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Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

washington.edu

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Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#41

Post by nnq »

food for though (mostly offtopic): what if most simulations are actually nurseries, run by our descendants as an alternative to mostly random procreation?

...I imagine that in a very distant and complex hypothetical future, the only way that super-intelligent beings could reproduce in a way that the offspring would truly be similar enough to their parents, so that they could feel empathy one towards another would be either by: (1) clone and mutate an existing individual (think mind-cloning, like software copying) and mutate, and (2) create "children from scratch" and raise them, for at least a few "eons" in successive simulations of their parents or ancestors pasts (any other alternative, I'd imagine, in a post-singularity world evolving incredibly fast, would result in offspring so different from their parents that it would make empathy and the existence of a shared culture with shared artistic and aesthetic values impossible...)

...maybe we're just "babies" in the first level of a simulated nursery, waiting to complete the stages to "adulthood" in world of unbound, "software like", intelligent beings :)

EDIT+: ...just realized that this could be made up into pseudo-scientific pseudo-theory of reincarnation (which I don't believe in, but I find it interesting) ...if any buddhist or hinduist mystic reads this and takes my idea and does something intersting with it, please give me credit as original author :)

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#42

Post by the_cat_kittles »

firlefans wrote: post #38

Why do smart people love to debate the most implausible nonsense? Time travel through singularities anyone?

While I don't know if it's actually deserving of the title "implausible nonsense", I think its important to remember that stupid is as stupid does, and same goes for smart. Someone isn't smart because they have the trappings of intelligence, its because they did something smart.

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#44

Post by evincarofautumn »

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #16
seanica wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A theorist who develops an experimental test that could prove we do not live in a simulation should be lauded. That sounds like they would be proving a negative, which is impossible to do.

That's a pretty silly statement. Surely you can prove that 1+1!=3, which is the negative of 1+1=3. You can also prove that pi is not a rational number, 1/2 is not an integer, etc. There's a post on the front page about attempting to prove P!=NP.

The typical formulations of all of those proofs are by contradiction, though—so it may be worth distinguishing “prove” from “demonstrate by proof”.

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#45

Post by jlgreco »

caseysoftware wrote: post #24
electrograv wrote: post #3

The scientific paper deals with "the hypothesis that the observed universe is a numerical simulation performed on a cubic space-time lattice or grid". Just because the universe may operate with computer-like regularity and grid-like data structures does not mean "the universe is a computer simulation." At best it means the fundamental laws of physics are "computer-like". Whether "resembles a computer simulation" equa…

Also.. if we are a simulation, wouldn't those running the simulation see what we're doing and supply us with the correct results that we would expect? They could just hardcode it..

Maybe they're sleeping on the job.

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#46

Post by nnq »

electrograv wrote: post #3

The scientific paper deals with "the hypothesis that the observed universe is a numerical simulation performed on a cubic space-time lattice or grid". Just because the universe may operate with computer-like regularity and grid-like data structures does not mean "the universe is a computer simulation." At best it means the fundamental laws of physics are "computer-like". Whether "resembles a computer simulation" equa…

...can't Wigner's "unreasonable effectiveness" be explained in some way via the anthropic principle? (there should be a way to reason that intelligent life like us could only have evolved in an universe where predictions about physical systems can be made considering only a small subset of the initial condition variables, and also that "abstract mathematical ideas" could only appear in someone's mind from a sort of intuition of the universe's laws, so that the mathematicians' intuition can't come "out of the void" but is actually subconsciously "inspired" by the laws of nature at some level and this is why it explains them, and that what "feels" "simple and elegant" to a mathematician actually feels this way because it's in accordance with the universal laws of nature by witch his mind also works...)

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#47

Post by [deleted] »

rymith wrote: post #15

What would be the purpose of a simulation with so much pain and suffering. Where children get raped, flayed, abused, etc... And don't give me any of that matrix crap, that was only to make a flawed concept make just enough sense that you didn't fully think it through until the next bullet time scene. I'm certainly not on the outside paying for this. I have a degenerative bone disease that's caused me to have 6 major…

[deleted]

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#48

Post by jlgreco »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #31

Does it matter? Think about a simulation in a game on your PC. Nothing in that game actually exists outside the simulation. i.e. as far as anyone/anything in the simulation is concerned, the simulation is real. You cannot leave the simulation. You cannot end the simulation. There's nothing unreal about the simulation for anyone in it.

The idea seems to be, from within the simulation, detect artifacts of the simulation.

Seems like a sensible enough proposal to me. (That doesn't mean I think they will succeed).

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#49

Post by jlgreco »

nsxwolf wrote: post #23
rymith wrote: post #15

What would be the purpose of a simulation with so much pain and suffering. Where children get raped, flayed, abused, etc... And don't give me any of that matrix crap, that was only to make a flawed concept make just enough sense that you didn't fully think it through until the next bullet time scene. I'm certainly not on the outside paying for this. I have a degenerative bone disease that's caused me to have 6 major…

Very interesting that you can replace 'simulation' with 'God' and your statements are a perfect recitation of 'The Problem of Evil'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

The problem with applying that (very reasonable, in my opinion) argument to this discussion is that it invokes assumptions of benevolence, or even planning and/or intent.

Those things are largely irrelevant to the question of simulation. There should be no implicit assumption that a simulation must have any sort of "deity" behind it. Nothing with intent, purpose, planning, ethics, etc. It seems much more reasonable to me that such a simulation, if it is in fact the case, 1) arose "naturally", whatever that may mean, and 2) does not care about us. This universe, simulated or otherwise, does not care about humans. Why should we assume the proposed simulation does?

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#50

Post by neumann_alfred »

spindritf wrote: post #26
caseysoftware wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also.. if we are a simulation, wouldn't those running the simulation see what we're doing and supply us with the correct results that we would expect? They could just hardcode it..

Maybe they're not so bright or careful? Or maybe it's all happening too fast for them? http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/

That was the most fascinating thing I barely understood a word of that I read in a long time. Thanks!
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