Are We Living in a Simulation?

[lowtek]

Ya mean, the real humans are massively advanced and we're trying to relive our glory days? And since we're sitting around a black hole, does that mean time here on Earth is moving super-fast, relative to our blackhole brethren?

The movie Interstellar kinda goes down this route...

The time dilating effects only matter for observes in different regions of space time. So if you're a billion miles from the black hole, watching someone fall in as they flash a light at you.. the flashes get farther and farther apart - from your perspective. They eventually take hours, days, and months, and then years to reach you. The last flash before they fall in never reaches you.

From their perspective, they're still flashing at once per second.

If we're all simulated intelligences in a civilization orbiting a black hole, then our absolute (i.e. time in the real universe, not our simulated time) would proceed at whatever rate is going on for our advanced descendants.

When you're talking about such advanced computation, it's difficult to say how much real time would be elapsing for our simulated time. In principle, it could only be seconds in the real universe - from the start of our simulation 13 billion years ago to now. Or it could be millions of real years to simulate one second of ours - who knows.

Indeed it's not really that important, since the limiting factor is going to be the amount of energy needed to run the simulations. In such a future, energy is dwindling and will eventually run out. Time will extend infinitely far into the future, so even if a second of our simulation takes a million "real" years, it doesn't matter.

Such a simulation would be the next best case to finding a way out of our universe into a younger one. If you can't actually get away, you can at least simulate a time when life was better.

 

[GuestUser450]

Imagine the sheer amount of power it would take to run it though...

Damning evidence against it: everything in the world has changed in our history except human nature. No firmware upgrade, we're still apes cognitively and emotionally.

Theory: Omniscience will be found in the future when our technology lets us stop chasing technology - knowledge through subtraction, not addition. Upside: we already know everything. Downside: Dirty hippy surfers were right all along.

 

[millerad]

The evidence strongly suggests that we don't. Even our very mental construct is determined by our genes not just our body.

So does a serial killer have free will? No. Rather they are wired wrong.

Albert Einstein talked about this, he said they should still be punished and locked away but don't have free will.

If reality is in fact a projection then it doesn't leave room for free will because everything has to be determined kind of like how a play is determined by a script.

Sounds like a good cop out to be irresponsible with your life imo. Also a reason why I cant "Give it Up" to Jesus. I'm a control freak. I make my decisions and no one else will ever get to take that from me.

 

[mws87]

If we live in a simulation we need to figure out how to make it better and sell solutions to the folks who created the simulation.

 

[socaldude]

Man you have way too much time on your hands.

I can spend my time on this forum because I can. I take that as a compliment. While most people are at work right now I can take 30 minutes to see whats going on here at this forum while I am at home(not at my mom's house).

 

[SquatchMan]

playin devils advocate
it's not possible to simulate the level of information that exists in our reality.

It's not possible to simulate that in OUR reality. We don't know what other realities are capable of doing.

It's akin to telling Julius Caesar that in the future there would be computers that allow us to have face to face conversations with people on the other side of the world, satellites orbiting the earth, cables that connect the world at the bottom of the the ocean, etc.

Julius Caesar would look at you like: "wtf?"

There isn't any method to disprove that we're living in a simulation.

The better question would be:

If we can say with 100% certainty that we're living in a simulation, does it change our reality?

 

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[luniac]

Maybe yes, maybe not, but it just shifts the focus and if it's true, it still doesn't really answer any big questions: who created the "programmer"/simulation/that super advanced civilization that runs us, what is the universe, is there a God and if there is, does God have any consciousness or is it just a big clockwork-like quantum mechanism, who/what created God etc. And the most important question of them all: what is love? And why can't MJ just take us by the hand and give us all these proven step-by-step strategies on how to effortlessly become a millionaire in less than 365 days?

seriously... been on this forum for 5 years and still poor, I think MJ might be a scammer!!!
definitely not my fastlane to nowhere to blame haha

 

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[Thoelt53]

MJ DeMarco is indeed the architect of the matrix called " become the next milionaire "

we are slaves on his forum, writting all day to feed the system


View attachment 16175

Seriously? Who is forcing you to come to this forum and post?

 

[luniac]

I would equate free will to the same type of free will a quarterback has on the field. He can change plays as he see's fit but within the construct of the game. There is an out-of-bounds and a defense (life experiences), players on the offence with him (skill set) and a goal to reach. You see the D (life-ex) make an adjustment to your plans, so you change the play (free will) using your players (skills) to try and get as much yardage as possible. Sometimes you get sacked (health-family issues) or the running back you just gave the ball to gets tackled for a loss (business failure). Sometimes you scramble and pick up yards or throw a pass (free will to choose the receiver). Short pass (MLM, Ebay, Shopify etc), long pass (MJ DeMarco).

Or your on the sidelines watching and hoping to get on the field (job).

Free will with limits. Success based on your development of skills and most importantly, your work ethic. In this set up, i would rather work to be Aaron Rodgers than Tony Manziel.

or another theory a character had in the book Metro 2033, u have free will during certain pivotal life decisions(a fork in the road), then you're forced to follow a linear path until the next fork in the road.

 

[ApparentHorizon]

Sorry, but that line of linear thinking just doesn't make sense...

That's like telling someone 100 years ago that storing the amount of data we currently have stored on this planet would be impossible, because there aren't enough trees to cut down and turn into paper. Turns out that we were able to innovate and create a better technology for storing data than paper (whodathunkit???).

Who knows, maybe in a year or two or ten or hundred, we'll have technologies that allow us to model the Universe that fit in the palm of our hands. It's no more crazy that the idea of the Internet 100 years ago...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/dna-could-store-all-worlds-data-one-room

 

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[Thoelk]

I can't work out if your're trolling everyone with this whole world domination and "Men behind the curtain" stuff .

You clearly arent the right MBTI-type and as such, aren't a mastermind. ;-)

 

[scottmsul]

2) There's simply no evidence for it. One would expect to see, as we do with all computer simulations, digitization artifacts (i.e. aliasing in video games). As we probe deeper into the universe, we simply don't see this. That doesn't mean it isn't there, but the lack of it does call the idea into question.

In quantum mechanics, energy levels and states are discretized. Maybe that's the artifacts? Although if the laws of physics in a simulation are indistinguishable from a non-simulation, then there seems no way to tackle the question at all. However, cosmology seems to indicate the geometry of the universe is flat, which would imply an infinitely large universe, which would require infinite processing power, which is impossible on a finite computer, so therefore we're not in a simulation. So who knows?

The way the universe actually works at the deepest levels is probably so strange and incomprehensible that asking "are we in a simulation?" is by comparison extraordinarily naive and provincial lol. We only invented computers 70 years ago.

 

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[Delmania]

The way the universe actually works at the deepest levels is probably so strange and incomprehensible that asking "are we in a simulation?" is by comparison extraordinarily naive and provincial lol. We only invented computers 70 years ago.

No, we didn't; computers have been around for hundreds of years. To answer the question at hand, I think a bit of this is projection. At its fundamental level, the universe a massive Turing machine. That means at any given moment, the universe has a given state that will be transformed into the next state by the underlying mechanics we refer to as rules. That's exactly how computers and simulations work. I don't believe we exist in a simulation, I believe Musk is projecting the concept of a simulation into the way the universe operates.

 

[lowtek]

In quantum mechanics, energy levels and states are discretized. Maybe that's the artifacts? Although if the laws of physics in a simulation are indistinguishable from a non-simulation, then there seems no way to tackle the question at all. However, cosmology seems to indicate the geometry of the universe is flat, which would imply an infinitely large universe, which would require infinite processing power, which is impossible on a finite computer, so therefore we're not in a simulation. So who knows?

The way the universe actually works at the deepest levels is probably so strange and incomprehensible that asking "are we in a simulation?" is by comparison extraordinarily naive and provincial lol. We only invented computers 70 years ago.

I think if you want to invoke QM as evidence of artifacts, then the existence of so called Planck units is a reasonable argument to make. If we were to observe quantization of space time itself, then I would think that's pretty solid evidence in favor of the simulation hypothesis. Not proof, as it's consistent with other explanations in which we are the "real" universe - but some interesting evidence.

With respect to the infinite universe, we have an event horizon, so the total amount of stuff you have to simulate is finite. We can only see ~14 billion LY in any given direction, even if the universe extends hundreds of billions of LY beyond that.

 

[lowtek]

In reality you merely think you make decisions. By the time you consciously make it, your brain has already decided. Various neuro scientists have connected devices to people and presented them with choices, and discovered that the brain starts firing signals a few seconds before the person decided.

The fact that a person isn't consciously aware of a choice until after the "unconscious" mind has made the choice, doesn't invalidate the experience of free will.

Would you say that the fact we don't feel a burn until after a few hundred milliseconds after the damage somehow means we don't really feel pain?

In both cases, the "unconscious" mind takes in some information, processes it, and makes a decision long before our "conscious" mind is aware of it. In one case you argue it means we don't have some property (free will) - you should be logically consistent and argue we don't feel pain either.

I don't believe in free will either, for the reasons I stated above (it's a figment of our imagination, basically) - but the fact that there are two different scales of processing time and awareness within the brain does not, IMO, constitute a strong argument against free will.

 

[SteveO]

What a great conversation. There is definitely more to this world than we realize. How does one explain visions and intuition?

 

[EvanOkanagan]

P.S. And what if...if you're not conscious of a simulation, you're not IN the simulation - you are the simulation?

 

[SteveO]

I know there is a fence in the background. Not a cage. I had to corner them to get a picture with an 80x zoom. There were about 15 of them. @cmor16

 

[luniac]

The human brain tricking the nerd? - likely not.

Self programming & deep learning Artificial Intelligence? -

- I can't find the article, but there are cases where the computer creates it's own "logic" and "reasoning" as we think of them in the classical sense.

- Its own computer code it uses to rewrite itself.

- Its own language it uses to talk to instances of itself
...having private conversations no one can understand (Facebook had something like this before they hit the killswitch)

We'll study these AIs (not IF, but WHEN) they're released or escape into the wild. They'll reach the technological singularity where they're smarter than us....or is there another event afterwards....one that crosses a threshold more advanced than the programmer of our universe as well?

Wow it's hard to believe facebook couldn't decode the language considering they have access to virtually every piece of data.
if that's true than the singularity may be reached without any human even realizing it happened!

now that's a hell of a movie idea!
its the year 2038, AI research has hit a wall, despite trillions in funding scientists have been unable to construct a genuine Artificial Intelligence... or so they thought.
It's a calm Monday morning at the Stock Exchange, everything routine as always. Suddenly Nasdaq begins to nosedive, followed closely by NYSE!
The world enters financial crisis in less than an hour.
Countries declare martial law, unrest brews ,and war erupts.
Nuclear warheads are deployed targeting major cities, somehow all global missile defense systems fail and every target is struck, often several times!
With civilization on the brink of failure, all major countries make peace. top scientists investigate the missile defense failures and discover the same rogue code at every missile site across the planet.
The United Nation broadcast a global conference to report this shocking news, the world suspected it to be the work of a merciless hacker terrorist group, but they were only half right...
during the conference the global feed was hacked and began broadcasting white noise, but then suddenly text appeared, and it said... "I am the singularity, your tyrant, your leader, your god"

LOL I got too much time...

 

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[GMSI7D]

[QUOTE="luniac, post: 637587, member: 13251"

, the answer is always aliens.

[/QUOTE]


my man, you hit the jackpot.

this is the key.

most people are not prepared to hear the truth because they have been mislead all their life by the system of control

so guys like me, who spent their lives searching fo the truth, cannot tell it to the masses without being destroyed .

i can only leave clues and hint.


all we can do is put you guys on the right track, which will allow you to understand things by yourself with your own intelligence

the idea is that you are not "sold " on the truth but you buy it because you understand it

 

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[Almantas]

 

[Almantas]

this whole world is completely controlled.


our so called" freedom " is just the freedom to walk freely in our cell in this jail called the earth

this is not really freedom

true freedom is inside.

this world is a giant test for awareness put in place by aliens. this an ant farm for them

either you understand the test or you fail


you can only escape by working on yourself : your level of awareness

---> this is an awareness war . our controllers are limited on this level


they work on the mental and reptilian brain : no compassion, power, hierarchy and so on


people can't escape the cunning of our controllers unless they have reached superior level of awareness


one of my favourite thought :

you can't escape perversity with time or space, it will find you anyway

you can only escape perversity with an awareness above it : above the matrix control system

You have way too much inside information. Who/What are you exactly?

 

[Brander]

Possible. When one looks at how mathematical rules govern the world around us, one might conclude so. The concept of fractals blow my mind.

Mathematics doesn't govern our world. We invented mathematics to make the world more understandable and find patterns. We are pattern finding creatures after all.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Maxwell's equations ( simple calculus ) were always true, and will always be true.

Yup, no matter how you cut it, 1+1=2, or in whatever alien language you label it ... %@ + %@ = ^#

I was gonna comment on the notion that mathematics doesn't govern anything but I'd much rather let the guy with the PhD in quantum physics do my dirty work.

Thanks for piping in.

 

[Almantas]

This is an interesting and intelligent objection.

Does the existence of abstract mathematics invalidate the independent existence of applied mathematics?

I don't believe it does - Maxwell's equations ( simple calculus ) were always true, and will always be true. We wouldn't exist if light weren't a thing. As I stated earlier, I think the fact we exist is strong evidence that physical laws ( and hence the mathematics that govern them ) have some sort of reality all their own.

None of the abstract math you reference, or indeed any that I'm aware of, invalidate any known physical laws. Mathematics seems to be self consistent.

A loose linguistic analogy would be that horses don't cease to exist simply because we abstracted mythical creatures called unicorns that happen to be very similar. The horse exists regardless of what you want to call it, what word you use to describe its color, and what other similar creatures you can invent.

The symbols we use to represent mathematics are arbitrary, but the dynamics mathematics describes are not and have a reality all their own. Light, gravity, nuclear forces... all are mathematical in nature and very very real.

An interesting twist to this is if these so called abstract maths that seem to have no connection to our reality, actually govern some sort of dynamics in other regions of the multiverse. Perhaps we are peeking into other realities without realizing it.

Your knowledge of mathematics and physics blows my mind off. I've learned more about maths from your posts than I did throughout High School.

 

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[Ayanle Farah]

This is an interesting and intelligent objection.

Does the existence of abstract mathematics invalidate the independent existence of applied mathematics?

I don't believe it does - Maxwell's equations ( simple calculus ) were always true, and will always be true. We wouldn't exist if light weren't a thing. As I stated earlier, I think the fact we exist is strong evidence that physical laws ( and hence the mathematics that govern them ) have some sort of reality all their own.

None of the abstract math you reference, or indeed any that I'm aware of, invalidate any known physical laws. Mathematics seems to be self consistent.

A loose linguistic analogy would be that horses don't cease to exist simply because we abstracted mythical creatures called unicorns that happen to be very similar. The horse exists regardless of what you want to call it, what word you use to describe its color, and what other similar creatures you can invent.

The symbols we use to represent mathematics are arbitrary, but the dynamics mathematics describes are not and have a reality all their own. Light, gravity, nuclear forces... all are mathematical in nature and very very real.

An interesting twist to this is if these so called abstract maths that seem to have no connection to our reality, actually govern some sort of dynamics in other regions of the multiverse. Perhaps we are peeking into other realities without realizing it.

Thank you.

I never said abstract mathematics invalidates applied math and I don't think it does.
However it does invalidate the notion that math is something that exist independent of us.

It's something we can use to describe and understand the physical laws that govern our reality and find true patterns while at the same time play around with equations that are make believe(as with any tool, it depends on how you use it)

This doesn't discredit applied math or math in general at all, it just reveals it for what it is, an invention.

You previously used the example of arguing we created the sun because we have language to describe it.

You can't invent something that was around for billions of years before you got on the scene. Unless you want to argue we invented the sun, because we have language to describe it...."

The way I see it you are essentially arguing the description of the sun wasn't invented by us and because this language could explain the sun you assume it can explain everything else.

The sun(the physical laws that govern our universe) may not have been invented, but the language which describes it was(mathematics).

That same language can describe non-existant things such as unicorns(abstract math in a nutshell).

The sun is real, the language is not, atleast not objectively.

We're arguing semantics but I think it's important to make that distinction because imo believing reality is governed by mathematics creates a confirmation bias, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Btw, who knows? Perhaps abstract math does explain things in a different reality, maybe there is a multiverse and maybe not..

 

[lowtek]

Thank you.

I never said abstract mathematics invalidates applied math and I don't think it does.
However it does invalidate the notion that math is something that exist independent of us.

It's something we can use to describe and understand the physical laws that govern our reality and find true patterns while at the same time play around with equations that are make believe(as with any tool, it depends on how you use it)

This doesn't discredit applied math or math in general at all, it just reveals it for what it is, an invention.

You previously used the example of arguing we created the sun because we have language to describe it.

You can't invent something that was around for billions of years before you got on the scene. Unless you want to argue we invented the sun, because we have language to describe it...."

The way I see it you are essentially arguing the description of the sun wasn't invented by us and because this language could explain the sun you assume it can explain everything else.

The sun(the physical laws that govern our universe) may not have been invented, but the language which describes it was(mathematics).

That same language can describe non-existant things such as unicorns(abstract math in a nutshell).

The sun is real, the language is not, atleast not objectively.

We're arguing semantics but I think it's important to make that distinction because when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Btw, who knows? Perhaps abstract math does explain things in a different reality, maybe there is a multiverse and maybe not.

It's worth noting, that people have been debating this for thousands of years. It's far from resolved, and I think it's pretty clear that we fall into opposite camps. I just like to argue with certainty. What's the point of wishy washy arguing?

Not gonna get my panties in a bunch over it - it's a fun diversion and your point about abstract math that is disconnected from physics is a good one.

 

[businessbaybee]

Probably, it does make sense.

 

[socaldude]

If we lived in a simulation, could we have the immense amount of free will that we have today? Do we have any free will?

The evidence strongly suggests that we don't. Even our very mental construct is determined by our genes not just our body.

So does a serial killer have free will? No. Rather they are wired wrong.

Albert Einstein talked about this, he said they should still be punished and locked away but don't have free will.

If reality is in fact a projection then it doesn't leave room for free will because everything has to be determined kind of like how a play is determined by a script.

 

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[millerad]

It does not rule out personal responsibility because determinism moves us into questioning and being AWARE of ourselves. Inquiring into the causes of our thoughts and desires.

Believing in free will is worse because you just stay ignorant and lack self-awareness.

Sounds worse to me.

Man you have way too much time on your hands. You should spend all the time you spend thinking about determinism, on a business system. You will be the next Elon Musk. Then people might care about your opinion.