Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012)

#81

Post by 3chelon » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

mkstowegnv wrote: post #71

IMHO as a biologist infused with awe of the natural world from observation and reading, it is laughable that gods or computers could design or simulate the infinite levels of mind numbing complexity and unimaginable patterns that evolution has produced. But most people who are more focused on, and hungry for, the order created by technology and society in general, find it easy - with occasional cognitive dissonance,…

But evolution would be part of the process. The programmer (or god) just sets the thing in motion. From an evolutionary biology perspective, evolution might be the main deal, the whole point of the simulation. It would make some sense, to create processes, systems and structures that no being could ever come up with.

As far as I know, there are some creationists that believe something along these lines already. Dawkins used to call it smuggling God in the back door.

Re: Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012)

#82

Post by skc » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 5:56 PM UTC

kornork wrote: post #5

If we're living in a simulation, the question of whether AIs can have consciousness is solved.

But what if consciousness itself is simulated. The problem here is that a simulation would have to adhere to a set of programmatic rules meaning that the only way consciousness could arise as we like to think we know it, is via some weird unintended side effect.

Re: Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012)

#83

Post by sakopov » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

codesnik wrote: post #51

sakopov wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So we're a simulation that can simulate 15 (femto)meters of cosmos that is indistinguishable from reality. This isn't much but it's still absolutely mind-bending. Reminds me of the movie The 13th Floor [1] [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/

femtometers?

Yep. Typoed.

Re: Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012)

#84

Post by smrtinsert » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 6:07 PM UTC

mkstowegnv wrote: post #71

IMHO as a biologist infused with awe of the natural world from observation and reading, it is laughable that gods or computers could design or simulate the infinite levels of mind numbing complexity and unimaginable patterns that evolution has produced. But most people who are more focused on, and hungry for, the order created by technology and society in general, find it easy - with occasional cognitive dissonance,…

As a BS in bio as well I learned everything in biology arises from chemistry which arises from physics which can be explained (mostly?) with math. If that isn't abundantly clear on graduation your teachers did you a disservice.

You don't have to design anything, it should just show up if its an accurate enough simulation.

Re: Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012)

#85

Post by astrodust » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

4ad wrote: post #22

astrodust wrote: post #16

Keep in mind that if you wanted to create a simulated universe you can ensure nobody ever finds out. If someone does find out, you can simply fix the problem and revert to a point in time just before the data leading to the discovery was captured. Speaking academically, you might be playing with fire if you probe the outer limits of the universe and we are in a simulation run by some entity concerned with keeping tha…

> you can simply fix the problem and revert to a point in time just before the data leading to the discovery was captured. Only with classical computers, not quantum computers.

It's only quantum from our perspective. For all we know it's deterministic from some external perspective.

Imagine if we discover the random number generator used by quantum events!

Re: Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012)

#86

Post by comicjk » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

Vraxx wrote: post #80

comicjk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misconception, but superposition has nothing to do with "do not render if the player is not watching." As far as we know, every particle in the universe is interacting with every other (with a light speed delay) and thus "measuring" it (modifying and responding to its wavefunction) at all times. In the two-slit experiment, for example, the wavefunction of a particle moving through a slit interacts wi…

I see the distinction you're making (I think), but I still don't see how that invalidates GP's analogy. Surely "running" a wavefunction is computationally cheaper than re-evaluating the particle's characteristics at every universal frame. Perhaps it's not so much about our own "watching" but rather "do not calculate when irrelevant". My own analogy might be an online map frame like google maps, where tiles outside th…

The particle's characteristics ARE the wavefunction - or to say it another way, the wavefunction is the only real characteristic a particle has.

When I run a quantum mechanics simulation at work, I might afterwards calculate the particle positions or some other classical characteristic of the system. But I need those characteristics only because I'm trying to get a classical model of the system. The system itself, when it's running, doesn't do any of that. It interacts wavefunction-to-wavefunction. As far as we know, that's how the universe works.

Re: Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012)

#87

Post by CoryG89 » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 6:49 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #72

CoryG89 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really true? What about a self-aware AI? I can imagine an AI that resides on a chip and developed consciousness could conceivably control a camera/robot in the real world and literally inspect and even reverse engineer or repair/improve itself or the hardware it runs on.

True, but in the end their ability to perceive will be limited by the wires to/from those cameras to their hardware, and thus it is still possible that even the external world they thing they're observing, including themselves and their place in it, is also simulated. As in, someone could plug a "fake" camera into the AI and fool it.

I agree that an AI could be tricked into believing it's environment is the real world when it's only a simulation, just as we could be AIs in a simulation. But this doesn't preclude the possibility of an AI being able to completely inspect/understand the hardware it's running on in the real world, if given the fact that it actually is running on hardware in the real world.

Re: Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012)

#88

Post by mkstowegnv » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 7:10 PM UTC

smrtinsert wrote: post #84

mkstowegnv wrote: post #71

IMHO as a biologist infused with awe of the natural world from observation and reading, it is laughable that gods or computers could design or simulate the infinite levels of mind numbing complexity and unimaginable patterns that evolution has produced. But most people who are more focused on, and hungry for, the order created by technology and society in general, find it easy - with occasional cognitive dissonance,…

As a BS in bio as well I learned everything in biology arises from chemistry which arises from physics which can be explained (mostly?) with math. If that isn't abundantly clear on graduation your teachers did you a disservice. You don't have to design anything, it should just show up if its an accurate enough simulation.

You are assuming unlimited computational resources. At some point the computer required is bigger than the universe and exceeds the limits of what our current knowledge of physics and cosmology allows us to speculate about in any kind of meaningful way. I actually believe that a computer with human level intelligence and consciousness will be possible - but only because it won't need to be as messy as real human minds. To paraphrase Hitchhikers Guide, biology is messy. Really messy. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly messy it is.

Re: Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012)

#89

Post by ajuc » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

Nadya wrote: post #73

ajuc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is mathematical, not physical, so it should still hold.

The mathematics depend heavily on physics. If physics outside of our universe differ - the math wouldn't add up. I can make 2 + 2 = 5 in a simulation. That doesn't mean 2 + 2 = 5 outside of the simulation.

> I can make 2 + 2 = 5 in a simulation

I'm not sure you can. Yes you can make a chest with 2 apples contain 5 apples if you put 2 more, but it's impossible (IMHO) to make it consistent. How many apples do you have if you place 2 chests besides 2 other chests and put 1 apple in each? What if you repeat the process 2 times and then another 2 times?

Also - when some things in physics aren't intuitive (QM for example, but even adding velocities in relativity) we don't think math is wrong - we think math doesn't apply in that way to this particular phenomena.

Re: Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation (2012)

#90

Post by ajuc » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 7:33 PM UTC

mkstowegnv wrote: post #71

IMHO as a biologist infused with awe of the natural world from observation and reading, it is laughable that gods or computers could design or simulate the infinite levels of mind numbing complexity and unimaginable patterns that evolution has produced. But most people who are more focused on, and hungry for, the order created by technology and society in general, find it easy - with occasional cognitive dissonance,…

If we live in a simulation evolution is still much more probable explanation of the life we see than creationism.

With big enough computer and interesting enough set of unerlying rules you can run a simulation to see what happens and there may be life somewhere in the simulated universe. We even do similar experiments [1] right now (but the rules are very simple for now, and the generated life isn't very impressive so far).

I find this much more likely than a Programmer designing not only the universal rules (relativity, quantum nechanics, etc), but also small details of chemistry, biology, and all the organisms (if not all - how comes they look like they evolved - that's LOTS of stuff to fake).

I can easily imagine humanity to be able to create simulation on big enough scale to create some artifical life in future.

I can't imagine all the advances in math and chaos theory and fractal design and however to even call all that fields that would be required to design artifical life working in simulated universe "by hand" in such a way, that it seems it evolved from first principles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_life