John Wheeler saw the tear in reality • Hacker News Board

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#91

Post by Filligree » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:12 AM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #84

hcarnot wrote: post #68

The source of his confusion is believing that all observers must share a single reality. This is not the case: as an observer of event A=a, you only share the same reality as all other observers who also measure A=a (or anything downstream of A=a). If some observer comes along and measures A=b, they split away from your reality. Only the version of that observer that saw A=a stays with you. There is no "remote synchr…

> The source of his confusion That's a fairly strong claim when referring to one of the greatest physicists and deepest yet wide ranging thinkers of the 20th century.

Yet this is essentially the consensus interpretation of MWI.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#92

Post by sameoldtune » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:12 AM UTC

ricksunny wrote: post #48

It's interesting we have such receptivity in the HN community here on physicist-proposed metaphysics (yay!), yet in an entirely similar light - an article covering physicist Roger Penrose's 'microtubules' on HN a couple days ago, we get the reflexive "but experts say this is bunk' treatment. Personally I don't know from Sam on either hypothesis. I'm just wondering for all things seeming equal, when do we get receptiv…

Penroses theories about cognition smell like bunk and I only got a physics undergraduate degree. I’m glad he has found things to do in his old age but there are not a lot of physics departments jumping to put those theories to the test.

This isn’t a “both sides” issue, it’s two separate physicists and two separate theories about different areas of physics.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#93

Post by airstrike » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:21 AM UTC

TuringTourist wrote: post #43

joseph_b wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything sounds so simple until we try to explain it. If the emulation is contained inside the universe being emulated, do you think the emulated universe includes the emulation contained within it? Does the emulation now contain another emulation? If so, now many emulations?

And if that is the case, the odds are basically 0 that we happen to be the first of an infinite number of universes emulating themselves

But that really has no bearing on our emulated selves. For us, this is the one reality that matters

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#94

Post by anthk » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:21 AM UTC

swifthesitation wrote: post #38

its_bbq wrote: post #22

On the blackboard he and his students wrote "Godel's Proof -- too important to be left to the mathematicians." As a mathematician, I'd love if anyone here knew the context

> His incompleteness theorems meant there can be no mathematical theory of everything, no unification of what’s provable and what’s true. What mathematicians can prove depends on their starting assumptions, not on any fundamental ground truth from which all answers spring[0]. So why leave it solely to the mathematicians. [0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-godels-proof-works-202007...

On these, you can define some paradoxes in compiler (lisp specially) by redefining predicates (functions that return either true or false). On most cases, it either returns an error, or spawns a debugger.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#95

Post by airstrike » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:22 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #50

xpl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can there be an empty universe? I suppose there is no "self" to represent then.

An empty universe would not have any information, or state change, and wouldn’t trigger any computation, therefore, it wouldn’t exist.

But if I include it as a variant in my Universe enum, then doesn't it exist anyway, at least as a concept, even if it's never constructed?

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#96

Post by pavel_lishin » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:27 AM UTC

collingreen wrote: post #15

excalibur wrote: post #14

Seriously, this article brings to mind the classic short story about a simulated universe: https://qntm.org/responsibility And also the wildly speculative conjecture that our universe will be retroactively created by a super intelligent AI in the precise manner necessary to facilitate its own existence, from which it follows that we exist for the express purpose of creating it. (If anybody knows the source I might ha…

There is a dark version of this (with some pascal's wager thrown in) called Roko's basilisk. Maybe that's what you're thinking of? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk

There's also a Stephen Baxter novel, where a splinter group of humanity called "Wigner's Friends", believes something like this to be the case. I forget which one it is, but it's part of the Xeelee Sequence.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#97

Post by qingcharles » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:35 AM UTC

bongodongobob wrote: post #66

qingcharles wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I have a totally unhinged belief that it might be possible to emulate the universe inside the universe itself.

I don't think there's any reason you couldn't but the simulation might move so slowly that it's not useful.

There are two problems -- storing the state of your emulated universe (storage space) and the operating speed.

You can undoubtably run it at less than realtime, and might even be able to find a way to scrub fwd/rev through time to the interesting bits.

The bigger issue is how to store the data. If the universe is compressible we might be able to store it and operate on it. If it's not sanely compressible then we either need to use a large chunk, or all of, the universe's matter/energy to store the state of our emulator and any inhabitants of our universe would need to file written complaints in advance at Alpha Centauri if they did not consent to being subsumed into the Giant Grey Blob(tm).

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#98

Post by qingcharles » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:38 AM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #76

qingcharles wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I have a totally unhinged belief that it might be possible to emulate the universe inside the universe itself.

It's frankly not all that clear what this even means. When cosmologists talk about the "universe," the generally mean the observable universe, which is all events that have ever happened in the past light-cone of the observer. Since space is expanding, that is constantly changing, with the expectation being that at some point, from the perspective of anything in our current galactic supercluster, everything else will…

Well, I feel like an emulator for our universe should be able to boot off simply the initial seed value and a copy of the Total Laws of Physics(tm).

If you could emulate it then you could access and see into all the parts of our universe which are currently unobservable. Of course, if you could emulate it sufficiently you should be able to scrub the timeline into the future and visit Milliways too.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#99

Post by nickpsecurity » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:39 AM UTC

bwood wrote: post #70

rbanffy wrote: post #9

> It is not a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. It’s more palatable when we consider not the observation, but the information that was collapsed out of the superimposed states at the time of the observation. The universe uses lazy evaluation, and things only happen when they have effects on other things, and what we see as past depends on what we observe now, as both need to be consistent with each other…

I've been compiling a list of ways in which physical reality is similar to game engines or mechanical simulation in general. Here's my list so far: - The observer effect, quantum entanglement and wavefunction collapse --> lazy evaluation - Speed of light --> speed of causality to resolve the object interaction problem O(n^2) - Quanta of energy, Planck's length --> discretization of reality to limit computational prec…

Add a few more observations:

1. The laws of the universe require unimaginable power, knowledge, and precision to implement. Its Creator must have these traits.

2. It doesn’t fail. Everything humans build requires maintenance but still fails. That this universe runs with a 100% reliability rate shows its maintainer’s power, knowledge, and perfection. It also shows He is sustaining us every second. He’s thinking about and caring for His creation.

3. Humans appear hardwired to seek who God is. So, the Creator wants us to look for them.

4. Even as children, humans have basic notions of love, justice, and are relational. The Creator is a relational, moral being who wants them to think like that.

5. All life passes through genes that carry some appearance and behavior. The higher creations raise their offspring. The Creator designed us to bear children who we teach. We’re creators in a way, too.

6. Many claim the Creator reveals Himself to them. One had objective proof, power, and outcomes that back that up (eg GetHisWord.com). The Creator has purpose for us which He helpfully shares. Jesus also lived it, too, in the same flesh before dying for our sins.

Just these six suggest that, in contrast to gaming, our world is run by God who has power, omniscience, morals, and a relationship with His people. So, that says the way to win is to be close to Him (Jesus) while playing the game by His rules. Also, to enjoy learning how it works which is endlessly deep and fun. :)

In contrast, a game engine or computer doesn’t compare mostly because of how the universe works perfectly despite billions upon billions upon billions of interactions. It can’t be overstated how unlikely that is based on all observations of reality. It’s truly astounding.

Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality

#100

Post by james_marks » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:46 AM UTC

meowkit wrote: post #85

ricksunny wrote: post #48

It's interesting we have such receptivity in the HN community here on physicist-proposed metaphysics (yay!), yet in an entirely similar light - an article covering physicist Roger Penrose's 'microtubules' on HN a couple days ago, we get the reflexive "but experts say this is bunk' treatment. Personally I don't know from Sam on either hypothesis. I'm just wondering for all things seeming equal, when do we get receptiv…

As the other comments point out... most things are dynamical systems that respond to chaos theory (small inputs, big divergence in output). Many of the possible states can be reduced down to two or so poles (e.g. skepticism vs acceptance vs outrage vs indifference in our potential responses) Trying to determine when or why a dynamical system like this goes to a specific state is Sisyphean if I put a word to it. Novel…

I’ve noticed in round table discussions where everyone is expected to comment, an idea will emerge early and then dominate future responses.

Sure, many of us seek acceptance from the group, but also, as an idea gets traction, I think it just gets harder to have an original idea.

It’s like trying to remember how a song goes while another one is playing, and I see it on HN threads (like this one!) often.