41–50 of 56 posts
Reading this I see for the first time why the notion that the universe is a simulation isn't so far fetched.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to disagree and I can not really understand what is so appealing about the simulation idea to many. It is an idea that will lead nowhere because you are unable to distinguish a real universe from a simulated one. In order to do this you would have to know what at least one of those scenarios looks like and then compare the universe you observe to what you know to be true about a real or simulated universe. It…
Personally I find the peculiar implication of a simple question so appealing. Will we eventually be able to create simulations that one would be unable to differentiate from reality if that simulation is all they had ever known? The answer there is quite self evident, yet it simultaneously somehow implies it is highly likely that we are ourselves within a simulation. The reason is that we can safely assume that we ar…
Universe simulations would be very resource intensive and advanced civilizations would have better uses for those resources. You may very well get some highly advanced simulations from the advanced civilizations, but they would likely me on a much, much, much smaller scale than the containing universe.
E.g., if there are a billion simulated universes, they may each be a trillionth the scope of the real universe. So your odds of being in the real universe are 1/(0.001 + 1), or almost 1.
Simulations can't be 100% efficient -- If a system was, I don't think it would be considered a simulation, but just a place in the regular universe -- but even if it were, simulating a solar system would take the full resources of an entire solar system. It's hard to see why an advanced civilization would devote those kinds of resources to creating simulations or if one did, how it would survive for long to maintain it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For all we know, 99,999% of the universe could be just a projection. You don't need to simulate all of it down to the proton level, just the things we can see. And the reason our cosmological theories fail miserably in things like dark matter or dark energy could be because there's really nothing out there.
If 99.999 % of the universe is fake, than you only have to simulate 0.001 % of the universe but you also only have 0.001 % of a universe to turn into a computer and run a simulation on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to disagree and I can not really understand what is so appealing about the simulation idea to many. It is an idea that will lead nowhere because you are unable to distinguish a real universe from a simulated one. In order to do this you would have to know what at least one of those scenarios looks like and then compare the universe you observe to what you know to be true about a real or simulated universe. It…
You have basically said it may be unprovable. First, that may be true, but it also may not be true. Secondly even if it were true, why would that change anyone’s interest or curiosity about it being a possibility?
They all share roughly the same idea, there is some reality but by some perfect arrangement of smoke and mirrors you are by definition unable to ever learn something about that reality. There is certainly some value in discussing those ideas on a meta level, finding common characteristics, figuring out limits, but beyond this the individual ideas are, at least in my opinion, mostly a waste of time. What is the point of analyzing something that by definition leaves you stuck?
And as far as I can tell philosophy has long ago mostly accepted this and made it something like an axiom that there is an reality and we can learn about it and doesn't concern itself much anymore with ideas that would, if true, block any possible progress.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If 99.999 % of the universe is fake, than you only have to simulate 0.001 % of the universe but you also only have 0.001 % of a universe to turn into a computer and run a simulation on.
Does a computer that runs a simulation of the universe has to be as big as the universe? In which case the universe is the simulation.
And I don't think it would be meaningful to say the universe is the simulation. A processor executing some code is not a simulation of a processor executing some code, an electron flying across the room is not a simulation of an electron flying across the room, a dog walking down the sidewalk is not a simulation of a dog walking down the sidewalk. A simulation requires, at least that would be my ad hoc definition, one system recreating the states and behaviors of a different system, they can not be the same system.
Neutrinos aren't massless
Confirmed higgs
> Problems
Hierarchy problem
Fine tuning
Why is the cosmological constant so "wrong compared to theory"
No evidence for supersymmetry yet at 10^-17cm via LHC
No evidence for WIMPs
How do we combine QM + GR?
Do black holes destroy information? How to solve the BH firewall problem?
> Speculation
Is there supersymmetry at higher energies than the LHC can probe?
Is spacetime doomed? I.e. is space-time a hologram on the boundary or some other emergent phenomenon
Is there a multiverse?
Is decoherence a solution, or does the wave function "collapse", or simply many-worlds?
Is perturbation theory sensible or is there a deeper more elegant way to calculate scattering?
Is time emergent or fundamental?
Reading this I see for the first time why the notion that the universe is a simulation isn't so far fetched.
I have to disagree and I can not really understand what is so appealing about the simulation idea to many. It is an idea that will lead nowhere because you are unable to distinguish a real universe from a simulated one. In order to do this you would have to know what at least one of those scenarios looks like and then compare the universe you observe to what you know to be true about a real or simulated universe. It…
After familiarizing with QM/SR concepts some years ago, I came to the conclusion that there is nothing more strange and pointless than the world without these two. If max speed was infinite (or finite but non-relative, which is essentially the same) and there was no probabilistic outcomes, then the world would "happen to the end" instantly and/or with analytically predefined series of events. From any initial state.…
> with analytically predefined series of events. This doesn't make universe less interesting or more predictable. Consider Mandelbrots set, it is fully analytically predefined, but only way to find it's details is to perform the whole calculation. Similarly the universe can be predefined, but the only way of finding its state after some amount of time can be performing a calculation fully equivalent to letting the un…
This one is very interesting since it brings back the question what time really is. Your point involves “metacircular” observer that can only work/simulate as fast as it can, but the definition of “fast” is external to it. Sure, if we simulate predefined-but-calc-required in our universe, then it will take time. But why should we measure it this way? I mean, does calculation process exist at all without something that requires time for it?
[Or we’re really talking about the same fundamental thing that lies behind both our and hypothetically deterministic universe.]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A child you made deaf like that would still discover sound as the vibrations that distorted the lenses on the eye once detection got sensitive enough. I dispute the very notion that it's possible to cut someone off from the basic nature of reality, because you must fundamentally have constructed the cage from that reality and thus their interaction with their cage will reveal its mechanics (and hence the mechanics of…
If you didn't know, his example is just a re-hash of Plato's cave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
The Cave itself is only given definition in terms of what we might call the Ultimate (in a Platonic setting); though it's essence is to obscure the Sun (a symbol of the too bright to observe Ultimate), the very ability to do so is fundamentally related to the fact it's also a manifestation of the Ultimate.
Similarly, the Fire and anything used to cast Shadows. By careful observation of the nature of Shadows and Light from the Fire upon the Cave, we observe a manifestation of the Ultimate interacting with itself, because the Light from the Fire is merely a transposition of Truth from the Sun, while the essence of the Cave is revealed in it, and we can see the Ultimate through the lens of the Cave.
It's fundamentally impossible to separate the manifestation of an Essence from an expression of the Ultimate interacting with itself; ergo, any structure capable of self interacting and capturing its "Errors" will find in them the ability to distill a view of the Ultimate.
-- the argument is pretty endemic to any structure capable of expressing existing: what exists cannot be cut off from the nature of existence, because fundamentally it's doing that.
(Also, first time I think those philosophy classes came in handy.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I find the peculiar implication of a simple question so appealing. Will we eventually be able to create simulations that one would be unable to differentiate from reality if that simulation is all they had ever known? The answer there is quite self evident, yet it simultaneously somehow implies it is highly likely that we are ourselves within a simulation. The reason is that we can safely assume that we ar…
I am already not convinced that it is likely that there are a huge number of faithful simulations. It seems to me that simulating a universe faithfully would more or less consume all the resources of that universe. So all simulations could at best be heavily simplified versions of reality, like the worlds in our computer games compared to our universe. That of course doesn't preclude our universe from just being a si…
There's a logical slip in your math. It is not more likely that someone else lives in the real universe than you. It's equally improbable. And the more simulated the realities, the less probable of any given civilization existing within the real one. Just picture it as balls in a bag. There are 'n' black balls representing the number of simulated realities one may be within, but just 1 white ball representing the real reality. And like you mention, even if somebody was able to reveal and 'disable' the simulation of their reality -- the same logic holds (that the new unveiled reality is likely also false), unless there is some newfound reason to think it might not.