Not sure I buy this, but it's an interesting way to make the calculation:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/
Not sure I buy this, but it's an interesting way to make the calculation:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/
11 comments:
I remember this Spacedaily article, years ago - https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Were_not_living_in_a_simulation_scientists_confirm_999.html
I thought the issue was settled. And, people are still trying to either prove/disprove it. This almost sounds like a religion!
I think there are far too many unknowns to make any better a prediction than "it may be possible."
The simulation idea sounds like an argument for a god . . .
Well, the difference is that the "god" of our world would be all powerful WITHIN our world, but outside of it he might be no more powerful or special than your average computer game programmer. If you've ever played MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft, administrators sometimes hop into games for various reasons. They're invincible and capable of doing virtually anything. So the precedent exists.
That's like the god exists argument . . . because human's design things; therefore, a god must have created us.
- My main thoughts on this, actually, is the simulation argument is suggesting that each physical process has a mathematial equation cranking away each infinitesimal physical process.
Physical processes are not being controlled by some mathematical equations. Zero dimensional points, and a linear row of zero dimensional points are not laying around on the ground. We didn't discover the number 2 by stumbling upon "2" laying around on the ground.
Well, it’s not a “must have happened“ scenario, only one that is interesting to think about. I wouldn’t even put the odds at 50-50, but I find the topic intriguing.
I don’t think we can come to any sort of conclusion about what any virtual world would be like. For all you can know, YOU are the only artificial intelligence who exists, and the rest of us are just supportive artificial intelligences that lack sentience. The whole universe need not be simulated, not even the vast majority of the Earth, just the areas where you live. And any time you might find evidence that you do not live in the “real“ world, the simulation could be paused or even rolled back to fix any evidence so you are none the wiser. That would make the simulated world hypothesis impossible to falsify, and thus not scientific. But still entertaining.
Two things I can add here are 1) the whole glitches thing, and 2) the holographic universe.
If the simulation hypothesis is correct, there should be glitches. But, I don't think glitches happen. The only way for the universe to work is to be consistent; glitches are not possible; the simulation hypothesis is disproven right there. You can't have science with an inconsistent world.
There is this holographic universe idea. There was a book at the bookstore which I always wanted to read, but never did. But, I have read other stuff which points towards the holographic universe - loop quantum gravity, and really Black holes. The black hole's surface is defined by it's growing entropy. I almost need to review this. But, the suggestion would be, generalizing to the universe as a whole, is that the universe is a big black hole. The bigger the black hole, the less tidal forces one feels. And so, if the black hole codes up the information, stores it on it's surface, holographic like, and the universe is a big black hole, then, we're a kind of hologram. But, this doesn't mean there's some A.I. controlling this, or even some kind of natural intelligence.
If the technology is advanced enough that the A.I. is both sentient and unaware that it is living in a simulated universe, it's conceivable that it could be programmed to be incapable of perceiving any glitches. And if not, any time an A.I. noticed a glitch, the simulation could be halted, the last previous save altered to either fix the glitch or arrange for circumstances to change so that the A.I. never notices the glitch, and the simulation continued from there.
Yes, I'm familiar with the holographic universe principle--that we are holographic projections of a 2D image on the surface of a black hole. I haven't read about it to any great detail, though, although I understand it could very well be a completely natural phenomenon.
Hello again Derek,
Correcting glitches is like adding Ptolemaic epicycles to correct for each separate detail. The pre-Renaissance, and maybe some Renaissance era science and technology people would make their clocks based on these Ptolemaic epicycles. I like the one shown by Jacob Bronowski here - episode 6 - the Starry Messenger - http://www.infocobuild.com/books-and-films/science/TheAscentOfMan/episode-06.html around 7:00 minutes, he shows a clockwork built by some student from Padua
I also found this bible quote which shows the god and holy ghost idea is Ptolemaic epicyle like conceptuion.
1 Corinthians 15:41 - "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory."
I thought I'd remark one area of Jacob Bronowski's episode 6 here - that of his idea of what happened to the Easter Islaanders. He suggests they could not get off because they didn't have a map of the stars. Maybe - maybe not. But, I have seen that Archaeologists have noted strikingly similar architecture between the Easter Island and some of the ruins on South America.
I guess they are saying the mainland ruins are Incan - these megalithic structures - https://www.pinterest.com/pin/559572322428159844/ They found similar style architecture on Easter Island.
It appears that Easter Island was place where they put their temples so that others couldn't touch or destroy them.
Let me try to state the correspondence between simulation theory and Ptolemaic epicycles better.
Glitches would correspond to problems that each epicycle tries to cover up, and each simulation fix corresponds to an epicycle.
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