News Is the universe really just a computer simulation?

[Linguofreak]

Now that is spooky.
The result would be law of nature not being constant all the time.

And it would be pretty much beyond science to detect, since it's not repeatable. And with troll enough "god", unobservable in any non-anekdotal moment.

Not only that, but it's the way the simulations we run on our computers tend to work. Nothing in the simulated world can force us to interact with the computer. You can start an Orbiter session running, put a Delta Glider on a Hohmann trajectory to Mars, and leave it running while you leave the house for a long vacation.

 

[Quick_Nick]

Not only that, but it's the way the simulations we run on our computers tend to work. Nothing in the simulated world can force us to interact with the computer. You can start an Orbiter session running, put a Delta Glider on a Hohmann trajectory to Mars, and leave it running while you leave the house for a long vacation.

And that's precisely the moment where you realize all your dwarves are dying.

 

[Ghostrider]

In the first case, what's the point of knowing about it?
You're not going to try hacking out of the universe, right? Right?

Why not? If we know it's a simulation, and can find the cheat codes, Matrix here we come...:lol:

 

[SiberianTiger]

Please, isn't it obvious that life formed exactly the way it could have happened under the given rules, not the other way around?

As far as I understand the ideas suggested by the anthropic principle's partisans, the tuning of the world constants is so fine that no stars and planets could exist under somewhat different conditions, and it's more than just presence of liquid water inside the green zone for some planets.

 

[Admiral_Ritt]

If the universe is an INTENDED simulation, then whomever is running it, has
set-up parameters that make it very difficult to find out.


The Quantum world, is a very handy substrate to include in a simultated universe. It puts a cap on what science can tell us about our world.

The General Theory of Relativity is a Handy thing to have to put constraints
on any living beings in a simulation, like an implicit electrified fence.

If the Simulation can detect the concious thoughts that may lead to it's
discovery, it will intervene create results that obscure it.

The computer power neccessary to Create the simulation is vastly overated.
You only need to fully simulate 2-3% of minds, the rest can be automatons, only being made whole on the random chance that that fully
rendered mind interacts with these simpleton automatons.

Sometimes I think that non-curious people about the world are a hint
of that mind automation.

Also, think about revolutions in history. It is said that only a few percent
of total populations take part in the struggles that affect the outcome.


THE ALTERNATIVE IS: that this simultion of our universse is unintended runaway effect of some program, and it is eating alot computing power and energy. A comitee is in session as to how best to pull the plug, and maybe restart without the BUGS in the program. If this is the case then
verifying that WE ARE in simultion maybe proof that our world is nearly at an
end for reasons out our controll

 

[Ghostrider]

Time to break that old day-glo frisbee out of the drawer...

 

[Xyon]

if (this->readThread(ORBITER_FORUM_COM, 29254) && desires->internet->makeForumComment())
{
    std::string comment;
    printf_s(comment, "%s", brain->internetActions->threadComment);
    manipulators->hands->right->doKeyboardAction(SCROLL_KEYS, SCROLL_DOWN);
    manipulators->hands->right->doMouseAction(LMB, this->thread->quickReplyBox);
    combinedManip->hands->performComplex(KEYBOARD_TYPING, comment);
    manipulators->hands->right->doMouseAction(LMB, this->thread->submit);
    return true;
}
else
{
    return NAVIGATE_AWAY;
}

 

[Artlav]

If the Simulation can detect the concious thoughts that may lead to it's
discovery, it will intervene create results that obscure it.

The computer power neccessary to Create the simulation is vastly overated.
You only need to fully simulate 2-3% of minds, the rest can be automatons, only being made whole on the random chance that that fully
rendered mind interacts with these simpleton automatons.

That assumes that the simulation is akin to The Matrix - Earth is the focus, people are simulated, and rest of the universe is just a background.

Even then there are problems - all the "background" would take way more computational resources than any single "mind", so simulating only 2-3% makes no sense.

Neither is it making sense per se - every person appears to be quite complex, curiosity or not.
All their stories are still played out from start to finish.
If they are background, then the requirements on this "background" is only a touch less than on "real" minds.


If, however, it's The Universe that is simulated, then humans, "consciousness", people, etc is probably not even recognizable, and is hardly unique.

The resources needed are either extreme, on the scale of the entire universe running itself;
Or else extremely small, if proper fractal compression is used.

In the latter case the universe might be just a pattern of a single equation, akin to mandelbrot set - infinite in size, finite in complexity, inconceivable in simplicity.

The latter case seems to make more sense.
Everything is falling together, complexity is increasing constantly.
A gas cloud 6 billion years ago collapsed on it's own accord into planets, life, humans, and that computer you're staring at.
Just like if there is an attractor embedded in the laws of physics, making the universe converge on some sort of The Solution which is the point of making the whole thing.

 

[Linguofreak]

If life is a computer simulation, and I'm just a computer program myself. I'm gonna find and kick in the shin of the person who thought that giving the computer program a "headache program" was a good idea.

Seriously though, life seems a bit too complex to be a simulation. There are too many variables in life that it just seems impractical that someone created (multiple) computer programs that interact with eachother in so many different ways.

As I said above, if the universe is a simulation, we're part of the data, not programs ourselves.

 

[FADEC]

Yes.

 

[Hartmann]

Perhaps a computer simulation not , but we could be an hologram in an holographic universe .

 

[Quick_Nick]

Perhaps a computer simulation not , but we could be an hologram in an holographic universe .

That's still data, (usually called information) with the "RAM" being at the "edge" of the universe.

 

[Izack]

I've always been fascinated by this thought experiment.

There's a known limit to how much energy those particles have, though, and Beane and his colleagues have calculated that this seemingly arbitrary cliff in the spectrum is consistent with the kind of boundary that you'd find if there was an underlying lattice governing the limits of a simulator.

This is where the article lost me. The second half of this sentence strikes me entirely as non sequitur. "Consistent" with what kind of boundary? Does this imply we already have a precedent for this?

I admit to not reading the arXiv paper for lack of time. If anyone has, do they explain where they researched / how they constructed a working theory describing the boundaries that would be encountered if the universe was a simulation?

 

[Artlav]

This is where the article lost me. The second half of this sentence strikes me entirely as non sequitur. "Consistent" with what kind of boundary? Does this imply we already have a precedent for this?

I admit to not reading the arXiv paper for lack of time. If anyone has, do they explain where they researched / how they constructed a working theory describing the boundaries that would be encountered if the universe was a simulation?

Quantization errors.


Either it's the floating point errors, in which cases, for example things going too fast would not change velocity in the low ranges - a thing going at 99% c would only accelerate by fractions of 1 m/s, or things too far would only change positions in the same kinds of fractions..
You can see that effect in Orbiter if you go a few LY away from the Sun, or going at a few LY per second of speed.
Kind of implausible, unless it's the Earth that is the focus of the sim, not the whole universe - things would break from such errors, and quickly, while we see a consistent universe all the way out.


Or, in an integer math, there is a minimum size to things, akin to plank length.
In this case, we will see directional errors.
Basically, the space won't be uniform, isotropic - there would be directions it's easier to go in, and directions it's harder to go in.
Microscopic differences that might accumulate to noticeable levels if a particle have travelled across a few intergalactic voids.
Think Conway's Life game for example.
With rough enough lattice this could allow for breaking of laws of thermodynamics and energy conservation.


In any case, that assumes that the external world have the same types of math and computers that we invented, which is kind of a big assumption.
I.e. you can configure a fractal pattern in such a way that it would represent a whole universe if detailed deep enough. There will be no inconsistencies if you look from the inside, and an external observer's resolution would depend on how long he is willing to wait for the pattern to generate.


Once again, it's a space of cosmological theories where possibilities are only limited by imagination.

 

[jedidia]

This is where the article lost me. The second half of this sentence strikes me entirely as non sequitur. "Consistent" with what kind of boundary? Does this imply we already have a precedent for this?

Basically, it suggests that there is a minimum resolution at which the universe works, which you would not have in an analog process. The major question popping up here for me would be if they can be sure that it's not just the minimum resolution of the measuring equipment or their data processing method they've found...