3 ms·
Unless the question is to ask whether the universe is a poorly written simulation with edge cases that differ from the real thing. In that case, the question is
by barkingcat 13y ago
Unless the question is to ask whether the universe is a poorly written simulation with edge cases that differ from the real thing. In that case, the question is very interesting.
- hansjorg 13y agoHow would you know what the real thing was from inside the simulation?
- pjscott 13y agoOne approach: you look at what the physical laws appear to be, and then ask "What weird edge cases would we expect to see if and only if this were running in a particular type of simulation?" That's what the paper linked to does. It's not perfect, but it's something.
- angersock 13y agoSo...how do we detect we're running in Perl instead of Ruby?
- eCa 13y agoThe answer is obvious [0]. [0] http://xkcd.com/224/ http://xkcd.com/224/
- jblow 13y agoThe main objection is that the way edge cases would "differ from the real thing" depends on what their "computers" are like which may not be anything like our computers. In fact there is no reason to believe they are similar at all.
- solipsism 13y agoTo take that point further, not only may their computers be nothing like our computers, the whole point of the article is that our natural laws and the basis of our mathematics is part of the simulation. That implies that the host (to borrow virtualization jargon) world's computers may work according to rules nothing like our own. Certainly you can't make statements like quantum effects between particles would otherwise require an infinite amount of memory. You can't make any statements about the host world, any more than we can make statements about the nature of a god, if one existed.