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The question really ultimately resolves to whether the universe can be quantized at all levels or whether it is analog. If it is quantized I demand my 5 minutes

The question really ultimately resolves to whether the universe can be quantized at all levels or whether it is analog. If it is quantized I demand my 5 minutes with god, because I would see that as proof of all of this being a simulation. My lack of belief in such a being makes me hope that it is analog.

deleted 1y ago
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gaigalas 1y ago
"It looks designed" means nothing. It could be our ignorance at play (we have a long proven track record of being ignorant about how things work).
- eru 1y ago
  Yes. Or it could be an optimisation algorithm like evolution. Or even just lots and lots of variation and some process selecting which one we focus our attention one. Compare the anthropic principle.
  - gaigalas 11mo ago
    For all we know, it could be distinct layers all the way down to infinity. Each time you peel one, something completely different comes up. Never truly knowable. The universe has thrown more than a few hints that our obsession with precision and certainty could be seen cosmically as "silly". In our current algorithmic-obsessed era, this is reminiscent of procedural generation (but down/up the scale of complexity, not "one man's sky" style of PG). However, we also have a long track record of seeing the world as nails for our latest hammer. The idea of an algorithm, or even computation in general, could be in reality conceptually closer to "pointy stone tool" than "ultimate substrate".
    - eru 11mo ago
      > For all we know, it could be distinct layers all the way down to infinity. Each time you peel one, something completely different comes up. Never truly knowable. The universe has thrown more than a few hints that our obsession with precision and certainty could be seen cosmically as "silly". That's a tempting thing to say, but quantum mechanics suggests that we don't have infinite layers at the bottom. Most thermodynamic arguments combined with quantum mechanics. See eg also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound about the amount of information that can even in theory be contained in a specific volume of space time.
      - gaigalas 11mo ago
        From the link you shared: > the maximum amount of information that is required to perfectly describe a given physical system _down to the quantum level_ (emphasis added by me) It looks like it makes predictions for the quantum layer and above. -- Historically, we humans have a long proven track record of missing layers at the bottom that were unknown but now are known.
Legend2440 1y ago
Computation does not necessarily need to be quantized and discrete; there are fully continuous models of computation, like ODEs or continuous cellular automata.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  That's true, but we already know that a bunch of stuff about the universe is quantized. The question is whether or not that holds true for everything or rather not. And all 'fully continuous models of computation' in the end rely on a representation that is a quantized approximation of an ideal. In other words: any practical implementation of such a model that does not end up being a noise generator or an oscillator and that can be used for reliable computation is - as far as I know - based on some quantized model, and then there are still the cells themselves (arguably quanta) and their location (usually on a grid, but you could use a continuous representation for that as well). Now, 23 or 52 bits (depending on the size of the float representation you use for the 'continuous' values) is a lot, but it is not actually continuous. That's an analog concept and you can't really implement that concept with a fidelity high enough on a digital computer. You could do it on an analog computer but then you'd be into the noise very quickly. In theory you can, but in practice this is super hard to do.
  - eru 1y ago
    If your underlying system is linear and stable, you can pick any arbitrary precision you are interested in and compute all future behaviour to that precision on a digital computer. Btw, quantum mechanics is both linear and stable--and even deterministic. Admittedly it's a bit of a mystery how the observed chaotic nature of eg Newtonian billard balls emerges from quantum mechanics. 'Stable' in this case means that small perturbations in the input only lead to small perturbations in the output. You can insert your favourite epsilon-delta formalisation of that concept, if you wish. To get back to the meat of your comment: You can simulate such a stable system 'lazily'. Ie you simulate it with any given fixed precision at first, and (only) when someone zooms in to have a closer look at a specific part, you increase the precision of the numbers in your simulation. (Thanks to the finite speed of light, you might even get away with only re-simulating that part of your system with higher fidelity. But I'm not quite sure.) Remember those fractal explorers like Fractint that used to be all the rage: they were digital at heart---obviously---but you could zoom in arbitrarily as if they had infinite continuous precision.

deleted 1y ago

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gaigalas 1y ago

"It looks designed" means nothing. It could be our ignorance at play (we have a long proven track record of being ignorant about how things work).

eru 1y ago
Yes. Or it could be an optimisation algorithm like evolution. Or even just lots and lots of variation and some process selecting which one we focus our attention one. Compare the anthropic principle.
- gaigalas 11mo ago
  For all we know, it could be distinct layers all the way down to infinity. Each time you peel one, something completely different comes up. Never truly knowable. The universe has thrown more than a few hints that our obsession with precision and certainty could be seen cosmically as "silly". In our current algorithmic-obsessed era, this is reminiscent of procedural generation (but down/up the scale of complexity, not "one man's sky" style of PG). However, we also have a long track record of seeing the world as nails for our latest hammer. The idea of an algorithm, or even computation in general, could be in reality conceptually closer to "pointy stone tool" than "ultimate substrate".
  - eru 11mo ago
    > For all we know, it could be distinct layers all the way down to infinity. Each time you peel one, something completely different comes up. Never truly knowable. The universe has thrown more than a few hints that our obsession with precision and certainty could be seen cosmically as "silly". That's a tempting thing to say, but quantum mechanics suggests that we don't have infinite layers at the bottom. Most thermodynamic arguments combined with quantum mechanics. See eg also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound about the amount of information that can even in theory be contained in a specific volume of space time.
    - gaigalas 11mo ago
      From the link you shared: > the maximum amount of information that is required to perfectly describe a given physical system _down to the quantum level_ (emphasis added by me) It looks like it makes predictions for the quantum layer and above. -- Historically, we humans have a long proven track record of missing layers at the bottom that were unknown but now are known.

Legend2440 1y ago

Computation does not necessarily need to be quantized and discrete; there are fully continuous models of computation, like ODEs or continuous cellular automata.

jacquesm 1y ago
That's true, but we already know that a bunch of stuff about the universe is quantized. The question is whether or not that holds true for everything or rather not. And all 'fully continuous models of computation' in the end rely on a representation that is a quantized approximation of an ideal. In other words: any practical implementation of such a model that does not end up being a noise generator or an oscillator and that can be used for reliable computation is - as far as I know - based on some quantized model, and then there are still the cells themselves (arguably quanta) and their location (usually on a grid, but you could use a continuous representation for that as well). Now, 23 or 52 bits (depending on the size of the float representation you use for the 'continuous' values) is a lot, but it is not actually continuous. That's an analog concept and you can't really implement that concept with a fidelity high enough on a digital computer. You could do it on an analog computer but then you'd be into the noise very quickly. In theory you can, but in practice this is super hard to do.
- eru 1y ago
  If your underlying system is linear and stable, you can pick any arbitrary precision you are interested in and compute all future behaviour to that precision on a digital computer. Btw, quantum mechanics is both linear and stable--and even deterministic. Admittedly it's a bit of a mystery how the observed chaotic nature of eg Newtonian billard balls emerges from quantum mechanics. 'Stable' in this case means that small perturbations in the input only lead to small perturbations in the output. You can insert your favourite epsilon-delta formalisation of that concept, if you wish. To get back to the meat of your comment: You can simulate such a stable system 'lazily'. Ie you simulate it with any given fixed precision at first, and (only) when someone zooms in to have a closer look at a specific part, you increase the precision of the numbers in your simulation. (Thanks to the finite speed of light, you might even get away with only re-simulating that part of your system with higher fidelity. But I'm not quite sure.) Remember those fractal explorers like Fractint that used to be all the rage: they were digital at heart---obviously---but you could zoom in arbitrarily as if they had infinite continuous precision.