If we're in a simulation, it's going to have bugs. We're going to find them, and start exploiting them for things like superluminal flight. Then the day shift will come in, find us exploting the bugs and patch the system. Hopefully they have their act together and they can hot-patch (or pause, patch and resume) and avoid restarting the simulation. Even so, we'll be stuck at the wrong end of now impossible superluminal flights.
Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
141–150 of 211 posts
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#142In short, statistically, God (our creator) exists and we can resurrect, it is just a question of backup restoration. BTW, this movie on the subject is not that bad: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#143Isn't it obvious for most that for an advanced enough simulation, it is impossible to prove that you are in a simulation from inside the simulation? Even if we find proof that our current model of reality is wrong, it would only mean we need to search for another model of reality, we can't just say "but out theory doesn't actually match the reality because the reality is actually a simulation that computes approximat…
Got me thinking whether an application can detect if its running on a virtualized OS. Found this : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/154163/detect-virtualized... Whether something like this exists for our virtualized environment, we have to find out.
The point with any "blue pill / red pill" technology/experiment is that you can design it because you have "outside knowledge", you are outside the VM and know how the VM and the physical processor works. The knowledge required to detect of something is running as a simulation comes from outside the simulation. Even if by "miracle" you were to get this "outside knowledge", you wouldn't know whether it is real knowledge or something spitting a random result. You'd need to be "outside" to know that what you thought it was "spooky outside knowledge" actually was. Even in Matrix, the red pill is made via knowledge from outside The Matrix :) Think, how would Neo know if the outside the matrix experience weren't just an "acid trip"? He wouldn't, were it not for the "bending the laws of physics" phenomena that could be experienced by others too, but they were only possible because The Matrix was programmed to allow them in special circumstances, but you could still classify them as "science so advanced you can't distinguish it from magic" if you as a movie viewer didn't have the "outside knowledge".
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
(c) We are unintended by-products of whatever is being simulated.
yeah, and I consider this part of (b): maybe our universe itself (or the meta-universe containing it or something) is some kind of "useful software" in a simulation VM (what I mean by "bitcoin miner" :)), and we are just some by-products of its running.
I read (b) to suggest that we are are intimately important part of this simulation. The simulation starters wouldn't consider us a threat to the integrity of their simulation as we are part of that simulation.
However, if we were unintended by-products, the simulation starters could turn on us - especially if we start interfering in the global state of the simulation. There is an interesting Asimov story along these lines where top scientists would be mysteriously killed in order to prevent humans developing force field tech. The protagonist compared humans to bacteria growing in a petri dish. In order to stop the bacteria spreading out you surround the bacteria with penicillin. The simulation starters did something analogous to humans.
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#145The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine, J. B. S. Haldane [1]
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#146"The theory basically goes that any civilisation which could evolve to a 'post-human' stage would almost certainly learn to run simulations on the scale of a universe. And that given the size of reality - billions of worlds, around billions of suns - it is fairly likely that if this is possible, it has already happened." That sounds distinctly like Anselm's ontological proof for the existence of God, and thus likely…
What are the specific parallels you see, beyond them both sounding specious?
The simulation argument says: if simulating minds is possible, and technologies eventually advance to the point that they can do it, a civilization would make lots of them. Thus, most minds are virtual, so your mind has a high base rate of being one.
Anselm's argument is: the best thing in the world would have to exist, since existence is better than non-existence. I define God as the best thing, so God must exist.
I don't quite see the parallel, but if you see something specific, I'd like to hear it.
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#147Isn't this just proving P = NP on a larger scale?
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#148And if it has? Well, then the statistical likelihood is that we're located somewhere in that chain of simulations within simulations. The alternative - that we're the first civilisation, in the first universe - is virtually (no pun intended) absurd. wrong. there are multiple alternatives; we are the nth civilization in a real universe, we are the nth to the nth civilization in the multiverse, etc. Sloppy sensationali…
The quote is a somewhat poor rephrasing of a more solid argument from this paper: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf Anyway, your objection here isn't actually relevant as far as I can tell. It's a probabilistic argument about the number of real minds vs. the number of simulated minds, and the bulk of the "proof" is in demonstrating that, under certain assumptions, the number of simulated minds would b…
The objection is totally relevant because you cannot calculate probabilities if you don't know the number of real universes, the probability of life arising from non-life, etc. I would argue, using that line of reasoning that it is more likely that we would be a dream of a sentient entity rather than a simulation of one if his probabilistic assumptions are taken as probable.
Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#149Re: Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always felt there's something deeply fallacious -- or hopelessly wrapped up in human psychology -- about taking a representation of a virtual world that we might create and treating it as on par with the actual universe. It's almost like saying "we're probably characters in a novel," since for every universe there are many novels. Or like that old proof that God exists because he has every desirable quality, inc…
There is a similar argument against AI. That a computer can't "feel" or experience any of the sensations we do. If you type 'emotional_state = "happy"', does that mean your computer feels happiness? Even if you have a complex simulation of neurons, if you zoom in, all you will see is little electrons bouncing through various logic gates and ending up in some kind of pattern. But the thing is, the exact same thing is…
> The only thing I can think of is that the character in the book is far simpler than a human. Words that say "john is happy" is similar to setting a variable on your computer equal to "happy". Happiness in a human is far more complex, involving tons of interactions between neurons. But this answer isn't satisfactory to me. Complexity isn't what makes something intelligent or conscious after all.
This is the difference between a running program and a short description of the program. The short description isn't runnable, and isn't running. The reason the program itself is doing what we want it to do is not because it's more complex than the short description (though it is), but because it's actually executing the algorithm. We could imagine more and more detailed descriptions of the program, specifying more and more closely how it works, and eventually it's so detailed that you could run the program from that description. At that point, the description is still not a running program, unless and until you run it. Being conscious is a process -- a running algorithm -- not a static description.