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this is highly naive of me to ask, but "in theory" if we could simulate the universe, would familiar stuff like living organisms/'societies'/'humans' potentiall
by krrishd 8y ago
this is highly naive of me to ask, but "in theory" if we could simulate the universe, would familiar stuff like living organisms/'societies'/'humans' potentially just emerge within such simulations?
just super cool to think about even if not the case/unrealistic.
- ada1981 8y agoIf we could simulate it past a certain fidelity threshold, it would seem so.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoDepends on how you define living, really. It's a philosophical problem, what makes one collection of matter "alive" and another "not alive"? Since at least Thomas S. Ray's work on Tierra in the 90s we've been creating universes in which things that could be called "life" have developed.
- pouta 8y agoThe 'I Am A Strange Loop' covers this beautifully.
- rotexo 8y agoMy understanding of Tierra and its successors like Avida are that the "digital organisms" are written beforehand and then systematically (pseudorandomly) mutated. Because the initial "organisms" are written, it would be a stretch to say that "life" developed in these systems. A statement like "the process of evolution by natural selection was simulated in an artificial system" would seem to be more accurate.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoYes, this is true, however I think the distinction is irrelevant. The initial VM was created with the intention of encouraging this evolution, had the original intent included spontaneous emergence of a-life as a goal I'm pretty confident that would have happened.
- rotexo 8y agoSeems like that's an assertion begging for an experiment. Take the software that manages experiments in Avida or Tierra, but don't supply pre-written organisms. Bit-flip randomly and see if something develops. Unfortunately I don't know the implementation details of those systems at all, so I can't say whether or not that would be feasible.