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The frame rate of the universe (2009)

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Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#51

Post by Cpoll »

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…

I remember reading a story about this: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/166938/story-about...

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#52

Post by andrei_says_ »

zzzeek wrote: post #18

Pratchett would have then said, each of these frames is an entirely new universe, the previous one being destroyed. "And they are told: 'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he sa…

This is now my favorite quote.

The Big Bang is an ongoing event. Surprise is the state of yoga.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#53

Post by Teever »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #46
joshualedbetter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not a judgement on he meaning of your life it's a judgement on the authenticity of your life and the accuracy of your view of the world.

Which view point is better -- one that believes in a flat earth or one that sees the world as spherical and all that this fact entails?

A flat Earther can't put a rover on Mars but someone who knows that the world is round can.

Imagine what a person who comes to understand that the world is a simulation could do.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#54

Post by tutfbhuf »

lamacase wrote: post #37
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 monster math was "1/(planck time value from Wikipedia)"

Enough qualification for /r/theydidthemonstermath

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#55

Post by foxes »

There is no evidence the Planck length is the smallest possible length in the universe, a pop sci misconception. It is the length at which quantum effects dominate the structure of space time, ie "quantum foam". It is perhaps the smallest measurable distance according to some calculations. Most experimental evidence indicates space is continuous.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#56

Post by tutfbhuf »

ericb wrote: post #48
zamadatix wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Let's assume mankind could create a machine that could crash the universe. Should we ever press the button to test it? And if the button is successful (the universe terminates), how would we get to know the result of the experiment?

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#57

Post by yetihehe »

t0mbstone wrote: post #45

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 un…

There are such theories, even with mass requiring more calculations. So when there is mass nearby, you need to make more calculations, which slows down that speed in that place. Slowing down speed in medium typically provides refraction/bending of light, so maybe bending of path of light/mass (aka gravity) is due to computational complexity.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#58

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

Teever wrote: post #53
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not a judgement on he meaning of your life it's a judgement on the authenticity of your life and the accuracy of your view of the world. Which view point is better -- one that believes in a flat earth or one that sees the world as spherical and all that this fact entails? A flat Earther can't put a rover on Mars but someone who knows that the world is round can. Imagine what a person who comes to understand that…

What you're really arguing for is a deeper understanding of the universe. Whether the universe is a simulation or not is irrelevant.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#59

Post by tupshin »

zzzeek wrote: post #18

Pratchett would have then said, each of these frames is an entirely new universe, the previous one being destroyed. "And they are told: 'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he sa…

The universe is best modeled with substructural linear logic, so makes sense.

Re: The frame rate of the universe (2009)

#60

Post by benibela »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #17
gzalo wrote: post #3

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…

I took a creative writing class at University (mostly on a whim). One of the stories I proof-read was a novel about this idea. That the universe didn't tick at a uniform rate and there were people who could "tick" faster or slow. Of course, you run into all sorts of people with breathing and moving through very hard air. The core tenet of the book was that the clock domains of the universe were drifting apart at an a…

>core tenet of the book was that the clock domains of the universe were drifting apart at an accelerated rate and the protagonists were trying to stop it.

Another idea would be to have the clocks running backwards.

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