This reminds me of the awesome Scriptbots project by Karpathy (of Tesla self driving fame) from 10 years ago, which I spent countless hours playing with: https://sites.google.com/site/scriptbotsevo/
ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
81–90 of 217 posts
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 suffici…
> The mathematical universe sidesteps this problem. If there is a concise and complete model of the universe, that is sufficient for it to exist.
This then leads to how does math exist instead of nothing? Math is a concept, and if concepts exist then that is not "nothing".
Many people confuse "nothing" with the vacuum of space and particles appearing out of nowhere. In this case, we have something (space, vacuums, and particles), not nothing.
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#83Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That's like a sim saying that their world would be impossible to run on the desktop in their simulated living room. That is tautologically true.
The physics of the simulator would have to be totally different to support a simulation with exponential computational costs. You probably couldn’t have anything like conservation of energy. Polynomial overhead would feel much more plausible.
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Everyone saying it would be computationally expensive to simulate our universe is failing to put their mind outside of the box of our universe. Imagine for a moment that there's a universe which compares to our universe similarly to how our world compares to one inside of Conway's Game of life.
Granted, this scenario doesn't provide us with anything we can take action on, but the idea that we're in a simulation at all doesn't, either.
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s no evidence we live in a simulation, and a whole lot to suggest we aren’t.
Is there any evidence suggesting we're not in a simulation?
1. That the simulator must run something much larger than this world much faster than real time. How feasible is that?
2. That the same arguments also apply to our simulator operators. They also inhabit a simulated universe. And so on. Where does it stop, and why?
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Everyone saying it would be computationally expensive to simulate our universe is failing to put their mind outside of the box of our universe. Imagine for a moment that there's a universe which compares to our universe similarly to how our world compares to one inside of Conway's Game of life. Granted, this scenario doesn't provide us with anything we can take action on, but the idea that we're in a simulation at al…
So you only have to assume physics totally different from ours, and we can’t observe it. Isn’t that a bit of a weak point? And what would be the point of this simulation that has been running for billions of years?
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#88For folks who like this sort of thing, I will once again make my monthly plug for folks to check out "The Evolution of Cooperation", by Robert Axelrod.
Also, "The Selfish Gene". Super fun read. Also, there are a bunch of really interesting videos made to demonstrate concepts like the evolution of altruism on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goePYJ74Ydg
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#89Earlier 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…
Unnecessarily expensive computation in software? preposterous.
Re: ALiEn – a GPU-accelerated artificial life simulation program
#90Their favicon really looks like Flickr's logo.