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On whether we're living in a simulation

scottaaronson.blog

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Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#11

Post by yorwba »

amelius wrote: post #5

> My personal belief is that the deepest things we’ve learned about quantum gravity—including about the Planck scale, and the Bekenstein bound from black-hole thermodynamics, and AdS/CFT—all militate toward the view that the answer is “yes,” that in some sense (which needs to be spelled out carefully!) the physical universe really is a giant Turing machine. Doesn't the non-determinism of QM in fact say that there's f…

Non-deterministic Turing machines are computationally equivalent to deterministic ones. Quantum mechanics only causes issues with the practical feasibility of the computation, not its theoretical possibility given unbounded time and storage.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#12

Post by Waterluvian »

Is it knowable that we’re living in a simulation or not? Because if it’s not knowable, isn’t any argument for or against just meaningless cherry picking?

So I’m wondering what the ways might be that we can definitively know, versus new observations of how this universe works. Even a giant head appearing in the sky telling us it’s a sim would necessarily be reconcilable by changing our models?

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#13

Post by FrustratedMonky »

->"Why not just join the theologians in that earlier discussion, rather than pretending that this is something distinctive about computers? Is it relevantly different here if you’re being dreamed in the mind of God or being executed in Python?"

Exactly. There is a few thousand years, since Plato's the Cave, dealing with same issues.

Why make it a 'computer' this time.

Because an entire generation has grown up after watching 'The Matrix', and that was their first introduction to the ideas. Now all the same old problems are put in that context. But they are shoe-horning it into current understandings of what a computer is.

If physical Church-Turing is correct, then we 'ARE' the computer, not 'IN' the computer.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#14

Post by azornathogron »

k__ wrote: post #4

What's the reason for the simulation to be smaller than the simulator? Can't it just be the same but slower? This wouldn't be perceivable from the inside.

Regardless of speed, presumably the simulator must hold at least as much state as the simulation has, and that would put some kind of bound on "size".

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#15

Post by FrustratedMonky »

amelius wrote: post #5

> My personal belief is that the deepest things we’ve learned about quantum gravity—including about the Planck scale, and the Bekenstein bound from black-hole thermodynamics, and AdS/CFT—all militate toward the view that the answer is “yes,” that in some sense (which needs to be spelled out carefully!) the physical universe really is a giant Turing machine. Doesn't the non-determinism of QM in fact say that there's f…

"non-determinism of QM".

Think this is still in doubt.

There is the whole branch of physics called 'super determinism' , trying to find the underlying causes of events that look 'undetermined'.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#16

Post by FartyMcFarter »

lukan wrote: post #7

"If they say, maybe you should live your life differently, just from knowing that you might be in a simulation, I respond: I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I have a vague feeling that this discussion predates the 80 or so years we’ve had digital computers! Why not just join the theologians in that earlier discussion, rather than pretending that this is something distinctive about computers? Is it relevantly dif…

It's still interesting to think about though. Specifically, I find it interesting that the concept of a "god" is actually realistic in a very tangible way.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#17

Post by PeterisP »

k__ wrote: post #4

What's the reason for the simulation to be smaller than the simulator? Can't it just be the same but slower? This wouldn't be perceivable from the inside.

Quantity of information - a simulator whose state itself can be expressed in X bits can't possibly have a simulation with X+1 bits of incompressible state.

Re: On whether we're living in a simulation

#19

Post by z7 »

amelius wrote: post #5

> My personal belief is that the deepest things we’ve learned about quantum gravity—including about the Planck scale, and the Bekenstein bound from black-hole thermodynamics, and AdS/CFT—all militate toward the view that the answer is “yes,” that in some sense (which needs to be spelled out carefully!) the physical universe really is a giant Turing machine. Doesn't the non-determinism of QM in fact say that there's f…

Schmidhuber says that there's no evidence for non-determinism (randomness):

https://people.idsia.ch/%7Ejuergen/randomness.html

https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_a...

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