Every time I need to cross a seemingly empty street, suddenly cars appear. I can't help but imagine it's a render distance issue.
Try to cross the street without turning your head. When you turn your head, they render the cars in the opposite directions.
/jk always look both ways before crossing the street.
The render distance (observable universe)
The pixel size (Planck units)
And the update rate ('speed of light' = speed of information being updated)
Calling Planck units "pixels" is extremely reductive. This is just naively applying video game concepts to physics with a poor understanding of both.
I took an entire graduate course in QM and a quantized Universe does, in fact, seem pixelated. That's exactly how I explain it to people. There's simply a finite level to how closely you can zoom in. Space, time, and energy are all quantized, and maybe even gravity though we haven't figured that one out yet.
Why can’t you cut a Planck unit in half?
The why is not really known. But we simply cannot. There is not line where one particle ends and another particle begins. The best you can do is give a probability distribution, but some of the particles will be in places where they're not really supposed to be. This is actually what drives the fusion processes in stars. The nuclei don't actually have enough kinetic energy to fuse--but she is the protons in one hydrogen nucleus just magically appear in the nucleus of a neighboring hydrogen atom.
You literally can't have distances that are smaller than these probability distributions.
A finite level to how close you can zoom in is very different from pixels. Pixels (or voxels in this case) are indivisible elements of a larger whole that exist along an evenly spaced grid. The universe doesn't have a Cartesian coordinate system measured in Planck lengths
Pixels (or voxels in this case) are indivisible elements of a larger whole that exist along an evenly spaced grid.
That's exactly what a Planck unit of spacetime is. And yes, the Universe--like a screen--is divided into an evenly-spaced grid any time you choose a coordinate system.
I took an entire graduate course in QM and a quantized Universe does, in fact, seem pixelated. That's exactly how I explain it to people. There's simply a finite level to how closely you can zoom in.
isn’t the most recent explanation on planck’s length saying that we simply can’t observe further down, but it is hypothesised that smaller lengths actually exist?
Just searched a bit, looking into how the length came to be and found this from wikipedia. https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length
"The Planck length does not have any precise physical significance, and it is a common misconception that it is the inherent pixel size of the universe."
What I found elsewhere was that it's the only length one can get out of the universal constans of G, c and h. So as far as I know with my limited know how is that the planck length is useful or more convenient than other lengths in quantum physics.
isn’t the most recent explanation on planck’s length saying that we simply can’t observe further down
No. The math has the indivisibility built right into it, and our countless observations agree. There's no smaller length, because then the probability distributions between different particles start overlapping. There's a limit to how closely you can zoom in, and we can describe that limit mathematically. We don't know why it's there, but it's certainly there.
can you post a source for this?
I can't post a source for all of QM, no. I can share my class notes with you, but you might as well look into it. There are lots of quality online classes about it. You can go digging for info about Planck's constant, that's where it's "built into" the math.
but he’s not saying that the Planck’s length is the pixel size of our universe.
There is a misconception that the universe is fundamentally divided into Planck-sized pixels, that nothing can be smaller than the Planck length, that things move through space by progressing one Planck length every Planck time. Judging by the ultimate source, a cursory search of reddit questions, the misconception is fairly common. There is nothing in established physics that says this is the case, nothing in general relativity or quantum mechanics pointing to it. I have an idea as to where the misconception might arise, that I can’t really back up but I will state anyway. I think that when people learn that the energy states of electrons in an atom are quantized, and that Planck’s constant is involved, a leap is made towards the pixel fallacy. I remember in my early teens reading about the Planck time in National Geographic, and hearing about Planck’s constant in highschool physics or chemistry, and thinking they were the same. As I mentioned earlier, just because units are “natural” it doesn’t mean they are “fundamental,” due to the choice of constants used to define the units. The simplest reason that Planck-pixels don’t make up the universe is special relativity and the idea that all inertial reference frames are equally valid. If there is a rest frame in which the matrix of these Planck-pixels is isotropic, in other frames they would be length contracted in one direction, and moving diagonally with respect to his matrix might impart angle-dependence on how you experience the universe. If an electromagnetic wave with the wavelength of one Planck length were propagating through space, its wavelength could be made even smaller by transforming to a reference frame in which the wavelength is even smaller, so the idea of rest-frame equivalence and a minimal length are inconsistent with one-another.
but he’s not saying that the Planck’s length is the pixel size of our universe.
And neither was I. But what he IS saying is that there's a limit to how closely you can measure length in any dimension. Thinking of it like pixels is a useful metaphor because that's an indivisible unit, and it's what's behind Planck's constant. But a Planck length is really only relative to quantum gravity, not QM generally.
Status not being updated if no one is looking at it (Schrödinger's cat, quantum entanglement)
According to some, assuming it's even possible to fully simulate a universe to the degree that life in it can't tell, then there should be multiple simulations running, so there would be more sim-universes than real ones, and odds would be high that any given universe you find yourself in would be a sim.
Personally I don't buy it, I think if we were in a sim the laws of physics would have to be easily computable (they aren't, see gluons) and I think it would take the computing power of an entire universe to simulate one of similar complexity at anywhere close to reasonable speed. (Note how emulators and virtual machines can only emulate a weaker system then the host system, at least at speeds comparable to native hardware)
Thanks for typing out what i was gonna say.
I am agnostic about simulation theory. If an advanced enough “something” can create a simulation undistinguishable from the lives we experience now then i would bet that we do live in one. But thats a big if and goes a bit further than one where life cant tell. (A simulated single cell organism is miles of from simulated mammals and society)
there would be more sim-universes than real ones
This ties back to the mediocrity principle. If there are 10 billion people living on Earth, but 10 quadrillion living in simulations, the chances for you to live in the latter is much higher.
Along goes the simulation argument by Nick Bostrom. If simulation is possible, and practiced, we likely are simulated ourselves.
Isaac Arthur) noted that housing a population in a simulation is much more efficient than doing so physically. It seems like a convergent choice for powerful civilizations which want to maximize the life supported by fading stars (or energy potentials in general).
I think it would take the computing power of an entire universe to simulate one of similar complexity
Two objections:
It might be sufficient to simulate the experience, without fully simulating the underlying physics. That's how we do 3D games anyways. No one cares if we actually simulate individual air molecules. If the cloth moves indistinguishable as if, that's as good as the original, for a much lower cost. You can also cull unobserved parts of the universe.
Host and simulation can have completely unrelated laws of nature. Specifically, inhabitants of the simulation cannot study their host environment. As such, I think making assumptions about the host makes no sense.
Those are some really interesting points, thanks for your input.
How much would speed matter to a simulated lifeform. Ive often wondered if time would suddenly stop and then continue we would probably just experience it like it didn’t stop.
but time is relative. we might very well live in a simulation that takes a minute of “external time” to compute a single tick of our time. we just can’t experience it.
I'm not really a believer of the whole simulated universe theory, but I find your arguments against it weak.
You're basing what is and isn't easily calculatable off of our experiences. Same with "complexities of the universes". However, if our world is indeed simulated, there's no telling what the host universe is like. It might have crazy different math and be far far more complex than ours. Us trying to understand it would essentially be an excercise in futility.
Simulation theory is more or less a kind of modern creation myth, and creation myths are based around its societies current level of understanding of the world. In ancient times people explained the worlds actions and existence through gods and imaginative myths. When the scientific revolution happened people explained the universe in terms of immutable laws and cosmic logic. Now we are in the computational revolution, thus some people explain the worlds existence through computers. All untestable and unfalsifiable explanations for the nature of reality are as good as any other, so pick your poison and enjoy!
Simulation theory comes from solipsism, and it's not that modern. According to Wikipedia it originated in Greece in 483–375 BC.
Every human is solipsist until about 2 years old, when they start to realize that the world is not revolving around them. It is called "crisis of 2 year old", or "terrible twos". Some people don't get to go through this at 2, especially the children of billionaires, who have no reasons to think that they are not the center of the universe.
The danger of this approach is that you start treating other people as NPCs, dehumanizing them.
When others are not real people, you don't have any problem with robbing, raping or murdering them. See the "Westworld" series for more deep analysis.
The idea that it's theoretically possible that we would be able to simulate a universe of our own leads to the hypothesis that we could be living in a simulation ourselves.
If we do, I would like a server change. Please 🥺
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.
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.
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.
If you believe it’s possible we could create that simulation (and why would we only do it once), then it follows it would possible for that simulation to create it’s own simulations. And so on and so on.
So if it’s possible, then it’s all but impossible that any of this is real.
At this point does it matter? If it turns out tomorrow we have proof we live in a simulation, it doesn’t make my life any less real. I still gotta go to working tomorrow lol.
Yea it really wouldn’t matter other than having religious dogma change or about what happens after death.
It’s more of an interesting thought experiment about the seemingly minuscule chances of life forming and us being/experiencing life.
It gives comfort for people who don't adhere to any of the major religions but still need to feel like there is a hidden meaning to existence and something bigger than the universe.
You cannot disprove this hypothesis and it's cool. Quite literally nothing can support it - if we live in a simulation, every part of the universe makes sense for us because we have no reference frame for "real" physics.
It's just something fun to think about but ultimately it doesn't matter, you have no way to find out.
I'm a weak solipsist - I firmly believe that "I think therefore I am" is the only truth we can know. Everything else, we take on faith.
That said, it doesn't really matter. We live in the reality we perceive. There's no practical difference between living in reality and living in a simulation.
What does it mean to "live in a simulation"? If I created a sentient computer program that has no contact with the outside world then you would say it's living in a simulation, but if you took that same exact program and connected it to a robot you'd say it's living in reality. But what's the line? If you add a tiny glimpse of reality but 99.9% of its experiences are stimulated is it living in a simulation or reality? It's not necessarily a black or white thing but more like a spectrum. In that sense you could say that our brains are creating a simulation of the outside world based on real inputs, but our perception of reality is not necessarily accurate. I would say our brains are on the spectrum of being a simulation of reality because not everything we experience is necessarily real.
Aliens could land on my lawn and take a 10hour long shit and I'd still have to go to work the next day.
Because thinking that we are here for no specific reason is scary
It's not an "either/or" situation. I don't think we're in a simulation, but that doesn't mean we're here for hi specific reason. We're obviously here to live, and to help each other out of the darkness of ignorance and into the light of understanding while they live. That's literally our purpose, and so much of what we do is geared toward that. I guess people are looking for something deeper, but that seems plenty deep to me! If you're not actively trying to help the people around you, you're going to feel empty, like your life has no meaning. Unless you're a sociopath, which is definitely a thing. But most of us are not. Most of us just want to feel like we're doing our part, so we should keep that in mind.
The limits of physics could be a rendering limit on the simulation hardware.
I think it's a contemporary way of viewing the creation problem that religion has also been trying to address.
Who created the universe, and who created the one who created the universe. What caused the Big bang. Etc.
The whole thing is irrelevant in my opinion. It doesn't matter, because whatever initialised existence is outside of our existence. That would be separated in dimensions, or even if we could interact with it, it would at least be in a completely different frame of time. The entire existence of our universe could be a blink of an eye in whatever is outside of it.
It seems like megalomania to me for humans to believe that they can ever figure this one out. Just like the microbes in our bodies can't interact with us, I don't have any hope for humans to ever understand how the entire universe interacts with it's creator, whether it's a simulation, a devine creation or the result of physics.
If it's a simulation and we are just variables in a sub-routine, then its futile to claim that we can ever figure out what is outside our loop. We can catch global variables from the main loop, like natural constants, but we'll never see the code that calls our sub.
The only reason to believe it is that we can also not prove that it isn't so. Someone claims that it's statistically unlikely that it's not a simulation but I'm not so sure about that argument. It's based on an extremely deterministic view, that everything can be simulated with enough computer power, which itself is a questionable view.
For a slightly different take, a simulation and reality are not that fundamentally different given how both are perceived by senses in a similar way. Like how a VR headset uses the same sense that you use to see real objects.
They start to diverge in a way when you start encountering edge phenomenon that are beyond the scope of the simulation, like how a game would glitch. So far, however much we zoom in or zoom out, reality works consistently. So it is less likely that we're in a simulation.
Because Elon Musk believes in it, I know it’s probably wrong.
What's the difference?
YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF FREE PREVIEW OF "THE LIFE". To continue using this entertainment, please deposit 650 kvazons to your blardg.
Damn I spent my last kvazon at the pizzeria do yall take credit?
Yes, but you'll regret it later, in about 20 years.
My life is “Murphy’s Law: the Movie”. Every time I try to reassure myself by saying “well, at least it can’t possibly get any worse than this”, it gets worse. There’s no way that there isn’t some asshole running a simulation where they just fuck with me.
It's based on the idea that if we were, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Because everything can be expressed mathematically.
Ever wonder about reasons to think we are not living in a simulation?
Musk's leadership of Twitter. if we're in a simulation it makes perfect sense - some admin forgot to flip a switch somewhere and shit has gone a bit off the rails
I'm still waiting for Pi to start repeating so that we have proof.
I wrote a much longer comment that was lost (still missing client features from Reddit clients like draft saving).
The TLDR is a lot of the physics behaviors we have in our world relating to quanta (as many others have mentioned), but especially in combination with a ~2,000 year old text and tradition which claimed the most (in)famous person in history was saying we are in a non-physical copy of a dead original world made by a light-based intelligence brought forth by the original humanity, and that the proof for this was in motion and rest - particularly that the ability to find an indivisible point within things would only be possible in the non-physical physical.
So in an age where humanity is on the cusp of bringing forth new intelligence, ever more looking like that will occur in light (optoelectronics), where we are creating digital twins of ourselves and the world around us, where a trillion dollar corporation has already been granted a patent on digital resurrection of the dead, and where the virtual worlds we build often use rendering tricks similar to the behavior of our own world at low fidelities -- that's pretty weird to have existed so far back in antiquity.
Almost like it would be more likely to exist in a simulated world, much like how many of our own virtual world have 4th wall breaking acknowledgement of being virtual buried as an Easter egg in their lore...
What 2000 year old thing are you talking about?
Here’s Elon Musk’s argument (not saying I agree with it but here’s what he said about it):
Eventually we will be able to create entirely convincing simulations. Just look at video games. The graphics are getting pretty good.
So given that we will inevitably create such simulations, we have to ask whether it has perhaps already happened and this is one of them.
And since we will no doubt create many different simulations, millions of them, the odds are against this one being the prime reality. It’s just millions-to-one odds by the numbers.
Therefore this is almost certainly a simulation.
(Personally I think there are factual and logical problems at many steps in this)
I just want to point out that while Musk likes to parrot this rhetoric, it is Nick Bostrom who should be credited with the hypothesis in its current, modern incarnation. That's not to say it is entirely his idea either, as similar hypotheses have been pontificated over for centuries , notably by René Descartes.
Mm thanks. Worthy footnote.
I just want to point out that while Musk likes to parrot this rhetoric, it is Nick Bostrom who should be credited with the hypothesis in its current, modern incarnation. That's not to say it is entirely his idea either, as similar hypotheses have been pontificated over for centuries , notably by René Descartes.
seems consistent..
Doesn’t sound any more ridiculous than any of the other ideas.
I never see my neighbors bringing groceries into their house.
I don’t see any reason to think I’m not in a simulation, except that it’s just a silly ancient fable, created by the simulation. but none of that affects the “realities” of life and love all the rest of it.
Everything there is is made out of atoms,
Just seems to easy to me, like 0s and 1s in Matrix
but atoms are made by particles, and particles are made by gluons, which are made of… strings? quantum foam? we haven’t hit rock bottom yet.
If you have the fundamental belief that if we know every single possible detail down to the atom, that we can predict what will happen every time, then you believe that free will does not exist. If you think of it that way, and think everything is calculated, then it could be theoretically be possible for some kind of super computer to generate everything since it knows all the information and can calculate what will happen next.
I also think that free will may not exist, but I'm not sure why. Either everything can be calculated in advance as you say, or everything is fundamentally random because quantum mechanics. But maybe there's something at the edge where neither of these explanations are correct? What happens there?
Herd mentality is very weird. People who would never, on their own, commit crimes/violence just kind of start doing it. Almost feels like that “god hand” player controlling the RTS ordered a group of people to do their bidding.
Once I learned about quantum field theory, the distinction between reality and simulation kind of went away for me. It says that all of reality is essentially number values for different fundamental fields. A particle exists when the value for this field is d and the value for that field is y. But the only fundamentally real things are the fields. Everything else are just a configuration of number values within them that together conform to mathematical logic.
This sounds a lot like software to me. Whether it’s running on quantum fields or a fucking Pentium 3 doesn’t seem super important.
So sweeping aside the technology as irrelevant, we have turn to the issue of whether the universe is contrived by programmers. The question becomes: did people create the universe? And my opinion of us just isn’t that high.
The fact that this question gets reasked every five seconds.
Math and physics. (Almost) everything can be calculated, and the stuff we can't calculate is probably because we haven't discovered the constant/formula yet.
Math and physics. (Almost) everything can be calculated, and the stuff we can't calculate is probably because we haven't discovered the constant/formula yet.
Math and physics. (Almost) everything can be calculated, and the stuff we can't calculate is probably because we haven't discovered the constant/formula yet.
Math and physics. (Almost) everything can be calculated, and the stuff we can't calculate is probably because we haven't discovered the constant/formula yet.
Every time I need to cross a seemingly empty street, suddenly cars appear. I can't help but imagine it's a render distance issue.
Try to cross the street without turning your head. When you turn your head, they render the cars in the opposite directions.
/jk always look both ways before crossing the street.
Calling Planck units "pixels" is extremely reductive. This is just naively applying video game concepts to physics with a poor understanding of both.
I took an entire graduate course in QM and a quantized Universe does, in fact, seem pixelated. That's exactly how I explain it to people. There's simply a finite level to how closely you can zoom in. Space, time, and energy are all quantized, and maybe even gravity though we haven't figured that one out yet.
Why can’t you cut a Planck unit in half?
The why is not really known. But we simply cannot. There is not line where one particle ends and another particle begins. The best you can do is give a probability distribution, but some of the particles will be in places where they're not really supposed to be. This is actually what drives the fusion processes in stars. The nuclei don't actually have enough kinetic energy to fuse--but she is the protons in one hydrogen nucleus just magically appear in the nucleus of a neighboring hydrogen atom.
You literally can't have distances that are smaller than these probability distributions.
A finite level to how close you can zoom in is very different from pixels. Pixels (or voxels in this case) are indivisible elements of a larger whole that exist along an evenly spaced grid. The universe doesn't have a Cartesian coordinate system measured in Planck lengths
That's exactly what a Planck unit of spacetime is. And yes, the Universe--like a screen--is divided into an evenly-spaced grid any time you choose a coordinate system.
I took an entire graduate course in QM and a quantized Universe does, in fact, seem pixelated. That's exactly how I explain it to people. There's simply a finite level to how closely you can zoom in.
isn’t the most recent explanation on planck’s length saying that we simply can’t observe further down, but it is hypothesised that smaller lengths actually exist?
Just searched a bit, looking into how the length came to be and found this from wikipedia. https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length "The Planck length does not have any precise physical significance, and it is a common misconception that it is the inherent pixel size of the universe." What I found elsewhere was that it's the only length one can get out of the universal constans of G, c and h. So as far as I know with my limited know how is that the planck length is useful or more convenient than other lengths in quantum physics.
No. The math has the indivisibility built right into it, and our countless observations agree. There's no smaller length, because then the probability distributions between different particles start overlapping. There's a limit to how closely you can zoom in, and we can describe that limit mathematically. We don't know why it's there, but it's certainly there.
can you post a source for this?
I can't post a source for all of QM, no. I can share my class notes with you, but you might as well look into it. There are lots of quality online classes about it. You can go digging for info about Planck's constant, that's where it's "built into" the math.
Here's a good explanation from PBS Spacetime https://youtu.be/tQSbms5MDvY
but he’s not saying that the Planck’s length is the pixel size of our universe.
Reference: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/hand-wavy-discussion-planck-length/
And neither was I. But what he IS saying is that there's a limit to how closely you can measure length in any dimension. Thinking of it like pixels is a useful metaphor because that's an indivisible unit, and it's what's behind Planck's constant. But a Planck length is really only relative to quantum gravity, not QM generally.
According to some, assuming it's even possible to fully simulate a universe to the degree that life in it can't tell, then there should be multiple simulations running, so there would be more sim-universes than real ones, and odds would be high that any given universe you find yourself in would be a sim.
Personally I don't buy it, I think if we were in a sim the laws of physics would have to be easily computable (they aren't, see gluons) and I think it would take the computing power of an entire universe to simulate one of similar complexity at anywhere close to reasonable speed. (Note how emulators and virtual machines can only emulate a weaker system then the host system, at least at speeds comparable to native hardware)
Thanks for typing out what i was gonna say.
I am agnostic about simulation theory. If an advanced enough “something” can create a simulation undistinguishable from the lives we experience now then i would bet that we do live in one. But thats a big if and goes a bit further than one where life cant tell. (A simulated single cell organism is miles of from simulated mammals and society)
This ties back to the mediocrity principle. If there are 10 billion people living on Earth, but 10 quadrillion living in simulations, the chances for you to live in the latter is much higher.
Along goes the simulation argument by Nick Bostrom. If simulation is possible, and practiced, we likely are simulated ourselves.
Isaac Arthur) noted that housing a population in a simulation is much more efficient than doing so physically. It seems like a convergent choice for powerful civilizations which want to maximize the life supported by fading stars (or energy potentials in general).
Two objections:
Those are some really interesting points, thanks for your input.
How much would speed matter to a simulated lifeform. Ive often wondered if time would suddenly stop and then continue we would probably just experience it like it didn’t stop.
but time is relative. we might very well live in a simulation that takes a minute of “external time” to compute a single tick of our time. we just can’t experience it.
I'm not really a believer of the whole simulated universe theory, but I find your arguments against it weak.
You're basing what is and isn't easily calculatable off of our experiences. Same with "complexities of the universes". However, if our world is indeed simulated, there's no telling what the host universe is like. It might have crazy different math and be far far more complex than ours. Us trying to understand it would essentially be an excercise in futility.
Simulation theory is more or less a kind of modern creation myth, and creation myths are based around its societies current level of understanding of the world. In ancient times people explained the worlds actions and existence through gods and imaginative myths. When the scientific revolution happened people explained the universe in terms of immutable laws and cosmic logic. Now we are in the computational revolution, thus some people explain the worlds existence through computers. All untestable and unfalsifiable explanations for the nature of reality are as good as any other, so pick your poison and enjoy!
Simulation theory comes from solipsism, and it's not that modern. According to Wikipedia it originated in Greece in 483–375 BC.
Every human is solipsist until about 2 years old, when they start to realize that the world is not revolving around them. It is called "crisis of 2 year old", or "terrible twos". Some people don't get to go through this at 2, especially the children of billionaires, who have no reasons to think that they are not the center of the universe.
The danger of this approach is that you start treating other people as NPCs, dehumanizing them. When others are not real people, you don't have any problem with robbing, raping or murdering them. See the "Westworld" series for more deep analysis.
The idea that it's theoretically possible that we would be able to simulate a universe of our own leads to the hypothesis that we could be living in a simulation ourselves.
If we do, I would like a server change. Please 🥺
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.
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.
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.
If you believe it’s possible we could create that simulation (and why would we only do it once), then it follows it would possible for that simulation to create it’s own simulations. And so on and so on.
So if it’s possible, then it’s all but impossible that any of this is real.
The first
moverstimulator theory - we are God.At this point does it matter? If it turns out tomorrow we have proof we live in a simulation, it doesn’t make my life any less real. I still gotta go to working tomorrow lol.
Yea it really wouldn’t matter other than having religious dogma change or about what happens after death.
It’s more of an interesting thought experiment about the seemingly minuscule chances of life forming and us being/experiencing life.
It gives comfort for people who don't adhere to any of the major religions but still need to feel like there is a hidden meaning to existence and something bigger than the universe.
You cannot disprove this hypothesis and it's cool. Quite literally nothing can support it - if we live in a simulation, every part of the universe makes sense for us because we have no reference frame for "real" physics.
It's just something fun to think about but ultimately it doesn't matter, you have no way to find out.
I'm a weak solipsist - I firmly believe that "I think therefore I am" is the only truth we can know. Everything else, we take on faith.
That said, it doesn't really matter. We live in the reality we perceive. There's no practical difference between living in reality and living in a simulation.
What does it mean to "live in a simulation"? If I created a sentient computer program that has no contact with the outside world then you would say it's living in a simulation, but if you took that same exact program and connected it to a robot you'd say it's living in reality. But what's the line? If you add a tiny glimpse of reality but 99.9% of its experiences are stimulated is it living in a simulation or reality? It's not necessarily a black or white thing but more like a spectrum. In that sense you could say that our brains are creating a simulation of the outside world based on real inputs, but our perception of reality is not necessarily accurate. I would say our brains are on the spectrum of being a simulation of reality because not everything we experience is necessarily real.
Aliens could land on my lawn and take a 10hour long shit and I'd still have to go to work the next day.
Because thinking that we are here for no specific reason is scary
It's not an "either/or" situation. I don't think we're in a simulation, but that doesn't mean we're here for hi specific reason. We're obviously here to live, and to help each other out of the darkness of ignorance and into the light of understanding while they live. That's literally our purpose, and so much of what we do is geared toward that. I guess people are looking for something deeper, but that seems plenty deep to me! If you're not actively trying to help the people around you, you're going to feel empty, like your life has no meaning. Unless you're a sociopath, which is definitely a thing. But most of us are not. Most of us just want to feel like we're doing our part, so we should keep that in mind.
The limits of physics could be a rendering limit on the simulation hardware.
I think it's a contemporary way of viewing the creation problem that religion has also been trying to address. Who created the universe, and who created the one who created the universe. What caused the Big bang. Etc.
The whole thing is irrelevant in my opinion. It doesn't matter, because whatever initialised existence is outside of our existence. That would be separated in dimensions, or even if we could interact with it, it would at least be in a completely different frame of time. The entire existence of our universe could be a blink of an eye in whatever is outside of it.
It seems like megalomania to me for humans to believe that they can ever figure this one out. Just like the microbes in our bodies can't interact with us, I don't have any hope for humans to ever understand how the entire universe interacts with it's creator, whether it's a simulation, a devine creation or the result of physics.
If it's a simulation and we are just variables in a sub-routine, then its futile to claim that we can ever figure out what is outside our loop. We can catch global variables from the main loop, like natural constants, but we'll never see the code that calls our sub.
The only reason to believe it is that we can also not prove that it isn't so. Someone claims that it's statistically unlikely that it's not a simulation but I'm not so sure about that argument. It's based on an extremely deterministic view, that everything can be simulated with enough computer power, which itself is a questionable view.
For a slightly different take, a simulation and reality are not that fundamentally different given how both are perceived by senses in a similar way. Like how a VR headset uses the same sense that you use to see real objects.
They start to diverge in a way when you start encountering edge phenomenon that are beyond the scope of the simulation, like how a game would glitch. So far, however much we zoom in or zoom out, reality works consistently. So it is less likely that we're in a simulation.
Because Elon Musk believes in it, I know it’s probably wrong.
What's the difference?
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Damn I spent my last kvazon at the pizzeria do yall take credit?
Yes, but you'll regret it later, in about 20 years.
My life is “Murphy’s Law: the Movie”. Every time I try to reassure myself by saying “well, at least it can’t possibly get any worse than this”, it gets worse. There’s no way that there isn’t some asshole running a simulation where they just fuck with me.
It's based on the idea that if we were, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Because everything can be expressed mathematically.
Ever wonder about reasons to think we are not living in a simulation?
Musk's leadership of Twitter. if we're in a simulation it makes perfect sense - some admin forgot to flip a switch somewhere and shit has gone a bit off the rails
I'm still waiting for Pi to start repeating so that we have proof.
I wrote a much longer comment that was lost (still missing client features from Reddit clients like draft saving).
The TLDR is a lot of the physics behaviors we have in our world relating to quanta (as many others have mentioned), but especially in combination with a ~2,000 year old text and tradition which claimed the most (in)famous person in history was saying we are in a non-physical copy of a dead original world made by a light-based intelligence brought forth by the original humanity, and that the proof for this was in motion and rest - particularly that the ability to find an indivisible point within things would only be possible in the non-physical physical.
So in an age where humanity is on the cusp of bringing forth new intelligence, ever more looking like that will occur in light (optoelectronics), where we are creating digital twins of ourselves and the world around us, where a trillion dollar corporation has already been granted a patent on digital resurrection of the dead, and where the virtual worlds we build often use rendering tricks similar to the behavior of our own world at low fidelities -- that's pretty weird to have existed so far back in antiquity.
Almost like it would be more likely to exist in a simulated world, much like how many of our own virtual world have 4th wall breaking acknowledgement of being virtual buried as an Easter egg in their lore...
What 2000 year old thing are you talking about?
Here’s Elon Musk’s argument (not saying I agree with it but here’s what he said about it):
Eventually we will be able to create entirely convincing simulations. Just look at video games. The graphics are getting pretty good.
So given that we will inevitably create such simulations, we have to ask whether it has perhaps already happened and this is one of them.
And since we will no doubt create many different simulations, millions of them, the odds are against this one being the prime reality. It’s just millions-to-one odds by the numbers.
Therefore this is almost certainly a simulation.
(Personally I think there are factual and logical problems at many steps in this)
I just want to point out that while Musk likes to parrot this rhetoric, it is Nick Bostrom who should be credited with the hypothesis in its current, modern incarnation. That's not to say it is entirely his idea either, as similar hypotheses have been pontificated over for centuries , notably by René Descartes.
Mm thanks. Worthy footnote.
I just want to point out that while Musk likes to parrot this rhetoric, it is Nick Bostrom who should be credited with the hypothesis in its current, modern incarnation. That's not to say it is entirely his idea either, as similar hypotheses have been pontificated over for centuries , notably by René Descartes.
seems consistent..
Doesn’t sound any more ridiculous than any of the other ideas.
I never see my neighbors bringing groceries into their house.
I don’t see any reason to think I’m not in a simulation, except that it’s just a silly ancient fable, created by the simulation. but none of that affects the “realities” of life and love all the rest of it.
Everything there is is made out of atoms, Just seems to easy to me, like 0s and 1s in Matrix
but atoms are made by particles, and particles are made by gluons, which are made of… strings? quantum foam? we haven’t hit rock bottom yet.
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If you have the fundamental belief that if we know every single possible detail down to the atom, that we can predict what will happen every time, then you believe that free will does not exist. If you think of it that way, and think everything is calculated, then it could be theoretically be possible for some kind of super computer to generate everything since it knows all the information and can calculate what will happen next.
I also think that free will may not exist, but I'm not sure why. Either everything can be calculated in advance as you say, or everything is fundamentally random because quantum mechanics. But maybe there's something at the edge where neither of these explanations are correct? What happens there?
Herd mentality is very weird. People who would never, on their own, commit crimes/violence just kind of start doing it. Almost feels like that “god hand” player controlling the RTS ordered a group of people to do their bidding.
Once I learned about quantum field theory, the distinction between reality and simulation kind of went away for me. It says that all of reality is essentially number values for different fundamental fields. A particle exists when the value for this field is d and the value for that field is y. But the only fundamentally real things are the fields. Everything else are just a configuration of number values within them that together conform to mathematical logic.
This sounds a lot like software to me. Whether it’s running on quantum fields or a fucking Pentium 3 doesn’t seem super important.
So sweeping aside the technology as irrelevant, we have turn to the issue of whether the universe is contrived by programmers. The question becomes: did people create the universe? And my opinion of us just isn’t that high.
The fact that this question gets reasked every five seconds.
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Math and physics. (Almost) everything can be calculated, and the stuff we can't calculate is probably because we haven't discovered the constant/formula yet.
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Math and physics. (Almost) everything can be calculated, and the stuff we can't calculate is probably because we haven't discovered the constant/formula yet.
Math and physics. (Almost) everything can be calculated, and the stuff we can't calculate is probably because we haven't discovered the constant/formula yet.
Math and physics. (Almost) everything can be calculated, and the stuff we can't calculate is probably because we haven't discovered the constant/formula yet.
All text has already been written. Everything you ever read was already cached for easy access, even this comment.
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