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The frame rate of the universe (2009)

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Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#41

Post by tshaddox »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #36
tshaddox wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I welcome a better explanation for the phenomena. AFAIK we've been trying to come up with one for a long time. A brain floating in a nutrient tube and experiencing extremely high fidelity VR you would also claim that table and bubble gum exist. But from perspective of outside observer the only thing that is real is brain in a vat belief that table and bubble gum are real. You are right that solipsism is not the best…

> I welcome a better explanation for the phenomena.

For which ones specifically? Generally any traditional scientific or layperson's explanation for a phenomenon is much better, namely the part that explains my observation of some entity by accepting that the observed entity exists. (Note that this doesn't imply that all observed entities exist. There are many cases where we have good explanations for why one would observe an entity that does not exist.)

> The overarching point, is that I think it does not matter if we are in simulation as long as it is self-consistent.

I suppose it might be okay to say that you believe that, as long as you're actually still generating new knowledge in order to solve problems. That's roughly the same as an astronomer saying "it doesn't matter whether Mars exists, as long as the entire Universe behaves consistently as if Mars exists." That astronomer can probably still help solve problems like figuring out how to land a rover on Mars, although I suspect that odd bit of epistemological gymnastics would introduce at least a small amount of difficulty compared to the astronomer whose epistemological stance is simply that Mars indeed exists.

Perhaps that's the difference in epistemology here: in your quest for knowledge, is your goal to solve problems, or to experience some feeling like "certainty" or "justification"?

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#42

Post by gunn »

bob1029 wrote: post #31

> 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.

So what does the non-simulated "real" or "outer-world" look like in this view?

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#43

Post by yourapostasy »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #14
tutfbhuf wrote: post #11

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 a more interesting question is: would it matter if it were?

Absolutely. If we are in a simulation, then I want our species to eventually learn how to grab control of the developer console, use that to get information on the physics of the developer's world, use that to learn how to perform the equivalent of Drexlerian nanotech, wet-print ouselves out into the developer's world, and bootstrap into becoming "real", or finding out how far the turtles go from the developer's world. If it is a simulation, then I want to alter the damn rules to eliminate the scarcity we currently labor under.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#44

Post by industriousthou »

joshualedbetter wrote: post #21
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a more interesting question is: would it matter if it were?

Imagine a robot trying to argue that it doesn't if they live in Westworld; I mean, the robot bar tender still has to tend bar. Imagine Truman trying to convince himself that it doesn't matter if he's in a TV show or not. Their arguments, no matter how clever, would be absurd when looking in from the outside. If there's a high probability that the simulation hypothesis is true, it seems clinically insane to believe th…

The thing is Truman and the characters in Westworld (I think, haven't seen it) are being manipulated to create a narrative.

I we were in a simulation where the creator(s) were hands off, just letting it run its course, then I don't think it really matters. If, on the other hand, they're pulling strings and manipulating outcomes for whatever reason, then it seems like it matters a lot more. At least that's my intuition.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#45

Post by t0mbstone »

I've often wondered if the speed of light was somehow related to the computation cycles per second of our universe.

For example, imagine if the universe was made of a three dimensional fabric of tiny pixels, and the only way information could move to another adjacent pixel was one universe calculation at a time.

So when something without mass is moving across a field of pixels, its speed is capped by the number of universe calculations happening per second.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#46

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

joshualedbetter wrote: post #21
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a more interesting question is: would it matter if it were?

Imagine a robot trying to argue that it doesn't if they live in Westworld; I mean, the robot bar tender still has to tend bar. Imagine Truman trying to convince himself that it doesn't matter if he's in a TV show or not. Their arguments, no matter how clever, would be absurd when looking in from the outside. If there's a high probability that the simulation hypothesis is true, it seems clinically insane to believe th…

Let's assume the simulation hypothesis is true: our universe is a computer program. Now what? Do our lives suddenly cease to have meaning?

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#47

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

yourapostasy wrote: post #43
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a more interesting question is: would it matter if it were?

Absolutely. If we are in a simulation, then I want our species to eventually learn how to grab control of the developer console, use that to get information on the physics of the developer's world, use that to learn how to perform the equivalent of Drexlerian nanotech, wet-print ouselves out into the developer's world, and bootstrap into becoming "real", or finding out how far the turtles go from the developer's worl…

> Absolutely. If we are in a simulation, then I want our species to [...] bootstrap into becoming "real"

Why? Undoubtedly the world outside our own has its own problems, all of which are possibly utterly alien to us.

> or finding out how far the turtles go from the developer's world.

To what end? Why is the top-most reality more valuable? If it is merely a matter of having more to explore, well, there's still plenty of this universe left.

> If it is a simulation, then I want to alter the damn rules to eliminate the scarcity we currently labor under.

Fair enough, but if there's a way to do that it hardly matters if we're in a simulation or not. Any exploit we pull off may as well just be some quirk of physics from our perspective.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#48

Post by ericb »

zamadatix wrote: post #27
alasdair_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can only tell it's a VM via sidechannel because you know what not-a-VM would do already. In the case of the universe we have nothing to compare to, no way to say "that's an effect of running on the underlying hardware" vs "that's a special case of how the hardware runs". E.g. one could take speculative execution rollback after certain workloads as timing jitter from being in a VM if they didn't know that's just h…

The difference is that there's an underlying assumption that base reality is analog and perhaps continuous rather than discrete, and definitely not CPU or memory constrained.

In the scenario you mention, reality would be a program because it is still run on a computer in either case. If reality isn't a simulation, then we shouldn't be able to DDOS it, or overflow it, crash it, access a memory buffer, get root access, or execute timing attacks as those things are artifacts of computation.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#49

Post by redrobein »

tutfbhuf wrote: post #11

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?

The simplest I answer I could come up with is to try to record video of light moving at over that framerate. If there's still smoth movement across frames we're probably real. If it looks like a crappy gif we're a simulation.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#50

Post by 22c »

alasdair_ wrote: post #25
tutfbhuf wrote: post #11

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…

Experiments have been done similar to what you describe which help prove that we are not in certain types of simulations.

I can't find the specific paper now, because of all the pop-sci clickbait which comes up thanks to Musk musings.

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