Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

scottaaronson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 285 posts

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#251

Post by acomar »

chenelson wrote: post #226
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that your mind is not an isolatable computation This doesn't follow from what you write next. You are saying that the computation needed to generate a mind is very large. I agree that it might be the case, and I would say that nobody knows how large. Do you really need to simulate in minute detail what is going on in every distant galaxy? Seems doubtful, but who knows? All I'm saying is that if this computat…

So...ever look up at the night sky? Are you not looking at information, and are you certain you understand the semantic and semiotic content that is being transmitted? Just because data is not explicit as a Pepsi commercial doesn't mean, a priori, we are without affect or effect.

There are degrees of accuracy in simulation. I expect the effect of distant galaxies to be an extremely low-order impact and so I might reasonably exclude them.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#252

Post by ouid »

This question is so fundamentally bullshit that a new, stronger form of the word fundamental is required to truly describe it. Of course the universe is a simulation. There are either more fundamental processes occurring which explain the behavior of our observations, or it is the identity simulation. Newtonian laws are simulated with quantum laws, atoms are simulated with quarks, time is simulated by statistical relationships, and chemical interactions within the rules of the other abstractions are sufficient to simulate our observations.

If you believe that this question is about whether or not there is some anthropomorphic supervisor of the simulation, then THAT is the hypothesis you should be putting forward, not that the universe is a simulation, which is meaningless.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#253

Post by pavel_lishin »

ue_ wrote: post #237
pavel_lishin wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Not any more than we can proof that a diety exists outside of this world. > Why can't this be proven? How would it be?

Aquinas' cosmological argument, or the ontological argument have been attempts to do so. Some such as Edward Feser still uphold that the cosmological argument is valid (I'm not well versed enough to say either way myself). I'm unclear as to whether you are dismissing the very idea of whether God's existence can be proven, or whether you are rejecting arguments made hitherto on a case-by-case basis.

I'm not familiar with his argument - some quick googling boils it down to this;

> 1. The cosmos or universe exists.

> 2. The existence of the cosmos has a cause.

> 3. That cause is God.

And that seems more like playing a "pin a word on a concept" than proving the existence of a deity.

Anyway, I'm positing that if God exists, it is by very nature outside space and time, and not really within the realm of provability.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#254

Post by vidarh »

sullyj3 wrote: post #244
vidarh wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go further than that. Depending on your goal, you only need to simulate enough that subject being simulated can not notice the difference. Everything else can be generated on demand. E.g. consider the game Elite. It creates an - admittedly very simple - illusion of a persistent universe by using pseudo-random numbers to generate star systems. It then populates those systems with ships whenever you visit one.…

I was kind of vaguely gesturing towards that idea, but you crystallized and articulated it much better than I could :)

It's been a favourite thought of mine ever since I first realised that was how Elite managed to pack "that much universe" into just a few kilobytes :)

There's also an interesting parallel in philosophy. While the most famous dichotomy is that of the idealists vs. materialists, with the idealists basically saying (vastly oversimplified) we can't trust sensory input - it could all be in our mind, in the in the late 1800's there was a philosophy called emirio-criticism or alternatively Machism (after Ernst Mach) that took a middle road:

They argued that only that which you could directly observe had a meaningful real existence. Scientific laws for example, according to Ernst Mach, existed to make data comprehensible, but as such according to Mach is just an idealised representation of the data rather than a description of reality. As such, he for example opposed atomic theory, because he saw it as insufficiently "economical" - you can not directly observe atoms, and so a theory that propose them rather than aim for the most economical possible description that matches the fact seemed unwarranted to him.

Today his theory is less known than one of the dominant criticisms of it: an almost equally obscure book by Lenin called "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" written to discredit Bogdanov who believed in Mach's theory. It's not a very good book.

But while Machism doesn't seem very useful for interpreting the world(e.g. what makes human sensory organs more reliable than mechanical aids?) it's interesting for its argument of drawing a line between the economical idealised representation of reality and reality based on what is directly observable, which I find fascinating given the issue of simulation.

Basically, the fidelity of simulation largely boils down to resolving observation to direct observation of known/knowable detail vs. idealised economical representations that the observer has no way of disproving.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#255

Post by sebleon »

bambax wrote: post #45
sebleon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*disclaimer: no explanatory power, just food for thought 'cogito, ergo sum' We could very well be 'real' consciousnesses being fed artificial sensory data. While we would exist outside the simulation, our perception of objective reality might be fake.

That's the Matrix, exactly. But they have flip phones there.

Ha, the flip phones are key. They must have algorithmically calculated that the 90s were the optimum time to live a false life.

I wonder why the machines made people live boring lives - seems like a great way to get them to wonder "is there more to life than this?"

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#256

Post by pdabbadabba »

Retric wrote: post #247
pdabbadabba wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your claim that most philosophies don't equate 'inconsistent' with 'false.' I think it is, in fact, widely accepted in philosophical circles that one cannot rationally hold inconsistent beliefs, because the law of the excluded middle tells you that one of them has to be false (unless we're talking about another kind of 'philosophy'--the kind one finds in religious texts or self help books). But the in…

Many, non western philosophies are are not necessarily religious and do hold that A and not A can both be true. Many non religious western philosophers hold similar beliefs as do most religious western philosophers. Now you could argue that a majority of non religious western philosophers agree with the excluded middle, but that's a fairly weak argument. PS: Read some of the crap that showed up from poor understandin…

Sure, but does any of this establish that "most philosophies" don't observe the law of the excluded middle?

> you could argue that a majority of non religious western philosophers agree with the excluded middle, but that's a fairly weak argument.

But perhaps pretty strong when my claim was only that it is "widely accepted." :) At any rate, no need to argue further about what "most" people believe. I just wanted to make it clear that, at least in the philosophical circles I'm familiar with, the law of the excluded middle is almost universally accepted.

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#257

Post by dragonwriter »

Retric wrote: post #247
pdabbadabba wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your claim that most philosophies don't equate 'inconsistent' with 'false.' I think it is, in fact, widely accepted in philosophical circles that one cannot rationally hold inconsistent beliefs, because the law of the excluded middle tells you that one of them has to be false (unless we're talking about another kind of 'philosophy'--the kind one finds in religious texts or self help books). But the in…

Many, non western philosophies are are not necessarily religious and do hold that A and not A can both be true. Many non religious western philosophers hold similar beliefs as do most religious western philosophers. Now you could argue that a majority of non religious western philosophers agree with the excluded middle, but that's a fairly weak argument. PS: Read some of the crap that showed up from poor understandin…

> Many, non western philosophies are are not necessarily religious and do hold that A and not A can both be true.

As, for that matter, does fuzzy logic, insofar as one defines "true" as "has a non-zero truth value".

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#258

Post by captn3m0 »

acomar wrote: post #251
chenelson wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So...ever look up at the night sky? Are you not looking at information, and are you certain you understand the semantic and semiotic content that is being transmitted? Just because data is not explicit as a Pepsi commercial doesn't mean, a priori, we are without affect or effect.

There are degrees of accuracy in simulation. I expect the effect of distant galaxies to be an extremely low-order impact and so I might reasonably exclude them.

But what if you were working on the LIGO project?

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#259

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #171
lordfoom wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I'm interested in reading more about this?

Check e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method (And other newer sources on epistemology, but those are basic).

[deleted]

Re: Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation

#260

Post by oldsj »

Filligree wrote: post #167
wallace_f wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and any a priori meddling would be indistinguishable from ' the Standard Model, i.e. that's just how physics works '

Flaming letters in the sky stating "This is a simulation"?

Or what if there has already been evidence for simulation theory we just can't "see" it like the legend goes for the natives who couldn't see Columbus's ship when it arrived in America whoaaaa
Post reply on HN