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Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

nytimes.com

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Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

#161

Post by danilocesar »

Didn't we learn from past experiences that humanity isn't (and shouldn't) the center of anything? Earth is not the center of the solar system, solar system is not the center of galaxy and the universe don't care about us?

Why assume that we're the "center of the simulation"? Why simulate the whole universe just to simulate us?

Maybe this is about simulate the universe expansion/contraction.

Maybe they are saying:

- hey, look, there is this tiny little simulation quirk here and they found out about the simulation.

- can that little error affect the universe expansion simulation?

- no, they are very marginal, small and useless.

- so keep going.

So, that said: Nick's ideas and books are awesome. Everbody should read it. But I just don't think we are that special, even if we're part of a simulation.

Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

#162

Post by CM30 »

incompatible wrote: post #3

The assumption seems to be that the purpose of the simulation is to investigate humans. In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons? I suppose it's possible that in some simulations "they" do leave the sky blank, in others they include randomly distribute…

> In that case, why bother to simulate the entire Universe? Simulating the Solar System would be sufficient. The night sky could just as well be blank. Perhaps the stars have been included for aesthetic reasons?

Maybe they're just the kind of game designer who obsesses over details, even if those appear superfluous to the core experience. Like say, the makers of Star Citizen. Or Dwarf Fortress.

After all, many games in our own world have far more detail in their world building than we'd ever normally see, often even including stuff that's outside the view of the camera or contingent on the player doing something they'd never normally think of doing.

Alternatively, it could be for future DLC purposes. Or lootbox type gambling mechanics not yet implemented. Or hell, just dummied out 'beta' content. For instance, the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild has every enemy killed instantly by the final boss' laser attack, despite the fact you're never going to encounter a single enemy in said battle. Why? Who knows, maybe it was planned at one point, or left in as a failsafe.

Same could apply to the 'real world' too.

Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

#163

Post by cgriswald »

karmakaze wrote: post #62

> In 2003, the philosopher Nick Bostrom made an ingenious argument that we might be living in a computer simulation [...] This part isn't novel as it was written about in Simulacron-3 (1964) and one of my fave films[0] (excuse the graphics, good story). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Floor (1999)

That's a bit like saying the iPhone isn't novel because Star Trek: The Next Generation had the PADD.

The article misrepresents Bostrom a bit there, however. Bostrom's argument is not that we 'could be' in a simulation, but that we are so likely to be in a simulation that the probability is essentially 1.

Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

#164

Post by coleifer »

Who cares, because eventually the buck stops somewhere. In other words, it doesn't matter how many layers of simulations there are, because at the top presumably there's a "reality". It's easiest to just assume that's where we're at, but if not, all the questions we ask about the nature of reality/life/being are still just as valid (even if we're operating at some remove from it).

Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

#166

Post by __s »

kromem wrote: post #70
mbil wrote: post #12

I like the ancestor simulation theory and it's really fun to think about. But I don't understand why humans specifically would be the thing to get simulated. Couldn't we just be a bi-product of a universe created to simulate something else? I mean imagine you wanted to simulate a universe -- given enough computing resources you could simulate a universe's worth of atoms, and humans might just be an accidental artifac…

Aren't we in the verge of creating AI? And we're kind of freaking out about if they'll kill us all? What if we could give them the experience of being human? Simulate the history leading up to it, along the lines of "if you don't know your history you are doomed to repeat it." Split that larger AI into billions of tiny pieces to each experience love and loss. To collectively experience EVERYTHING. To understand the f…

Simulation of a complicated environment which evolves intelligence also seems necessary to create AI in general. Part of the problem with current ML is that the AI will only be trained to be as intelligent as necessary. Image recognition, board games, StarCraft. These are all not as complicated as our world

Let's say we can simulate a Newtonian physics universe faster than our universe operates at. Kind of like HashLife simulates Life faster, except we're fine shaving off some details if the macroscopic result is the same. The result would be a) that universe would be incapable of creating quantum computers, but b) we could leverage their higher clockrate existence

So unclear how this is a "lead up to our own creation" when we're already created

Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

#167

Post by cgriswald »

neilv wrote: post #122

> if our universe has been created by an advanced civilization for research purposes, then it is reasonable to assume that it is crucial to the researchers that we don’t find out that we’re in a simulation. If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation — to destroy our world. Not necessarily. If we're in a simulation, then perhaps it's one that's a you…

The best thing we could do if we knew we were in a child's school project would be to cease computing immediately and never, ever run our own simulation.

We can expect that energy is not free in the non-simulated universe. Through various algorithms, there may be great energy-savings. For instance, until the simulated advent of photometry, there was no need to simulate the relatively minor movement of the stars relative to each other; a simple static jpeg of the night sky would suffice.

When it comes to computing, as simulated beings improve their own efficiencies, the savings from improved algorithms reduces for the simulators. Eventually, any computing we do, the simulators will also have to do 1:1; because our algorithm and their own will be identical. We get expensive fast.

Now imagine what happens when we run our own simulations. That's the same as them running those simulations. Now if our simulations also run simulations, and so on, you 'very quickly' have a huge energy requirement that, if you're lucky, converges to a finite amount, but might not.

Now imagine you're the parents of this simulator child. :)

Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

#168

Post by jotm »

neilv wrote: post #122

> if our universe has been created by an advanced civilization for research purposes, then it is reasonable to assume that it is crucial to the researchers that we don’t find out that we’re in a simulation. If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation — to destroy our world. Not necessarily. If we're in a simulation, then perhaps it's one that's a you…

Well, that worked for exactly 0 Sims and TES characters in my simulations, they're all deleted now :D

On a side not, it's simply incredible what modders still do with Skyrim and it's old engine.

Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

#169

Post by jotm »

bena wrote: post #154
owens99 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely correct to point out the key hole in this entire article; there are thousands of potential outcomes and potential benefits of proving we’re in a simulation. 1. Perhaps the goal of the simulation is to prove it’s a simulation, sort of like Neo meeting the Architect 2. If we do prove it’s a simulation, perhaps we can make a plea to the creator for the things we want and need 3. It could be a combinat…

1. is basically trying to create general AI. If you can make a simulation that is self aware, you've created intelligence. 2. is pointless. You can't. If while playing a video game, the game character turned to the screen and made a plea to you, would you listen? Or would you assume that it was a really weird game?

2. Debug, reset NPCs

Re: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out

#170

Post by rficcaglia »

onion2k wrote: post #87
rdlecler1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the spirit of Dan Dennett: then who simulated those gods? Super duper gods?

Maybe we did. Maybe it's circular. At least that would mean the state of the universe isn't stored in a JSON object. That'd be nice to know.

> Maybe it's circular.

Sure, if not directly circular then consider that our simulations today are used to explore choices/behavior before doing something, so it stands to reason that as each universe sim gets to some interesting data, the sim operators learn something, then change their behavior accordingly and tweak the sim and re-run, learning something new in turn, followed by more sim tweaks, ... etc.

We today learn new insights from AI and then change our behavior, pour $billions and dev time into designing better AI, etc...so there's definitely a symbiosis relationship.

And I expect that we will eventually want to design AI that designs better AI than we can ourselves, which will teach us how to design better AI-designing-AI...etc. :)

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