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Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

washington.edu

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Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#51

Post by majmun »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #34
ComputerGuru wrote: post #31

Does it matter? Think about a simulation in a game on your PC. Nothing in that game actually exists outside the simulation. i.e. as far as anyone/anything in the simulation is concerned, the simulation is real. You cannot leave the simulation. You cannot end the simulation. There's nothing unreal about the simulation for anyone in it.

It does. If the simulation is buggy, we could hack it and "get out of the box" :). See also: http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/

this happens when you die, universe segfaults, or it continues running in hell, limbus or heaven. depends on where it lands. hell has 9 rings. goal is to end up in ring 0 . heaven

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#52

Post by shmerl »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #30
dhughes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isaac Asimov's 'The Last Question' answers that.

The Last Question is one of my most favorite short stories, and unless I'm completely missing something, has nothing to do with simulation.

Stanislaw Lem actually has a story precisely on this subject.

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#53

Post by huseyinyilmaz »

coopdog wrote: post #11
ISL wrote: post #2

ArXiv paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847 This work attempts to draw out the presence of a simulation by looking for tiny violations of known/expected symmetries, which is always worth doing. We should note, however, that an excellent simulation could exactly cover its tracks, lest the underlying architecture cause unintended artifacts. From a CS perspective, the simulation's developer might create unit tests that…

I think they're assuming that the simulators don't have infinite resources, so eventually we'll find a 'wall' in the simulation. "With finite resources at their disposal, our descendants will likely make use of effective theory methods, as is done today, to simulate every-increasing complexity, by, for instance, using meshes that adapt to the relevant physical length scales, or by using fluid dynamics to determine the b…

Our decedents might have a certain level of technological advancement that Moore's law works a lot faster for them. If it is above a certain level, we would not fast enough to detect that limit.

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#54

Post by ajuc »

caseysoftware wrote: post #24
electrograv wrote: post #3

The scientific paper deals with "the hypothesis that the observed universe is a numerical simulation performed on a cubic space-time lattice or grid". Just because the universe may operate with computer-like regularity and grid-like data structures does not mean "the universe is a computer simulation." At best it means the fundamental laws of physics are "computer-like". Whether "resembles a computer simulation" equa…

Also.. if we are a simulation, wouldn't those running the simulation see what we're doing and supply us with the correct results that we would expect? They could just hardcode it..

If we're simulation, we're almost certainly emergent phenomena (laws of physics as we discovered them doesn't say anything about humans, they operate on much lower level of abstraction). Those, that run our simulation may even don't know we're there.

Imagine intelligent life evolved in huge game of life grid (it's possible assuming inteligence is turing-complete). We may look at the strange patterns and never know they are intelligent, never mind communicating with them, or decoding what they're up to from the patterns.

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#55

Post by firlefans »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #42
firlefans wrote: post #38

Why do smart people love to debate the most implausible nonsense? Time travel through singularities anyone?

While I don't know if it's actually deserving of the title "implausible nonsense", I think its important to remember that stupid is as stupid does, and same goes for smart. Someone isn't smart because they have the trappings of intelligence, its because they did something smart.

"its because they did something smart" So intelligence == 'achievement'? That makes no sense.

As for nonsense, ok I'll retract that, it is an interesting but highly implausible topic that gets a large amount of discussion relative to it's likelihood. It's actually just another way of phrasing "Does God exist?" If there was a computer (God) simulating this universe and controlling it, then it'd require a host universe for itself to exist, and it's complexity has to be greater than what it is simulating. Therefore it is less likely, and not by an insignificant amount.

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#56

Post by GotAnyMegadeth »

Imagine, in the far future, you were able to to create a simulation that was so advanced that it could accurately recreate everything that has happened in the universe so far, so that it was an exact replica of history. Also, that there is a way which you can determine whether you are in a simulation or not. Assuming you are in the real universe, if you make this measurement, it will show false, however when your simulation reaches that point in history, the result would show up true, and reality and simulation would diverge. The only way to stop this would be to make a more advanced simulation that could not be detected with any method, or to have some part of your simulation check for when this test is made, and spoof the result...

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#57

Post by alanctgardner2 »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #44
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty silly statement. Surely you can prove that 1+1!=3, which is the negative of 1+1=3. You can also prove that pi is not a rational number, 1/2 is not an integer, etc. There's a post on the front page about attempting to prove P!=NP.

The typical formulations of all of those proofs are by contradiction, though—so it may be worth distinguishing “prove” from “demonstrate by proof”.

Is there a distinction between proving and demonstrating by proof? I did a quick search (I'm hardly a mathematician), to quote Wikipedia:

> a proof must demonstrate that a statement is always true

It would seem that, if you can demonstrate a statement is true for a given logic, that is proof. Contradiction and exhaustion (which is a bit more controversial, I think), while less tidy than one might expect, are valid techniques for showing that a statement is always true, and therefore are valid ways to construct a proof.

Note: I encourage any and all maths professors to come and tell me off if I'm way off base.

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#58

Post by codex »

The assumptions in this paper are quite weak. It's like testing whether or not your code is running in a virtual machine. It can be done, but only if the virtual machine authors have made some glaring mistake.

Yes, computation is finite, but that doesn't mean that the authors of the simulation can't use more resources than usual simulating your test of the simulation. Not all parts of the simulation need to run at the same level of detail.

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#59

Post by gliese1337 »

jlgreco wrote: post #49
nsxwolf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting that you can replace 'simulation' with 'God' and your statements are a perfect recitation of 'The Problem of Evil'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

The problem with applying that (very reasonable, in my opinion) argument to this discussion is that it invokes assumptions of benevolence, or even planning and/or intent. Those things are largely irrelevant to the question of simulation. There should be no implicit assumption that a simulation must have any sort of "deity" behind it. Nothing with intent, purpose, planning, ethics, etc. It seems much more reasonable t…

Well, the idea that the simulators care is the basis for the standard argument that we're probably in a simulation. After all, it's supposed to be posthumans running simulations of their evolutionary ancestors. I don't know why they would do that, but given that premise, why run simulations of your ancestors if you don't care about your ancestors?

Of course, that provides another answer to the problem of pain- that this is how it was the first time 'round, and they want the simulation to be accurate.

Re: Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested

#60

Post by jlgreco »

gliese1337 wrote: post #59
jlgreco wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with applying that (very reasonable, in my opinion) argument to this discussion is that it invokes assumptions of benevolence, or even planning and/or intent. Those things are largely irrelevant to the question of simulation. There should be no implicit assumption that a simulation must have any sort of "deity" behind it. Nothing with intent, purpose, planning, ethics, etc. It seems much more reasonable t…

Well, the idea that the simulators care is the basis for the standard argument that we're probably in a simulation. After all, it's supposed to be posthumans running simulations of their evolutionary ancestors. I don't know why they would do that, but given that premise, why run simulations of your ancestors if you don't care about your ancestors? Of course, that provides another answer to the problem of pain- that t…

Is the simulation just of us though? Or is the simulation of a much larger portion of the observable universe? We naturally want to be important, but I don't see any particularly compelling reason to think that we are. I don't see any reason at all to assume that if we are in a simulation, it is being run by anything remotely resembling us (or used to resemble us), or indeed by anything at all.

Is that such a strange concept? The prevailing school of thought, if the universe is not a simulation, is that there is no mastermind behind it. Seems natural to me that we would assume the same about any universe simulator.

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