There's nothing in the star or rock doing the same thing.
There doesn't need to me. Each state is a snapshot of a valid, logical, self-consistent timeline - all that matters (according to the theory) is that the states can be considered to exist/to be encoded somewhere.
The idea in the book is that a guy gets a load of money from investors and sets up a complex but deterministic cellular automaton which includes copies of the investors' consciousnesses along with all the programming necessary to run a virtual reality for them. The simulation is started, left running for a few seconds and then switched off - but the people within it continue to experience, because the next state of the automaton doesn't need to be run on a computer. It already exists out there somewhere, as does the next state, and the next state, and the next.
It probably doesn't really stand up to a lot of examination, as it was created for the purposes of a novel.
There's a slightly different version of the idea in another book, where some explorers find, in a chain of subsequent universes, a manufactured object which is slightly different in each universe. They eventually realise that they're looking at physical snapshots of a simulation, containing the consciousnesses of the aliens that came before them. The explorers (who are simulations themselves, running on a futuristic but more "conventional" computer) keep travelling through the universes, each time finding a slightly different "state" object - it's like someone had printed out each state of a run of Conway's Life, instead of just keeping the data in a computer and displaying it on screen.
Eventually, after trillions and trillions of universes, they find the physical copies of the object stop changing. The alien consciousnesses within eventually came to the end of their philosophical and scientific study of reality, and... stopped.
Running a simulation doesn't make you analogous to the commonly understood meaning of "God."
My computer is capable of running simulations - and, in fact, I am capable of programming such simulations - which can result in far more complexity than my human brain is capable of comprehending at once.
This *is* a simulation. Except that the computing substrate is atoms and molecules rather than electrons and transistors.
Well, for a start, plenty of things happen in the universe which don't involve atoms and molecules. Secondly, atoms and molecules are in the universe and we can observe them and work out the rules that govern their behaviour, so they can't be the substrate of the simulation.
Either Bach is a better composer than Beethoven, or Beethoven is a better composer than Bach. Neither is testable or provable scientifically.
Sure it is. You just need to precisely and scientifically define "better." Your opening statement presumes there is such a definition.
Or you could just tack on at third alternative, which is to admit that "better" is a purely subjective term which can not be subject to objective analysis.
A universe which hosts our simulated universe would obviously be much larger than ours.
It doesn't have to be. Our universe appears to be large but all those galaxies Hubble has showed us may not be simulated to anything like the same precision as our local environment (or at least, not while we're not looking at them).
What if you recorded every state on a magnetic tape, and then instead of simulating, you would just re-run the tape ? What if if you just spool the tape without actually reading the information from it ? What if you just leave the tape on a shelf ?
This sounds like Greg Egan's dust theory (which isn't explained much by the link).
It doesn't matter how any state is encoded. It may not even matter if it is encoded. Somewhere, in a universe, the current state of your mind may be encoded (by chance) in the arrangement of atoms in a rock; the next state might (by chance) be encoded in flunctuations in a star's surface 10,000,000 years before the rock came into existence.
In a big enough universe, just about anything can be encoded in some fashion, and (so the theory goes, as far as I understand it) conscious beings can therefore experience their reality purely because a chain of internally consistent subsequent encodings of their mind exist somewhere.
Yeah, it's all a bit wishy-washy, really. And I don't think it really explains why we don't experience weird things happening all the time, except that perhaps for some reason only logically consistent subsequent "encodings" of a reality can be experienced. Otherwise, somewhere there is an encoded "me" who is about to experience a velociraptor attA-.khmc. \zs;jdf'GV'oihdfln'@|n
The theology predicts one will experience what one does indeed experience, with high correlation.
The question then becomes: why does theology predict what it predicts? Likely answer: because it hijacked reported experiences and shoe-horned them into the theology.
Slashdot Mirror
Rise In CO2 Has 'Greened Planet Earth'
Gah. Stop verbing adjectives. It really infuriationates me.
I don't who the "you" this headline/summary is referring to, but it's not me.
It means they wouldn't reach the speed of light.
The energy from these particles is enough for the creation of another universe.
Is it? How much is that in jiggawatts then?
We DO know that you will get ripped to shreds before you get inside, though.
If the black hole is big enough you can cross the event horizon without feeling so much as a pinch.
Have You Experienced Ageism?
...I said to my wife. She loves it when I talk formal.
Oh, wait, didn't have my glasses on. Ageism.
There's nothing in the star or rock doing the same thing.
There doesn't need to me. Each state is a snapshot of a valid, logical, self-consistent timeline - all that matters (according to the theory) is that the states can be considered to exist/to be encoded somewhere.
The idea in the book is that a guy gets a load of money from investors and sets up a complex but deterministic cellular automaton which includes copies of the investors' consciousnesses along with all the programming necessary to run a virtual reality for them. The simulation is started, left running for a few seconds and then switched off - but the people within it continue to experience, because the next state of the automaton doesn't need to be run on a computer. It already exists out there somewhere, as does the next state, and the next state, and the next.
It probably doesn't really stand up to a lot of examination, as it was created for the purposes of a novel.
There's a slightly different version of the idea in another book, where some explorers find, in a chain of subsequent universes, a manufactured object which is slightly different in each universe. They eventually realise that they're looking at physical snapshots of a simulation, containing the consciousnesses of the aliens that came before them. The explorers (who are simulations themselves, running on a futuristic but more "conventional" computer) keep travelling through the universes, each time finding a slightly different "state" object - it's like someone had printed out each state of a run of Conway's Life, instead of just keeping the data in a computer and displaying it on screen.
Eventually, after trillions and trillions of universes, they find the physical copies of the object stop changing. The alien consciousnesses within eventually came to the end of their philosophical and scientific study of reality, and... stopped.
if page.title.contains("you"){setclickbait(true);}
Much simpler.
Running a simulation doesn't make you analogous to the commonly understood meaning of "God."
My computer is capable of running simulations - and, in fact, I am capable of programming such simulations - which can result in far more complexity than my human brain is capable of comprehending at once.
This *is* a simulation. Except that the computing substrate is atoms and molecules rather than electrons and transistors.
Well, for a start, plenty of things happen in the universe which don't involve atoms and molecules. Secondly, atoms and molecules are in the universe and we can observe them and work out the rules that govern their behaviour, so they can't be the substrate of the simulation.
Either Bach is a better composer than Beethoven, or Beethoven is a better composer than Bach. Neither is testable or provable scientifically.
Sure it is. You just need to precisely and scientifically define "better." Your opening statement presumes there is such a definition.
Or you could just tack on at third alternative, which is to admit that "better" is a purely subjective term which can not be subject to objective analysis.
A universe which hosts our simulated universe would obviously be much larger than ours.
It doesn't have to be. Our universe appears to be large but all those galaxies Hubble has showed us may not be simulated to anything like the same precision as our local environment (or at least, not while we're not looking at them).
What if you recorded every state on a magnetic tape, and then instead of simulating, you would just re-run the tape ? What if if you just spool the tape without actually reading the information from it ? What if you just leave the tape on a shelf ?
This sounds like Greg Egan's dust theory (which isn't explained much by the link).
It doesn't matter how any state is encoded. It may not even matter if it is encoded. Somewhere, in a universe, the current state of your mind may be encoded (by chance) in the arrangement of atoms in a rock; the next state might (by chance) be encoded in flunctuations in a star's surface 10,000,000 years before the rock came into existence.
In a big enough universe, just about anything can be encoded in some fashion, and (so the theory goes, as far as I understand it) conscious beings can therefore experience their reality purely because a chain of internally consistent subsequent encodings of their mind exist somewhere.
Yeah, it's all a bit wishy-washy, really. And I don't think it really explains why we don't experience weird things happening all the time, except that perhaps for some reason only logically consistent subsequent "encodings" of a reality can be experienced. Otherwise, somewhere there is an encoded "me" who is about to experience a velociraptor attA-.khmc. \zs;jdf'GV'oihdfln'@|n
The theology predicts one will experience what one does indeed experience, with high correlation.
The question then becomes: why does theology predict what it predicts? Likely answer: because it hijacked reported experiences and shoe-horned them into the theology.
This explains Friday afternoons.
That's not a proof.
Plank time.
good day!
But-
And they will pay for the wall they will go up against.
Oh, well, good. There's no way anyone could fake the words "official trailer" in a video.
The only weird thing I noticed about the Bourne one is that it actually includes the text "Official Trailer" in the video.
Don't upset the AppleCartel.
geothermal is good for heating/cooling stuff but you can't do much else with it...
I know, right? What good is heating stuff? Lame.
Google Search Will Soon Include Live TV Listings
Uh, okay, I guess that's news...
Well, probably.