8 ms·

First of all, if I live in a simulation, you probably do not even exist. After all, as we are likely never going to meet in person, it would be extremely ineffi

First of all, if I live in a simulation, you probably do not even exist. After all, as we are likely never going to meet in person, it would be extremely inefficient to actually simulate you, too. Second, the simulation would have to be restricted in some sense. Either its reality's laws of physics would not be the same as ours or it would run slower then real-time (which would be odd, at least). If the simulation would run slower then real-time, but within the same physical reality as ours, we could observe it, albeit in a very unfortunate manner: The evolution of the universe (expanding space, decaying particles) would show earlier in the "host reality" then in our "guest reality". Presumably, the simulation would become inconsistent before it would break down. If the host universe has different laws of physics it is literally metaphysical. There is no point in trying to understand such a thing within the limits of our existence. So we can put this into the world of (religious) believe systems.

zaphirplane 5y ago
The maximum speed of light constraint sounds very much a hardware limitation on the FPS I wonder if the limitation continues to be hardware or difficulty in removing the restriction in a backwards compatible way
- contravariant 5y ago
  Adding in quantum mechanics was a terrible mistake then.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ninkendo 5y ago
    In my personal simulation hypothesis, quantum mechanics is a workaround for when pesky scientists started looking closely at the edge cases in the simulation’s behavior. It’s expensive to simulate every particle, so it’s easier to simulate the macroscopic observables of a system in bulk. But if you try to look at individual particle interactions, you end up seeing that things aren’t deterministic any more (because the individual particles aren’t typically simulated), and the results of experiments are heavily dependent on when/what exactly you decide to measure. Wave function collapse is what happens when the simulation had to fully evaluate a particle interaction that would have normally been optimized away.
    - contravariant 5y ago
      I mean sure that sounds nice, but entanglement makes no sense as an optimization. There's no computational argument that can be made why you'd want something that classical computers are frankly incapable of calculating. You could argue that the simulation must be running on a quantum computer then, but that's just moving the goal posts.
      - ninkendo 5y ago
        > entanglement makes no sense as an optimization. Of course, which is why the universe doesn’t typically calculate full entanglement; hence entanglement doesn’t really show up on the macro scale. Only when you do experiments on a handful of particles, and come up with an observable that depends on their behavior (interferometry, etc), the simulation has to scramble to come up with a coherent history that agrees with your measurement, in a lazily evaluated way. The larger scale the experiments are on entangled particles, the harder the simulation has to work to make it all happen and make sense. :-) One could say that decoherence is the universe’s way of preventing us from stealing its compute power too much.
        contravariant 5y ago
        If this holds then things should start to break down once we get some serious entanglement on the way (VLHC anyone?). And let's ignore that most of the supposed optimizations that quantum mechanics was allegedly bringing happen because of entanglement and not in spite of it.
    - DonHopkins 5y ago
      Like the cars and pedestrians in GTA. I was trying to create the biggest pile up of wrecked cars that I could, and they kept disappearing whenever I turned my back in them!
- Lichtso 5y ago
  To me it sounds more like a requirement for life to form, and by extension also for intelligent living observers. Many of the physical laws need to balance each other perfectly for that to happen. That does not mean they were "designed" that way, just that no intelligent living being will ever observe anything else. Therefor, the situation is as expected and does not indicate anything what so ever.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    If it's extremely unlikely that such a balance would occur by itself then that itself indicates something. If I fell out of a plane and miraculously survived, I don't think my response would be "Of course I survived! If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here to say this!"
    - Lichtso 5y ago
      > extremely unlikely That implies that there can only be exactly one universe, whereas the simulation hypothesis (just as the multiverse or many worlds interpretation) say that there are infinite. Thus, the probability of something happening is undefined, as there is no denominator and everything possible happens somewhere.
      - robertlagrant 5y ago
        In that sense it implies that anything we haven't observed is impossible. It equally implies a wizard didn't do it. I think a more useful view is that is extremely unlikely, and so we need an extraordinary claim with extraordinary evidence to explain it.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      If my experience with physics engines indicates anything, it’s that the speed of light is probably an arbitrary constant set to prevent weird floating point errors or accidentally passing through objects.
    - FredPret 5y ago
      But with a simulation, the mother universe needs that unlikely set of balanced circumstances, and a simulation set up in it, making it even less likely
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Aeolun 5y ago
> After all, as we are likely never going to meet in person, it would be extremely inefficient to actually simulate you, too. If you are at the point where you can simulate a whole world, I think this ceases to be an issue.
shawncampbell 5y ago
In "Fall, or Dodge in Hell" the author, Neal Stephenson, explores this concept in great detail (over nearly 1000 pages).

zaphirplane 5y ago

The maximum speed of light constraint sounds very much a hardware limitation on the FPS I wonder if the limitation continues to be hardware or difficulty in removing the restriction in a backwards compatible way

contravariant 5y ago
Adding in quantum mechanics was a terrible mistake then.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ninkendo 5y ago
  In my personal simulation hypothesis, quantum mechanics is a workaround for when pesky scientists started looking closely at the edge cases in the simulation’s behavior. It’s expensive to simulate every particle, so it’s easier to simulate the macroscopic observables of a system in bulk. But if you try to look at individual particle interactions, you end up seeing that things aren’t deterministic any more (because the individual particles aren’t typically simulated), and the results of experiments are heavily dependent on when/what exactly you decide to measure. Wave function collapse is what happens when the simulation had to fully evaluate a particle interaction that would have normally been optimized away.
  - contravariant 5y ago
    I mean sure that sounds nice, but entanglement makes no sense as an optimization. There's no computational argument that can be made why you'd want something that classical computers are frankly incapable of calculating. You could argue that the simulation must be running on a quantum computer then, but that's just moving the goal posts.
    - ninkendo 5y ago
      > entanglement makes no sense as an optimization. Of course, which is why the universe doesn’t typically calculate full entanglement; hence entanglement doesn’t really show up on the macro scale. Only when you do experiments on a handful of particles, and come up with an observable that depends on their behavior (interferometry, etc), the simulation has to scramble to come up with a coherent history that agrees with your measurement, in a lazily evaluated way. The larger scale the experiments are on entangled particles, the harder the simulation has to work to make it all happen and make sense. :-) One could say that decoherence is the universe’s way of preventing us from stealing its compute power too much.
      - contravariant 5y ago
        If this holds then things should start to break down once we get some serious entanglement on the way (VLHC anyone?). And let's ignore that most of the supposed optimizations that quantum mechanics was allegedly bringing happen because of entanglement and not in spite of it.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    Like the cars and pedestrians in GTA. I was trying to create the biggest pile up of wrecked cars that I could, and they kept disappearing whenever I turned my back in them!
Lichtso 5y ago
To me it sounds more like a requirement for life to form, and by extension also for intelligent living observers. Many of the physical laws need to balance each other perfectly for that to happen. That does not mean they were "designed" that way, just that no intelligent living being will ever observe anything else. Therefor, the situation is as expected and does not indicate anything what so ever.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  If it's extremely unlikely that such a balance would occur by itself then that itself indicates something. If I fell out of a plane and miraculously survived, I don't think my response would be "Of course I survived! If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here to say this!"
  - Lichtso 5y ago
    > extremely unlikely That implies that there can only be exactly one universe, whereas the simulation hypothesis (just as the multiverse or many worlds interpretation) say that there are infinite. Thus, the probability of something happening is undefined, as there is no denominator and everything possible happens somewhere.
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
      In that sense it implies that anything we haven't observed is impossible. It equally implies a wizard didn't do it. I think a more useful view is that is extremely unlikely, and so we need an extraordinary claim with extraordinary evidence to explain it.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    If my experience with physics engines indicates anything, it’s that the speed of light is probably an arbitrary constant set to prevent weird floating point errors or accidentally passing through objects.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    But with a simulation, the mother universe needs that unlikely set of balanced circumstances, and a simulation set up in it, making it even less likely

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Aeolun 5y ago

> After all, as we are likely never going to meet in person, it would be extremely inefficient to actually simulate you, too. If you are at the point where you can simulate a whole world, I think this ceases to be an issue.

shawncampbell 5y ago

In "Fall, or Dodge in Hell" the author, Neal Stephenson, explores this concept in great detail (over nearly 1000 pages).