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Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
- astrodust 13y agoI really hope they don't accidentally trigger a divide by zero error and we have to start over again.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoImagine if you not only realized you were living in a simulation but that the simulation involved randomness (god playing dice) and you could somehow force backtracking with a simple button so that different values were chosen. Now, play the lottery and hit that button whenever you don't win; you could then surface an unlikely universe where you get really lucky.
- cscheid 13y agoHave you heard of Max Tegmark's quantum suicide argument? If you believe it sufficiently, well, buy a lottery ticket and cyanide, and really commit yourself to it :) (No, please, do NOT do this.)
- ryan-c 13y agoLet us for a moment, assume that the quantum suicide argument is correct. It is probably more likely that you will somehow survive the cyanide with life-long debilitating effects than for you to actually win the lottery.
- qu4z-2 13y agoHah, that's very cool. I came up with this as an idea for a short story a couple of days ago (except slightly more drastically, as it involved the complete annihilation of humanity on a failure condition, allowing the practitioner to drag everyone else with him into his preferred outcome-world). I'm simultaneously pleased and displeased that someone's already given it a lot of thought.
- SCAQTony 13y agolike "cmd z" all the way back to the big bang?
- gmaslov 13y agoIt's unlikely to work unless the button is so reliable that you have a better chance of winning the lottery than the button/mechanism failing in some (possibly undetectable) way. It's the same argument against trying to use quantum immortality to force a miracle by killing yourself, or constructing a machine to kill you, unless some desirable event occurs. It's much more likely that your machine will fail, or you'll change your mind.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoWe could imagine that the simulation naturally backtracks given a paradox or dead end. So if the lottery is rigged, I would never get rich, and the simulation would just backtrack to where I would never decide to try this.
- dllthomas 13y agoThe mechanism by which you construct that paradox would still be a mechanism that can fail, just (presumably) not a mechanical one.
- mikeash 13y agoI'm sure they do checkpointing and can roll back in the event of a problem. This has probably happened many times already.
- cnlwsu 13y agoI cant help but picture two mice trying to reconstruct the question from a human brain
- mikeash 13y agoI was thinking of this one as I wrote that: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
- lifthrasiir 13y agoCheckpointing does require a lot of resources and very large scale simulation like a simulation of whole universe may prohibit such checkpointing.
- dllthomas 13y agoThat depends on the scales involved in the universe where the simulation is being run. Maybe we're easy :-P
- dyno12345 13y agogives a whole new meaning to the term blue screen of death
- visarga 13y agoDivide by zero exceptions run in a try {} catch {} block. It's called a black hole.
- joezydeco 13y agoIf I wake up naked and sliding down a drain pipe, I'm gonna be really upset...
- GhotiFish 13y agoOn the plus side, programming is about to become much more interesting for you!
- visarga 13y agoFrom running virtual machines to running virtual universes. Same job, more work.
- WalterSear 13y agoOh, it's not all bad. Some bits, you can even take pride in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slartibartfast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slartibartfast
- WalterSear 13y ago"Woah. I can code in Malbolge."
- anonymous 13y agoYou win the award for "Best ultra-short horror sci-fi".
- spoiler 13y agoWell, this explains all the bugs and glitches in life like disease, death, assbutts, war, famine, broken hearts...
- chatmasta 13y agoLink to their project proposal (Cornell): http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.1847v2.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.1847v2.pdf
- aswanson 13y agoAnd if it has? Well, then the statistical likelihood is that we're located somewhere in that chain of simulations within simulations. The alternative - that we're the first civilisation, in the first universe - is virtually (no pun intended) absurd. wrong. there are multiple alternatives; we are the nth civilization in a real universe, we are the nth to the nth civilization in the multiverse, etc. Sloppy sensationalism and bad statistical reasoning in this article.
- dgreensp 13y agoI've always felt there's something deeply fallacious -- or hopelessly wrapped up in human psychology -- about taking a representation of a virtual world that we might create and treating it as on par with the actual universe. It's almost like saying "we're probably characters in a novel," since for every universe there are many novels. Or like that old proof that God exists because he has every desirable quality, including existence -- as if a hypothetical entity could be forced into being by sheer burden of how it is described. When we talk and reason, we call something a universe to invoke all the general properties our universe has -- except existence, of course, because it would be silly if we could only talk about things that exist. Various things like books and simulations are physical representations of universes that don't exist. By virtue of our interpretation, they are universes nonetheless. When reading a book, we fill in assumptions and details from real life if the author gives us no reason to think otherwise. Tautologically, the world of the book is different from the real world in some limited and structured way, but not in any way that keeps it from being a world at all. Physics seeks to explain the world exhaustively and reductionistically in terms of mechanisms, models, and mathematics -- basically, to boil it all down to the consequences that emerge from laws and equations that we can completely conceptualize. If the universe consisted just of electromagnetism, for example, then Maxwell's equations would be a "complete" description of the universe, and any simulation of them could be considered a universe. Everything about the universe, every general description that's true of it without reference to specific places, times, and things, would be reflected in the simulated universe as well, because science allows us to subsume it all into the more fundamental description given by the equations. The problem is that a model of the universe is stil a model. Humans invented the notion that a thing and a description of a thing are equivalent.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- humanspecies 13y agoI thought it was pretty interesting the first three times this was posted.
- crgt 13y agoThose postings were just simulations.
- benhamner 13y agoIf you're interested in going a bit deeper on this, Nick Bostrom (http://nickbostrom.com/ http://nickbostrom.com/) has pulled together an intriguing case: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html A provoking question: if we found evidence that convinced us, beyond a reasonable doubt, that we were living in a computer simulation, would you change your behavior?
- brodney 13y agoCould you?
- kabdib 13y agoAlready have!
- benhamner 13y agoAre they using a pseudo-random number generator with a set seed, or is there a better source of randomness? ;) I treat free will as an assumption: - If we are, in fact, predestined, assuming I have free will doesn't hurt or matter. - If we do have free will, I'm applying that free will to make decisions based on a correct assumption - If we do have free will and I had assumed we were predestined, this could have worse results. At the very least, it is unlikely to improve outcomes
- dgordon 13y ago"If we are, in fact, predestined, assuming I have free will doesn't hurt or matter." Not to mention you were predestined to assume so.
- KC8ZKF 13y agoYou have to live as if you have free will. You can't say, "I've considered all the possibilites, and have decided that there is no free will", because considerations and decisions are acts of free will themselves. Of course, that doesn't mean you have free will.
- mflindell 13y agoIf we were created like this, wouldn't it be feasible to say that the creators could just patch this up so the experiment will appear to work but is indeed, rigged.
- dllthomas 13y agoCould? Probably; depends on the nature of the simulation. Would? If they could, they might, or they might be pleased we figured it out :-P
- lifthrasiir 13y agoIt reminds me of this short novel: http://qntm.org/responsibility http://qntm.org/responsibility
- lucb1e 13y agoWas about to post that! Fictional, but incredibly intriguing. Keeps you thinking for weeks :)
- terenceong 13y agothis reminds me of the film The Thirteenth Floor... and the book it's based on.
- kstenerud 13y ago"The alternative - that we're the first civilisation, in the first universe - is virtually (no pun intended) absurd." As opposed to us simply being some other civilization on one of the other billions of habitable planets in that same "first" universe?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pdog 13y agoThen where are they?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- omegaham 13y agoIn a galaxy far, far away. My guess is that there are other civilizations out there, but they're suffering from the exact same problems as us - long distances, huge energy requirements, lots of time. If we can't get out to the stars, I can see why plenty of civilizations would be having trouble.
- CoffeeDregs 13y agoFirst off: why would you assume that we could interact with them? It appears to be phenomenally difficult to get from point to point in the galaxy/universe (see the recent trend in science-fiction to stick to a speed of light limited universe). If we come up with some fantastic energy source (see: ZPE), then I'll say that it's phenomenally slow so that no civilization would invest in doing it. If we come up with some civilization that would do so, I'd point out that it's phenomenally slow/difficult to send signals across universal distances. Rational folks think that non-solar-local interactions are probably not possible... Large brained rational folks think to look for solar-local artifacts of Kardashev-scale>1 civilizations (see: http://www.personal.psu.edu/jtw13/blogs/astrowright/2013/03/artifact-seti.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/jtw13/blogs/astrowright/2013/03/...). Recall that early explorers met Native Americans and called them Indians because they had misinterpreted distances, didn't know all of the continents, etc. We have a history of overcoming increasingly large distances with improved transport. This does not mean that we shall always do so. It may be depressing, but it may be the case that exponential curves in natural do not exist. We may live in a time where we understand that sigmoids rule the evolution of our world/civilizations... (And no the plural of Malthus is not proof of an exponential curves in nature...)
- songgao 13y agoPlease don't `kill -9` me! I'm having fun in this simulated universe.
- mahmud 13y agoThere is a Star Trek Voyager episode where three humanoids on a planet survived a natural disaster that destroyed their planet by going into stasis and having their brains stimulated by a computer simulation for over 19 years. In that time, the adaptive computer responded to their worst fears by turning the "fun" model world full of clowns and dancers into a circus nightmare. The virtual characters created to entertain the survivors turned into sinister clowns. The head clown, and the manifestation of fear itself, has full access to their brains and would adapt to circumvent any attempts by them to leave his world or terminate the stasis.
- oftenwrong 13y agohttp://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Thaw http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Thaw
- mahmud 13y agoThat's the one! Cheers.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoOr the less click-baity headline: "Physicists to Test if Universe is Computable"
- tantalor 13y agoOf course it's computable. Planets aren't going to orbit by themselves; something has to add up all those force vectors for every molecule everywhere. I think the question is whether the compution is discrete (i.e., cheats) or is everywhere continuous.
- midnightsine 13y agoAre you sure? Is the universe described by an equation s=t*v, v=10 untrue unless we compute it? Does moving electrons on a CPU die suddenly give it meaning? Do scraps of graphite left on paper by a pencil? The simplest turing complete cellular automaton can be computed using ordinary rocks. Are there no infinitely many natural numbers unless we observe them? And then finally is actually computing a universe described by a set and a step function the only way to make it real? Is it not "real" by simply being possible? As for discreteness of time, in quantum mechanics changes in state are modeled by square matrices over complex numbers. GL(n, C) is complete - for every matrix M you also have M^1/2, representing half the state chance. It follows that our time, at conceptual level, is at least as "dense" as rational numbers.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ctdonath 13y ago“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
- endtime 13y agoI think it's a bit silly to try to infer things about the computer that could be simulating our universe based on things internal to the simulation. Many of our fictions don't have the same laws of physics as we do.
- aswanson 13y agoExactly.
- XorNot 13y agoIt's a hypothesis - namely, that the entities running the simulation are trying to simulate their own universe to make deductions and discoveries about it. Therefore, our universe would be a reasonable facsimile of there's in most respects. Which has the implication that their may be limitations on their computational substrates which required workarounds or optimizations, or as the lattice QCD case points out - which require representing phenomenoma as discrete computational steps, rather then continuous analytical functions. It's a well known problem in all the computational disciplines, that changing the time-step of your simulation frequently leads to wildly different results then you expect. Think about the speed of light and tell me how it makes _any_ sense that time slows down due to velocity. Yet that's exactly what EVE Online does to stop nodes crashing during heavy gameplay.
- marblar 13y agoIt makes perfect sense, if you require the speed of light to be the same in all frames of reference.
- tantalor 13y agoYet our universe is quite good at solving the three body problem. Would you take that as evidence that it does not computate discretely?
- XorNot 13y agoTo the best of our knowledge, but that's kind of the point of this work isn't it? Look at something blown up on a large enough scale and see if the results show that it's actually continuous or if there's evidence that (in this case) there's a "real" lattice QCD grid size affecting things.
- webwielder 13y agoIf the universe was a computer program, it would have crashed by now.
- upquark 13y agoIf someone is running our universe as a simulation they still don't necessarily know of our existence. I have a hard time figuring out how you'd detect intelligent life or its byproducts in your simulation. Even if you do detect something alive, how do you interact with it in a non-destructive way? Also not trivial at all :) That "long-distance phone call" might be far less likely than us ever figuring out if we're indeed a simulation.
- devb 13y agoIt's apparently a good time to link to a writing entitled "Creating Infinite Suffering": http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/lab-universes.html http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/lab-universes.html "Abstract. I think there's a small but non-negligible probability that humans or their descendants will create infinitely many new universes in a laboratory. Under weak assumptions, this would entail the creation of infinitely many sentient organisms. Many of those organisms would be small and short-lived, and their lives in the wild would often involve far more pain than happiness. Given the seriousness of suffering, I conclude that creating infinitely many universes would be infinitely bad."
- Houshalter 13y agoIt would also create infinite amounts of happiness and joy.
- qu4z-2 13y agoMakes me wonder: Is computing universes with a computer all that different from simulating universes with imagination?
- darxius 13y agoI've always been interested by this sort of stuff (as I'm sure several people are -- especially the HN audience). It always brings up a bunch of interesting questions: - If we're self aware of the simulation, would we be able (or ever want to) reverse engineer the fabric of which makes up our sim? - Would there be infinite simulations? How far _up_ does the rabbit hole go? - Another idea, and this is reaching, would be to consider the motivation behind running simulations like these. Are the "controllers" running simulations to try and find solutions to problems they are facing? Of course, this is the stuff right out of Scifi movies.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoThe problem with this theory (the universe is a simulation) is that it's a tautology. You cannot prove or disprove it, and for practical reasons it changes nothing if you assert it's true. What is really being researched is whether the universe is computable, because that's something you can prove.
- darxius 13y agoIf they can prove the universe is computable and that we would (given the resources) create a simulation of our own, wouldn't that lend credence to the idea that we would be in a simulation as well? I see what you mean though, it would be impossible (with our current understanding of ... everything) to actually determine is we're in a sim or not.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoThe point is, to determine whether "this" universe is a simulation or not, you would need to look after a special characteristic that differentiates it from a "parent" universe. If you prove the universe is computable, that still doesn't give you any answer whether it's a simulation or not. As it stands, the theory is a tautology, because that's just proving the universe is something that it is.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- skylan_q 13y agoProbably relevant for those interested: In 1969, Zuse suggested the concept of a computation-based universe in his book Rechnender Raum (Calculating Space). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse
- nate_martin 13y agoI've always thought that quantum theory provided some decent evidence for this. Instead of always computing every value for every result, the universe does so only when things are "observed", saving on computation.
- aswanson 13y agoWhy would "saving" be valued, metaphysically?
- Houshalter 13y agoSo the simulation would take far less computational resources.
- aswanson 13y agoWhy do you assume computational resources are a cost/constraint in the 'real' universe?
- Houshalter 13y agoThey may not be. In which case there is no way to know. But if they are that is something we can test for (possibly.)
- marcosdumay 13y agoQuantum mechanics certaninly leads to a very informatic view of the Universe... The problem is that this is human bias. You can describe any theory by information manipulation, and it is as good a description as any other.
- Xcelerate 13y agoNo, it doesn't really work that way. A wavefunction is based upon a configuration space and you can't just neglect part of it or you'll get inaccurate results.
- JackFr 13y ago"The theory basically goes that any civilisation which could evolve to a 'post-human' stage would almost certainly learn to run simulations on the scale of a universe. And that given the size of reality - billions of worlds, around billions of suns - it is fairly likely that if this is possible, it has already happened." That sounds distinctly like Anselm's ontological proof for the existence of God, and thus likely suffers from the same logical fallacies.
- jerf 13y agoIf you want to take on a non-strawman version of the argument, check out benhammer's links below. That said, I do often feel that at the literal edges of our universe (in all the senses of that term), our uncertainties simply dominate everything and all of our guesses about the true nature of reality are dominated by that uncertainty. Something (or, depending, multiple somethings) must be true for some value of true, but I'm skeptical if we can discover it. If it popped up and simply flat-out told us what the truth was somehow (the Great Simulator writing the message in the stars [1]), we probably couldn't confirm it. [1]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/
- batgaijin 13y agoWell the most interesting part of the Matrix trilogy was when Neo used his powers in the 'real' world; specifically stopping the drones and being able to see despite losing his eyesight.
- specialist 13y agoTotally. I expected the simulation within a simulation, turtles all the way down, plot twist. My favorite theory was that all the humans were passengers on a generational seed ship traveling to the next star, kept in near stasis to keep them alive and mostly sane during the millennial transit. That would have played nicely with The Architect's explanation that in the perfect simulated world, humans went insane. So The Architect devised worlds with struggles. But the iteration we observed got out of hand, due to The Oracle's meddling. Such a wasted opportunity.
- GuiA 13y ago>"Essentially, Savage said that computers used to build simulations perform "lattice quantum chromodynamics calculations" - dividing space into a four-dimensional grid." I thought current quantum physics determined the universe had 13 dimensions? (two time version of M-theory)
- visarga 13y agoSo they have to simulate an array of 13 dimensions instead of 4. Technically it's equivalent though.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- visarga 13y agoThat and the Finely Tuned Universe Paradox (the Goldilocks Enigma) is why I can't easily consider myself an atheist. I mean, chances are, this universe is "intelligently designed", in the most literal sense. I call it the "Alien God Hypothesis". It's probable that a race of aliens has mastered the "world creation mechanism", either by simulation or by physical hacking (who knows, maybe they can control black holes and create baby universes inside with just the right conditions for life). At some point down the line there must be a purely physical universe though, but we're probably not there, but in one of the branches. So while I am not atheist in a pure sense, I am not a theist either. Nice, isn't it? Science makes almost full circle to religion. The IDers are almost right.
- jerf 13y agoI have often thought that if 20th century science tried to ram home the logical necessity of atheism, 21st century science rams home the logical necessity of agnosticism being the ground level, so to speak. If we, tiny as we still are, can even conceive of a practical way to simulate a universe (and what is truly the difference between "simulate" and "create" in the end?), how can we in good conscience fully rule out the idea that we are in fact in a simulation, and that whoever it is that is simulating us is in every reasonable sense a lower-case-d deity? They may be leaving us alone, ignorant of our existence (perhaps they only care about the large-scale results and we are but a blip), etc etc the entire well explored set of possible philosophical deities, but how can we confidently proclaim that none of them exist? In the 20th century, one could be ignorant and scoff at the idea that Mankind might ever create a universe, and therefore scoff by extension at the idea that anyone or anything else could either... but now we know better. We've got universe prototypes already in production as ongoing commercial concerns (far more than mere theory!), at various stages of incredible primitiveness, but prototypes nonetheless. Rather than a massive leap, it is now merely logical progression that something, somewhere in some reality may actually have the knowledge and the resources to have "created" our universe, for some value of the term "created". (I speak here of science in the vague philosophical movement sense. As much as it would like to claim total philosophical neutrality, there are certain Opinions that are Had.)
- 13y ago
- CosmicJohn 13y agoIf it is a simulation, it must be running on a Solaris server sitting in the corner of some office, boasting a record uptime.
- Aldream 13y agoReminded me of an excerpt of "La Révolution des fourmis" ("The Revolution of the Ants", 1996) by the french writer Bernard Werber, in which students run such a simulation (named InfraWorld), until "simulated scientists" uncover the truth of their condition, leading to mass hysteria and eventually the collapse of their civilization...
- rdmcfee 13y agoI wonder if the civilization creating the simulation would have motivations beyond just doing this because they can. Perhaps with the benefits of a vastly accelerated timescale a simulation could be used for predictive purposes. As for simulations within simulations. If we are in a simulation and our "program" is permitted to run long enough by it's creators we will most certainly find out :)
- n3rdy 13y agoIMO one other motivation would be a safe way to create a strong AI, for both predictive purposes, development of new technologies, and medical advancements.
- adventured 13y agoIt's just my opinion, but I believe the scope has been mistaken. People have had a tendency to miss on scale throughout history in regards to both the micro and macro spheres. What we call the universe today, I believe there may be a trillion of them (connected in the same way that galaxies are). They're so large and so far apart, we still don't realize it yet. I believe we've missed on the macro scale just like we did on the micro scale in discovering the tiny world of atoms etc. I believe we'll figure this out in the next hundred years as our optics and data gathering become far more advanced. In this scenario, if there are just 10 civilizations per 'universe' - there would still be billions or trillions of civilizations, and they would almost never meet due to the extreme scale involved (by the time you could attempt to explore your universe, it has already begun killing you off by imploding).
- visarga 13y agoSo, if we can't meet aliens to chat, we can create our own. We just need to simulate their universe.
- cpdean 13y agohuffingtonpost. fortellers of scientific breakthrough? You decide.
- DigitalSea 13y agoThe theory that we are living in a computer simulation has always intrigued me, but if we were truly running inside of a simulation wouldn't said simulation have safe-guard protocols in place preventing us from determining whether or not we are within a simulation? Very curious to see if we are all really living within Simcity or The Matrix.
- dontstealmyname 13y agoI think of it like a security expert trying to keep crackers out. No matter how fancy the security they'll be a hole some where forgotten or overlooked which will reveal at least something. Who knows? Maybe our universe was created by the lowest bidder and cut corners to improve profits.
- sramsay 13y ago". . . dividing space into a four-dimensional grid." Time Cube! These stupid idiots still don't understand it.
- Wonderdonkey 13y agoThis article is from 2012. The simulation is lagging. What kind of hardware is this thing running on?
- Jarihd 13y agoJust recalled one of my several questions i had when i was a small kid to which i never got any answers, so here's my kiddy question can it be that.. we are beings living inside another huge-living-being and working for it under some laws. like the way we have cells in our body working for us, we could be something like cells working in this huge-living-being. can this explain the multiverse idea i.e a universe inside another universe inside another universe.. and maybe finite in number.
- kislayverma 13y agoSome believe that if you really proved that the universe was a simulation, the universe would change into a newer and better simulation. Evidence suggests this has happened before.
- joshschreuder 13y agoWhat are some examples of the evidence?
- jrabone 13y agoI think OP is (mis)quoting The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
- nnq 13y agoIsn't it obvious for most that for an advanced enough simulation, it is impossible to prove that you are in a simulation from inside the simulation? Even if we find proof that our current model of reality is wrong, it would only mean we need to search for another model of reality, we can't just say "but out theory doesn't actually match the reality because the reality is actually a simulation that computes approximations for some cases". Imagine if Einstein thought something (let's say for the sake of argument that he had access to some real close-to-speed-of-light experiments): "classical mechanics, isn't wrong, but predictions for close-to-the-speed-of-light experiments don't match the reality because we live in a simulation and the resource constraints forced by the computations needed for the simulation computer to do for such cases make it distort things through heuristic approximations ...and because we live in a simulation I can further pursue my other line of work, the genetic theory of Leprechauns and Fairies...". Now I actually believe the plausability of the simulation theory, unfalsifiable as it may be, and all, but I think such simulations wouldn't be run for "fun" alone: if we're in a simulation, we're either (a) "babies" in nursery that probably involve multiple existences in multiple simulations until we are "prepared" for the "top-level reality" or (b) we and our universes are a very advanced form of... future "bitcoin miners" :| (I sincerely hope for either (a) or the plain ol "reality is real" theory, but one can never now...)
- polymatter 13y ago(c) We are unintended by-products of whatever is being simulated.
- nnq 13y agoyeah, and I consider this part of (b): maybe our universe itself (or the meta-universe containing it or something) is some kind of "useful software" in a simulation VM (what I mean by "bitcoin miner" :)), and we are just some by-products of its running.
- polymatter 13y agoI read (b) to suggest that we are are intimately important part of this simulation. The simulation starters wouldn't consider us a threat to the integrity of their simulation as we are part of that simulation. However, if we were unintended by-products, the simulation starters could turn on us - especially if we start interfering in the global state of the simulation. There is an interesting Asimov story along these lines where top scientists would be mysteriously killed in order to prevent humans developing force field tech. The protagonist compared humans to bacteria growing in a petri dish. In order to stop the bacteria spreading out you surround the bacteria with penicillin. The simulation starters did something analogous to humans.
- willurd 13y agoTheory A has probability X of occurring. Another possibility is that theory B is what's really happening, but that has a much lower probability Y of occurring. X > Y, ergo A must be what's really going on. QED.
- pellias 13y agoSo, the big bang was just a bootup of the computer ? And the uptime has been like X billion of years ? This sounds too far fetched.
- ceeK 13y agoX billion of years for us may in fact just be minutes for those running the simulation. If you were running a simulation you wouldn't want to have to wait billions of years for the first life to form.
- chipaca 13y agoIf we're in a simulation, it's going to have bugs. We're going to find them, and start exploiting them for things like superluminal flight. Then the day shift will come in, find us exploting the bugs and patch the system. Hopefully they have their act together and they can hot-patch (or pause, patch and resume) and avoid restarting the simulation. Even so, we'll be stuck at the wrong end of now impossible superluminal flights.
- webreac 13y agoIn short, statistically, God (our creator) exists and we can resurrect, it is just a question of backup restoration. BTW, this movie on the subject is not that bad: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/
- tcgv 13y agoThe universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine, J. B. S. Haldane [1] [1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane
- TheFiachna 13y agoIsn't this just proving P = NP on a larger scale?
- bitL 13y agoSo, the answer to the great question of universe is not 42, but that the simulation results will be presented in a paper authored by a researcher duo Trurl and Klapaucius at the SIG UNI conference in the main universe? ;-)
- fennecfoxen 13y agoWe might not know if the universe is a simulation, but we know enough about the properties of the universe to put some constraints on its properties. For instance: We know about entropy. We know that there is an upper bound on the amount of information that can be contained within a given space, and it is proportional to surface area of that space. (The upper bound is realized when the space becomes a black hole.) These values constrain any simulation of the physics of our universe in any universe which has the same physics. We know that in the case of accurately simulating the entire physical universe, you're going to need a LOT of space and energy.
- Drakim 13y agoProvided, as you say, that the parent universe has the same physical laws. We would have no way to know that.
- polshaw 13y agoWhat I would like to discuss is what purpose would simulating a universe have for the advanced civilisation? As the civilisation becomes closer to being capable of creating a perfectly simulated universe, they get less benefit from having one. If we assume the universe we are in is at least similar to 'the first', then the existence of entropy / thermodynamic laws would surely create a significant cost to universe simulation. So I can't see it being done without good reason (eg as a toy), and as the master would have to understand all the factors involved in the universe already to create the simulation, so what would they gain? Is it right to say that it would be impossible to simulate the universe at full speed? (ie. the computer would need to be powerful enough to simulate itself and more (ie. the rest of the universe)). If so, this would not only make it less useful, but put significant (increasing) limits on the local age of the descendent universes; assuming (fairly, i think) that the master universe does not have an infinite existence with infinite time between shocks. Also, how would it be possible to store all the information for a universe within itself? Or perhaps we are talking about imperfect simulations, which would make it much more feasible? but then the infinite exponential chain would not be possible as each child would become more crude. Or perhaps only a (diminishing) proportion of space(-time) is simulated.. or maybe the speed of light decreases as simulation levels get deeper? In writing this I think I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible (in so far as anything is given our imperfect knowledge), at least a complete universe simulation or an endless chain, but I would love for someone to show otherwise.
- jonnathanson 13y ago"What I would like to discuss is what purpose would simulating a universe have for the advanced civilisation?" The Douglas Adams-style answer would be that we're some kid's physics homework. Perhaps, in a sufficiently advanced civilization, building a working computer model of an advanced universe is child's play. An alternative is that the simulators inhabit a very different universe from our own, and that our simulation is something entirely new. It's not a replica of their universe; it's a completely different creation. They could be studying various scenarios, of which ours is just one. We need to bear in mind that we're approaching this problem from our own, subjective understanding of our universe. It's not a given that the simulators' universe is anything like ours.
- x_ferris 13y ago"The question is, 'Can you communicate with those other universes if they are running on the same platform?," she said. If we share any form of resources then its going to be possible either through a timing or storage channel attack - this is simplified but here's an example of two vms communicating via the hypervisor: http://www.idontplaydarts.com/2012/08/data-exfiltration-through-the-vmware-hypervisor/ http://www.idontplaydarts.com/2012/08/data-exfiltration-thro...
- fatihdonmez 13y agoActually it's what most religions said about universe. It was all programmed at the beginning. All of our actions and their future possible results are known by god. The problem is how we can develop awareness about it, if we doesn't have enough perception by default. Religions say that just believe without questioning, we have reasons, we create the signs for you to believe. I don't know, but as an engineer it does look like god is the head engineer.
- martijn_himself 13y agoAm I right in my (very limited) understanding that they derive their 'observables' (i.e. indicators that would prove we are inside a simulation) from the assumption that the space-time continuum is discretized in a certain way? By the time we are actually able to perform a simulation on such a scale would the numerical method not have evolved as well and possibly produce totally different kinds of 'observables'? I realise I am totally out of my depth here :).
- cscurmudgeon 13y agoRemember the days when physicists used to posit precise and falsifiable statements that were not bad philosophy?
- cdub32k 13y agoIf we are living in a simulation, then our simulation exists and is part of reality. It should just be considered a type of reality rather than NOT REAL. This whole idea is just the idea of God put into terms people can believe
- washedup 13y agoIf this theory proves true, it also proves the existence of "god" in the form of a programmer.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoCoincidentally, Science of Discworld IV just came out last week.
- canvia 13y agoIt seems to me that the primary purpose of such a simulation would be to generate a form of artificial intelligence. Maybe at some point it takes the form of a sentient consciousness. Who can judge whether or not an intelligence is artificial? With sufficient complexity it would be indistinguishable. If I wanted to create an AI, I would probably follow a similar strategy to evolution. It would be beneficial to have many iterations occurring and interacting all at once to speed up the process. Having the AI develop it's own complexity would save incredible amounts of programming time. It would also make the intelligence unique and have a different perspective. Create a system for replication (reproduction) that also introduces an exchange of components (genes) with other iterations of the program. Maybe add a chance for random mutations at this stage. Have a way of transferring knowledge, experience and ideas (memes, mirror neurons, sensory inputs - language will develop evolutionarily). A lot will still be learned through trial and error in each instance, especially at lower complexity levels. Look at how a baby learns. It's similar to current machine learning. Limit the amount of time that any single instance can run, and have earlier more primitive instances have a faster roll over time to work out the negative traits faster. There must be predatory characteristics (in instances as well as the environment) to enforce survival of the fittest. Why would you want to make an AI? Maybe it's to solve problems that you can't figure out. Maybe it's to do work that you don't want to do. We could be a simulation that's solving the problems of another civilization. Maybe we just create their entertainment for them. How can we solve global warming? If we could simulate a planet just like ours and have time pass at a faster rate, we could eventually run enough iterations to find a solution. Or maybe simulations are used to do research and develop new technologies. Want to develop cold fusion? Let a machine figure it out by running simulations that generate intelligence and introduce the need for sources of efficient power generation (interplanetary travel and survival instinct for example). Solutions would be transferable since you would presumably create a copy of your own environment and rules, and the language used to reach the solution is irrelevant since it all just boils down to math. Or maybe they're just lonely? Who wants to be the only sentient being in existence. What happens when the AI that was created figures out that the easiest way for it to solve its problems is to create an AI and have it do all the work? Visually I think it would probably be similar to a fractal. Infinite.