It reminds me of this short novel: http://qntm.org/responsibility
Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
21–30 of 211 posts
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#22this reminds me of the film The Thirteenth Floor... and the book it's based on.
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#23If you're interested in going a bit deeper on this, Nick Bostrom ( http://nickbostrom.com/ ) has pulled together an intriguing case: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html A provoking question: if we found evidence that convinced us, beyond a reasonable doubt, that we were living in a computer simulation, would you change your behavior?
Could you?
Already have!
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#24"The alternative - that we're the first civilisation, in the first universe - is virtually (no pun intended) absurd."
As opposed to us simply being some other civilization on one of the other billions of habitable planets in that same "first" universe?
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#25I really hope they don't accidentally trigger a divide by zero error and we have to start over again.
I'm sure they do checkpointing and can roll back in the event of a problem. This has probably happened many times already.
Checkpointing does require a lot of resources and very large scale simulation like a simulation of whole universe may prohibit such checkpointing.
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine if you not only realized you were living in a simulation but that the simulation involved randomness (god playing dice) and you could somehow force backtracking with a simple button so that different values were chosen. Now, play the lottery and hit that button whenever you don't win; you could then surface an unlikely universe where you get really lucky.
It's unlikely to work unless the button is so reliable that you have a better chance of winning the lottery than the button/mechanism failing in some (possibly undetectable) way. It's the same argument against trying to use quantum immortality to force a miracle by killing yourself, or constructing a machine to kill you, unless some desirable event occurs. It's much more likely that your machine will fail, or you'll…
We could imagine that the simulation naturally backtracks given a paradox or dead end. So if the lottery is rigged, I would never get rich, and the simulation would just backtrack to where I would never decide to try this.
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#27Please don't `kill -9` me! I'm having fun in this simulated universe.
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#28Or the less click-baity headline:
"Physicists to Test if Universe is Computable"
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#29If we were created like this, wouldn't it be feasible to say that the creators could just patch this up so the experiment will appear to work but is indeed, rigged.
Could? Probably; depends on the nature of the simulation.
Would? If they could, they might, or they might be pleased we figured it out :-P
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure they do checkpointing and can roll back in the event of a problem. This has probably happened many times already.
Checkpointing does require a lot of resources and very large scale simulation like a simulation of whole universe may prohibit such checkpointing.
That depends on the scales involved in the universe where the simulation is being run. Maybe we're easy :-P