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The bounds of the computing power isn't even worth considering because we have no knowledge of the resources, let alone the nature of the reality, in either a p

The bounds of the computing power isn't even worth considering because we have no knowledge of the resources, let alone the nature of the reality, in either a parent universe or parent simulation. Sure, fidelity must drop in each nested simulation, but we have no idea if we are 2 levels deep, 1000 levels deep, or in the actual real universe.

Retric 8y ago
That's irrelevant as Life and computation both take resources. In a more complex universe the bacteria equivalent could be more intelligent than humans. But it does not go the other way simulations of a life form will always be less efficient than the least complex lifeforms in a parent universe.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >But it does not go the other way simulations of a life form will always be less efficient than the least complex lifeforms in a parent universe. That doesn't follow logically. It's perfectly fine to be able to simulate life forms MORE efficient than the one's in your universe.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Simulation involves a lot of overhead. Computers and life can be built from the same stuff QED. the simplest simulation of a lifeforms must be more complex than the direct equivalent of that lifeforms. That's not to say the simplest possible equivalent organism exists in that universe, but anything that could make a simulation should also be able to make that life form.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Simulation involves a lot of overhead True for some values of "a lot", false for others. What's undeniably true is that it incurs some overhead over NOT running a simulation. But that doesn't prove that a simulated life form incurs overhead larger than its real life counterpart. For one, there might not be any real life counterpart. We say "simulation" here, but what we actually mean is "virtual world", which might simulate an actual world, or it might be its totally own thing (the same way I can chose to write a simulation of actual things, like e.g. "the Sims", or a simulation of a domain I only imagined). If, for example, as per TFA, our universe is a simulation, is doesn't mean that it actually simulated something else. Just that it's a simulation in itself. So, "simulated" in this discussion means "not an organically created world made of some physical substrate, but consciously created/programmed by some advanced civilization". So, the thing simulated could be totally unlike (in properties, physical laws, etc) what exists in the universe of those doing the simulation. Second, a simulation (as we know it and practice it ourselves) usually has much less overhead than the real life thing it simulates (when it does simulate some real life thing). That's like, it's whole point. E.g. a weather model running in some supercomputers has some overhead, but nothing like that of the actual weather. Similarly, Sims has some overhead, but nothing like the equivalent real-life place and humans would have. Where you seem to be confused is that you assume that: (a) a simulation must be of something that exists, (b) a simulation must be perfect, e.g. 1:1 to the thing it simulates. Only then would your argument make sense. But neither of those things are necessary -- even our Earth and universe, if they are simulations, they could be very crude models, running with very low resources, in a vastly more complex and powerful real universe.
      - 883771773929 8y ago
        Adding on to this with an analogy from simulating dynamics in cellular automata, most of the interesting models of physics we see act with high redundancy in both spatial and temporal locality. A simple rule like Conway's Game of Life that isn't too physically realistic but is instructive because of how intimately it's been analyzed while exhibiting some relatively high complexity, shows remarkable compressibility using techniques such as memoization in HashLife[0]. Even more striking is the potential for superspeed caching where different nodes are evolved at different speeds often allowing _exponential_ speedups of pattern generations to be calculated for longer than the timeframe of the universe we speculate about today for real physics. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife
        Retric 8y ago
        No free lunch. Hashlife takes more memory and only works well in low entropy environments. But, consider if you want to run a simulation 100 times using the same data you can speed that output up by just copying the output of the first simulation 100 times. But that's not simulating the same mind 100 times it's simulating the mind only once. Hash life and similar approaches don't increase your ability to compute unique mind states.
      - Retric 8y ago
        (a) is not an objection because 'life form' is flexible. Any computing sub strait could directly compute say a neural network vs a simulation of a neural network. The simulation will always be slower, but the 'real' version running on "FPGA" or it's higher dimensional equivalent imposes direct mapping between what happens in the 'real' world and what is being computed. EX: If we use a FPGA that's hit by a cosmic ray that bit is flipped, on the other hand if you have an array of FPGA's and compare them then that's decouples the 1:1 mapping creating a simulation but adds overhead. (b) a simulation must be perfect. No, if you can get away with a less accurate simulation you can get also get intelligence from less computational power using the same approach in the 'real' world.
    - Vraxx 8y ago
      I'm not sure if that's entirely true. My analogy here would be how we observe classical mechanics or even just regular objects. We can predict the path a ball will take through the air in painstaking and incredibly accurate detail (more detail than we have tools to properly measure), but that doesn't require that we simulate all of the component pieces that make up the ball. We compress that by just calculating what the whole lot of atoms will do on average and substitute that in when we have millions of them and the error is negligible. That's essentially the basis of statistical mechanics. Why could we not make a simpler simulation of a life form (that its 'direct' real implementation) with similar processes of compressing information on component pieces and making approximations where the magnitude of the error is smaller than the accuracy of the measurement? It seems to me that there is also a similar analogy to be made in the methods that we can use to compress information. Is there a functional difference between a compression algorithm that is lossless and one that would maybe corrupt 1 rgb value a tiny nudge in an entire image with millions of pixels if our only tool for examining it for corruption were our eyes? What if we then used that compression algorithm only in situations where we know the tools used to examine the results wouldn't be able to identify the losses, and used a lossless compression only when such tools were available? All this is to say that I believe you could feasibly create a perfect simulation of something more complex than the thing performing the simulation with proper optimizations, but it would require certain stipulations like knowing when to use various optimizations to avoid contaminating fidelity of the simulation. Simple example would be simulating human history before a microscope was invented would allow us to constrain all approximations to have less error than would be visible to the most precise observer's senses of measurement.
      - Retric 8y ago
        At that point you are not simulating physics you are simulating minds. From a practical standpoint it's viable, but introduces the possibility to notice the simulation. To counter that you could add overhead detect when when something would notice the simulation, but that's not going to be cheap computationally. Further, simulating worlds vs keeping real people in pods to see those simulated worlds seems to favor people in pods. Especially if you alter the biology of those pod people to have real physical brains operating on some hardware and little else. Philosophically you can argue about simulations vs "FPGA" boards ruing minds, but direct minds on "FPGA" boards still introduces direct impacts from the real world vs pure simulation.

Retric 8y ago

That's irrelevant as Life and computation both take resources. In a more complex universe the bacteria equivalent could be more intelligent than humans. But it does not go the other way simulations of a life form will always be less efficient than the least complex lifeforms in a parent universe.

coldtea 8y ago
>But it does not go the other way simulations of a life form will always be less efficient than the least complex lifeforms in a parent universe. That doesn't follow logically. It's perfectly fine to be able to simulate life forms MORE efficient than the one's in your universe.
- Retric 8y ago
  Simulation involves a lot of overhead. Computers and life can be built from the same stuff QED. the simplest simulation of a lifeforms must be more complex than the direct equivalent of that lifeforms. That's not to say the simplest possible equivalent organism exists in that universe, but anything that could make a simulation should also be able to make that life form.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Simulation involves a lot of overhead True for some values of "a lot", false for others. What's undeniably true is that it incurs some overhead over NOT running a simulation. But that doesn't prove that a simulated life form incurs overhead larger than its real life counterpart. For one, there might not be any real life counterpart. We say "simulation" here, but what we actually mean is "virtual world", which might simulate an actual world, or it might be its totally own thing (the same way I can chose to write a simulation of actual things, like e.g. "the Sims", or a simulation of a domain I only imagined). If, for example, as per TFA, our universe is a simulation, is doesn't mean that it actually simulated something else. Just that it's a simulation in itself. So, "simulated" in this discussion means "not an organically created world made of some physical substrate, but consciously created/programmed by some advanced civilization". So, the thing simulated could be totally unlike (in properties, physical laws, etc) what exists in the universe of those doing the simulation. Second, a simulation (as we know it and practice it ourselves) usually has much less overhead than the real life thing it simulates (when it does simulate some real life thing). That's like, it's whole point. E.g. a weather model running in some supercomputers has some overhead, but nothing like that of the actual weather. Similarly, Sims has some overhead, but nothing like the equivalent real-life place and humans would have. Where you seem to be confused is that you assume that: (a) a simulation must be of something that exists, (b) a simulation must be perfect, e.g. 1:1 to the thing it simulates. Only then would your argument make sense. But neither of those things are necessary -- even our Earth and universe, if they are simulations, they could be very crude models, running with very low resources, in a vastly more complex and powerful real universe.
    - 883771773929 8y ago
      Adding on to this with an analogy from simulating dynamics in cellular automata, most of the interesting models of physics we see act with high redundancy in both spatial and temporal locality. A simple rule like Conway's Game of Life that isn't too physically realistic but is instructive because of how intimately it's been analyzed while exhibiting some relatively high complexity, shows remarkable compressibility using techniques such as memoization in HashLife[0]. Even more striking is the potential for superspeed caching where different nodes are evolved at different speeds often allowing _exponential_ speedups of pattern generations to be calculated for longer than the timeframe of the universe we speculate about today for real physics. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife
      - Retric 8y ago
        No free lunch. Hashlife takes more memory and only works well in low entropy environments. But, consider if you want to run a simulation 100 times using the same data you can speed that output up by just copying the output of the first simulation 100 times. But that's not simulating the same mind 100 times it's simulating the mind only once. Hash life and similar approaches don't increase your ability to compute unique mind states.
    - Retric 8y ago
      (a) is not an objection because 'life form' is flexible. Any computing sub strait could directly compute say a neural network vs a simulation of a neural network. The simulation will always be slower, but the 'real' version running on "FPGA" or it's higher dimensional equivalent imposes direct mapping between what happens in the 'real' world and what is being computed. EX: If we use a FPGA that's hit by a cosmic ray that bit is flipped, on the other hand if you have an array of FPGA's and compare them then that's decouples the 1:1 mapping creating a simulation but adds overhead. (b) a simulation must be perfect. No, if you can get away with a less accurate simulation you can get also get intelligence from less computational power using the same approach in the 'real' world.
  - Vraxx 8y ago
    I'm not sure if that's entirely true. My analogy here would be how we observe classical mechanics or even just regular objects. We can predict the path a ball will take through the air in painstaking and incredibly accurate detail (more detail than we have tools to properly measure), but that doesn't require that we simulate all of the component pieces that make up the ball. We compress that by just calculating what the whole lot of atoms will do on average and substitute that in when we have millions of them and the error is negligible. That's essentially the basis of statistical mechanics. Why could we not make a simpler simulation of a life form (that its 'direct' real implementation) with similar processes of compressing information on component pieces and making approximations where the magnitude of the error is smaller than the accuracy of the measurement? It seems to me that there is also a similar analogy to be made in the methods that we can use to compress information. Is there a functional difference between a compression algorithm that is lossless and one that would maybe corrupt 1 rgb value a tiny nudge in an entire image with millions of pixels if our only tool for examining it for corruption were our eyes? What if we then used that compression algorithm only in situations where we know the tools used to examine the results wouldn't be able to identify the losses, and used a lossless compression only when such tools were available? All this is to say that I believe you could feasibly create a perfect simulation of something more complex than the thing performing the simulation with proper optimizations, but it would require certain stipulations like knowing when to use various optimizations to avoid contaminating fidelity of the simulation. Simple example would be simulating human history before a microscope was invented would allow us to constrain all approximations to have less error than would be visible to the most precise observer's senses of measurement.
    - Retric 8y ago
      At that point you are not simulating physics you are simulating minds. From a practical standpoint it's viable, but introduces the possibility to notice the simulation. To counter that you could add overhead detect when when something would notice the simulation, but that's not going to be cheap computationally. Further, simulating worlds vs keeping real people in pods to see those simulated worlds seems to favor people in pods. Especially if you alter the biology of those pod people to have real physical brains operating on some hardware and little else. Philosophically you can argue about simulations vs "FPGA" boards ruing minds, but direct minds on "FPGA" boards still introduces direct impacts from the real world vs pure simulation.