3 ms·

I wonder if we could discover new physics/applications or build a warp drive just by brute-forcing/mass experimentation or simulation. What if our universe is

by raducu 5y ago

I wonder if we could discover new physics/applications or build a warp drive just by brute-forcing/mass experimentation or simulation. What if our universe is simulation by an "alien" species who wants to achieve FTL travel but are out of ideas on how to do it; but, they can run obscenely massive simulations. And the simulation stops as soon as someone inside the universe achieves FTL travel.

TechBro8615 5y ago
Would that imply the aliens are also in a simulation?
aasasd 5y ago
Aside from the general crankery of this musing, you realize that us being able to discover FTL travel would depend on the underlying physics being simulated deeply and accurately enough in the first place, and probably with some headroom?
- mromanuk 5y ago
  It doesn’t matter if the simulation is kind of sketchy. Because we can find holes in it, and exploit those to move around. To us simple simulated beings, we achieved FTL and we can conquer the simulated universe. The aliens on the next level, probably will find out that the simulation broke. Or a dilemma, maybe we can’t find FTL, because the simulation was already patched from previous iterations.
- raducu 5y ago
  If a civilization is capable of simulating universes, most likely it know if FTL is actually possible or not in their own universe. But it could also be that even the original universe has too many free/independent parameters and the original civilization is as scientifically agnostic as us if FTL is actually technologically possible, so they could say "we thought of everything we could and still cannot prove or disprove FTL, let's create a totally different species and let them have a go, maybe they come up with radically different ideas, but it's better not to create them in our own Universe or they might be smarter than us and turn against us, let's sandbox them in their own simulated universe". They could probably use "A.I." like AlphaGo to try and build structures within their own universe limitations that create Alcubierre drives, but it could also be that that also failed and after searching for aeons, they just raised their tentacles and said "that's it, we're stuck, the only thing left is to try the simulated universe approach".

by raducu 5y ago

TechBro8615 5y ago

Would that imply the aliens are also in a simulation?

aasasd 5y ago

Aside from the general crankery of this musing, you realize that us being able to discover FTL travel would depend on the underlying physics being simulated deeply and accurately enough in the first place, and probably with some headroom?

mromanuk 5y ago
It doesn’t matter if the simulation is kind of sketchy. Because we can find holes in it, and exploit those to move around. To us simple simulated beings, we achieved FTL and we can conquer the simulated universe. The aliens on the next level, probably will find out that the simulation broke. Or a dilemma, maybe we can’t find FTL, because the simulation was already patched from previous iterations.
raducu 5y ago
If a civilization is capable of simulating universes, most likely it know if FTL is actually possible or not in their own universe. But it could also be that even the original universe has too many free/independent parameters and the original civilization is as scientifically agnostic as us if FTL is actually technologically possible, so they could say "we thought of everything we could and still cannot prove or disprove FTL, let's create a totally different species and let them have a go, maybe they come up with radically different ideas, but it's better not to create them in our own Universe or they might be smarter than us and turn against us, let's sandbox them in their own simulated universe". They could probably use "A.I." like AlphaGo to try and build structures within their own universe limitations that create Alcubierre drives, but it could also be that that also failed and after searching for aeons, they just raised their tentacles and said "that's it, we're stuck, the only thing left is to try the simulated universe approach".