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Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

simulation-argument.com

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Re: Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

#31

Post by michaelneale »

hugh wrote: post #30
eyudkowsky wrote: post #20

The Simulation Argument is not that we are living in a computer simulation. It is that you must reject at least one of the 3 propositions: (1) we are not living in a computer simulation (2) the human species will give rise to descendants that have the power to run lots of simulations (3) at least a few of them will run ancestor simulations. Which of these three do you think is untrue? Alternatively you could reject t…

Personally I really doubt (2). I work in theoretical condensed matter physics, and it's awfully hard to accurately simulate anything with more than a very small number of atoms. Sure, computers will continue to get faster for a while, but these problems scale very badly with the size of the system, and we're not all many orders of magnitude away from the fundamental limits of computation. I suspect that even if you w…

well perhaps a few options:

* Assume humans are the target of the simulation - our senses are fairly constrained (eg our focal point is only a tiny area where hi resolution is required etc...)

* What about non classical computing (quantum computing) - it may end up being nothing, but it seems to have some interesting promise in going beyond the raw computation power of atoms at least.

Re: Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

#32

Post by danteembermage »

hugh wrote: post #30
eyudkowsky wrote: post #20

The Simulation Argument is not that we are living in a computer simulation. It is that you must reject at least one of the 3 propositions: (1) we are not living in a computer simulation (2) the human species will give rise to descendants that have the power to run lots of simulations (3) at least a few of them will run ancestor simulations. Which of these three do you think is untrue? Alternatively you could reject t…

Personally I really doubt (2). I work in theoretical condensed matter physics, and it's awfully hard to accurately simulate anything with more than a very small number of atoms. Sure, computers will continue to get faster for a while, but these problems scale very badly with the size of the system, and we're not all many orders of magnitude away from the fundamental limits of computation. I suspect that even if you w…

One possible solution is to elongate the time-steps; if we take a million years to simulate one second of simulation time you could get by with a lot less computing power.

Re: Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

#33

Post by jacobbijani »

zach wrote: post #22
jacobbijani wrote: post #19

What argument would have been made 100 years ago? Are we living in a steam engine?

That we are living in a book. Note that the popular plot device of being trapped in one (or more) books survived intact as being trapped in the TV and being trapped in a virtual reality game. If you watch kid's cartoon series, you know that this plot device is as inevitable as the Freaky Friday contrivance.

Yeah, that's precisely the point I was trying to make (I think). It's the same basic mental model, "we ARE the technology we use." As it evolves, so does the theory.

Re: Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

#34

Post by trominos »

hugh wrote: post #30
eyudkowsky wrote: post #20

The Simulation Argument is not that we are living in a computer simulation. It is that you must reject at least one of the 3 propositions: (1) we are not living in a computer simulation (2) the human species will give rise to descendants that have the power to run lots of simulations (3) at least a few of them will run ancestor simulations. Which of these three do you think is untrue? Alternatively you could reject t…

Personally I really doubt (2). I work in theoretical condensed matter physics, and it's awfully hard to accurately simulate anything with more than a very small number of atoms. Sure, computers will continue to get faster for a while, but these problems scale very badly with the size of the system, and we're not all many orders of magnitude away from the fundamental limits of computation. I suspect that even if you w…

It may be possible that each universe will simulate a substantially simpler universe; it would of course be impossible to tell whether you universe has "lower resolution" from the inside, cause you'd have no frame of reference.

Re: Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

#35

Post by rms »

hugh wrote: post #30
eyudkowsky wrote: post #20

The Simulation Argument is not that we are living in a computer simulation. It is that you must reject at least one of the 3 propositions: (1) we are not living in a computer simulation (2) the human species will give rise to descendants that have the power to run lots of simulations (3) at least a few of them will run ancestor simulations. Which of these three do you think is untrue? Alternatively you could reject t…

Personally I really doubt (2). I work in theoretical condensed matter physics, and it's awfully hard to accurately simulate anything with more than a very small number of atoms. Sure, computers will continue to get faster for a while, but these problems scale very badly with the size of the system, and we're not all many orders of magnitude away from the fundamental limits of computation. I suspect that even if you w…

When do you think Moore's law will fail?

Re: Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

#36

Post by IsaacSchlueter »

eyudkowsky wrote: post #20

The Simulation Argument is not that we are living in a computer simulation. It is that you must reject at least one of the 3 propositions: (1) we are not living in a computer simulation (2) the human species will give rise to descendants that have the power to run lots of simulations (3) at least a few of them will run ancestor simulations. Which of these three do you think is untrue? Alternatively you could reject t…

Informational entropy causes a snag.

It is impossible for any information system to express all the information about a more complicated system than itself. Ie, the computer capable of simulating the entire universe, down to the smallest of the small would have to be bigger than the universe. (Because, whatever the smallest piece is that it tracks, it'll have to express that in something bigger, that smallest thing being the smallest thing that exists.)

The other alternative, is for the simulation to drop a lot of detail about the thing being simulated. But then we'd see compression errors. (Or, maybe that explains why QM sometimes seems like God just said, "F--- it, whatever, just flip a coin or something, I don't care"? ;)

Re: Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

#37

Post by [deleted] »

m0nty wrote: post #17
mrtron wrote: post #12

Throughout my youth, I always considered a similar thought experiment. Make the assumption you were some higher power with no concept of 'time' (or lived forever in our concept of time). What would you do? Well, I believe you would get very bored quickly, and the only logical solution is to run some experiments. I would start small (lets for arguments sake say at the molecular level, but almost certainly it would be…

"Make the assumption ... it seems like a logical conclusion" For me, that sums up the problem with this kind of thing. Assumptions don't lead to logical conclusions, but "meta-assumptions" which have grown out of your original one. You can't put assumptions in one end of your experiment and get facts out the other, unless you can test your ideas. Incidentally, I'm not hostile to your idea or the others discussed here…

[deleted]

Re: Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

#38

Post by danx0r »

I think the fallacy here is the definition of "ancestor simulations". What does that really mean? I think it's more likely that posthumans will run simulations of whatever interests them at the time, which will probably not be the past. What they will want to know is what lies ahead.

Therefore, my scifi mythology is that we are in a simulation created by some other culture (ie not human).

Re: Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

#39

Post by jey »

hugh wrote: post #30
eyudkowsky wrote: post #20

The Simulation Argument is not that we are living in a computer simulation. It is that you must reject at least one of the 3 propositions: (1) we are not living in a computer simulation (2) the human species will give rise to descendants that have the power to run lots of simulations (3) at least a few of them will run ancestor simulations. Which of these three do you think is untrue? Alternatively you could reject t…

Personally I really doubt (2). I work in theoretical condensed matter physics, and it's awfully hard to accurately simulate anything with more than a very small number of atoms. Sure, computers will continue to get faster for a while, but these problems scale very badly with the size of the system, and we're not all many orders of magnitude away from the fundamental limits of computation. I suspect that even if you w…

You're assuming that we'll be using the same approaches (e.g. molecular dynamics on classical computers) to do the simulation. We don't know what methods and techniques will be available in the future, so we can't confidently claim that it'll forever be out of reach. I bet there's some room for improvement over the current crude techniques.

Re: Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?

#40

Post by rms »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #36
eyudkowsky wrote: post #20

The Simulation Argument is not that we are living in a computer simulation. It is that you must reject at least one of the 3 propositions: (1) we are not living in a computer simulation (2) the human species will give rise to descendants that have the power to run lots of simulations (3) at least a few of them will run ancestor simulations. Which of these three do you think is untrue? Alternatively you could reject t…

Informational entropy causes a snag. It is impossible for any information system to express all the information about a more complicated system than itself. Ie, the computer capable of simulating the entire universe, down to the smallest of the small would have to be bigger than the universe. (Because, whatever the smallest piece is that it tracks, it'll have to express that in something bigger, that smallest thing b…

What makes you think the entire universe exists?
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