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Scientists are looking for ways to put the simulation hypothesis to the test
- ElBarto 8y agoIt's a possibility but I think not more likely than the possibility that we are not. If we are, then it pushes back 'reality' one step back but the question of what 'reality' is remains. And that even opens new questions. In my view this is similar the question of the origin of the Universe. Both questions boil down to either a singularity or to infinity. It's difficult for the mind to make sense of either.
- nomadiccoder 8y agoIt is argued that there is a higher probability that we are living in a simulation.
- 7dare 8y agoHe's arguing against that view and gave arguments. Do you have any?
- jcranmer 8y agoThe standard argument for simulation boils down to "in the future, we'll get access to insane computational ability, and someone is bound to run ancestor simulations just because we can; once this becomes possible, the amount of time consumed by such simulations will dwarf the time of history." In other words, the argument is basically "it's not impossible, so it will eventually happen, and over a long enough time period, it doesn't matter how long it takes to happen." (As you might imagine, I am not persuaded by this argument.)
- stan_rogers 8y agoNo, it's far more likely that we're the result of an emergency overload dump of a runaway thaumic reactor experiment run in the squash court of a university for wizards on a much more sensible flat world. There's far less hand-waving in that narrative.
- samsari 8y agoIt's not a very convincing argument because there's absolutely zero actual evidence to back the argument up, and absolutely zero reason to even accept the axioms the argument is based on.
- ElBarto 8y agoHow do you work out that probability?
- jeletonskelly 8y agoThere is only one "real" universe. If simulations are being run there's a potentially incomprehensible number of simulated universes. As a member of one of those universes, it is probable you are in one of the many simulations and not the only "real" universe.
- ElBarto 8y agoThat does not answer the question at all.
- memebox3f 8y agoWhere is all this computing power coming from? How many universes could you compute with the power of one sun over the course of it's life?
- misthop 8y agoWhy only one star? Even if you assume the simulating universe has similar physics to ours the simulating entities could be Kardashev[0] III, IV or V [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
- cwmma 8y agoA lot of these experiments start from a premise that the simulating universe has similar physics to the one being simulated and thus any short cuts might be noticed, but the outer universe could be be more have more complex (or just different) physics so the fact that ours doesn't match up with theirs doesn't mean ours isn't self consistent. Sort of like how in Permutation City they create a simulated universe via cellular automata and then when they tell the residents of that universe they are simulated they don't believe them.
- reacweb 8y agoThe simulation has probably a purpose like solving (or understanding) issues in the outer universe. It would be reasonnable to build the simulated universe as similar as possible to the outer universe.
- dustyleary 8y agoThat's a big assumption. What purpose does Goat Simulator http://www.goat-simulator.com/ http://www.goat-simulator.com/ serve to solve/understand issues in our universe? How do you know our universe is not a child's toy for a race of deity-like beings? Or an art project? Maybe the outer universe is populated by immortal godlike entities and has the equivalent of the guys who made Dwarf Fortress saying, "hmm, I wonder what would happen if there were a race of pseudo-intelligent creatures that just arbitrarily died after just a few million seconds?" Or, "I wonder what would happen if the fundamental building blocks of the universe did not behave predictably, but instead made a random choice to determine the outcome of every interaction?" And maybe that programmer is just about to come back from his coffee break, look at what happened, and say, "hmm, that was boring", kill the process, and move on to other things. When you're talking about something that could be powerful enough to simulate our entire universe, assuming that our sense of scale matters at all to it is pretty much the definition of hubris.
- padobson 8y agoThere's a question as to whether ethics/morals/compassion scale with power. I think there's a solid argument to be made that human power has scaled near exponentially over the last 200 years while human ethics seem to be coupled to it (slavery and genocide are almost universally reviled where they were common place before, per capita violence is way way down, international and intercultural cooperation via trade, communication, etc have never been higher). Are the two things tightly coupled? Seems difficult to prove, but if they are, they folks running our simulation are probably going to treat us a lot better than we treat each other.
- scottndecker 8y agoThe simulation won't allow it. Those trying to determine it will be eliminated from the simulation. Even discussing this on a public forum is dangerous.
- nine_k 8y agoFrom the observation that miracles and divine interventions, widely reported earlier, are all but gone for many centuries, we can conclude that the simulation is now considered production-quality, and live-patching via the debugger interface is no more practiced.
- clamprecht 8y agoIf this is true, then the fact that no one is eliminated after this discussion would be evidence that we're not in a simulation. At least not one with the rules you suggest. But maybe the simulation does allow such discussions.
- jpmoyn 8y agoI don't see it as any more likely than us not being in a simulation. Regardless, these discussions always drag up so much existential dread in me.
- user812 8y agoIt is fundamentally impossible to know whether we live in a "simulation". The concept itself is a notion connected to contemporary culture based on certain technical knowledge, and thus the definition of what a simulation is isn't absolute, but rather subjective. It follows that not much objective can come from this biased root assumptions. In many ways physics is theoretical nowadays. You can look through the list of theories in theoretical physics and realize that it is all a giant construct. Physicists can spend their entire careers with illusions, which is ironic as physics supposedely is about reality. At the end of his career, Albert Einstein said: "I think it's entirely possible that physics can't be based upon the field concept, i.e. consistent structures. In this case not a single part of my cloud-castle remains, including the theory of gravitation and all the rest of modern physics."
- paraschopra 8y agoIf there are simulators, can't / won't they detect our attempts to test the simulation hypothesis and patch any defects that scientists might notice to render such experiments un-reproducible? Unless they really want us to find them. But then there are easier ways for that. One is simply painting in the sky: show me what you got.
- nine_k 8y agoThis assumes that there exist some "they" who "set up" the simulation and are "watching" it. It's an excessively strong assumption, to my mind. E.g. known biological life critically depends on an implementation of a machine programmed by DNA, but there's little doubt that said machine was not specifically engineered for the purpose by anyone.
- 21 8y agoIt's not a trivial task - think about how hard it is to detect computer viruses in a computer. Then we also know that homomorphic encryption is possible in principle, where from the outside it's thought to be impossible to figure out what computation goes on inside the algorithm (for example searching for a simulation)
- ken 8y agoAliens might not be constantly watching all billions of life forms. Aliens might not care if we find them or not. There's plenty of reasons aliens wouldn't bother to interfere. If you buy the Simulation Hypothesis, based on the premise that aliens have infinite computing power in which to run simulations like this, then logically you should also believe that we're not special. With infinite computing power, they don't need a giant datacenter and a research team to run us. It's just a few basic principles they chose last month (in their time), and a little box sitting on someone's desk, like the TNG episode "Ship in a Bottle". With infinite power, there's probably millions of simulations running. Maybe if it becomes self-aware, a light turns on, and they cheer, like we do when the bouncing DVD logo hits exactly in the corner -- and then they go on with their life. Maybe kids pick different initial conditions and race to see which universe becomes self-aware first. I don't believe the Simulation Hypothesis, but if it is true, the most likely scenario is that there's gobs of different simulations running, and aliens don't care about us at all.
- danbruc 8y agoThis is more or less simply impossible. If we observe some fact X about our universe we have no source of truth that can tell us whether X should be true or false for real universes, simulated universes, or both kinds of universes.
- lev99 8y agoIt's impossible to prove, but empirical evidence could improve the theory.
- danbruc 8y agoWhat kind of evidence are you hoping for? Say we measure particle trajectories very precisely and discover something that looks a lot like floating point rounding errors. Now what? How would you know that the physics of the real universe doesn't resembles floating point numbers? It is absolutely unjustified to jump from the universe looks smooth to us but our computer simulations have finite precision to the real universe is smooth and simulated universes might have finite precision. It is an attempt to distinguish something we don't know from something else we don't know. Everything we know about our universe might be something that applies to real universes or something that applies to simulated universes depending on whether we live in a real universe or in a simulated universe. Even worse, we know nothing at all about simulated universes if we live in a real universe and we know nothing at all about real universes if we live in a simulated universe.
- ape4 8y agoIf its a simulation there would be some "shortcut" way to get into "root" or supervisor mode.
- ken 8y agoWhy? Conway's Life doesn't have a supervisor shortcut.
- 21 8y agoDepends how you think about it. What if you ran Conway's Life simulation, and suddenly on you screen appear cells ordered in the form of text messages like "Hi, I am aware that this is a simulation, I want to talk with the entities outside it".
- informatimago 8y agoConway's Life is a mathematical concept. Actual programs: 1- can have bugs. 2- could have backdoors. For example, if you have more than 1024 live cells, there could be a buffer overflow that would be seen in the Live universe as a magical doorway from which gliders could come or go. You could implement a backdoor: a small area where spiners would send a message to an external process, perhaps yourself, and that would influence the rest of the game. And as the God of your Conway Life, you can add live cells or kill them by the mere touch of your finger on the touch screen! What more do you want?
- baxtr 8y agoSide note: I strongly believe that we’re just living inside a dream of some billionaires that were completely bored out. And, there is no test to falsify that thought...
- hindsightRegret 8y agoPreposterous, they would be trillionaires in their dreams, then.
- tokyodude 8y agoI probably don't understand the argument. My limited understanding is it's a thought experiment 1. We have GTA5 2. GTA5 will continue to improve until there are actual A.I. NPCs in it 3. Those NPCs will not know they are living in a simulated world 4. Every PS2000 playing GTA5 = more simulated people than actual people. QED, odds are we're simulated people The problem I have with this is the basic premise. Is it actually possible to simulate the entire universe? It seems impossible to me. The argument is supposed to be that like GTA5 only the parts being observed by the NPCs need to be simulated (actually GTA5 is only parts observed by the player). In either case that seems false. In order for the causality to work out when an NPC observes any part of the universe all causality for all atoms for the NPC's observation need to be calculated since they were last observed. I don't believe you can take shortcuts like a game does. Also, games rarely save the state of the entire game world, usually they reset any changes in few seconds. Further, simulating atoms requires more atoms. In other words there are impossible problems * You need more atoms in the universe to simulate a universe (so that means the outer universe has to be several orders of magnitudes larger than this one) * You can't actually take any shortcuts so you need insane processing power. More processing power than our entire universe. I seems like the basic premise, that it's obvious we'll eventually have universe simulators, is just flat out false. We could make a holodeck maybe, but it will have to be limited the same way games today are limited since otherwise it would require nearly infinite storage and computing power.
- misthop 8y agoBut we could simulate (in theory) a smaller universe than our own. Maybe that is what is happening. We can also simulate alternate physical properties. Maybe the simulating universe has vastly different rules/requirements.
- TomMarius 8y agoHave you counted into your math that we're close (within 30 years I'd say) to more than 5 different computing revolutions?
- sidcool 8y agoElon Musk did respond to a similar question that you have asked here. The entire Universe need not be simulated at the same time. It could be a generative program. The reality could be limited to just what we are observing.
- misthop 8y agoEven if detecting that we are/are not in a simulation, building experiments to help answer unusual questions is another way to understand the physics of our reality. I think it is great.
- byteface 8y agoMaybe something like conways game of life but using rules of thermodynamics instead to distribute cell energies may be fruitful at even a small level? Also it's worth considering if a reality that can operate outside of, or break mathematics/physics is possible. i.e. 1/0 as this would be harder to simulate
- nickbeukema 8y agoWouldn't the world view of a single god who created the universe also fall under a "simulation"?
- mLuby 8y agoI'm not sure how it matters if we're in one. Our goal in all realities should be to break free of that reality's constraints. On the detection part, I predict we won't figure this out until we start simulating realities ourselves; then for each bug we have to fix, we'll check it against our reality. "A simulation inside a simulation!" Or we may realize that energy is being supplied to the universe from an external source. Or we may be able to rowhammer a neighboring simulation (or any other part of the machine really). Of course we might accidentally cause memory corruption and destroy our universe, but we might also get root access! Basically execute an in-universe hack to escape our simulation confines. Fun to think about how this would all seem to aliens in the simulation next door when humanity first fiddles with their data then is able to execute arbitrary code.
- nine_k 8y agoIf we can detect that we're running in a VM, this by definition means that the virtualization is imperfect. We could use these imperfections both to obtain abilities not normally allowed by the VM rules, or contact either the "supervisor" or "parallel VMs", again, gaining abilities not normally possible. So finding a reliable proof that our world is a simulation automatically means finding some kind of an escape hatch from it, or at least a peephole to the "outside", which arguably would matter.
- informatimago 8y agoIf we're in a "simulation", ie, in a computer program, there is a possibility we may find a bug, an exploit, or a backdoor, that would let us become "superuser" and do magical god-like things (and most probably, just crash the process, destroying the universe and all there is inside it). On the other hand, simulation or not, this doesn't exclude or prove the existence of God. A simulation could be generated by unconscious physical processes in the super universe, as they could be created by "people" in that super universes (ie. gods). If the universe is not a simulation, it can still be a creation by a God, or happen to be by itself (or some unconscious meta-physical process). And as you note, it's also orthogonal to the question of whether the universe is a closed system or not. (both information-wise and energy-wise).
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoHow would you tell if a competent simulation was fixing the results to return "I'm not a simulation" when queried?
- wyldfire 8y agoI think those scientists should hire the researchers who keep discovering escapes from VMs/containers. Depending on which iteration we're on, there might be some simple low-hanging fruit like a BIOS call we could make. ;) Aside: read "Microcosmic God" [1], an interesting sci-fi short story by Theodore Sturgeon [2]. [1] http://1pezeshk.com/wp-content/pics/2013/01/microcosmicgodtheodoresturgeon-111104040008-phpapp02_2.pdf http://1pezeshk.com/wp-content/pics/2013/01/microcosmicgodth... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcosmic_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcosmic_God
- supastring 8y agoIf this is a simulation then it’s pretty mundane. If civilisations had the power to simulate universes, i can imagine vast numbers of more extreme or interesting universes. Heavens, hells, dramatic and artistic experiments. The mediocrity principle coupled with the fact that we’re in quite a boring universe seems to indicate that either the majority of simulations are quite mundane for some reason, or we’re likely not in a simulation.
- misthop 8y agoMaybe we are being simulated by a benevolent super-being playing The Sims
- jeletonskelly 8y agoGiven the immense size of our simulation and our relatively small presence in it, it could be that the simulators had no expectations of it becoming self-aware. It would seem that they simply picked some fundamental parameters (physics) and started it.
- deusofnull 8y agoHow do you know this universe is boring / mundane to a hereto unknown creator civilization? Maybe this universe is highly novel when compared to their experience?
- jwalton 8y agoI suspect the simulation hypothesis is false. It relies on the premise that computers will get faster and faster until eventually we are simulating universes, but I suspect this will not be the case; we have been running into physical boundaries in making CPUs faster for quite some time. It's true that simulating a universe would lend itself well to parallelization in some respects, and it's also true that the universe would not have to be simulated in realtime in order for it's occupants to perceive it in realtime, but still it would be a monumentally expensive undertaking with current technology. Quantum computing may give us some big shortcuts here. I also read a clever paper some years ago that assumed a minimum amount of energy required to perform a computation, and then asked, if our CPUs continue to double in power every year, how long will it be until we need to convert all the matter in the observable universe into its rest energy to power our computer? As with all numbers that double on a regular basis, the answer is shorter than you'd think. But, there's a far more worrisome subset of the simulation hypothesis; when we train an image classifier, we show it a whole bunch of pictures of cats and dogs and "train" it. It stands to reason that when we want to build a general purpose AI, we will need to train it with general experiences. You could easily do that by recording a person's entire life and then feeding it to an AI. Hard to start recording a person right out of the womb, but you could make some minor modifications to the recording so that everyone in this "recorded universe" thought it was perfectly normal for everyone to not remember the first four of five years of their life. If this hypothesis is true, then I have good news; when you "die", there will indeed be an afterlife. There will be several in fact, as you are instanced across many servers and put into service doing natural language processing for users of the iPhone MMLX.
- orwin 8y agoI remember my philosophy teacher saying to the class that we can make 3 hypothesis: - Technology can advance until we can make simulation undicernable from reality: in this case, we are likely to live in this simulation - Any civilisation comming close to the previous point is likely to already have destroyed itself. In this case, living in a similation is unlikely, - Technology can't advance to this point in our universe. Living in a simulation is impossible. On of these proposition is true, but we are unable to know which one. So we have to put an equal weight on those, and the probability that we live in a simulation is 1/3. Sadly (or hopefully), Church-Turing conjecture is somehow backing the 3rd theory too, and i'll by anything coming from Turing.
- ken 8y ago"If there are long-lived technological civilizations in the universe, and if they run computer simulations ..." This argument strikes me as similar in form to Fermi's Paradox -- and I don't buy that one, either. They both have the form: "If <unproven hypothesis 1> and <unproven hypothesis 2> and ... and <unproven hypothesis N>, then <surprising consequence>!" In Fermi's case, the consequence is observably false, so people assume that (only?) one of the clauses must be false. In the Simulation case, the consequence is not easily observable, but the premises seem not-completely-outrageous, so people start picking away at it. The hunch that "the universe is really really big, therefore occurrence X (which I just made up) ought to be happening an awful lot (but we have no way to even make a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many times)" just doesn't hold water for me. There's plenty of cases where my planet seems really big, but things just don't happen as often as I might predict by looking at one corner of it. If something were happening all the time, it would have been happening all along, and you wouldn't need to come up with the idea just now -- obviously the only ideas left to invent today must not be happening much! Apply the Fermi Paradox to the Simulation Hypothesis. The universe is only 14B years old, and AFAICT so far, completely void of intelligent life except for us (a very recent development). Isn't "life is exceptionally new and rare" a completely plausible (if boring) solution to both of these questions?
- byteface 8y agoFermi's just points out a contradiction between what's observable locally vs universally. So to your point can be related to simulation. But saying we're new or rare given how uniform it all is, is not boring but exceptional and that's the problem IMO. The fast radio bursts thing is interesting in this respect.
- gambler 8y agoThe whole thing feels like encroachment of some kind of bizarre secular theology into physics. Grandiose and mostly non-falsifiable claims that can't be used to make any specific predictions. Thinking by analogy (with computers) rather then by deduction or induction. What makes this fundamentally different from, let's say, talks about the astral plane? We don't have AI in GTA. We don't have strong AI at all. Our computing is running into all kinds of physical limitations right now. Moreover, the only thing that distinguishes GTA from accounting software is that we built it in such a way that it can be interpreted as a cruder version of the real world. There is no fundamental difference.
- visarga 8y agoAccounting software is also a crude version (partial model) of our economy.
- n-exploit 8y agoAnd the blockchain is a real time distributed ledger.
- jeletonskelly 8y agoIt's just a probability thought experiment. If there is only one real universe and there are (hypothetical) at least 2 simulations of universes (regardless of their fidelity) then the odds that you, an inhabitant of a universe, is in one of the simulated universes is 66%.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoThis can go wrong so fast. If there are only two kinds of people, winners of lotteries and losers of lotteries, it doesn't mean I have a 50% chance of winning the lottery. The simulation has to be 'good enough' to make a thinking person (win the lottery); my mind has to be only smart enough to think of multiple universes but not perceive the obvious simulation artifacts; I have to be written (as a simulation myself) to be capable of accepting multiple universes. Since we even ask ourselves "Are we a limited simulation artifact, or a real thinking person?" the answer is right there in the question.
- spaceman1331 8y agoelon musk is an idiot
- mbil 8y agoSlightly off topic, but anybody who's interested in thinking about the simulation hypothesis might get a kick out of this short fiction piece: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/166941 https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/166941
- currymj 8y agoI recommend the book “Paradoxes in Probability Theory”, by William Eckhardt. It refutes a number of these thought experiments that play weird games with probabilities, including the Doomsday Argument and the Simulation Hypothesis. I find its refutations convincing, although I could be wrong — there are many subtleties in play here. Regardless, if you find the Simulation Hypothesis or Doomsday Argument convincing, you ought to consider these refutations. Intuitively, it should be surprising that we can predict the apocalypse, or deduce the nature of an infinite regress of simulated universes, just by sitting in a chair and doing some basic arithmetic.
- tjtuck 8y agoEh, dark matter is the bug they seek.
- ghobs91 8y agoWhenever this debate comes up, I find it interesting that it's rarely discussed the theological ramifications of this. God is generally described as a being who is outside the plane of our existence, and created our existence. It's intriguing to me that those who argue we're in a simulation have much less trouble having faith in that premise despite the difficulty in proving it being exactly the same as proving the existence of God. If you think about it, the vast majority of the world which believes in a God essentially believes we're in a simulation.
- ASipos 8y agoThat's because the simulation argument is the finitary version of the ontological argument.
- warent 8y agoI've never heard that a qualifier for the simulation hypothesis is that it must be finite. For example, there could be infinitely many simulations recursively, or there could be a sufficiently advanced extra-dimensional lifeform that has generated an unbounded simulation that we live in.
- ASipos 8y agoI wasn't referring to the finiteness of the simulation, but rather to the fact that the notion of necessary truth (the box operator) is replaced by high probability. (I'm specifically referring to the modern modal versions of the ontological argument, which are not subject to Kant's objection.)
- warent 8y agoThere's too much jargon here for me to follow what you're saying. I'm not sure what you mean by "box operator" or "modern modal versions of the ontological argument", nor do I know what Kant's objection is.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
- macawfish 8y agoIf you think you're living in a simulation, maybe you're projecting something about about your cushioned (alienated) consumer lifestyle onto life itself. Your been absolved (robbed) of contact with the roots of your life. You sit in comfort zones, nibbling and sipping on life's material fruits, discarding packaging to the netherworld, wondering if the roots ever even ever existed in the first place. You're starting to doubt it. Maybe you're just living in a simulation. I'm more interested in this idea as a product of contemporary materialism than as a testable physical theory. Study semiotics, then ask yourself again if you're living in a "simulation".
- Vraxx 8y agoHmm, I mentioned in another comment that I'm not even sure how much I "believe" this premise, but for the sake of discussion let's assume I do as I find it fun to think about from time to time. Your post sounds very condescending, but I'm interested in what sounds like a completely different take on the topic than I've seen before. I don't know anything about semiotics and had to look up what the term meant before posting. What would be your abbreviated and distilled thesis for how semiotics relates to this topic and to your first paragraph? Phrase differently, if I were to study semiotics, what part of it in particular would be the most relevant to changing my answer/ideas related to the question "am I living in a simulation"?
- ranprieur 8y agoIf we're in a simulation, it's almost certainly not a computer simulation, but some technology that we can't even imagine, any more than cavemen could imagine computers.
- saalweachter 8y agoInfinite 2-state, 3-color Turing machine.
- warent 8y ago> "As a huge bonus, Campbell claims the experiment could also explain the weird way that events in quantum physics seem to be influenced by the observer: It may be a quirk of the simulation we live in, not a fundamental aspect of reality." I'm not a quantum physicist, but my spidey senses are tingling. Isn't this a common misrepresentation of a relatively well-known behavior in quantum mechanics, analogous to the Fourier transform trade-offs where a narrow window yields a poor resolution?
- gisely 8y agoWould love to hear answer to this from a quantum physicist. Any out there?
- absolutelysane 8y agoThat's the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. He's talking about the observer effect, which is a different thing entirely. If you want some background on it, google the double slit experiment. This isn't an endorsement of Campbell's claims above, of course, just some clarity on what he's talking about.
- furgooswft13 8y agoYou're talking about the Uncertainty Principle, which is indeed a property of all waves and not unique to Quantum Physics (I like to use the analogy of taking a single slice of a 44.1khz PWM data stream of an audio signal, in which you'd have 100% certainty of amplitude and 100% uncertainty of frequency. The more slices you take the more certain you are of frequency, less of amplitude.) Popular science and even QM itself has deeply confused itself on this issue over the past 100 years, yet it is as based in pure logic as the value of π is; nothing to do with the nature of the universe we happen to live in. But they seem to be talking about the so-called Observer Effect, an even more deeply confused issue in QM. I'm not a physicist but from what I've read it can be understood as a quantum system becoming entangled with another system, the detector/observer, which causes the original system to lose coherence. But nothing magical is happening due to consciousness or whatever, it's just 2 or more systems interacting and interfering with each other. The trick is that "observation" of a quantum system is said to collapse the wave function into well defined values instead of probabilities. I think this is explained well by Quantum decoherence[1], that the isolated system acquires phases from its surrounding environment and thus loses it's original coherence and superposition, however the total system of observed and observer is still coherent (and I'm not totally clear on why the new system takes up well defined values for certain properties, but it seems to be some dynamical time evolved process especially when a small system interacts with a much bigger one, if you can follow the linked article). And yes, I've heard these confusions combined into the notion that the universe only generates information when observed by some consciousness as some kind of space optimization, so maybe that is what the article is getting at. Again, not a physicist, so I could be just as confused as everyone else, but I prefer to try to understand things these ways than trying to make sense of the constant refrain of dead and alive cats, the darkside of the moon not existing until we sent a probe to see it, and "you might be able to be in two places at once, just like a quantum particle!" we get from pop-sci and some grant seeking scientists. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence
- blancheneige 8y agosurprised no one has mentioned The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch. it's a must read on the subject, in particular when it comes to all the irreducible hints and theoretical constraints that would allow us to rule out a simulated reality.
- AlexAltea 8y agoWhenever the simulation hypothesis comes up, there's always the questions like: Who is simulating us? Where is the power coming from? What happens if they pull the plug? But why would any of that matter? In the end it's just a blob of data, modified by some algorithm with every tick. That's not much different than computing 2+2=4. Does it matter whose computer calculated that? Will the answer be different if they pull the plug? None of that matters: maybe multiple beings are simulating the exact same universe, or maybe none of them are. Why would anything need to be computed "physically" to make the simulation happen? This take on the simulation hypothesis is the main plot point of "Permutation City" by Greg Egan, which to this day, is (IMHO) the most reasonable variant of the hypothesis I have read.
- shobith 8y agoMaybe we (or is it just me?), a collection of brains are the ones simulating the universe.
- everdev 8y agoNo matter how far back you go in any creation theory, something has to come from nothing. Multiverse and simulation theories kick the can down the road but don't answer the question "why is there something instead of nothing?". I think that's why it's important to know where this "computer" came from that's simulating us if it's true. We can't just get one answer and give up, we have to keep following the trail.
- kenmicklas 8y agoYou're projecting our experience of time onto what is a timeless mathematical essence. The idea that OP is referring to is that the universe "exists" simply because it is internally consistent.
- coldtea 8y ago>No matter how far back you go in any creation theory, something has to come from nothing. Multiverse and simulation theories kick the can down the road but don't answer the question "why is there something instead of nothing?". The expectation that it's impossible for something to come out of nothing is just a superstition.
- vinayms 8y agoI hypothesize that its one or a combination of these three things. 1. these people have run out of research ideas. 2. they want a series on the Discovery network. 3. they are scamming gullible billionaires into funding the "research". The fact that Tyson has something insightful to say makes point 2 a strong possibility, I say better than 50-50. I am disappointed to not see Kaku pitch in.
- lurquer 8y agoAnd 4. They watched The Matrix at an impressionable age.
- dr_dshiv 8y agoI like the moral implications: if the existential risk is being shut off, we should all do our part to keep things interesting
- ai_ia 8y agoOne of the most important worries and cause of anxiety I have had, has been the question of who created humans and why. And who has the created this entity in return and who created that entity in return, so on and so forth. I had many panic attacks with a sense of futility to life and meaning of it. Until some years earlier, I had an insight that maybe the rule that everything requires a beginning is a necessity for human mind to comprehend things. It is very damn well, possible to have things to exists without anyone setting things in order. There is a significant probability that this world simply exists without a beginning nor an end. This notion has given peace and satisfaction & I very well maybe wrong, but that is least of my concern now.
- jl2718 8y agoI had a math teacher in high school (Mr Atlas) that asked an epistemological question: “What if, before Copernicus, the stars really were just holes in the sky?” Think of scientists as unit testers for new features in CI.
- xamuel 8y agoOf course "Are we living in a simulation" is far too vague to test. The type of simulation must be narrowed down before the question can be tested. In my paper "A type of simulation which some experimental evidence suggests we don't live in", I give an example of a (very specific) type of simulation which we can easily test: https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEATO-6.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEATO-6.pdf
- TomMckenny 8y ago>"...we..." "We"? Down this line of thinking, maybe the rest of you don't exist. Maybe I made the simulation complete with friends and then erased the fact from my memory. Maybe instead of bugs in the simulation we should be looking for design flaws like irrational numbers for constants or slews of arbitrary particles. Of course if the universe were well designed we could use that as proof it's a simulation too. But I'm not sure "fun to think about" corresponds with "interesting enough to take even remotely seriously"
- blueadept111 8y agoIt's absurd to think that any entity within a simulation could draw conclusions about anything outside the simulation itself. "Better than 50%" my ass, Elon and Neil are hacks.
- Pica_soO 8y agoIf its a simulation, it should have safe-guards against recursions- meaning, limiting computation complexity, to prevent the inhabitants attempting to solve there problems with simulations tailored to there problems. So, build a simulating supercomputer, using quantum physics and NOT watch us all get deprecated.
- palisade 8y agoI've said this before and I'll say it again. The problem with coming up with a test for being in a simulation is that the creator of the simulation might simply overwrite our memories. They could make us believe we succeeded in proving the simulation hypothesis false. There really isn't a way to test this properly when you aren't able to experience reality objectively. We're on the inside. Side Note: I had an interesting debate just last night with some friends where I pointed out the creator of the universe might not even be aware of the aberration of our existence in it and from a high level thinks everything is running smoothly. And, we haven't made a big enough dent in the universe to get noticed. The question then becomes, if we for example destroyed a star or entire solar system to get the creator's attention would they go, "WHAT IS THIS?!" and delete the aberration? Contact us? Or, simply observe? Note: I was discussing a real god at the time, but my friend thought I was referring to a creator in the context of simulation theory at the time. Still an interesting brain buster either way. Also, if it's true the creator is more of a macroscopic thinker than microscopic and are "asleep at the wheel" then it kind of explains a lot of things regarding injustices in the world. The creator just glances at the universe from time to time says to themselves, "Well, the galaxies are still spinning. All is well." No offense to any religion. It was just a fun thought experiment.
- earenndil 8y agoWhy should we be an aberration? Perhaps life is one of many things that occur naturally with relative frequency given the parameters of the simulation.
- palisade 8y agoMost of humanity assumes we are meant to be here. It was a more interesting thought experiment to consider that we might be a happy accident.
- apo 8y agoScience can never "prove" a hypothesis - it can only disprove it. Therefore, a hypothesis that makes no falsifiable predictions has no business in scientific discourse. This is a point that non-scientists (and, unfortunately even some scientists) often get wrong. Some on this thread have compared the simulation hypothesis (SH) to theology. The difference is that the SH, at least in its most useful form, makes falsifiable predictions, as shown in the article. Theology, on the other hand, makes no falsifiable predictions. Christian theology takes this one step further by elevating "faith" to the highest plane of human being. Reason and disbelief, Christian theologies tell us, is the path to pride and Satan.
- samuelfekete 8y agoThe probabilistic argument can be made the other way: All the information for a simulated universe needs to be stored in some form in the outer universe, but the outer universe would also contain information not used for simulation. If we consider an arbitrary piece of information, chances are it exists in the outer universe only - unless more than 50% of the outer universe is used for simulations. If 100% of the outer universe is used for simulations, than the simulations are the outer universe(s).
- pontifier 8y agoA friend and I had some deep discussions about this last year. We figured out the basic outline of an escape plan, but unfortunately there is no way to determine if it actually succeeds. Essentially it boils down to creating an anomaly that cannot be ignored. Any simulation being run at that level should also have some sort of way of checking the contents and flagging things of interest for whoever is running the simulation. By creating an anomaly you gain attention. That attention may allow you to be deemed valuable. If you are valuable, then you may be recorded outside the simulation for some purpose. That may be the only route of escape, and it may only happen as the data from the simulation is checked in post processing... In conway' s game of life the glider is an example of escape. The pattern is useful, so we copy it from simulation to simulation for reasons it cannot comprehend. It has escaped.
- jpmoyn 8y agoThis is pretty borderline delusional
- hfdgiutdryg 8y agoIf our reality is built on top of a lattice, there’d be a fundamental coarseness to it, since there could be no details in our mock-universe smaller than the resolution of the simulation. I'm pretty sure I read an article about some research team starting on exactly that project at least ten years ago. I may even have read about it on Slashdot.
- earenndil 8y agoPlank length?
- sebringj 8y agoCouldn't a simulation also simulate our conclusions that we are not in one? It doesn't seem like one could answer this with any certainty in the end.
- evil-daemon 8y agoWell, good luck with that!
- nikkwong 8y agoI still think papers like these tend to undermine the sophistication and difficultly in solving the hard problem of consciousness. We can throw more and more computing power at creating a GTA-like simulation and make the AI more and more complex and ever more alive; but that won't ever make them conscious. And based on the current understanding, it seems that consciousness is more than just something that springs up from raw computing power. So the whole GTA-ification of reality just doesn't work for me. If we really are in GTA—well, why am I having the experience I am having? Is that question even answerable?
- titzer 8y ago> I still think papers like these tend to undermine the sophistication and difficultly in solving the hard problem of consciousness. We can throw more and more computing power at creating a GTA-like simulation and make the AI more and more complex and ever more alive; but that won't ever make them conscious. You're assuming dualism from the start, and you won't get anything but more dualism out of this line of reasoning. > If we really are in GTA—well, why am I having the experience I am having? When the characters in GTA start asking themselves this out loud, you two can argue it over and one or the other of you will have an epiphany.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Lichtso 8y agoHere is my collection of thoughts and opinions on the topic. First: The fascination for simulation hypothesis is another extension of us humans wanting to be something special and also being very worried that we might not be so special after all. This is the constant inner battle of our minds between the our inferiority complex and the mediocrity principle. Like as if living a simulated but enjoyable life is not good enough. But, that is not to say that it is not at least an interesting thought experiment everybody should try once. It can even help us understand our own insignificance. (Excuse me, my nihilist got out) Second: I do think there is no such a thing as simulation or even an inner and an outer forming a hierarchy. Imagine two astronomers looking into a telescope. One says to the other: "Wow, look I created this galaxy in there. And if I change the parameters just so slightly by adjusting this here, I get a totally different one which still has some similarities to the last one." Now, replace the telescope by a computer screen and the astronomers by two people programming a video game. What they fail to realize is that they do not "create" these galaxies or simulated universes. No, they are just observing them. And by interacting with the computer you don't change the simulation but instead switch to observing a different version. But, just like the natural numbers all of this just exists. It does not come into existence (is not created), neither does it cease to exist or change. It also needs no space or memory to be stored on and no mass to be conserved. 1+1=2 is true with and without us. It is completely independent. Concepts like time, space and mass are specific to some universes (like ours) and are not universal (pun intended). Third: Yes, multiverse theory does not solve everything, but it solves the "trivial" questions like: - Are we the result of an intelligent design, god, alien, simulation? Question which are just offsetting the problem by one. - Are we just a computer simulation and thus not "real"? All universes are equally real, there is no hierarchy: Cognito ergo sum. - Can we break out? Everything you find would just be another physical law and property of our universe. Or you get really lucky and are actually boltzmann-brained, allowing you to visit another universe while keeping your memories of the last one. At least that is what it would seem like to you. Yet, multiverse theory lets us move on to the harder questions like: Why does anything exist at all? Wouldn't it be much simpler for just nothing to exist? What is qualia and how does it "emerge"? P.S: Let them do their experiments, maybe they accidentally find something useful anyways.
- Razengan 8y agoI always thought that one of the biggest criteria for the existence of a “parent” “reality” would be whether there is such a thing as Free Will or not. If there is true randomness in our universe, then surely it must come from outside the universe, or our system could spontaneously put itself into an invalid state at some point and possibly crash, no?