That very much reminds me about the reasoning of Descartes why a god must exist: basically because he can think about it.
But really, just because you can think of it doesn’t make anything theoretically possible. For the simulation of a universe we have no idea how to do it.
I think that's a poor analogy.
It's true that we're not capable of stimulating a universe in appropriate detail presently, but it's inevitable that at some time we will have that capacity.
Looking at progress in the last 20 years, and extrapolate another thousand years, it's entirely plausible that one could spin up a "universe" on a personal device to play with.
It’s not only about levels of detail. We have no theory about how to compute a universe.
Moores law already does not hold up any more. There’s nothing to extrapolate.
I think the analogy is perfect. Thinkers think, but they’re bound in the context of their time and place. Our time and place is full of technology, of course thinkers will spin up an origin myth that is based on technology.
We could already theoretically simulate a universe; our only limiting factor is the amount of power we have available to us.
It might not be identical to our own universe as we are still missing the necessary knowledge to do that, though who's to say our host universe has the same laws of physics etc. as ours? It's not necessary to simulate our host universe, though rather a universe with a specific set of parameters that we decide on.
That specific set of parameters were likely chosen for our own universe.
We can model things and call them “universe”. But that’s about it.
That very much reminds me about the reasoning of Descartes why a god must exist: basically because he can think about it.
But really, just because you can think of it doesn’t make anything theoretically possible. For the simulation of a universe we have no idea how to do it.
I think that's a poor analogy.
It's true that we're not capable of stimulating a universe in appropriate detail presently, but it's inevitable that at some time we will have that capacity.
Looking at progress in the last 20 years, and extrapolate another thousand years, it's entirely plausible that one could spin up a "universe" on a personal device to play with.
It’s not only about levels of detail. We have no theory about how to compute a universe.
Moores law already does not hold up any more. There’s nothing to extrapolate.
I think the analogy is perfect. Thinkers think, but they’re bound in the context of their time and place. Our time and place is full of technology, of course thinkers will spin up an origin myth that is based on technology.
But that’s really all it is.
We could already theoretically simulate a universe; our only limiting factor is the amount of power we have available to us.
It might not be identical to our own universe as we are still missing the necessary knowledge to do that, though who's to say our host universe has the same laws of physics etc. as ours? It's not necessary to simulate our host universe, though rather a universe with a specific set of parameters that we decide on.
That specific set of parameters were likely chosen for our own universe.
We can model things and call them “universe”. But that’s about it.