Or we just don't undestand the next level down.
This "reality doesn't exist until it is measured" business is utterly reprehensible. It is masturbatory science/journalism.
Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds
41–50 of 249 posts
Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds
#42Clever optimization by our simulators, Big up
Had to find a way to keep the framerate from dropping below Planck time levels.
Ah, but how do you know the simulation doesn't just slow down the simulated flow of time so it can keep up? Think of a bullet-time like concept. The universe can be simulated as fast as the underlying hardware can keep up.
Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds
#43Clever optimization by our simulators, Big up
I've always wanted to read (or write?) a book about us determining we are in a simulation, but we find subtle flaws like this we're able to exploit in weird ways. Kind of like breaking out of a VM through register flaws or something. Anyone know of a story along those lines?
Isn't that the entire premise of The Matrix?
Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds
#44Clever optimization by our simulators, Big up
I've always wanted to read (or write?) a book about us determining we are in a simulation, but we find subtle flaws like this we're able to exploit in weird ways. Kind of like breaking out of a VM through register flaws or something. Anyone know of a story along those lines?
Maybe you should approach the revelation and "breaking through" by a philosophical rather than logical approach..if we are a simulation the logic we work with is artificial and arbitrary anyway. So in the story, get to the "real reality"...by taking the ideal of what reality should be and comparing it to what is observed to be and somehow "crack" into ultimate reality by doing so.
Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always wanted to read (or write?) a book about us determining we are in a simulation, but we find subtle flaws like this we're able to exploit in weird ways. Kind of like breaking out of a VM through register flaws or something. Anyone know of a story along those lines?
Check out Greg Egan's Permutation City in which sort of the opposite happens.
I'm reading that book right now, and so far it's good. One can also read: Anathem, Snow Crash, http://qntm.org/ra, or (extremely NSFW) The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.
All of them explore the nature of reality and consciousness in some way.
To the parent commenter, please write your story. The world always needs good fiction.
Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Had to find a way to keep the framerate from dropping below Planck time levels.
Ah, but how do you know the simulation doesn't just slow down the simulated flow of time so it can keep up? Think of a bullet-time like concept. The universe can be simulated as fast as the underlying hardware can keep up.
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Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds
#47What does it mean to exist? A thing exists specifically when it affects something else. What is measurement? It's a reciprocal affecting. So does a thing which is not affecting anything else and not being measured exist? No! QED
> What does it mean to exist? A thing exists specifically when it affects something else. What is measurement? It's a reciprocal affecting. All that's starting to sound an awful lot like Orthodox Christian theology about the essence of God…
Can you elaborate on the similarities? I took a course on medieval philosophy and theology (Anselm, Aquinas, Avicenna, and so on) so I am earnestly interested, but the connection isn't jumping out at me.
Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Check out Greg Egan's Permutation City in which sort of the opposite happens.
I'm reading that book right now, and so far it's good. One can also read: Anathem, Snow Crash, http://qntm.org/ra , or (extremely NSFW) The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. All of them explore the nature of reality and consciousness in some way. To the parent commenter, please write your story. The world always needs good fiction.
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect is one of my favorite sci-fi novellas. But yes, extremely unsuitable for anyone with a weak stomach.
Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds
#49Or, maybe, Everett was right.
Most physicists or, depending on who you talk to, nearly half of physicists, would appear to agree with you. I'm convinced that the Copenhagen interpretation remains popular because by making observation itself an integral part of the theory, you allow us to postulate that there is something special about human brains. But 'mysterious observation' is the luminiferous aether of quantum mechanics. photonic29: I would l…
Observation means measurement, nothing about the Copenhagen interpretation implies anything special about the human brain nor about consciousness.
Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds
#50In the time of Empiricism, the philosophers George Berkeley and John Locke proposed something similar. I believe it was called it immaterialism, or the idea that nothing exists without being perceived. Berkeley went further saying that objects only exist in the mind, or something like that.