicate that there is information outside the measurable universe, even though we cannot measure it.

...or so it goes. I haven't looked into the theory in detail, but I was under the impression that certain astronomical measurements would imply the existence of a sim, but are not required for us to be in a sim.

Re:the current plateau of physics

[ClickOnThis]

I'm fine with calling it science fiction, or more broadly, art.

Art often presents the vanguard of human ideas, before they make their way into other fields.

Already answered.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The Truth is Truth. The all permeating thing that you materialists call physics and laws of physics is Brahman. What we perceive as The Cosmos, and its physical manifestations are all projections, mere projection of Brahman in our plane of perception, or our sphere of perception. This is the grand illusion, or Maya. Only when we teach ourselves not to be distracted by the physics you would perceive the Brahman, the Truth.

Bear in mind sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from trollery.

Re:Just another god!

[ClickOnThis]

I'm sure you know the actual citation, but for the benefit of others:

Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer. -- Voltaire

[tr: If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.]

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The lizard remains motionless to:

1) be hard-to-see by predators. This is the "freeze" in the freeze-flight-fight response, which is popularly misrepresented as merely "fight or flight".
2) be hard-to-see by prey.
3) have an easy time observing both predators and prey as moving objects in an otherwise still environment.
4) absorb warmth from the sun, which primes their muscles for optimal performance (they are cold-blooded).
5) conserve calories.

You are anthropomorphizing them. This "shared experience" is entirely in your imagination.

And the lizard brain is primarily responsible for basic survival. The moral judgments placed on principles of sound survival notwithstanding.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

Pass the bong.

Re:Falsifiable test?

[fermion]

Many hundreds of years ago a process we know call physics was developed. This process replaced natural philosophy, a failed regimen that resulted in counter productive ideas such as infection being the result of bad blood, the flat earth, and the elements of fire, water, and earth.

As is said here, physics requires not only an idea that matches the data, but an idea the results in tangible novel predictions that can be tested. Physics is open to new ideas, such as the idea that energy is quantized, but requires those ideas to be formalized and used to create new verifiable knowledge, like the tunneling electron.

In short, physics focuses on practical results while natural philosophy focuses on fanciful conjectures. Physics is does not necessarily lead to a more absolute 'truth' but does provide a reasonably objective method to determine if a particular truth is personal or universal.

In this case, there may be an intelligence behind the physics. My question would be, how does this change the laws and assumptions and results we already have? One this I would suggest is that intelligence can change it's mind, so we would see evidence in the universe of differing laws. In fact we might see this, for instance the lack of antimatter. The second question is does assuming an intelligence help us develop a formal result to explain the discrepancy.