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If we assume we are in a simulation, surely it is simulating something 'known' (or familiar enough) like a universe with galaxies, stars, planets and life. And
by harel 6y ago
If we assume we are in a simulation, surely it is simulating something 'known' (or familiar enough) like a universe with galaxies, stars, planets and life. And it is simulated by 'something'. So either way, it is unfathomable and spectacular. What is great in all of these views, is that everything goes really if you think about it, considering how little we know compared to the scale it.
- mcculley 6y agoWhy do you assume that the simulation resembles the environment in which it executes? One can imagine cellular automata engines of enormous scale in which creatures could evolve. The simulated system need have no resemblance to the enclosing enviroment. Our universe could be a mathematical side-effect of some computation running in the enclosing universe.
- outworlder 6y agoExactly! A common refutation of the simulation hypothesis is that the computer would have to be impossibly large. Not so. As long as the host universe has different physical laws. For instance, simulating Minecraft using Minecraft redstone logic itself would probably take an impossibly large "computer". Yet, we can do that easily, as we have nanoscale transistors. Similarly, add just one more dimension to the host universe and you could build amazing machines (imagine instead of a 3D circuit board, a 4D, with all the extra arrangements it could provide). The host universe could be even crazier than this, with a whole different set of physical laws. Unless we find a sandbox vulnerability, we'll probably never know.
- harel 6y agoIt could also be a complete opposite of the executing environment, which is actually used to demonstrate the viability of 'another way to run a universe'. But because someone THOUGHT of this universe to simulate it, it's a "known" environment. If I try to break it down like a programmer, perhaps all it is, is a few physics rules programmed in, then the big bang on the enter key to execute the binary (I bet it's written in Rust - it's all the hype now). We could be done with a full universal simulation within maybe 1 hour of run time, but for us that 1 hour is like a trillion years.
- mcculley 6y agoWhy do you assume someone thought of the simulated universe? As I said, it could be an accident, a side-effect of something else. Just as people inadvertently invent Turing machines when designing languages, our universe could be the side-effect of something built for an entirely different purpose.
- mcculley 6y agoThe time scale could also be the other way around: An hour in the simulated universe could take a trillion years to execute in the host environment.