Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What are the odds we are living in a computer simulation? (2016)

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 127 posts

Re: What are the odds we are living in a computer simulation? (2016)

#71

Post by 52-6F-62 »

Tenoke wrote: post #37
lettergram wrote: post #21

Isn’t this basically impossible to prove? see Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/ Effectively we can’t prove a higher level of the simulation because we are encoded in it?

Is it impossible for software to prove it's likely in a VM just because it is 'encoded in it'? It depends on the implementation but it's definitely not impossible a priori and especially not because of Godel.

I think so.

It can model itself, but it couldn't replicate itself 1:1—which maybe is the wrong assumption on my part, but is the only way you could prove with certainty that you may be living in a simulation?

I mean, without input from another source, that is.

Re: What are the odds we are living in a computer simulation? (2016)

#73

Post by celticninja »

hirundo wrote: post #33

If it is a simulation, what are the odds that it's a game? The great majority of simulations that we know about are games. If it is a game, what are the odds that you are a non player character? In games, the vast majority of characters aren't the player. So if we are living in a computer simulation, odds are that we're non player characters.

In that case NPCs are the real people of the simulation. It is the playable character that knows it is not real. The NPCs are simulated to act and behave like independent entities with their own drivers and motivations. Therefore the NPCs are actually the most free characters in the simulation. The playable character just does what it is told by the player.

Re: What are the odds we are living in a computer simulation? (2016)

#74

Post by 52-6F-62 »

bloak wrote: post #62

The first step is to realise that it makes no difference to the people living inside a universe whether that universe is "real" or simulated. The second step is to realise that it makes no difference to the people living inside a simulated universe whether you actually run the simulator, or even bother building it. For example, the set of prime numbers less than 10^12 exists whether or not you build and program a com…

> then the mathematical object defined by that program exists whether or not you build a computer and run the program

This is how physics poses to "see behind the veil", so to speak. The implications seem a lot more interesting than a computer simulation, at least to a [this] human's perspective.

Re: What are the odds we are living in a computer simulation? (2016)

#75

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

rendall wrote: post #58

Simulation is such a lack of imagination. I see it situated right in the tradition of always comparing the universe to the latest technology. The Universe is... a clock! A hologram! Electricity! A computer! What if the Universe were a blemish on a semi-sentient 8th dimensional creature, itself by-product of an 23rd dimensional industrial process, which is itself a symbolic representation for even more incomprehensibl…

I completely agree, but it would be very difficult for the readers of such article to relate to. It's simply easier to call it something that we're familiar with so that people can think of it and discuss it. The reality might be so strange that we might be lacking any terms to describe it.

Re: What are the odds we are living in a computer simulation? (2016)

#76

Post by only_as_i_fall »

All physical evidence points to the universe containing some fixed amount of entropy which puts an upper bound on the complexity of any simulation you could embed inside it.

Given this, the claim that we're at the bottom of some large or infinite stack of simulated universes would have to also assert that the containing universe is fundamentally different than our own, which moves the claim from the realm of merely unfalsifiable to convoluted.

When I see people like musk make the argument for the universe being simulated I can't help but see those arguments as a sophomoric reach for whatever model of reality feels "coolest" at the time; evidence be damned.

Re: What are the odds we are living in a computer simulation? (2016)

#77

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

hirundo wrote: post #33

If it is a simulation, what are the odds that it's a game? The great majority of simulations that we know about are games. If it is a game, what are the odds that you are a non player character? In games, the vast majority of characters aren't the player. So if we are living in a computer simulation, odds are that we're non player characters.

> In games, the vast majority of characters aren't the player.

Actually it depends on the type of a game, maybe we're in an equivalent of a huge Hypixel server with us being players and animals being NPCs. Occasional admin interventions are perceived as UFO abductions and generally laughed at...

One particularity of this game is that there is no pre-existing set of universal rules: you are getting to know them from your parents, other people, "holy" and less holy books etc. - and even when you die you can never be 100% sure that the rules you learned were the ones to follow.

Re: What are the odds we are living in a computer simulation? (2016)

#78

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

cik wrote: post #53

I find questions like this fascinating. As a religious person, I guess I don't really see the question. There's no way for me to (currently) prove or disprove the existence of a deity. Ultimately I make a faith-based decision based on things that resonate with me, helping to reinforce my religious beliefs. Others do the reverse and don't believe. But it would be hubris on my part to try and prove the existence of dei…

> It's fundamentally unproveable

While we can't know the future, this might not have been the case in the past. Most religious books describe a time where special people like prophets have very direct, physical contact with the main deity of the religion (one of them even had a fight with God).

Re: What are the odds we are living in a computer simulation? (2016)

#79

Post by polynomial »

Simplicitas wrote: post #67

Does the resulting simulation (this universe) show any hints that it is nearly impossible for the theoretical hosting universe to exist?

Well yes, since you said hints and not absolute proof. Using QMC (Quantum Monte Carlo) we can show that quantized gravitational responses underpinning certain bosonic systems make the computational demands for simulating them exponentially intractable, to the point it's not clear how they could be simulated not just in practice but in theory.

Re: What are the odds we are living in a computer simulation? (2016)

#80

Post by returnInfinity »

only_as_i_fall wrote: post #76

All physical evidence points to the universe containing some fixed amount of entropy which puts an upper bound on the complexity of any simulation you could embed inside it. Given this, the claim that we're at the bottom of some large or infinite stack of simulated universes would have to also assert that the containing universe is fundamentally different than our own, which moves the claim from the realm of merely u…

The universe could be infinite. Current evidence may be incorrect.
Post reply on HN