DescentBB

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 88,00.html

There are some figures which can be found on the 'net which place our chances of being a simulation as high as 40%.

I consider it highly possible we're simulated, and further, consider this possible simulator to be capable of allowing us to create a further level of simulation. (Anyone seen "The 13th Floor"? Good movie)

The article wrote:However, some academics pour cold water on the notion of a machine-created universe. Seth Lloyd, professor of quantum mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said such a computer would have to be unimaginably large.

I say he's got a pretty small imagination!

In fact, the simulation might have only JUST been switched on. Your entire existence up until now could have been nothing except creating the memories you have.

There're several interesting things about this theory, which raise serious questions:

1) What does it mean if we ARE simulated?

I argue that it doesn't matter, provided there's no proof of it, because unless we can interact with it, or control it, there's no difference to this universe being real.

I've thought about the development of a cirtual universe too. You'd start with a "Big Bang" and a set of boundary conditions, and let the system evolve. The outcome will be a direct result of your initial conditions and the laws of the system. Much like our own universe in fact...

Or, you could start out with a basic history and a single continent on which smart animals are let loose. Your system requirements are low, because the LOD for this world is low. Nobody's using microscopes, or telescopes, so you only have to render the surface, and stars can simply be bright white points in the background...

As your system (and its inhabitants evolve) you have to pour in massive amounts of processing power to render things down to the subatomic level. But of course, if no one's looking, you don't have to render anything at all! So, you can probably avoid painting 99.99999999999999999% of the universe.

Of course, for me, this presents something of a problem. I am utterly non-religious, and yet it is impossible to discount the existence of "creator(s)". HEH!

Whatever the truth, it's possible to do interesting mental experiments about the topic.

Why render anything? Just tell someones brain what you want them to see, let their brain draw it for you. Try to define what vision is, you see light, but it is transmitted to your brain as signals over your optic nerve, your brain learns what things look like by searching for patterns in the signal on your optic nerve.

It might be hard to fake drawing a picture of something as simple as a rock, but it is probably easy to fake a signal to someones brain that says "you see a rock".

-Krom

Mobius wrote:I consider it highly possible we're simulated

I consider it highly possible Mobius is a nut.

Arbitar wrote:I consider it highly possible Mobius is a nut.

Highly possible true, but itâ??s the probability that counts here, and it is definitely probable.

The article starts out by referencing Douglas Adams. Take that as you will.

(Now now Mobius, everything will be better tomorrow. Just take your nice medicine...)

Krom wrote:Why render anything? Just tell someones brain what you want them to see, let their brain draw it for you. Try to define what vision is, you see light, but it is transmitted to your brain as signals over your optic nerve, your brain learns what things look like by searching for patterns in the signal on your optic nerve.

It might be hard to fake drawing a picture of something as simple as a rock, but it is probably easy to fake a signal to someones brain that says "you see a rock".

-Krom

the world's poor schizophrenics would probabaly be result of that FAILED experiment
----

you see a rock

a purple dragon dances the moonwalk on the rock.

abort/retry/fail... ?

Mobius wrote:...the simulation might have only JUST been switched on. Your entire existence up until now could have been nothing except creating the memories you have.

O_O
hey that's a cool theory! (not heard/thought of that one before).

i'd like to add this to this topic: why assume that the simulation would be computer based? perhaps we are a physical but small-scale experiment, that is ment to simulate on a small scale something that will be a larger more encompassing experiment later on.

Mobius wrote:I've thought about the development of a cirtual universe too. You'd start with a "Big Bang" and a set of boundary conditions, and let the system evolve. The outcome will be a direct result of your initial conditions and the laws of the system. Much like our own universe in fact...

That's called determinism, and it is NOT true for our universe. We know for a fact that we can not calculate how a system will evolve, even if we are given absolutely all beginning parameters. It's called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The only thing you can be certain of, is that a degree of uncertainty has a hand in everything!

If we are being simulated, we certainly were not the main subjects our simulators were interested in. The universe is so large we're just an infinitesimal speck in some insignificant part of some insignificant run-of-the-mill galaxy.

I have one VERY interesting implication of being simulated. It means we are governed by a unified physical theory, a theory we've been looking for for the past century. It means that everything in our universe can unvariably be modelled with this theory; even uncertainty (it is the driving factor behind the simulation).
For the last 25 years, scientists have been wondering whether such a theory could even exist. Because if it does, it has us thinking about itself. Now that's a mind-boggler

You DO have to render everything, because two people looking at the same scene have to agree on what they see for internal consistency.

Tricord - no - I'm right sorry. Because you can evolve the universe at speeds which defy belief, so you can run millions of universes, and thus tweak your initial setup conditions until you end up wirth the result you like.

You can't predict that *I* will exist at this time, but you can predict that someone LIKE me will result.

Remember, we're dealing with computer power which is "beyond imagination".

Don't forget, that not all the rules in the universe have to be set right now. We may be setting the rules as we discover them. The creators will have a ecrtain amount of leeway (but not much) as our race discovers the principles of the universe.

Plus, if something goes wrong, you can revert to a backup copy, and run that portion of the simulation again, with different settings...

Your theory about us not being the center of attention is good one - and is my personal belief. There are "gods" but they don't much care about us.

Mobius wrote:You DO have to render everything, because two people looking at the same scene have to agree on what they see for internal consistency.

Person a: "you see a rock" person b: "you see the same rock".
Describe the rock "it is black, volcanic, round, with indentations".

You do not have to render anything; just send the same fake signal to everyone who "sees" the rock.

You canâ??t say you have to render anything. Think about this: try to describe a shape without using another shape as a reference. Or what something tastes like without using another taste as a reference. In the end everything you see, smell, hear, feel or taste is reduced to signals in your brain, signals that are compressed small enough to fit in your brain, signals that could probably be very easily and very accurately faked by a computer.

Mobius wrote:Tricord - no - I'm right sorry. Because you can evolve the universe at speeds which defy belief, so you can run millions of universes, and thus tweak your initial setup conditions until you end up wirth the result you like.

No, I very much insist that *I'm* right on this one. What I tell you is that even if the universe was simulated on a computer or anything else required by this thought, running two simulations with the exact same initial parameters would yield two totally different outcomes. The simulation, even if ran on a deterministic machine, is inherently not deterministic. You can't simulate to look ahead, then return to the beginning and fine-tune. It's always different. There are an infitite points of choice and an infinite number of traversal paths, each with it's own probability.

Tricord wrote:

Mobius wrote:Tricord - no - I'm right sorry. Because you can evolve the universe at speeds which defy belief, so you can run millions of universes, and thus tweak your initial setup conditions until you end up wirth the result you like.

No, I very much insist that *I'm* right on this one. What I tell you is that even if the universe was simulated on a computer or anything else required by this thought, running two simulations with the exact same initial parameters would yield two totally different outcomes. The simulation, even if ran on a deterministic machine, is inherently not deterministic. You can't simulate to look ahead, then return to the beginning and fine-tune. It's always different. There are an infitite points of choice and an infinite number of traversal paths, each with it's own probability.

Agreed. Its like predicting the path a drop of water would take on your hand. It may go one way, but the next drop could go a completely different path if it hit the exact same spot.

MD-2389 wrote:Agreed. Its like predicting the path a drop of water would take on your hand. It may go one way, but the next drop could go a completely different path if it hit the exact same spot.

Although that is a flawed and corny Spielberg/Malcolm/JurassicPark view of the problem, I'll just leave it up for debate

I visualize the stfu mobi picture. Does anyone else see the same thing in their head? If someone posted it that would help

HMMMM. Are we talking math, or philosophy here?

Can we agree that the boundary conditions of the universe will mean that ALL simulations eventually result in intelligent beings of some description? I mean, we are creating "anthropic-type" universes - yeah?

After all, in the "time" available, evolution should produce intelligence in just about every instance.

The only difference might be where they live, what they look like and how long it takes for them to develop their own simulation-inside-a-simulation.

In fact, it might be a great game, called "The Sims" where gods compete against each other by tweaking initial conditions, and allowing for small "bumps" along the way..... which simulation develops their own simulation first...

Tricord wrote:

MD-2389 wrote:Agreed. Its like predicting the path a drop of water would take on your hand. It may go one way, but the next drop could go a completely different path if it hit the exact same spot.

Although that is a flawed and corny Spielberg/Malcolm/JurassicPark view of the problem, I'll just leave it up for debate

Well, what was flawed in the movie was the dude using his hand do demonstrate it in a moving vehicle.

Tyranny:



better?

Yea, time for the STFU Mobi pic

Yeah, that works

I don't suppose anyone here has read Tad Williams's "Otherland" series?

I think it's possible, and hell, it's even probable. But do I care? No.

If real life is like it is in The Matrix, I'll stay in my virtual world.

Tricord's reference to the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle is correct. Our universe is governed by chance.

Look at a window, you can see through it but you can also see a reflection of yourself in it. Lets say 85% of the light goes through the window, while 15% bounces back into your eye. Every photon hitting that window is identical, so why would some of them be reflected back and not all (or none)? The answer is they all have a certain possibility of either passing through or being reflected: every photon has an 85% chance of passing through and a 15% chance of being reflected. This means you cannot track what every one of them will do. Can the computer predict which individual photons will reflect?

You can also couple that with some quantum anomalies regarding particles not being in a fixed position. Would this system know where these particles are? Are they here? Are they there? Where will they be?

Heisenberg also conjures energy out of nothing in some cases, which the computer possibly cannot account for. Ortho-positronium is a simple atomic system made up of an electron and a positron which are spinning around each other. Both of these particles would desperately like to become 1 photon, however after a very short amount of time they conjure up 3.

I'd like to see how a computer system would simulate things like these if we discovered them, and most of all how it predict if it would happen.

Maybe I just made no sense?

Defender wrote:I think it's possible, and hell, it's even probable. But do I care? No.

If real life is like it is in The Matrix, I'll stay in my virtual world.

Good noodles!


RC

bowls of snot forevar!