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I don't understand what people mean by "we live in a simulation". The word "simulation" to me (and according to Wikipedia) means: > ...the imitation of the ope
by sssilver 9y ago
I don't understand what people mean by "we live in a simulation". The word "simulation" to me (and according to Wikipedia) means:
> ...the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. The act of simulating something first requires that a model be developed; this model represents the key characteristics, behaviors and functions of the selected physical or abstract system or process.
What "real-world process or system" is our universe "simulating" using some approximate model? Isn't our universe the "real world", pretty much by definition?
- baumandm 9y agoJust as we can create simulations using software, it's possible some other entity has created a simulation that contains us. A running process thinks the real world is constrained by CPU and memory and hard disks, but that doesn't mean it's true. Similarly, the universe is the "real world" from our perspective, but it's (currently) physically impossible for us to know otherwise if that is the case.
- sssilver 9y agoThe caveat here is, even if we are a computational (or some other) process in some system, that doesn't mean that process is a simulation of another process. Just because there's a system A that "wraps" system B, doesn't mean that system B's processes can be called "simulations" -- simulation implies that there's a process in system A that the process in system B is trying to mimic.