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I love contemplating this idea, but really hate when people write about it. They always talk about "The Matrix" or being "Video Game Characters", which really m
by nickcano 10y ago
I love contemplating this idea, but really hate when people write about it. They always talk about "The Matrix" or being "Video Game Characters", which really muddies the water. Of course a lot of people will reject the idea when presented like this. The Matrix, for one, is real humans in a real universe being plugged into the simulation of the real universe, which seems absurd. The idea of being inside a video game detracts from people's inherent feeling of free will and self awareness, because it seems to imply they are either a pre-programmed NPC or a character being controlled by some consciousness outside of the simulation. I feel like this flawed first impression makes them less likely to entertain the idea.
At least the way I think about it, these analogies are neither accurate to the theory nor necessary to explain it to the layman. Let's look at it academically. If our technology had the capacity to completely simulate any sort of universe, you can bet a least one research team would do just that. Well, if you, like me and many others, think of the intelligent mind simply as a very powerful and self-aware computer capable of learning and abstract thought, and if the so-called universe simulated by researchers has a model of matter capable of creating the logical gates needed to replicate such a computer, and the simulated universe contains natural processes by which these logical gates might evolve, then you must agree that it is possible intelligent life may emerge in such a simulated universe -- no matter how different, similar, big, or small it is in comparison to our own. Then, following the same reasoning, you must also agree that there is the slightest possibility that the nested universe may produce one or multiple collections of intelligence capable of the same thing.
In this thought experiment, the simulation isn't imprisonment, doesn't violate a sense of self-awareness or free will, and doesn't even rule out the concept of a god or ultimate creator. It simply abstracts the container in which our universe lives from something mysterious to something relatively relatable to our current technology.
Another interesting thought is if we ever become capable of simulating such a universe, it seems much more likely than not we're also a simulation, since there's a possibility for each simulation to produce it's own simulation or collection of simulations.
- webkike 10y agoHere's an interesting thought -- suppose the algorithm used to simulate our universe is not bound by the resources in the universe. Let's also say that our simulation results in the people in our simulation simulating our universe. In this case, who is simulating who? In every possible way you could observe them the two universes are identical.
- nickcano 10y agoWell that's also interesting because it brings the potential count of simulated universes from "some N bounded by the ratio of the amount information containable by a universe to the amount of information containable by all of its simulations processed as a function of the size of the 'master' or 'original' universe" to simply "N = infinity".
- estefan 10y agoIt's also interesting because some neuroscientists believe that we literally do live in our own simulations of reality. This is because our consciousness has a time lag which our mental simulations trick us into believing aren't there. The most obvious way of verifying how we create our own simulations mentally is by thinking about the blind spot in our eyes. If you hold your thumbs up at arms length in front of you and gradually move them apart, your thumbs disappear from view at some point. They are in your blind spot. However, you don't have large black holes in your field of vision, so your mind interpolates the data that it expects should be there.
- xixixao 10y agoPermutation City. Recommended reading.
- aaroninsf 10y agoThanks for the tip. Had not heard of it. Opening scene is very relevant :)
- cubano 10y ago"Free will" is almost certainly an illusion as well. This has been proven in many different ways over the past 50 years. http://io9.gizmodo.com/5975778/scientific-evidence-that-you-probably-dont-have-free-will http://io9.gizmodo.com/5975778/scientific-evidence-that-you-...
- breuleux 10y ago> Another interesting thought is if we ever become capable of simulating such a universe, it seems much more likely than not we're also a simulation, since there's a possibility for each simulation to produce it's own simulation or collection of simulations. There's a lot of "ifs", though, for the argument to work: The simulations must support a higher density of life than the universe does. If you need a planet the size of Jupiter and a hundred years to simulate one second of life on Earth, then each nested layer of simulation is going to make the number of simulated humans smaller. It seems highly dubious to me that simulations could be dense enough: if you can build a simulator capable of evolving a million life forms, couldn't you slash all the overhead of environmental simulation and use these same resources to build ten million life forms that interface with the real world directly (imagine nano-life, if that helps)? There must be sound economic reasons to build these simulations. Otherwise, too few of them will exist, and they will not be run for long enough. I can think of a few reasons, like research or entertainment, but I do not think they would suffice. Specialized, focused simulations are useful. Simulating whole universes is overkill. It's a waste of resources.
- taneq 10y agoLook at it this way - if at any point in the future, we ever run even one simulation of the world at our current time, then our odds are 50/50 of being in that simulation. That's only extrapolating from our current capabilities, and not assuming either nested simulations or 'non-historical' simulations. (If we're in a simulation, but not one based on the real universe's past, then we can't even begin to extrapolate from our world to 'universe zero'.) As for practicality, simulations don't need to support a higher density of life (although they very likely will use approximations and variable level-of-detail to effectively simulate space using less resources than the space itself would use) because they have other advantages; you can pause them, take snapshots, revert to earlier states, branch, etc. Think of it as like virtualisation for the universe. Even though virtualisation takes up some system resources, there are still huge advantages to running virtual hosts. As for simulating whole universes being a waste of resources - if we're in a non-historical simulation, we don't even have any conception of what "a waste of resources" means in universe zero. Maybe our entire universe, simulated on a regular grid smaller than the Planck length, is as trivial to store and manipulate on a 5-dimensional universe-zero computer as a 1-dimensional cellular automaton is on a modern desktop computer for us.
- AznHisoka 10y agoOn a side note, I always hate it when writers can't resist adding a snarky joke or 2 near the end of articles about a serious topic. It always always makes the article seem less credible.
- anexprogrammer 10y agoWhy is there never a research project to search for console access and cheat codes?