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The double slit experiment is all I needed to see to become fairly convinced that the universe is a simulation. I view it as a race condition in our physics.
Kind of on the same vibe, you can think of the speed of light as the bandwidth of spacetime.
I recall a blog post or article posted several years ago, somewhere, that discussed the networking consequences of lightspeed being an upper bound for bandwidth. Unfortunately "lightspeed networking" is not a unique search term! Does this ring a bell with anyone and does anyone have a link to that article?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some years ago, when learning about quantum mechanics, and how you could find a particle inside a forbidden region, I connected that with physics engines in games (and how computing them not fast enough can cause things to intersect in odd ways), and I had this idea: What if time flows in discrete steps, but the `ticks` aren't uniformly separated? For example, they could be distributed probabilistically as a Poisson…
A few years ago, I saw a proposal for multiplayer games which suggested that the time passage between ticks vary depending on how many users are playing within a close space, to help deal with the increased network load. This is something that Eve Online does, but it segments its game-space into discrete sectors and therefore it slows down time uniformly in these sectors. This proposal was to do the same, but variabl…
> It's still fascinating to think of the universe as a computer simulation. Modern physics make it seem more like a video game than ever. The double slit experiment is all I needed to see to become fairly convinced that the universe is a simulation. I view it as a race condition in our physics.
He did the monster math and calculated that the frame rate of the universe is 18 septillion FPS. Let's assume we are already in a game running with this FPS. Could we somehow prove that it's actually a simulation or disprove in the case it's not?
I think it's possible to detect if we're in a simulation or not. I think of it in a similar way to detecting whether or not a system is running in a virtual machine or on the hardware machine itself. Even if the VM is really, really good, there may be sidechannel tests that can be done, like measuring the amount of heat generated for a given computation, or weird timing attacks, or edge conditions that affect the und…
If you're on an emulated x86, and you know a lot about x86 architecture, you may detect that you're on an emulator. But if all you get is information on the one single instance you're running on right now, no references, no documentation, no comparison with bare metal... at that point what's the difference?
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This is called simulation theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis AFAIK whether we are in a simulation is undecidable as long as the simulation rules are self consistent... Philosophy had been dealing with similar problems for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism . The best they come up with is: "I think therefore I am."
What's the actual "problem" that solipsism deals with? Solipsism is simply a poor explanation of all phenomena, since when one says "nothing exists except my own mind," one could just as easily say "nothing exists except my own mind, that table over there, and the piece of bubblegum stuck under that table." Both explanations account for precisely the same set of phenomena (all observed phenomena), and both can have a…
The overarching point, is that I think it does not matter if we are in simulation as long as it is self-consistent. For the sake of argument, let's assume the world is deterministic. This will allow us to construct two scenarios. One is a real person living and dying in a 'real world'... the other one is a brain in a vat living the same simulated life. Both of their subjective experiences are identical, even if you randomly swapped them they would not notice.
Based on the above thought experiment, I think it does not really matter if we are in simulation.
Some counter arguments: * But the world is not deterministic! What if things are better in the 'real' world. Sure, but what if they are worse? There is already a wide disparity in this world. Some people live in post-scarcity society and others don't know if they will eat tomorrow. Even if we are in simulation, I would argue average external world experience would fall somewhere on the spectrum we have.
* But what if whoever runs the simulation decides to shut down the simulation. This is honestly one of the most benign rapid ending of the world I can imagine. Other events that could cause termination of human species would cause far more suffering. This would be global pandemic wiping out everyone, all out nuclear war, massive meteor or other white sky event... Just as well as shutting down the simulation beings that run it could choose to prevent one of other world ending event from happening. So I think this one is also a wash.
He did the monster math and calculated that the frame rate of the universe is 18 septillion FPS. Let's assume we are already in a game running with this FPS. Could we somehow prove that it's actually a simulation or disprove in the case it's not?
[0]:https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5wMcKNAwB6X4mp9og/that-alien...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recall a blog post or article posted several years ago, somewhere, that discussed the networking consequences of lightspeed being an upper bound for bandwidth. Unfortunately "lightspeed networking" is not a unique search term! Does this ring a bell with anyone and does anyone have a link to that article?
I can't recall any specific article, but I recall reading about how it could complicate interplanetary communication if we ever colonized another planet.
[1] http://www.standupeconomist.com/pdf/misc/interstellar.pdf
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few years ago, I saw a proposal for multiplayer games which suggested that the time passage between ticks vary depending on how many users are playing within a close space, to help deal with the increased network load. This is something that Eve Online does, but it segments its game-space into discrete sectors and therefore it slows down time uniformly in these sectors. This proposal was to do the same, but variabl…
We have already that. Thats time dilation due to gravity! In places/spaces with larger mass (aka stuff), time flows slower....