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don't remind me that people actually believe that you can infer the existence of a simulation only with data points that are created and controlled by it.

by rf15 9y ago

mirekrusin 9y ago
Simulation part was a joke. But the static, unchangeable past is interesting because: 1. assumption that the past is static and can't change is not crazy and if retrocausal influence exists, it could imply Many Worlds interpretation as more plausible - there must be at least 2 different universes with static past if you can choose at present past A or past B. The joke is that branching universes creates large overhead costs (n unmerged, binary branches create 2^n universes to keep track of) in simulation that can crash it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
alasdair_ 9y ago
There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this basic idea. As a (bad) analogy, think about how computer code can be written to detect whether or not it is running inside a virtual machine or on a "real" device. It's usually almost impossible to tell but by probing at the extremes and forcing the system to do things that never happen under common usage, it's possible. (It's also possible to break out of the system entirely and gain access to the host OS sometimes, but perhaps that's taking things too far :)
- monktastic1 9y ago
  The difficulty is that we already know something about how computers work. What's to say that time, space, logic, reason, mathematics are even things in the "base" reality?
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  > It's usually almost impossible to tell but by probing at the extremes and forcing the system to do things that never happen under common usage, it's possible Yes, but it's only possible by comparing the results to those same results when that action is performed outside of a VM. If you can never baseline your data outside the VM, then you'll never know you're seeing odd results. You'll just think "that's the way the world works".

don't remind me that people actually believe that you can infer the existence of a simulation only with data points that are created and controlled by it.

by rf15 9y ago

don't remind me that people actually believe that you can infer the existence of a simulation only with data points that are created and controlled by it.

mirekrusin 9y ago

Simulation part was a joke. But the static, unchangeable past is interesting because: 1. assumption that the past is static and can't change is not crazy and if retrocausal influence exists, it could imply Many Worlds interpretation as more plausible - there must be at least 2 different universes with static past if you can choose at present past A or past B. The joke is that branching universes creates large overhead costs (n unmerged, binary branches create 2^n universes to keep track of) in simulation that can crash it.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

alasdair_ 9y ago

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this basic idea. As a (bad) analogy, think about how computer code can be written to detect whether or not it is running inside a virtual machine or on a "real" device. It's usually almost impossible to tell but by probing at the extremes and forcing the system to do things that never happen under common usage, it's possible. (It's also possible to break out of the system entirely and gain access to the host OS sometimes, but perhaps that's taking things too far :)

monktastic1 9y ago
The difficulty is that we already know something about how computers work. What's to say that time, space, logic, reason, mathematics are even things in the "base" reality?
BoiledCabbage 9y ago
> It's usually almost impossible to tell but by probing at the extremes and forcing the system to do things that never happen under common usage, it's possible Yes, but it's only possible by comparing the results to those same results when that action is performed outside of a VM. If you can never baseline your data outside the VM, then you'll never know you're seeing odd results. You'll just think "that's the way the world works".