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This paper is assuming the simulating universe has things like "particles" and "cosmic rays". The properties of the simulating universe, including foundational

This paper is assuming the simulating universe has things like "particles" and "cosmic rays". The properties of the simulating universe, including foundational things like rules of logic and mathematics, could be literally unimaginable (by design or accident) within the simulation.

anyfoo 8y ago
As I wrote in another comment, you can still come up with theories for certain types of simulation, and test whether their properties hold or not. I suspect no one in the “simulation community” ever expects to disprove a simulation completely, but as the authors did you can try to come up with a likely simulation model (maybe close to how we would do it) and try to refute that.
- deleted 8y ago
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FLUX-YOU 8y ago
>The properties of the simulating universe, including foundational things like rules of logic and mathematics, could be literally unimaginable (by design or accident) within the simulation. This could be the quadrillionth iteration by which point they'd be pretty confident though.
neolefty 8y ago
> The properties of the simulating universe ... could be literally unimaginable ... within the simulation. Totally. This is an area that religion claims to address—believers in a religion [1] could frame God as The Simulator and a divine revelation as a message from the simulator, perhaps regarding the purpose of the simulation—that otherwise there is no way to know. The author of the paper describes a limitation of this line of inquiry: > The type of simulation ruled out is very specific. Perhaps that is the price one must pay to make any kind of Popperian progress. It reminds me of this: > For were I to praise [God] ... I would find that my praise of Thee can befit only such as are like unto me, who are themselves Thy creatures, and who have been generated through the power of Thy decree ... It's an area that's inherently challenging to explore from inside the simulation! [1] Disclaimer: Baha'i here, watch out [2] Baha'u'llah — http://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/prayers-meditations/#f=f4-396 http://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/p...
baq 8y ago
The beauty of logic and mathematics is precisely independence of the universe in which they've been discovered. I don't see how logic could be any different in any simulating universe.
- idlewords 8y ago
  You couldn't see it even if it were possible. But the entire apparatus (including your sense of wonder at its manifest universality) could be a manufactured construct in an unimaginably different world
m000z0rz 8y ago
From the abstract: > The type of simulation ruled out is very specific. Really, it seems to apply to external soft errors with any cause, even unimaginable ones. But yes, it is still pretty specific.

anyfoo 8y ago

As I wrote in another comment, you can still come up with theories for certain types of simulation, and test whether their properties hold or not. I suspect no one in the “simulation community” ever expects to disprove a simulation completely, but as the authors did you can try to come up with a likely simulation model (maybe close to how we would do it) and try to refute that.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

FLUX-YOU 8y ago

>The properties of the simulating universe, including foundational things like rules of logic and mathematics, could be literally unimaginable (by design or accident) within the simulation. This could be the quadrillionth iteration by which point they'd be pretty confident though.

neolefty 8y ago

> The properties of the simulating universe ... could be literally unimaginable ... within the simulation. Totally. This is an area that religion claims to address—believers in a religion [1] could frame God as The Simulator and a divine revelation as a message from the simulator, perhaps regarding the purpose of the simulation—that otherwise there is no way to know. The author of the paper describes a limitation of this line of inquiry: > The type of simulation ruled out is very specific. Perhaps that is the price one must pay to make any kind of Popperian progress. It reminds me of this: > For were I to praise [God] ... I would find that my praise of Thee can befit only such as are like unto me, who are themselves Thy creatures, and who have been generated through the power of Thy decree ... It's an area that's inherently challenging to explore from inside the simulation! [1] Disclaimer: Baha'i here, watch out [2] Baha'u'llah — http://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/prayers-meditations/#f=f4-396 http://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/p...

baq 8y ago

The beauty of logic and mathematics is precisely independence of the universe in which they've been discovered. I don't see how logic could be any different in any simulating universe.

idlewords 8y ago
You couldn't see it even if it were possible. But the entire apparatus (including your sense of wonder at its manifest universality) could be a manufactured construct in an unimaginably different world

m000z0rz 8y ago

From the abstract: > The type of simulation ruled out is very specific. Really, it seems to apply to external soft errors with any cause, even unimaginable ones. But yes, it is still pretty specific.