4 ms·

How exactly would the 1:1 bit correspondence work in practice? What is the binding between simulated and external bit? Wouldn't we need to operate at the edge o

How exactly would the 1:1 bit correspondence work in practice? What is the binding between simulated and external bit? Wouldn't we need to operate at the edge of Landauer's principle to really rule out this possibility?

xamuel 8y ago
Imagine if you were to program a video game in which players could interact with in-game computers, which were implemented as genuine full-feature emulations of working computers. It seems plausible that a memory-bit in one of the in-game computers would have its value stored in a memory-bit in the real computer on which the game was running.
- nofunsir 8y ago
  It's equally plausible that our single bit is far too high-level of an object for them. Why not just simulate everything that makes up our bits? (germanium atoms, etc)
  - xamuel 8y ago
    True. The paper doesn't rule out such a simulation. (Unless maybe the experiment could be run with memory-bits so hyper-sensitive that a single germanium atom could cause a macroscale bit-flip? Just kidding)
    - nofunsir 8y ago
      You joke, but aren't we're running into those limits? How many silicon atoms in a nanometer? Also... I misspoke. I was thinking gallium.
- shaded-enmity 8y ago
  What do you precisely mean by genuine full-feature emulations of working computers? If the in-game computer is represented as some "physical model using fundamental particles" than each bit of simulated memory is backed by, I don't know, gigabytes of data about properties of those particles? Isn't what constitutes a bit strictly dependent on the process making the actual reading? How would the simulator know what is considered a bit of information within the simulated system, and intentionally map it 1:1 onto a real memory bank? If we discard these problems, wouldn't that imply that if such mapping were possible, that the simulation would also have to be strictly Anthropic i.e. the only running "software" are minds being fed data as "sensory" input?
  - xamuel 8y ago
    Things that the players think are computers. Sorry for such a vague answer, but here's an example. Suppose some people live in a Minecraft server, unaware there's anything else. Within the game, they build some computers (search for "working computer in Minecraft", it's been done many times). They run their computers a long time and observe soft errors. The soft errors are caused by cosmic rays hitting the Minecraft server in the real world, but our heros don't know that. They attempt to protect their computers, moving them underground and setting guards to make sure no creepers get in, etc. But nothing they do stops the soft errors. Of course! What could they possibly do to stop soft errors caused by real cosmic rays hitting the Minecraft server?
    - aeosynth 8y ago
      It might be interesting to do exactly that - rerun the OP example in a Minecraft server, attempting to prove that it is a simulation. Proving the simulation hypothesis true in Minecraft could give ideas on how to prove it in our universe.
  - xamuel 8y ago
    Hi, not sure if you're still reading this, but I thought some more about your question. It makes me realize, computers-in-the-simulation aren't really important in my argument. What really matters is that the people in the simulation discover some way of making observations about microscale events. It could just as well happen that, say, they make many observations of sterile petri dishes and eventually notice "soft errors" in the petri dishes (e.g. spontaneous infection occurring due to real cosmic ray hitting simulating computer). So the inhabitants move their petri dishes into a vault, etc., and check whether that was enough to protect the petri dishes. I think computers are probably the best way to quickly get the idea across, but it could definitely generalize.

xamuel 8y ago

Imagine if you were to program a video game in which players could interact with in-game computers, which were implemented as genuine full-feature emulations of working computers. It seems plausible that a memory-bit in one of the in-game computers would have its value stored in a memory-bit in the real computer on which the game was running.

nofunsir 8y ago
It's equally plausible that our single bit is far too high-level of an object for them. Why not just simulate everything that makes up our bits? (germanium atoms, etc)
- xamuel 8y ago
  True. The paper doesn't rule out such a simulation. (Unless maybe the experiment could be run with memory-bits so hyper-sensitive that a single germanium atom could cause a macroscale bit-flip? Just kidding)
  - nofunsir 8y ago
    You joke, but aren't we're running into those limits? How many silicon atoms in a nanometer? Also... I misspoke. I was thinking gallium.
shaded-enmity 8y ago
What do you precisely mean by genuine full-feature emulations of working computers? If the in-game computer is represented as some "physical model using fundamental particles" than each bit of simulated memory is backed by, I don't know, gigabytes of data about properties of those particles? Isn't what constitutes a bit strictly dependent on the process making the actual reading? How would the simulator know what is considered a bit of information within the simulated system, and intentionally map it 1:1 onto a real memory bank? If we discard these problems, wouldn't that imply that if such mapping were possible, that the simulation would also have to be strictly Anthropic i.e. the only running "software" are minds being fed data as "sensory" input?
- xamuel 8y ago
  Things that the players think are computers. Sorry for such a vague answer, but here's an example. Suppose some people live in a Minecraft server, unaware there's anything else. Within the game, they build some computers (search for "working computer in Minecraft", it's been done many times). They run their computers a long time and observe soft errors. The soft errors are caused by cosmic rays hitting the Minecraft server in the real world, but our heros don't know that. They attempt to protect their computers, moving them underground and setting guards to make sure no creepers get in, etc. But nothing they do stops the soft errors. Of course! What could they possibly do to stop soft errors caused by real cosmic rays hitting the Minecraft server?
  - aeosynth 8y ago
    It might be interesting to do exactly that - rerun the OP example in a Minecraft server, attempting to prove that it is a simulation. Proving the simulation hypothesis true in Minecraft could give ideas on how to prove it in our universe.
- xamuel 8y ago
  Hi, not sure if you're still reading this, but I thought some more about your question. It makes me realize, computers-in-the-simulation aren't really important in my argument. What really matters is that the people in the simulation discover some way of making observations about microscale events. It could just as well happen that, say, they make many observations of sterile petri dishes and eventually notice "soft errors" in the petri dishes (e.g. spontaneous infection occurring due to real cosmic ray hitting simulating computer). So the inhabitants move their petri dishes into a vault, etc., and check whether that was enough to protect the petri dishes. I think computers are probably the best way to quickly get the idea across, but it could definitely generalize.