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Isn't this essentially Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe hypothesis?
OP here... yeah it sure looks like it is! I hadn't heard of it before, and will need to do some more reading, but at a high-level it does look to be the same line of thinking.
Telling persuasive stories can achieve essentially the same outcome, is much easier, and is already an accepted convention.
This argument seems to mix up "existence" and "construction". The number states do not magically appear in the physical universe merely by thinking up the construction. The numbers could be configured as (temporary) patterns in physical objects, such as brains, books, or in ink molecules on paper. But the states are not physical objects themselves. Also, if our universe happens to be universal, in the sense that it e…
In response to your second point, at a high level I believe the calculation device would exist inside _one_ universe but calculate another one... the idea that you could calculate your own universe and use that to predict future events does seem covered in paradoxes. For one, the universe you're predicting would (recursively) have to include the computer you're using to predict it. ... but that's different to what I'…
If you are trying to prove the existence of this universe by requiring the existence of another universe, then it's turtles all the way down.
How do you define "existing" of a pattern? Does it exist inside a physical thing? If so, then how does that physical container come into existence? And if it exists only conceptually, then how is it possible for concepts to exist? In the universe that I know, concepts only exist in the minds of human beings, and perhaps in some other animals. To me, it seems rather unlikely (and a bit anthropocentric or egocentric) that concepts are something truly universal.
For me, it helped to meditate a lot on what it'd be like to be a rock. The rock does not have memory, no sensory input, and therefore most likely no concept of time, space, logic, nor mathematics. It makes you wonder whether the rock exists at all. In any case, it probably doesn't care as much about it as we humans do. There might be a hint there.
Basically it's a question of whether math exists. If it exists then the states of the simulation exist and look like reality "from the inside". I really like Iain M. Banks moral argument against universe being simulated. No intelligence capable of simulating it would be immoral enough to create something so horrible. Unless they are a total bastard. So it's not a 100%.
Basically it's a question of whether math exists. If it exists then the states of the simulation exist and look like reality "from the inside". I really like Iain M. Banks moral argument against universe being simulated. No intelligence capable of simulating it would be immoral enough to create something so horrible. Unless they are a total bastard. So it's not a 100%.
Based on what just the human race has demonstrated across history, this claim is arguable at best.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is indeed similar. It seems to take a highly reductionist pathway: reality/experience can be simulated -> simulation is computation -> computation is mathematics -> mathematical objects exist regardless of whether anybody has discovered them. This implies that all conceivable universes (including the ones where a lot of really bad things happen on an eternal loop) are possessed of the exact same reality as ours.
Am I missing something here? I can suppose a universe where the premise is false (This is a conceivable universe, I’d argue). Doesn’t that mean that this premise really is false?
Isn't this essentially Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe hypothesis?
Why are you assuming this to be true? Due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, it's impossible to perfectly know "one state of human existence". So the rest of the thought experiment seems moot.
We're building digital twins of much of the universe around ourselves at different scales. We're even building digital twins of ourselves.
We're improving the technology that enables that twinning quite rapidly.
We're improving the technology that allows for emulating a virtual environment.
And in fact, there's a remarkable overlap in how we are running those virtual environments and the fundamental building blocks we've experimentally validated in our own universe.
The part that I think people get caught up in is the assumption that we'd need to ourselves calculate a 1:1 copy for us to be in a calculated copy.
But at macro scales the universe behaves as if things are continuous, not discrete/quantized. And the mechanics of quantization remains incompatible with the mechanics of continuous theories like GR.
The nuances of that quantization map to how we fudge fidelity in our own virtual representations.
So we need not create a 1:1 copy for us to be in a copy any more than one would need to create Minecraft at a 1:1 scale within Minecraft for Minecraft to exist.
Additionally, looking at mechanics isn't the only way to investigate whether we are in a virtual copy. For example, in many copies we make, there's some acknowledgement of that state woven into the world lore.
Indeed, in our own world in antiquity was a set of beliefs attributed to one of the most well known figures in history that espoused that we were in a copy of an original world in which an original humanity came to exist spontaneously and then brought forth the creator of this copy within light with us in their archetype before they ultimately perished. The full text at the heart of these beliefs was lost for centuries before being found again the same month as ENIAC ran its first computer program.
This text claimed the proof for what it said about a creator of light would be found in motion and rest (the domain now called Physics), and the group following it claimed that the ability to find an indivisible point within bodies would only be possible in the non-physical.
That's quite the coincidence in an age when we are moving towards putting the AI emulating our digital twins literally into light with optoelectronics and are very focused on the discovery of indivisible points within the domain of study of motion and rest.
(The name of the text is literally translated as "the good news of the twin" and its main point is that if one understands its content they will not fear death or worry about the soul's dependence on a physical body.)