7 ms·
> We envision two possible mechanisms that could explain the actualization of the variables: 1. The actualizations happens spontaneously as time passes. This vi
by ffhhj 7y ago
> We envision two possible mechanisms that could explain the
actualization of the variables:
1. The actualizations happens spontaneously as time
passes. This view is compatible with reductionism and it
does not necessarily require any effects of top-down causation. Note that this mechanism resembles, in the context of
quantum mechanics, objective collapse models such as the
“continuous spontaneous localization” (CSL) [23, 25].
2. The actualization happens when a higher level requires
it. This means that when a higher level of description (e.g., the
macroscopic measurement apparatus) requires some physical
quantity pertaining to the lower-level description to acquire a
determined value, then the lower level must get determined. In
quantum mechanics a similar explanation is provided by the
Copenhagen interpretation and, more explicitly, by the model
in Ref. [37].
https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.03697 https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.03697
Seems like a framework for the Simulation Theory.
- empath75 7y agoYeah I did have this idea at one point that if we’re in a simulation, than there is a cost for simulating things at finer and finer detail, which could manifest itself in higher energy requirements that we see in particle accelerators, but that we aren’t actually learning anything new at those levels, maybe we’ll find some new fundamental particles that make up the electron for example, And we’ll find new particles that make up those, none of which even existed until we started poking at them, since they aren’t necessary for the simulation to run.
- ineedasername 7y agoSort of a "turtles all of the way down", but only if you actually go looking for the turtles. This entire article makes my brain hurt in ways I'm really not used to. (I'm used to brain-hurt, you can't be intellectually curious without experiencing that occasional side-effect. It's just this particular flavor of it is... disconcerting)
- Abishek_Muthian 7y agoRegarding the cost of simulation, you might find what Dr. Michio Kaku said during his AMA. >I mentioned that a digital computer cannot simulate even a simple reality, since there are too many molecules to keep track of, far greater than the capabilities of any digital computer. We need a quantum computer to simulate quantum reality, and hence, once again, the weather is the smallest object that can simulate the weather. Therefore, I don’t think we live in a simulation, unless the simulation is the universe itself. -Dr.Michio Kaku
- Damorian 7y agoThis assumes we're simulated from a universe with identical laws and finitude, which I would never even consider.
- andrewon 7y agoBut a digital computer at present in this world may not be a good reference to the capability of the computer that supposedly simulate this world. We know nothing about the "real" world that computer resided, and nothing about that computer.
- joe_the_user 7y agoIf we have posited a thing with unknown properties and say maybe that is generating our universe, we've pretty much taken the opposite position to Occam's Razor, which is often stated as "Entities should not be multiplied without necessity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
- andrewon 7y agoOccam's Razor is a good principle for choosing scientific hypotheses. But I think when it comes to studying big questions like fundamental fabric of this physical world, we are at a lost here. Essentially we elect to believe, without justification, that the world got to follow a reductionist paradigm - if the world can be made simpler, it must not be more complex.
- roywiggins 7y agoRight, but that is then a totally unfalsifiable idea. You can't prove the non-existence of something you can't begin to define.
- andrewon 7y agoI guess that's the gist of all these arguments -- they are ideas not something we can prove or disprove.
- ffhhj 7y agoI guess it boils down to whether or not we're willing to accept infinite regress or not. Of course, if not, one must necessarily accept that reality 'comes from' nothing. Although I'm a VR developer, I can't believe it's "all turtles all the way down" :@) Actually I've been working on a theory to define randomness from complete uncertainty, without the "fair coin" metaphor based on constructivism, which is deterministic.
- AgentME 7y ago>if not, one must necessarily accept that reality 'comes from' nothing. UDASSA (http://fennetic.net/irc/finney.org/~hal/udassa/ http://fennetic.net/irc/finney.org/~hal/udassa/) is the closest thing I've seen to a believable idea about how reality could come from nothing. It's basically a more specific version of the mathematical universe hypothesis. >Actually I've been working on a theory to define randomness from complete uncertainty If you're trying to make a deterministic theory of physics and eschew randomness from the world, then you're going to run into big problems from quantum mechanics. The idea that results from random quantum interactions comes from hard-to-measure factors in the world that we just happen to be uncertain about is called a hidden variable theory, and Bell's Theorem shows that those theories are incompatible with the principle of locality. Though there is one popular local and deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics that avoids this issue: the Many-Worlds Interpretation. I wrote a post in another thread recently that's relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845499.
- joe_the_user 7y agoBut wouldn't a simulation be simulating the laws of an "actual" world? Why would the actual world have such a cost? Oppositely, if the actual world had such a cost, that's equal evidence that we are in said actual world.
- empath75 7y agoWhy would they? People make simulations of worlds that aren’t like the real world all the time.
- mirimir 7y agoIn Fall, Stephenson argues that the speed of light reflects resource limitations in the machine(s) running our reality.
- wildermuthn 7y agoWhen looking for explanations to a mystery, the best debugging method is to look at edge-cases. You eliminate all unimportant noisy data and begin to focus on the data that at least has the potential to cause the mystery. Ideally that data doesn’t change. Ideally it is a constant signal within the noise. Some underlying and unchanging constant. The speed of light has always struck me as one of the more constant, arbitrary, and yet vital pieces of data we know about our universe. Suitable for debugging whatever kind of reality is is that we find ourselves inhabiting.
- chadcmulligan 7y agoThe question I always end up with - how many simulations deep are we? Universe A builds a simulator to see how it works, it then builds a simulator and so on. We can never communicate with the original universe, so we build our own simulation. As always if simulating universes is possible then the probability we're in level 0 tends to 0.
- fpoling 7y agoThe could be no original universe. Just consider infinite sequence of simulations. Or universe A can be simulating universe B which is in turn simulates A. This is not possible with finite systems, but the moment one considers infinite ones, all bets are off.
- Intermernet 7y agoFrom Excession by Iain M Banks: "Eventually in the progress of a technologically advanced society, occasionally after some sort of limited access to hyperspace, more usually after theoretical work, it was realized that the soap bubble was not alone. The expanding universe lay inside a larger one, which in turn was entirely enclosed by a bubble of space-time with a still greater diameter. The same applied within the universe you happened to find yourself on/in; there were smaller, younger universes inside it, nested within like layers of paper round a much-wrapped spherical present." "In the very centre of all the concentric, inflating universes lay the place they had each originated from, where every now and again a cosmic fireball blinked into existence, detonating once more to produce another universe, its successive outpourings of creation like the explosions of some vast combustion engine, and the universes its pulsing exhaust." "There was more; complications in seven dimensions and beyond that involved a giant torus on which the 3-D universe could be described as a circle, contained and containing other nested tori, with further implications of whole populations of such meta-Realities… but the implications of multiple, concentric, sequential universes was generally considered enough to be going on with for the moment."
- reedwolf 7y agoRelevant SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-11-09 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-11-09