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No: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1220 http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1220 Or if we are, the universe simulating us has completely different physics from the on

No: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1220 http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1220 Or if we are, the universe simulating us has completely different physics from the one we live in, which have to be fully specified before the "argument" becomes remotely plausible.

catshirt 12y ago
"The great thing about the human imagination is that it has no problem imagining contradictions." ah yes, and science is always free of such contradiction. the author invests so much energy laughing at the simulation theory, only to conclude that he cannot disprove it? considering how much the author apparently hates philosophy, he managed to write a rather philosophical article. "Or if we are, the universe simulating us has completely different physics from the one we live in" i kind of feel like, with all due respect, no shit? why explore such profound philosophy within the constraints of science as we know it today?
shawnhermans 12y ago
That doesn't prove or disprove anything. The author assumes the simulation would have to simulate the entire known universe at the level of detail we observe. That is absurd. A simulation wouldn't need to simulate the entire universe, just what I am observing at that exact moment. Think of it is lazy evaluation. The rules are all known, but they are not evaluated until needed. If we have one single person, how hard would it be to simulate every single input to that one person? You wouldn't need to simulate an entire universe to do that. Going back to what the author had to say, you wouldn't have to simulate the state of every atom at every time. You only need to simulate when it is measured. Interestingly, this syncs up with what we know about the quantum world where measurement causes the state of the wave function to collapse. Additionally, the author seems to assume the universe exists outside of himself. He seems to trust the measurements and insights of scientific facts I doubt that he has confirmed via his own observation. Even if he did confirm all of them, this still doesn't prove the universe exists outside of what he directly observes with his own senses. By analogy, imagine you are a character in a video game. The video game doesn't render the entire universe of the game. Only the portion of the game the character is in at that moment. From the character's point of view, the laws are consistent. The character could even try to postulate some universal laws. Try to determine the size of their universe. I am not saying the philosophers are right or wrong. I'm just saying there is a lot more to the philosophy than the article covers.
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  > A simulation wouldn't need to simulate the entire universe, just what I am observing at that exact moment. How do you know this? I've run a lot of simulations, and to get things exactly right anywhere you need to compute everything everywhere. That at least is my experience. You've simply asserted that that is not the case, doing precisely what I'm critiquing the original argument for: imagining a case where there's no problem, and then asserting that case as a matter of fact. As to Cartesian skepticism, it isn't even a self-consistent position: you want me to take your argument seriously while simultaneously asserting that I don't even know you exist.
scobar 12y ago
Although I disagree with the condescending style, I found your article very interesting and a good argument against this hypothesis. I'm likely out of my depth, so I apologize if my question seems very naive. You said, 'it is overwhelmingly likely that whatever the “most elementary” controllable aspect of reality is, be it strings or something else, it will be able to encode at most a single bit per thing.' What if more variables were considered when deriving meaning from an electron? For example, Up means 1, Down means 0, and the position of that 1/0 relative to other 1s and 0s provides further info, or the time between transitions between 0 and 1 provides further info. Could a single electron then store information about more than 1 elementary particle?

catshirt 12y ago

"The great thing about the human imagination is that it has no problem imagining contradictions." ah yes, and science is always free of such contradiction. the author invests so much energy laughing at the simulation theory, only to conclude that he cannot disprove it? considering how much the author apparently hates philosophy, he managed to write a rather philosophical article. "Or if we are, the universe simulating us has completely different physics from the one we live in" i kind of feel like, with all due respect, no shit? why explore such profound philosophy within the constraints of science as we know it today?

shawnhermans 12y ago

That doesn't prove or disprove anything. The author assumes the simulation would have to simulate the entire known universe at the level of detail we observe. That is absurd. A simulation wouldn't need to simulate the entire universe, just what I am observing at that exact moment. Think of it is lazy evaluation. The rules are all known, but they are not evaluated until needed. If we have one single person, how hard would it be to simulate every single input to that one person? You wouldn't need to simulate an entire universe to do that. Going back to what the author had to say, you wouldn't have to simulate the state of every atom at every time. You only need to simulate when it is measured. Interestingly, this syncs up with what we know about the quantum world where measurement causes the state of the wave function to collapse. Additionally, the author seems to assume the universe exists outside of himself. He seems to trust the measurements and insights of scientific facts I doubt that he has confirmed via his own observation. Even if he did confirm all of them, this still doesn't prove the universe exists outside of what he directly observes with his own senses. By analogy, imagine you are a character in a video game. The video game doesn't render the entire universe of the game. Only the portion of the game the character is in at that moment. From the character's point of view, the laws are consistent. The character could even try to postulate some universal laws. Try to determine the size of their universe. I am not saying the philosophers are right or wrong. I'm just saying there is a lot more to the philosophy than the article covers.

tjradcliffe 12y ago
> A simulation wouldn't need to simulate the entire universe, just what I am observing at that exact moment. How do you know this? I've run a lot of simulations, and to get things exactly right anywhere you need to compute everything everywhere. That at least is my experience. You've simply asserted that that is not the case, doing precisely what I'm critiquing the original argument for: imagining a case where there's no problem, and then asserting that case as a matter of fact. As to Cartesian skepticism, it isn't even a self-consistent position: you want me to take your argument seriously while simultaneously asserting that I don't even know you exist.

scobar 12y ago

Although I disagree with the condescending style, I found your article very interesting and a good argument against this hypothesis. I'm likely out of my depth, so I apologize if my question seems very naive. You said, 'it is overwhelmingly likely that whatever the “most elementary” controllable aspect of reality is, be it strings or something else, it will be able to encode at most a single bit per thing.' What if more variables were considered when deriving meaning from an electron? For example, Up means 1, Down means 0, and the position of that 1/0 relative to other 1s and 0s provides further info, or the time between transitions between 0 and 1 provides further info. Could a single electron then store information about more than 1 elementary particle?