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No more a proof that we live in a matrix than the music in my Super Mario paper game is to Luigi that in our world if you go into another room the music changes

No more a proof that we live in a matrix than the music in my Super Mario paper game is to Luigi that in our world if you go into another room the music changes. In the "real" world the rules of information theory may or may not apply just as the rules of physics in a game may or may not apply in reality. So we cannot discern the probability of a simulated universe from whatever results may come from loop quantum gravity.

ars 18y ago
You need to edit what you wrote, because I couldn't understand it (although I sort of got the idea). But my point was the loop quantum gravity says that spacetime is basically a matrix of pixels. Which is what I would expect if the world was a simulation. It's not proof of course - there can't be proof, but if the world was continuous then it's less likely it's a simulation (but not impossible of course).
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- LPTS 18y ago
  Ars - your seem to have a problem, that you use language wrong. your improper use of language causes you to be overly dogmatic in your thinking. 'The world is a simulation' 'spacetime is a matrix of pixels', what does that mean? All sentences of the form 'A is B' should be re-written 'A seems B to frame X' (or observer x). loop quantum gravity does not say spacetime is pixels. it does say that spacetime might better be approximated as discrete at very small scales, and that such approximations might be useful tools for making progress. Recent experiments show that the idea that space is continuous at small scales is (make that, 'seems') an approximation. No one doing serious work on quantum anything thinks anything in the form X is Y. That worldview has been dead for 100 years. You can't play the speculate about quantum stuff game until you have changed your language to remove outmoded century old logical flaws you aren't aware of, which are built into the rules of a grammar you aren't conscious of, which governs the language you think in and predisposes you to make huge errors (like thinking there are cases where 'A is B'). You seem to think reality is actually one way, and our goal is to understand how reality is. That hasn't been the game for almost a hundred years. We now know that all models of reality, from physics to Aunt Edna's dogmatic catholicism, are tools that do not conform to reality. The idea is to refine our tools so they are more useful, not to figure out how reality is. You need to drop some acid and read 'quantum psychology,' stat! The map is not the territory! The hand pointing at the moon is not the moon. The language that describes the map is not the territory it's even further from the territory. There is no meaning in life, because life is what meaning refers to. Looking for meaning in life is like looking for trees on a map. Looking for what reality is in quantum loop gravity is like looking for trees on a map.
  - ars 18y ago
    What you are saying is that loop quantum gravity does not say "the world is discrete", but rather "a way to calculate stuff is to assume that it's discrete"? To me that sounds like saying protons don't exist, it's just we can explain all sort of stuff by assuming they do. If that really is the thinking in quantum physics it would explain a lot, but I think it's simply a cop-out because our intuitive sense does not work with the rules of quantum physics. Thanks for posting this, it helps me put some strange papers on quantum physics in their proper perspective - they are not "this is what the world is", but rather "we found some cool math". I guess that's what happens when you can't do experiments but can only make models and theories.
    - LPTS 18y ago
      If you stop using 'is' and all forms of the verb 'to be', our intuitive sense changes. If you never heard of the verb 'to be' or any of it's forms, and never thought in those terms, quantum physics would not contradict our intuitions. Easterners raised on the I-Ching and Chinese language do not find quantum physics as counterintuitive as we do. When viewing western portraits in art, Chinese pay more attention than westerners to the background and less to the object. Never mind our intuitive sense, this 'cop-out' is what we keep seeing time and time again. Our intuitive sense arises from the way the unconscious rules in our grammar shape our thinking. It's not that our intuitive sense clashes with quantum physics, but the much weirder situation that any single sense we could possibly have about it does not conform to the experiential reality. Far from being a cop-out, it's the bravest intellectual view you can take, and your only hope if you aren't down with the mathematics used in quantum physics. I wouldn't take it quite as far as reading the papers as only 'we found cool math'. Instead try 'we found experimental results such that no one set of mathematical models can (possibly!?) account for our experimental results."
      - astine 18y ago
        So the expression of identity is source of all confusion in communication? I would have attributed it to sloppy thinking and and imprecise grammar but oh I guess I'm wrong.
- aswanson 18y ago
  Sorry ars, re-reading my comment sent me for a loop as well. All I was trying to say (poorly) was that what you expect may have no relation to how the 'real' reality works. Digitization, pixels, etc. may have no analogue in actual existence and hence we cannot infer the nature of reality from our observations in simulation.

ars 18y ago

You need to edit what you wrote, because I couldn't understand it (although I sort of got the idea). But my point was the loop quantum gravity says that spacetime is basically a matrix of pixels. Which is what I would expect if the world was a simulation. It's not proof of course - there can't be proof, but if the world was continuous then it's less likely it's a simulation (but not impossible of course).

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
LPTS 18y ago
Ars - your seem to have a problem, that you use language wrong. your improper use of language causes you to be overly dogmatic in your thinking. 'The world is a simulation' 'spacetime is a matrix of pixels', what does that mean? All sentences of the form 'A is B' should be re-written 'A seems B to frame X' (or observer x). loop quantum gravity does not say spacetime is pixels. it does say that spacetime might better be approximated as discrete at very small scales, and that such approximations might be useful tools for making progress. Recent experiments show that the idea that space is continuous at small scales is (make that, 'seems') an approximation. No one doing serious work on quantum anything thinks anything in the form X is Y. That worldview has been dead for 100 years. You can't play the speculate about quantum stuff game until you have changed your language to remove outmoded century old logical flaws you aren't aware of, which are built into the rules of a grammar you aren't conscious of, which governs the language you think in and predisposes you to make huge errors (like thinking there are cases where 'A is B'). You seem to think reality is actually one way, and our goal is to understand how reality is. That hasn't been the game for almost a hundred years. We now know that all models of reality, from physics to Aunt Edna's dogmatic catholicism, are tools that do not conform to reality. The idea is to refine our tools so they are more useful, not to figure out how reality is. You need to drop some acid and read 'quantum psychology,' stat! The map is not the territory! The hand pointing at the moon is not the moon. The language that describes the map is not the territory it's even further from the territory. There is no meaning in life, because life is what meaning refers to. Looking for meaning in life is like looking for trees on a map. Looking for what reality is in quantum loop gravity is like looking for trees on a map.
- ars 18y ago
  What you are saying is that loop quantum gravity does not say "the world is discrete", but rather "a way to calculate stuff is to assume that it's discrete"? To me that sounds like saying protons don't exist, it's just we can explain all sort of stuff by assuming they do. If that really is the thinking in quantum physics it would explain a lot, but I think it's simply a cop-out because our intuitive sense does not work with the rules of quantum physics. Thanks for posting this, it helps me put some strange papers on quantum physics in their proper perspective - they are not "this is what the world is", but rather "we found some cool math". I guess that's what happens when you can't do experiments but can only make models and theories.
  - LPTS 18y ago
    If you stop using 'is' and all forms of the verb 'to be', our intuitive sense changes. If you never heard of the verb 'to be' or any of it's forms, and never thought in those terms, quantum physics would not contradict our intuitions. Easterners raised on the I-Ching and Chinese language do not find quantum physics as counterintuitive as we do. When viewing western portraits in art, Chinese pay more attention than westerners to the background and less to the object. Never mind our intuitive sense, this 'cop-out' is what we keep seeing time and time again. Our intuitive sense arises from the way the unconscious rules in our grammar shape our thinking. It's not that our intuitive sense clashes with quantum physics, but the much weirder situation that any single sense we could possibly have about it does not conform to the experiential reality. Far from being a cop-out, it's the bravest intellectual view you can take, and your only hope if you aren't down with the mathematics used in quantum physics. I wouldn't take it quite as far as reading the papers as only 'we found cool math'. Instead try 'we found experimental results such that no one set of mathematical models can (possibly!?) account for our experimental results."
    - astine 18y ago
      So the expression of identity is source of all confusion in communication? I would have attributed it to sloppy thinking and and imprecise grammar but oh I guess I'm wrong.
aswanson 18y ago
Sorry ars, re-reading my comment sent me for a loop as well. All I was trying to say (poorly) was that what you expect may have no relation to how the 'real' reality works. Digitization, pixels, etc. may have no analogue in actual existence and hence we cannot infer the nature of reality from our observations in simulation.