Check out Henri Bergson. The first person to argue that Time is Real.
He had a public debate with Albert Einstein about the nature of time and lost badly. Never fully recovered.
What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
101–110 of 215 posts
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#102Seems like a lot of the problem with "time" is semantic. Do things change? Yes, and if that's the definition then it certainly exists. But people don't generally see time like that, they think of it as some medium, or 4th dimension, that can possibly be traveled through. This kind of time does not exist (as much as anything can't exist). There are only particles and their positions. Traveling back in time would requi…
Time is very much a dimension. You should read up on relativity.
In relativity we can model time as a dimension, with great success. But even there it is always evident that the time dimension is very different from the spatial ones; for one, we cannot travel in it. I believe GP is only saying this is the problem, ignoring that the time dimension is very special.
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
>leading technologists agreeing that we're almost certainly in a simulated reality Just to elaborate, this is really easy to show. Just take two pieces of paper, and scribble all over one of them for 10-15 minutes. Then crumple them up and throw them to the ground. The blank one will fall to the ground smoothly. But the one that has a lot of image information will tax the Universe's GPU, because it isn't able to comp…
> Who is saying that? Very few are arguing that we're almost certainly in one. Philosphers like Nicholas Bostrom are arguing that either something will prevent most simulations from reaching a stage where we can or will simulate the past, or we most likely live in a simulation, but you'll note it's very possible that the answer is that we can't or won't too. The problem is that we don't have the faintest clue what th…
Another big problem for these theories is the amount of memory needed to represent our simulation. We can easily estimate the lower bound on the number of bytes needed for this simulation, being the number of atoms in the Earth (assuming they can "fake" the rest of the universe by exploiting the low speed of light), which you would need to all know a number of properties off (at the very least position and momentum). That's at least 10^50, i.e. "frickin enormous". Where would they even put a computer of this size? How would they power it?
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#104Another interesting thought experiment: what if time (rather entropy) is the only thing that exists? While highly likely to be untrue, it's an interesting mode of thought: as matter dominated beings we naturally approach conclusions from the perspective of matter.
You could also ask, what if time is the primary thing that exists? That is, it has authority over everything else that exists. This would mean that the laws of physics, for example, could change over time.
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#105Any recommended books on this topic?
Lee Smolin, Time Reborn (although he is unaware of the work of Henri Bergson before him).
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Who is saying that? Very few are arguing that we're almost certainly in one. Philosphers like Nicholas Bostrom are arguing that either something will prevent most simulations from reaching a stage where we can or will simulate the past, or we most likely live in a simulation, but you'll note it's very possible that the answer is that we can't or won't too. The problem is that we don't have the faintest clue what th…
Another big problem for these theories is the amount of memory needed to represent our simulation. We can easily estimate the lower bound on the number of bytes needed for this simulation, being the number of atoms in the Earth (assuming they can "fake" the rest of the universe by exploiting the low speed of light), which you would need to all know a number of properties off (at the very least position and momentum).…
There's no reason to assume they'd need to retain all this data. You'd "only" need to be able to reconstitute representations of details that are actually observed. Other than that you only need to be able to reconstitute a believable representation.
Some have floated the idea that this could be behind some of the peculiarities of physics. E.g. quantum effects, wave/particle duality etc. Of course that is purse speculation.
> That's at least 10^50, i.e. "frickin enormous". Where would they even put a computer of this size? How would they power it?
It's "frickin enormous" by our standards. If we are in a simulation we don't know the properties of the outside universe. E.g. for what we know it fits in some kids PDA.
The problem with even thinking about this is that we don't have any kind of references to go by at all for what is or could be possible.
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue with your definition can be shown when thinking about the absolute zero point (that is, 0°K): as per definition in this state, particles lack any kind of energy. Common tongue would say that it is "frozen". Now if this state lasts, let's say, indefinitely, time would be non-existent. As there is absolutely no change in the state of the particle. PS: Although one could now argue that the act of observation c…
Can that state exist?
Currently no.
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
The simulation argument comes from the fact that there a quite a lot of physics effects that are both surprising, and look an awful lot like dirty hacks that a programmer might put it. Quantum physics looks a lot like lazy evaluation (State doesn't exist until "observed"). The speed of light seems like a hack to prevent an n squared problem of everything in the universe effecting everything at the same time.
This is the same confident, facile declaration by may technologists who blather on about how we are on the cusp (a decade or two away) of being able to "download" the state of a person's brain and so let them live forever, in a virtual simulation. Such people are entirely ignorant of biology. The analogy to programming, the thing they do know something about, is and irresistible analogy because they don't know enough…
Well, we had hacksaws long before we had computers ;)
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Who is saying that? Very few are arguing that we're almost certainly in one. Philosphers like Nicholas Bostrom are arguing that either something will prevent most simulations from reaching a stage where we can or will simulate the past, or we most likely live in a simulation, but you'll note it's very possible that the answer is that we can't or won't too. The problem is that we don't have the faintest clue what th…
> Philosphers like Nicholas Bostrom are arguing that either something will prevent most simulations from reaching a stage where we can or will simulate the past, or we most likely live in a simulation What do they mean by "simulate the past"? If we're talking actual true-to-history simulations, that is going to require an unprecedented amount of inital data on how the world was in the past. An there's no way for the…
> What do they mean by "simulate the past"?
It's a simplification of the argument for the sake of making the first two prepositions easier to swallow as possibilities.
Consider that if we can simulate consciousness, then we could conceivably simulate a near infinite set of variations of consciousness.
This would still affect our likelihood of being in a simulation, as we don't have any outside knowledge that lets us know which type of entities we "should" be. It doesn't need to be human-type civilizations simulating their ancestors, it could just as well be some aliens playing a hyper-advanced version of Spore and making disgusting aliens to creep out their friends.
But it is easier to get people to picture e.g. Sim2,000,000 simulating full brains based on actual humans, set in a world based on "our" earth as having relevance to our existence, and it makes it more relevant to speculate on proposition #1 and #2. E.g. is there anything in human type society that will prevent us from getting there or wanting to do it?
> On the other hand, if they mean "simulations of some hypothetical past with loose connections to the actual past, Matrix-style", i.e. "they" have the freedom to generate the scenario we're in, why on earth would they choose this one with all the troubles and suffering in the world? Why not make one where everyone's a pony and we all eat rainbows and poop butterflies?
I don't know about you, but most of my Civilization/FreeCiv/Civ:CTP games ends up with things like nuclear war or brutal conquest - it's a lot more interesting to play the games in extreme directions. It's a good question, and one reason to explore this problem space.
Even so, in some sense it's not quite the right question: The point is that with high values for propositions #1 and #2, we could just happen to be in one of a potentially nearly infinite number of simulated realities. Perhaps they're running vast quantities of them to figure out of different choices would have different outcomes, for example. Or perhaps we're some kids afternoon entertainment.
We don't have a way of telling.
Unless we know that the possible set of "realities" is low, however, it makes little sense to speculate in whether there is anything "special" about "just this" simulation, because we have no basis for determining whether or not there is anything special or if the number of simulations is just so great that "ours" is just one tiny variation in a near endless sequence.
> They are running into exactly the same debates that Christian philosophers have been struggling with for millenniae - why is there evil in the world created by God / our hyperintelligent great^{n}grandchildren? Which indicates to me they are much closer to religion than science.
I'll repeat myself: It's not meant to be science. It's a philosophical argument. Nicholas Bostrom is a philosopher. It's his job to be a philosopher, not to set out scientific theories. Scientific theories could arise from speculation around the choices in question, such as e.g. whether or not there could be possible ways of determining if we're in a simulation, that might yield hypotheses that could be tested and potentially falsified.
But until that time, what separates this argument from religion is that the argument is not making any claims for either possible outcome - it is setting out a set of possibilities and asking questions around what we can learn from it.
As I've said elsewhere, if someone picks one on belief and sticks to it in the face of contradictory evidence, that'd be akin to religion. But asking questions and seeking ways of refining those into testable hypotheses is not religion.
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
See, I'm with you in the primary portion of this statement- if we're in a simulation, it doesn't make us any less 'real' - it doesn't matter whether I'm made of atoms or the stray thoughts of a passing horsefly. It is nevertheless important and interesting to know what the underlying medium in which I exist is, especially because there's no especially compelling reason why many kinds of simulated being could not crea…
> like a bit of malware breaking out of a sandboxes virtual machine Since you're trying to demonstrate the impossibility of the situation, I think the analogy you're looking for is ransomware breaking out of your computer and kidnapping you. The data/code/simulation can't suddenly escape the sandbox and materialize into whatever the "reality" is made of. For that reason, it is trivial if we are in a simulation.
>The data/code/simulation can't suddenly escape the sandbox and materialize into whatever the "reality" is made of. For that reason, it is trivial if we are in a simulation.
3D Printer owners would disagree with you.