5 ms·

And also the universe itself is often seen through the lens of contemporary technology. Are we living on an island that floats on a giant turtle’s back? Or are

by pavlov 3y ago

And also the universe itself is often seen through the lens of contemporary technology. Are we living on an island that floats on a giant turtle’s back? Or are the heavens like giant clockworks? Or maybe it’s all a computer simulation? These cosmological speculations are separated by thousands of years, but they are all simply a reflection of what the person finds most awe-inspiring in their everyday life.

CuriouslyC 3y ago
The difference is turtles all the way down was literal, but heavenly clockwork and computer program perspectives are clear metaphors.
- horsawlarway 3y ago
  Psh - everyone knows it's a flat disc balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle.
- pavlov 3y ago
  Tell that to the people who subscribe to the simulation hypothesis.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > turtles all the way down was literal Was it? What evidence do you have for that? If anything it sounds like the kind of verbal slapdown someone in authority would subject someone trying to be a smart alec. It is short. Easy to understand. And closes the kind of questioning. I would be very surprised if someone have considered it the literal truth, but of course have seen stranger things. > heavenly clockwork and computer program perspectives are clear metaphors. I don’t know about the clockwork. You will need to find someone who talks about that and ask them if they meant as a metaphor or not. On the other hand I know about the computer simulation one. That for me is not a metaphor. I seriously think that it is within the realm of possibilities that this universe we live in (including us) is a literal simulation. There would be possible physical experiments which depending on their results could make me increase or decrease my confidence in that statement. But I don’t consider it a metaphor. Now of course that is only the viewpoint of a single human, at a single point of time. So it might not matter much. But it shows that it is not that “clear” that everyone considers that view only as a metaphor.
  - civilitty 3y ago
    > I seriously think that it is within the realm of possibilities that this universe we live in (including us) is a literal simulation. Notice how you dropped the “computer” part. Without that qualifier, the “universe is a simulation” hypothesis goes back at least to Descartes and his evil demon [1]. That’s the GP’s point. The “demon,” “clockwork,” and “computer” are just metaphors to help illustrate the point. Hundreds of years ago it was a trickster demon, now it’s computers - the simulation part is the same. (The world floating on a turtle idea traces to the world turtle and several different creation myths, so it’s safe to say their believers took them a bit more literally) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon
    - CuriouslyC 3y ago
      Pretty funny to see a constructive comment downvoted faster than sweaty blather. Not a good day for HN.
    - krisoft 3y ago
      > now it’s computers - the simulation part is the same. I don't think so. I do understand this lineage of thought, and I agree with you that they are somewhat similar. But I must insist in saying that what I'm talking about is different. The trickster demon metaphor talks about a being (you) whose senses are replaced by the demon. But that means there is a you outside of the demon/computer simulation. I believe if this universe is a simulation, then I am part of that simulation. My mind is not an external observer hooked up to the simulation, but just matter simulated by the simulation according to the rules of the simulation. The thing Descartes was talking about is a Matrix situation. (Or rather to say the creators of Matrix were paraphrasing Descartes) Neo thinks he is living his life, but in truth his body is laying in a pod in the goo. I don't believe in that. I don't think that is likely true. If this is a simulation then me (and you, and this computer, and all of the people, and the butterflies and the stars) are in the simulation. And not the way how Neo is in there, but the way a cubic meter of minecraft sand is inside a minecraft world. Inside the minecraft world it is a cubic meter of sand, outside of it is just a few bytes in the memory of some program. Let me illustrate what I mean when I say that I don't speak about the universe being a computer simulation as a metaphor. Imagine that it is a simulation. What does this computer simulation have to do? Well, it seems that there are particles, and there are forces between them (gravity, electric, weak/strong nuclear force) In every iteration of this simulation it would seem that you need to calculate which particles are close to others so you can update the forces on them, so you can calculate their new state. To do this you need to inspect the distance between every two particle. That scales with ordo N^2 with the number of particles N. If the universe is a computer simulation it probably runs on a computer of immense power. But even then N^2 scaling is not good news in a hot path. Funny thing is that if the universe you want to simulate is relatively sparse (as is ours), and has an absolute speed limit (as ours seems to have), then you can shard your workload into parallel processes. And then you can run the separate shards relatively independently, and you only need to pass information from one shard to an other periodically. Now if our universe is a simulation, and it is sharded this way, then you would expect anomalies to crop up on the shard boundaries. Where the simulated mater is moved from one executor "node" to an other. We could construct small spacecraft and send them far away (perhaps other solar systems?). We would furnish these small automated spacecraft with sensitive experiments. Microscopic versions of a Newton's cradle, or some sort of subatomic oscillator, or a very precisely measured interferometric experiment. And the craft would autonomously check constantly that the laws of physics are unchanged, and work without glitches. If we don't see any glitches, then we shrug. Either we don't live in a computer simulation, or the computer simulation is not sharded this way, or the edge cases are very well handled, or the instruments were not sensitive enough, or the shards are even bigger (perhaps we should have sent the same experiments to a different galaxy?) If we see glitching, then we should try to map out exactly where they happen, and how they happen, and that would be very interesting. And if we see glitching of this kind that would increase my confidence in us living in a computer simulation. Does this make sense? You cannot design an experiment to test a metaphor. It doesn't even make sense. But I think of this as a possible literal truth, in which case you can formulate hypothesises based on it and you can check those with experiments. > so it’s safe to say their believers took them a bit more literally I believe you. Did anyone ever propose to solve a famine by sending a hunting party to cut a chunk of the turtle's flesh? Or to send gatherer's to collect the dung of the turtle to fertilise the land? Or to send holly people to the edge of the world, to peer down at the turtle to predict earthquakes? If the turtles are meant to be literal turtles these are all straightforward consequences. If nobody ever proposed anything like these, then perhaps the turtles were more of a metaphor?
- detourdog 3y ago
  I first heard Turtles all the way down in spoken story by Kurt Vonnegut. Does anyone else have a source of the story or is that the source?
  - pavlov 3y ago
    “The world is on a turtle’s back” is Iroquois cosmology, at least.
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      Wow, thank you. I’d always thought this a Pratchett things. I see it has a history in India and China too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        How could at least two cultures without a communication line between them both come up with such a quirky idea? There must be some underlying truth to it.. I'm sold. World turtle is the answer.
        the_af 3y ago
        "The Turtle Moves"!
        detourdog 3y ago
        I'm sure they stepped on turtles to go back and forth across the bering strait.
        kridsdale3 3y ago
        Chinese writing began with turtle shells as well, that's why the mostly conform to a sort of grid system, with curves.
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Humans are the universe. It’s not surprising the universe uses available metaphors to explain to itself why it might exist.
mjburgess 3y ago
Reasoning by analogy is one of the ways we solve the framing problem. So, when explaining the universe we imagine it's an act of will by a conscious entity (ie., like how we invent). When explaining the mind we suppose it's like one of our inventions. Absent an analogy of some kind it's quite hard to determine what features are salient. Objects have an essentially infinite number of properties.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  > So, when explaining the universe we imagine it's an act of will by a conscious entity Unless I’m misunderstand you, that line of reasoning assumes one is religious.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    We here means "our species".
  - pinkmuffinere 3y ago
    I don’t think that’s strictly required — atheists/agnostics can still “imagine” the universe is an act of will
  - pegasus 3y ago
    Not necessarily, see for example Nick Bostrom's Simulation Hypothesis. Maybe one could argue that too requires adherence to some religious dogma (Scientism? Reductionism?)
- kridsdale3 3y ago
  And absent an understanding of electric fields and meteorology, that lightning bolt over there must have been hurled by Zeus!
Legend2440 3y ago
Each of these are true in a sense. There's no turtle, but we are living on an "island" floating through space. The heavens do follow predictable, clockwork rules. Computer simulations are at least a good way to describe the universe.

by pavlov 3y ago

CuriouslyC 3y ago

The difference is turtles all the way down was literal, but heavenly clockwork and computer program perspectives are clear metaphors.

horsawlarway 3y ago
Psh - everyone knows it's a flat disc balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle.
pavlov 3y ago
Tell that to the people who subscribe to the simulation hypothesis.
krisoft 3y ago
> turtles all the way down was literal Was it? What evidence do you have for that? If anything it sounds like the kind of verbal slapdown someone in authority would subject someone trying to be a smart alec. It is short. Easy to understand. And closes the kind of questioning. I would be very surprised if someone have considered it the literal truth, but of course have seen stranger things. > heavenly clockwork and computer program perspectives are clear metaphors. I don’t know about the clockwork. You will need to find someone who talks about that and ask them if they meant as a metaphor or not. On the other hand I know about the computer simulation one. That for me is not a metaphor. I seriously think that it is within the realm of possibilities that this universe we live in (including us) is a literal simulation. There would be possible physical experiments which depending on their results could make me increase or decrease my confidence in that statement. But I don’t consider it a metaphor. Now of course that is only the viewpoint of a single human, at a single point of time. So it might not matter much. But it shows that it is not that “clear” that everyone considers that view only as a metaphor.
- civilitty 3y ago
  > I seriously think that it is within the realm of possibilities that this universe we live in (including us) is a literal simulation. Notice how you dropped the “computer” part. Without that qualifier, the “universe is a simulation” hypothesis goes back at least to Descartes and his evil demon [1]. That’s the GP’s point. The “demon,” “clockwork,” and “computer” are just metaphors to help illustrate the point. Hundreds of years ago it was a trickster demon, now it’s computers - the simulation part is the same. (The world floating on a turtle idea traces to the world turtle and several different creation myths, so it’s safe to say their believers took them a bit more literally) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon
  - CuriouslyC 3y ago
    Pretty funny to see a constructive comment downvoted faster than sweaty blather. Not a good day for HN.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > now it’s computers - the simulation part is the same. I don't think so. I do understand this lineage of thought, and I agree with you that they are somewhat similar. But I must insist in saying that what I'm talking about is different. The trickster demon metaphor talks about a being (you) whose senses are replaced by the demon. But that means there is a you outside of the demon/computer simulation. I believe if this universe is a simulation, then I am part of that simulation. My mind is not an external observer hooked up to the simulation, but just matter simulated by the simulation according to the rules of the simulation. The thing Descartes was talking about is a Matrix situation. (Or rather to say the creators of Matrix were paraphrasing Descartes) Neo thinks he is living his life, but in truth his body is laying in a pod in the goo. I don't believe in that. I don't think that is likely true. If this is a simulation then me (and you, and this computer, and all of the people, and the butterflies and the stars) are in the simulation. And not the way how Neo is in there, but the way a cubic meter of minecraft sand is inside a minecraft world. Inside the minecraft world it is a cubic meter of sand, outside of it is just a few bytes in the memory of some program. Let me illustrate what I mean when I say that I don't speak about the universe being a computer simulation as a metaphor. Imagine that it is a simulation. What does this computer simulation have to do? Well, it seems that there are particles, and there are forces between them (gravity, electric, weak/strong nuclear force) In every iteration of this simulation it would seem that you need to calculate which particles are close to others so you can update the forces on them, so you can calculate their new state. To do this you need to inspect the distance between every two particle. That scales with ordo N^2 with the number of particles N. If the universe is a computer simulation it probably runs on a computer of immense power. But even then N^2 scaling is not good news in a hot path. Funny thing is that if the universe you want to simulate is relatively sparse (as is ours), and has an absolute speed limit (as ours seems to have), then you can shard your workload into parallel processes. And then you can run the separate shards relatively independently, and you only need to pass information from one shard to an other periodically. Now if our universe is a simulation, and it is sharded this way, then you would expect anomalies to crop up on the shard boundaries. Where the simulated mater is moved from one executor "node" to an other. We could construct small spacecraft and send them far away (perhaps other solar systems?). We would furnish these small automated spacecraft with sensitive experiments. Microscopic versions of a Newton's cradle, or some sort of subatomic oscillator, or a very precisely measured interferometric experiment. And the craft would autonomously check constantly that the laws of physics are unchanged, and work without glitches. If we don't see any glitches, then we shrug. Either we don't live in a computer simulation, or the computer simulation is not sharded this way, or the edge cases are very well handled, or the instruments were not sensitive enough, or the shards are even bigger (perhaps we should have sent the same experiments to a different galaxy?) If we see glitching, then we should try to map out exactly where they happen, and how they happen, and that would be very interesting. And if we see glitching of this kind that would increase my confidence in us living in a computer simulation. Does this make sense? You cannot design an experiment to test a metaphor. It doesn't even make sense. But I think of this as a possible literal truth, in which case you can formulate hypothesises based on it and you can check those with experiments. > so it’s safe to say their believers took them a bit more literally I believe you. Did anyone ever propose to solve a famine by sending a hunting party to cut a chunk of the turtle's flesh? Or to send gatherer's to collect the dung of the turtle to fertilise the land? Or to send holly people to the edge of the world, to peer down at the turtle to predict earthquakes? If the turtles are meant to be literal turtles these are all straightforward consequences. If nobody ever proposed anything like these, then perhaps the turtles were more of a metaphor?
detourdog 3y ago
I first heard Turtles all the way down in spoken story by Kurt Vonnegut. Does anyone else have a source of the story or is that the source?
- pavlov 3y ago
  “The world is on a turtle’s back” is Iroquois cosmology, at least.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    Wow, thank you. I’d always thought this a Pratchett things. I see it has a history in India and China too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      How could at least two cultures without a communication line between them both come up with such a quirky idea? There must be some underlying truth to it.. I'm sold. World turtle is the answer.
      - the_af 3y ago
        "The Turtle Moves"!
        detourdog 3y ago
        I'm sure they stepped on turtles to go back and forth across the bering strait.
      - kridsdale3 3y ago
        Chinese writing began with turtle shells as well, that's why the mostly conform to a sort of grid system, with curves.
- DonHopkins 3y ago

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Humans are the universe. It’s not surprising the universe uses available metaphors to explain to itself why it might exist.

mjburgess 3y ago

Reasoning by analogy is one of the ways we solve the framing problem. So, when explaining the universe we imagine it's an act of will by a conscious entity (ie., like how we invent). When explaining the mind we suppose it's like one of our inventions. Absent an analogy of some kind it's quite hard to determine what features are salient. Objects have an essentially infinite number of properties.

lostlogin 3y ago
> So, when explaining the universe we imagine it's an act of will by a conscious entity Unless I’m misunderstand you, that line of reasoning assumes one is religious.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  We here means "our species".
- pinkmuffinere 3y ago
  I don’t think that’s strictly required — atheists/agnostics can still “imagine” the universe is an act of will
- pegasus 3y ago
  Not necessarily, see for example Nick Bostrom's Simulation Hypothesis. Maybe one could argue that too requires adherence to some religious dogma (Scientism? Reductionism?)
kridsdale3 3y ago
And absent an understanding of electric fields and meteorology, that lightning bolt over there must have been hurled by Zeus!

Legend2440 3y ago

Each of these are true in a sense. There's no turtle, but we are living on an "island" floating through space. The heavens do follow predictable, clockwork rules. Computer simulations are at least a good way to describe the universe.