15 ms·

If we were in a simulation, would the speed of light be the processing speed of the universe as each area re-renders, and spooky action at a distance be two var

by ericb 5y ago

If we were in a simulation, would the speed of light be the processing speed of the universe as each area re-renders, and spooky action at a distance be two variables pointed to the same memory location, populated with a lazy-loaded value, with copy-on-write semantics? edit: seems like it is lazy loaded, so revised my summary.

stouset 5y ago
It’s more like two variables pointing to an uninitialized value that’s lazily randomly generated on dereference. And copy-on-write. Edit: OP edited their original comment to be more accurate.
someguyorother 5y ago
It's not really immutable as you can change the parameters of an entangled pair. You just can't communicate any information by doing so, because you need a classical signal to make sure you don't read one of the particles the wrong way.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  I could be WAY off, but if locality isn’t entirely true, and the “read success” is 33-67%, doesn’t that still leave quite a bit of wiggle room for communicating information in some fault tolerant method?
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Nobody's ever managed it, the theory all says it's impossible, and that would violate several "known laws" of physics.
  - cma 5y ago
    Correlations only but no useable communication. You can both make a decision on the same random info that isn't determined until later when you are apart, but can't know anything other than that if they followed the plan they made their choice based on the same later-determined random info, correlated with your random info. If they didn't follow the plan and measured orhogonal/same (can't remember which) spins, then your results are uncorrelated but you can't know until you meet back up (maybe barring superdeterminism that is also accessible to the individual).
    - mrkstu 5y ago
      If we agree before parting that one of us is going to Alpha Centari and the other is staying on Earth and going to assassinate either the President of Russia or America depending on the observed state on an entangled pair of particles, once I reach the star system. Doesn't the traveler have more information than anyone else on ship about whether an assassination attempt was made in Russia or America? and have it faster than the speed of light? We don't have it with certainty, but we have shared knowledge that is unknowable to others and instantaneous.
      - cma 5y ago
        I think you would have a shared private piece of correlated information between each other that wasn't determined until you made the measurement (though maybe no joint reference frame to say who made it first), but you can't choose what it was (communicate with each other). The universe either had to break the light barrier to make the measurements correlated (predetermining the outcome isn't generally possible because you could choose how to make the measurement based on another quantum measurement from something outside of the other participant's then-current light cone), or make the same choice through superdeterminism (the other measurement and all others were predetermined too and exact simulation of entire future universe's measurement decisions was shared between every particle when they were within some distance at big bang or something). But even though the universe broke the light barrier, you yourself aren't able to use it for communication. In the many-worlds interpretation you've both branched into the same branch of the multiverse, but couldn't choose which branch. You do have private knowledge of which branch and the consequences of that, assuming you both followed the agreed on procedure. I think you can use what you are describing in a series of correlated measurements to set up a provably secure one-time-pad, and then do secure classical communication with it. But you don't communicate the actual bits of the pad, you just both get correlated ones.
      - lmm 5y ago
        You didn't gain any information after parting - you'd "know" just as much if your compatriot on Earth had given you a sealed envelope that said "Russia" or "America" inside. You can take actions that will later turn out to be correlated with each other, but you can only find that out once you meet up again, bounded by the speed of light.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    You get correlations - you can "understand what you read" once you have the measurements from both entangled particles, so you need another channel of communication (with the associated delays) to get that information. One side doing their interaction may cause a "spooky action at a distance" (according to some QM interpretations), but if you have only one side of readings and don't know what the other party measured in their interactions, you can't tell anything about what "the other side" did, so it does not help communication at all because you still need to transmit as many bits in a non-quantum way until you can do anything.
jerf 5y ago
You're probably interested in something more like the holographic universe hypothesis. Under that hypothesis, I believe "entangled particles" end up staying close to each other in the projected space. 3D space in that case would be an "emergent phenomenon" that isn't necessarily the "base data structure" of the simulation.
dvt 5y ago
If we were in a simulation, it feels overzealous to make the assumption that the computing model would be anything at all like what've developed. Best assumptions you can make is that it follows some kind of consistent logic (though there's caveats here, too).
- ericb 5y ago
  > that the computing model would be anything at all like what've developed Perhaps. I suspect, though, that it would be subject to the same information theoretical constraints which would provide convergent evolutionary pressures. It seems at least likely that some level of optimization would be useful if there is any type of cost (energy, materials, resources, space) to the computing substrate, whatever that may be, and that would lead to similar optimizations to what we might be able to imagine.
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago
  The speed of light is the exact kinda of constant a programmer would add to a system to solve problems.
  - eigenket 5y ago
    But quantum mechanics is exactly the opposite of what a programmer would add. At least as far as we understand it is (exponentially) harder to simulate quantum systems than classical ones.
    - lazide 5y ago
      Sure, using systems built from inside the system. In said theoretical world, they may have different constraints and physics after all. (Only kinda serious) Practically, the simulator theory may be testable, but probably not. Every religion I’ve run across is pretty clearly not okay to even test. So that’s progress maybe?
lisper 5y ago
That's not a bad analogy, but you have to be very careful here because no classical analogy can be a perfect fit for entanglement. The wave function is deeply and fundamentally different than our classical reality, and there is no way to reproduce its behavior classically. Among the fundamental differences is the fact that classical information can be copied but quantum states cannot be cloned. This is IMHO the single biggest disconnect between the wave function and classical reality because the nature of our (classical) existence is fundamentally intertwingled with copying (classical) information. It is happening right now even as you read this. Information is being copied out of my brain onto the internets and into your brain. At the same time, all our cells are busily copying the information in our DNA, and so on and so on.
- tylerhou 5y ago
  A classical analogy for entanglement: suppose I have two balls in a bag. They are identical in every way, except one is red and the other is blue. I randomly grab one in each hand and show my hands closed. Now the states of the ball are entangled: as soon as you see the color of one ball, that "determines" the color of the other. (Not claiming that this is a perfect analogy, but I don't see where it diverges from how entangled quantum waves would behave.) > Among the fundamental differences is the fact that classical information can be copied but quantum states cannot be cloned. The no-cloning theorem says that there exists no universal quantum machine that can perfectly clone an arbitrary quantum state. However, that does not preclude a machine that can imperfectly clone any quantum state, or machines that can perfectly clone some but not all quantum states [1]. (Clearly the information transferred to my brain is not a perfect copy of your brain's state, and your DNA is not perfectly copied every time.) [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9607018 https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9607018
  - kolinko 5y ago
    The analogy you mentioned is exactly the wrong one - it suggest that it’s just a matter of a hidden variable. A proper (but less elegant) would be: you have two balls with the same color or a pattern. You take one out. If you check the color first, you will find the other’s color the same, but the pattern sometimes different. If you check the pattern first, you will find the pattern the same, but the color sometimes different.
fallingknife 5y ago
Cellular automata have a built in speed limit, so it could be something like that. If one cell's state depends on only its immediate neighbors state, then logically no object can move faster than one cell diameter per frame. And if you had shared state between two non-adjacent cells in certain limited cases, that could create "faster than light" behavior.
joe_the_user 5y ago
There are no propositions that "we are in simulation" would imply (unless someone fundamentally lacks imagination). Being "in a simulation" doesn't imply that we're in simulation created by later humans, it doesn't give any indication how fine-grain the approximations are, etc. etc. "We're in a simulation" fundamentally discard Occam's Razor in the fashion of the belief in God as controlling everything. And thus this belief has the same weight as belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
- IncRnd 5y ago
  > "We're in a simulation" fundamentally discard Occam's Razor in the fashion of the belief in God as controlling everything. And thus this belief has the same weight as belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster [1]. You are using Occam's Razor incorrectly. A preference for parismony in problem solving is not identical with parsimony being the only state of the world. As a side note, which directly applies to your comment, Occam's Razor was invented by Friar William of Ockham as a defense of divine miracles.
  - joe_the_user 5y ago
    You are using Occam's Razor incorrectly. A preference for parismony is not identical with parsimony being the only state of the world. "Everything is really under control of invisible stuff" make it impossible to use parisomy under any circumstances. It fundamentally discards Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor was invented by Friar William of Ockham as a defense of divine miracles. While I wouldn't personally accept a God that acts in the world, the argument is about having some sort of evidence based interpretation of the world. Flying Spaghetti Monster is response to arguments like "God makes the rain fall" etc, not to a God that appears in the world but a God that can essentially be evoked for anything and in any fashion.
    - mrkstu 5y ago
      "we're in a simulation" is at least something that might be ultimately testable with the right theory and experiment. FSM/God isn't w/o them choosing to 'reveal' themselves to everyone.
SigmundA 5y ago
Speed of light would just be rule, like cellular automata rules, Planck distance is cell size and the rule is you may only move one cell per frame in any direction. Processing speed doesn't matter to us, it could take a million "years" to render a frame but we experience it in real-time. As you say pointer to shared memory location is basically hidden variable theory, you could also move faster than the speed of light by simply updating your location to any value, I have done this in game hacking before you just need a WriteProcessMemory api, might get caught by anti-cheats.
- cecilpl2 5y ago
  > Processing speed doesn't matter to us, it could take a million "years" to render a frame but we experience it in real-time. This is part of the premise of the fantastic novel "Permutation City" by Greg Egan.
  - SigmundA 5y ago
    I read Diaspora which touches on that as well, I really need to read Permutation City.
dw-im-here 5y ago
no
GuB-42 5y ago
Isn't it the non-local hidden variable model? The idea that if local hidden variables do do not explain Bell inequalities, make the hidden variables non-local. I think this model kind of works and some scientists are working on it, but it is not the preferred interpretation.
rendall 5y ago
That's a bit like asking if the universe were a clock, would the speed of light be the maximum rotation speed of its crankshaft. If the Universe were {analogy} is {real thing} related to {analogous thing}?
danbmil99 5y ago
Excellent analogy. That's exactly how it seems to work. I wrote a paper on this over a decade ago, I'll see if I can find it.

by ericb 5y ago

stouset 5y ago

It’s more like two variables pointing to an uninitialized value that’s lazily randomly generated on dereference. And copy-on-write. Edit: OP edited their original comment to be more accurate.

someguyorother 5y ago

It's not really immutable as you can change the parameters of an entangled pair. You just can't communicate any information by doing so, because you need a classical signal to make sure you don't read one of the particles the wrong way.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
I could be WAY off, but if locality isn’t entirely true, and the “read success” is 33-67%, doesn’t that still leave quite a bit of wiggle room for communicating information in some fault tolerant method?
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Nobody's ever managed it, the theory all says it's impossible, and that would violate several "known laws" of physics.
- cma 5y ago
  Correlations only but no useable communication. You can both make a decision on the same random info that isn't determined until later when you are apart, but can't know anything other than that if they followed the plan they made their choice based on the same later-determined random info, correlated with your random info. If they didn't follow the plan and measured orhogonal/same (can't remember which) spins, then your results are uncorrelated but you can't know until you meet back up (maybe barring superdeterminism that is also accessible to the individual).
  - mrkstu 5y ago
    If we agree before parting that one of us is going to Alpha Centari and the other is staying on Earth and going to assassinate either the President of Russia or America depending on the observed state on an entangled pair of particles, once I reach the star system. Doesn't the traveler have more information than anyone else on ship about whether an assassination attempt was made in Russia or America? and have it faster than the speed of light? We don't have it with certainty, but we have shared knowledge that is unknowable to others and instantaneous.
    - cma 5y ago
      I think you would have a shared private piece of correlated information between each other that wasn't determined until you made the measurement (though maybe no joint reference frame to say who made it first), but you can't choose what it was (communicate with each other). The universe either had to break the light barrier to make the measurements correlated (predetermining the outcome isn't generally possible because you could choose how to make the measurement based on another quantum measurement from something outside of the other participant's then-current light cone), or make the same choice through superdeterminism (the other measurement and all others were predetermined too and exact simulation of entire future universe's measurement decisions was shared between every particle when they were within some distance at big bang or something). But even though the universe broke the light barrier, you yourself aren't able to use it for communication. In the many-worlds interpretation you've both branched into the same branch of the multiverse, but couldn't choose which branch. You do have private knowledge of which branch and the consequences of that, assuming you both followed the agreed on procedure. I think you can use what you are describing in a series of correlated measurements to set up a provably secure one-time-pad, and then do secure classical communication with it. But you don't communicate the actual bits of the pad, you just both get correlated ones.
    - lmm 5y ago
      You didn't gain any information after parting - you'd "know" just as much if your compatriot on Earth had given you a sealed envelope that said "Russia" or "America" inside. You can take actions that will later turn out to be correlated with each other, but you can only find that out once you meet up again, bounded by the speed of light.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  You get correlations - you can "understand what you read" once you have the measurements from both entangled particles, so you need another channel of communication (with the associated delays) to get that information. One side doing their interaction may cause a "spooky action at a distance" (according to some QM interpretations), but if you have only one side of readings and don't know what the other party measured in their interactions, you can't tell anything about what "the other side" did, so it does not help communication at all because you still need to transmit as many bits in a non-quantum way until you can do anything.

jerf 5y ago

You're probably interested in something more like the holographic universe hypothesis. Under that hypothesis, I believe "entangled particles" end up staying close to each other in the projected space. 3D space in that case would be an "emergent phenomenon" that isn't necessarily the "base data structure" of the simulation.

dvt 5y ago

If we were in a simulation, it feels overzealous to make the assumption that the computing model would be anything at all like what've developed. Best assumptions you can make is that it follows some kind of consistent logic (though there's caveats here, too).

ericb 5y ago
> that the computing model would be anything at all like what've developed Perhaps. I suspect, though, that it would be subject to the same information theoretical constraints which would provide convergent evolutionary pressures. It seems at least likely that some level of optimization would be useful if there is any type of cost (energy, materials, resources, space) to the computing substrate, whatever that may be, and that would lead to similar optimizations to what we might be able to imagine.
tick_tock_tick 5y ago
The speed of light is the exact kinda of constant a programmer would add to a system to solve problems.
- eigenket 5y ago
  But quantum mechanics is exactly the opposite of what a programmer would add. At least as far as we understand it is (exponentially) harder to simulate quantum systems than classical ones.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Sure, using systems built from inside the system. In said theoretical world, they may have different constraints and physics after all. (Only kinda serious) Practically, the simulator theory may be testable, but probably not. Every religion I’ve run across is pretty clearly not okay to even test. So that’s progress maybe?

lisper 5y ago

That's not a bad analogy, but you have to be very careful here because no classical analogy can be a perfect fit for entanglement. The wave function is deeply and fundamentally different than our classical reality, and there is no way to reproduce its behavior classically. Among the fundamental differences is the fact that classical information can be copied but quantum states cannot be cloned. This is IMHO the single biggest disconnect between the wave function and classical reality because the nature of our (classical) existence is fundamentally intertwingled with copying (classical) information. It is happening right now even as you read this. Information is being copied out of my brain onto the internets and into your brain. At the same time, all our cells are busily copying the information in our DNA, and so on and so on.

tylerhou 5y ago
A classical analogy for entanglement: suppose I have two balls in a bag. They are identical in every way, except one is red and the other is blue. I randomly grab one in each hand and show my hands closed. Now the states of the ball are entangled: as soon as you see the color of one ball, that "determines" the color of the other. (Not claiming that this is a perfect analogy, but I don't see where it diverges from how entangled quantum waves would behave.) > Among the fundamental differences is the fact that classical information can be copied but quantum states cannot be cloned. The no-cloning theorem says that there exists no universal quantum machine that can perfectly clone an arbitrary quantum state. However, that does not preclude a machine that can imperfectly clone any quantum state, or machines that can perfectly clone some but not all quantum states [1]. (Clearly the information transferred to my brain is not a perfect copy of your brain's state, and your DNA is not perfectly copied every time.) [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9607018 https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9607018
- kolinko 5y ago
  The analogy you mentioned is exactly the wrong one - it suggest that it’s just a matter of a hidden variable. A proper (but less elegant) would be: you have two balls with the same color or a pattern. You take one out. If you check the color first, you will find the other’s color the same, but the pattern sometimes different. If you check the pattern first, you will find the pattern the same, but the color sometimes different.

fallingknife 5y ago

Cellular automata have a built in speed limit, so it could be something like that. If one cell's state depends on only its immediate neighbors state, then logically no object can move faster than one cell diameter per frame. And if you had shared state between two non-adjacent cells in certain limited cases, that could create "faster than light" behavior.

joe_the_user 5y ago

There are no propositions that "we are in simulation" would imply (unless someone fundamentally lacks imagination). Being "in a simulation" doesn't imply that we're in simulation created by later humans, it doesn't give any indication how fine-grain the approximations are, etc. etc. "We're in a simulation" fundamentally discard Occam's Razor in the fashion of the belief in God as controlling everything. And thus this belief has the same weight as belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

IncRnd 5y ago
> "We're in a simulation" fundamentally discard Occam's Razor in the fashion of the belief in God as controlling everything. And thus this belief has the same weight as belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster [1]. You are using Occam's Razor incorrectly. A preference for parismony in problem solving is not identical with parsimony being the only state of the world. As a side note, which directly applies to your comment, Occam's Razor was invented by Friar William of Ockham as a defense of divine miracles.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  You are using Occam's Razor incorrectly. A preference for parismony is not identical with parsimony being the only state of the world. "Everything is really under control of invisible stuff" make it impossible to use parisomy under any circumstances. It fundamentally discards Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor was invented by Friar William of Ockham as a defense of divine miracles. While I wouldn't personally accept a God that acts in the world, the argument is about having some sort of evidence based interpretation of the world. Flying Spaghetti Monster is response to arguments like "God makes the rain fall" etc, not to a God that appears in the world but a God that can essentially be evoked for anything and in any fashion.
  - mrkstu 5y ago
    "we're in a simulation" is at least something that might be ultimately testable with the right theory and experiment. FSM/God isn't w/o them choosing to 'reveal' themselves to everyone.

SigmundA 5y ago

Speed of light would just be rule, like cellular automata rules, Planck distance is cell size and the rule is you may only move one cell per frame in any direction. Processing speed doesn't matter to us, it could take a million "years" to render a frame but we experience it in real-time. As you say pointer to shared memory location is basically hidden variable theory, you could also move faster than the speed of light by simply updating your location to any value, I have done this in game hacking before you just need a WriteProcessMemory api, might get caught by anti-cheats.

cecilpl2 5y ago
> Processing speed doesn't matter to us, it could take a million "years" to render a frame but we experience it in real-time. This is part of the premise of the fantastic novel "Permutation City" by Greg Egan.
- SigmundA 5y ago
  I read Diaspora which touches on that as well, I really need to read Permutation City.

dw-im-here 5y ago

GuB-42 5y ago

Isn't it the non-local hidden variable model? The idea that if local hidden variables do do not explain Bell inequalities, make the hidden variables non-local. I think this model kind of works and some scientists are working on it, but it is not the preferred interpretation.

rendall 5y ago

That's a bit like asking if the universe were a clock, would the speed of light be the maximum rotation speed of its crankshaft. If the Universe were {analogy} is {real thing} related to {analogous thing}?

danbmil99 5y ago

Excellent analogy. That's exactly how it seems to work. I wrote a paper on this over a decade ago, I'll see if I can find it.