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ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program

alien-project.org

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Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program

#61

Post by phkahler »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #27
dezmou wrote: post #18

Imagine if our real world is juste some github project

It's more likely than you think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis

Not really. If we're in a simulation that just begs the question - what is the "real" universe that the simulation is running in. It pushes the question of the nature of our universe up a level where we have zero visibility. No more satisfying that "where was god before he created the universe?"

The mathematical universe sidesteps this problem. If there is a concise and complete model of the universe, that is sufficient for it to exist. A simulation might also be considered a mathematical model, and it would exist in the same way even if nothing ever runs the simulation. So I guess maybe it could be a simulation, but we mustn't ask what it runs on, but what is the program?

Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program

#62

Post by sooheon »

Hwatwasthat wrote: post #58
throwaway6734 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book is absolutely fantastic. Egan is a magnificent writer.

He is, but sometimes I go cross-eyed reading his books. He likes to explore some crazy topics, which makes for great reading but sometimes confusing reading too.

Yeah, that's why my favorite way of reading him is via his short stories. Just enough to get the big idea across and not get lost in too much detail.

Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program

#63

Post by kabla »

Definitely going to play around with this. I'd love to see examples where you have a ton of at first non-usable energy spread out in the world, with some "hot spot" of energy in a corner with some setup allowing for evolving mechanisms. Seeing mechanisms form that are able to utilize the spread-out energy would be really fascinating.

Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program

#70

Post by LandR »

wyager wrote: post #52
zild3d wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence suggesting we're not in a simulation?

A lot of physics seems unnecessarily expensive to compute. Quantum mechanics suggest we either have nonlocality or exponential blowup, both of which cause simulation challenges. With just classical physics you don’t need to deal with that. On the other hand, there are a lot of things that make physics tractable to compute, such as the +++- metric tensor and other factors forbidding causality violations. A universe wi…

Isn't this all assuming the simulation is running on a "computer" in a universe like ours.

Couldn't the universe where the simulation runs be so entirely different to ours that computing all that stuff is just easy.

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