Are we living in an advanced simulation?

[AFMKelvin]

True lol



That's a good point. "God made us in his image" as it were.

The problem with these laws is we're limited by our (?) tools. We see fractals in nature, but how far down do they actually go?

Max Plank said there is a unit of measurement that's so small, that anything after that is insignificant and doesn't have any effect on the physical world.

So a lot of what we know is false incomplete.

In the center of a black hole for example, all of our theories fail.

The paper I mentioned earlier. (Forgot to link it: Quantized gravitational responses, the sign problem, and quantum complexity)

Says just that. If these quantum properties are infinitely complex, then a simulation is hard to justify.

Then there are people who believe we can explain the entirety of existence in a 1 inch equation. (The string theory folks).

Then all you have to do is run a simple algorithm, and you could play out a local solar system on your phone.



I was reading some woo-woo pseudoscience a while back, that I've never been able to let go.

That we're all interconnected somehow through a higher dimension. Which we can access, and some people do it accidentally. Though there's no known reproducible experiment we can conduct.

This "clairvoyant" comes to mind: Edgar Cayce - Wikipedia

Apparently, absorbing knowledge from ancestors and predicting the future.

Now this is where it gets weird, and ties in with the whole simulation thing.

Real science hypothesizes 11 dimensions.

"Time" is also something that we experience because we're stuck within 4 dimensions, with no access to the others.

Meaning, all of time has already played out. So a "glitch" in the simulation could allow someone to gain info from a snapshot in the future.

Kind of far-fetched. Until...

Imagine you knew the exact position of every atom in the solar system. Could you speed up "time" and predict every event and movement to the smallest of detail.

We already do it with weather patterns. We pick a few data points gathered from instruments, and can get a good idea of what's going to happen within the next 10 days.

Then of course, this begs the question of free will, which is a whole different rabbit hole.

Our knowledge is incomplete because at the present we are focused on the physical tangible gross material nature of reality. We call it science. It's not our tools that we are limited on but with our thoughts.

I don't agree with Max Plank about the igsinificance of a unit of measurement so small that it has no effect on the physical.

In fact I think the opposite is true.

There's is a subtle mind realm. Than there's the gross physical material realm and even that is just energy in the form of atoms.

But to create in the physical we have to start in the mind realm which is intangible.

Society has mastered one level of the subtle mind realm called mathematics. Without it we wouldn't have all the technological advances we have today. Mathematics is like the nexus between the mind realm and the physical realm.

 

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[ChrisR]

Vox is a joke.

 

[ApparentHorizon]

Our knowledge is incomplete because at the present we are focused on the physical tangible gross material nature of reality. We call it science. It's not our tools that we are limited on but with our thoughts.

I don't agree with Max Plank about the igsinificance of a unit of measurement so small that it has no effect on the physical.

In fact I think the opposite is true.

There's is a subtle mind realm. Than there's the gross physical material realm and even that is just energy in the form of atoms.

But to create in the physical we have to start in the mind realm which is intangible.

Society has mastered one level of the subtle mind realm called mathematics. Without it we wouldn't have all the technological advances we have today. Mathematics is like the nexus between the mind realm and the physical realm.

I don't know if I'm reading this correctly, but are you assuming Plank is attributing his length theory to a mind realm? Seems to be material imo.

As I mentioned earlier, if you have infinite complexity, a simulation may not be plausible.

Check out Claude Shannon. "The father of the information age."

He said, everything is information.

If you take the universe and break it down to its most basic parts, you can reconstruct it, in its entirety with 1s and 0s

Information encompasses all material, energy, matter, etc. theories, and bridges the gap with the mind realm, as you put it.

Therefore, you can have information without matter, but not vice-versa.

 

[SteveO]

Can you elaborate on this more. Where is the conflict between energies and beliefs?

No conflict. What we see as truths are from what physical observations and society teaches us. They are not "wrong". But they are not truths. There is much more than meets the eye. Energies are truths. They will be realized through us. We don't always know how to direct them. They can be fully directed by choice though.

 

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[AFMKelvin]

I don't know if I'm reading this correctly, but are you assuming Plank is attributing his length theory to a mind realm? Seems to be material imo.

As I mentioned earlier, if you have infinite complexity, a simulation may not be plausible.

Check out Claude Shannon. "The father of the information age."

He said, everything is information.

If you take the universe and break it down to its most basic parts, you can reconstruct it, in its entirety with 1s and 0s

Information encompasses all material, energy, matter, etc. theories, and bridges the gap with the mind realm, as you put it.

Therefore, you can have information without matter, but not vice-versa.

Even the mind realm is material but you go on a spectrum from subtle material to gross material. Sorry if it's confusing but its hard to explain. I've been reading way too much Vedanta philosophy and there's so many aspects of it that rely on one another to come to a conclusion.

Claude Shannon may just be right.

 

[AFMKelvin]

No conflict. What we see as truths are from what physical observations and society teaches us. They are not "wrong". But they are not truths. There is much more than meets the eye. Energies are truths. They will be realized through us. We don't always know how to direct them. They can be fully directed by choice though.

I agree with you.

 

[socaldude]

It's pretty amazing that even ancient philosophers like plato talked about this.

He called it the forms.

He was very poetic and difficult to understand.

He basically said that us and all physical things are mirrored and represented by "higher truths" or "representations" in another dimension.

So even when we die. Although obviously we don't exist anymore. Our higher essence still and always exists in a higher form.

Just saying what plato would say.

 

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[Actual Wizard]

But that being said, there are some prominent physicists that say that notion might not be too far fetched.

We are not living a simulation. Debunked decades ago (in internet years.)

Physicists find we’re not living in a computer simulation | Cosmos

I admit that when somebody tried to tell me that quantum computing has done more computations than exist in the entire universe, my eyes did roll back into my head a little harder than when I heard Musk mention the simulation theory.

PS: Quantum computing is a scam. There's no practical purpose for it what-so-ever.

Fact: No useful computation has been done on a quantum computer that a traditional computer cannot do at the same speed, if not faster.

A quantum computer is effectively an extremely expensive drinking bird.

 

[csalvato]

We are not living a simulation. Debunked decades ago (in internet years.)

Physicists find we’re not living in a computer simulation | Cosmos

Did you read the article you posted? This is a direct quote from that article:

There is a caveat to this conclusion: if our universe is a simulation, there is no reason that the laws of physics should apply outside it. In the words of Zohar Ringel, the lead author of the paper, “Who knows what are the computing capabilities of whatever simulates us?”

This conclusion is stating that our simulator, should one exist, is confined to the same laws of physics to which we are confined. That's nonsensical.

 

[Actual Wizard]

This conclusion is stating that our simulator, should one exist, is confined to the same laws of physics to which we are confined. That's nonsensical.

Hey, I've got some shares in a quantum computer company that you might be interested in buying. Here is a formula to determine how much investor money is needed to get it to work. Since a few physicists told me that it only works at absolute zero, we'll define that number as A; the following formula can be derived to determine how much investor money is required.

Investor_Money_Required_For_Quantum_Computing_To_Work = ( Investor_Money - My_Salary - Cost_To_Build_Quantum_Computer ) / A

How many shares would you like to purchase for 100$ each?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqN_2jDVbOU

 

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[csalvato]

Hey, I've got some shares in a quantum computer company that you might be interested in buying. Here is a formula to determine how much investor money is needed to get it to work. Since a few physicists told me that it only works at absolute zero, we'll define that number as A; the following formula can be derived to determine how much investor money is required.

Investor_Money_Required_For_Quantum_Computing_To_Work = ( Investor_Money - My_Salary - Cost_To_Build_Quantum_Computer ) / A

How many shares would you like to purchase for 100$ each?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqN_2jDVbOU

Who said anything about quantum computing?

 

[PedroG]

No one is asking "why". Why would higher beings run a simulation. What is the purpose of spending so much energy running simulations?

To test and observe things that would otherwise take a very, very long time. Imagine being able to test and observe the effects that a certain food preservative would have on a population after consuming it for 40 years, and being able to get the answer within minutes.

Or being able to run social experiments that last 200 years, but in the real world, would complete within hours.

 

[Actual Wizard]

Who said anything about quantum computing?

/blank stare

That's definately not what I was trying get at there...

 

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[PedroG]

I read the books "Evidence of the Afterlife", and "God and the Afterlife" (Jeffrey Long, Paul Perry) recently and it got me thinking about the simulation theory.

Those books talk about real experiences from people that were near death and what they experienced. There was a central theme that this world may be just a place where our real selves (our souls) come to, to experience new things and learn.

It got me thinking that the simulation theory can be applied to these experiences. The way I interpreted what these people were saying, it's like this world IS a simulation, but instead of it being run by other beings, we are actually running it ourselves. Sort of like a game we enter ourselves into, to experience things we wouldn't be able to experience in our "real" world.

 

[loop101]

Alan Watts nailed it:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckiNNgfMKcQ

 

[Actual Wizard]

I read the books "Evidence of the Afterlife", and "God and the Afterlife" (Jeffrey Long, Paul Perry) recently and it got me thinking about the simulation theory.

Those books talk about real experiences from people that were near death and what they experienced. There was a central theme that this world may be just a place where our real selves (our souls) come to, to experience new things and learn.

It got me thinking that the simulation theory can be applied to these experiences. The way I interpreted what these people were saying, it's like this world IS a simulation, but instead of it being run by other beings, we are actually running it ourselves. Sort of like a game we enter ourselves into, to experience things we wouldn't be able to experience in our "real" world.

The human brain dumps a lot of weird chemicals, including DMT (Google it) in an attempt to survive.

Humans also have a tendency to tell fabricated stories about reality, especially in cases where they are near death.

 

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[socaldude]

It got me thinking that the simulation theory can be applied to these experiences

I think ultimately all of this begs the question; what happens when you die?

Cause I mean the moment you are born, death is something we will all experience.

I know this kind of sounds wishy washy and hocus pocus BS but I seriously believe that when someone dies one continuous to have consciousness of eternal essences but no memory or emotions of what we experienced while our body was alive.

Almost as if our body was nothing other than an actor in a movie or something.

But I do tend to alternate between not believing these kinds of things. I always keep an open mind. It's always good to view things from all possible perspectives and not rule anything out.

 

[ApparentHorizon]

The way I interpreted what these people were saying, it's like this world IS a simulation, but instead of it being run by other beings, we are actually running it ourselves. Sort of like a game we enter ourselves into, to experience things we wouldn't be able to experience in our "real" world.

2nd time this has been brought up and I'm having a hard time conceptualizing it, from a purely physical sense.

Let's say we do live in the real world.

There is in fact a strong argument, when you pose the question, why is there something rather than nothing?

If we live in a "Zero Energy Universe," which is a prevailing hypothesis, that means for every particle there is an anti-particle that cancel each other out. Somewhere though, some energy field got a little too excited (the big bang) and threw those 2 apart.

If you wait long enough, however, they'll all find each other. I mean LONG.

Knowing this, we took the steps to isolate the matter (US and everything we can touch), and created our own world. At that point, you would have the capabilities to manipulate atoms themselves. Think turning a lead atom into a gold atom.

Would that make it a simulation we created from ourselves?

Sort of like, if a robot gets blown up, and its pieces fly everywhere. Some parts are still functioning, so what did not disintegrate upon impact, can be patched together to put together something resembling...a Frankenstein version of the original.

(Also random bit of sci-fy. I think black holes are just elaborate Dyson-Spheres, and the question of whether we are alone in the universe is so over our heads. We're just too dumb to see it staring us in the face, because we're a type 0 civilization on the "Kardashev Scale." We get our energy from dead plants in the earth. A conventional Dyson Sphere surrounds a sun and collects its energy. But we know a sun can only output so much energy, before it goes poof. Small amount compared to a black hole. I mean can you even run a quantum computer to simulate the universe from a sun? I think not! So what do you do? You invert the sphere, and absorb LITERALLY EVERYTHING. matter and energy. After all, matter = energy. There are a million reasons why this is wrong, but still fun to speculate)

 

[loop101]

what happens when you die

Religions give you an answer to that question, while science is befuddled by it, and spirituality questions the question itself.

 

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[socaldude]

Would that make it a simulation we created from ourselves?

I think a question to ask is how is it possible that humans are even capable of understanding the universe in the first place?

If we are a product of evolution doesn't that mean that theres intelligence intrinsic to nature? So now that us understanding things is the same thing as nature understanding things. Almost like a mirror.

So it's almost like saying yes we created the simulation cause nature did as well.

 

[lowtek]

2nd time this has been brought up and I'm having a hard time conceptualizing it, from a purely physical sense.

Let's say we do live in the real world.

There is in fact a strong argument, when you pose the question, why is there something rather than nothing?

If we live in a "Zero Energy Universe," which is a prevailing hypothesis, that means for every particle there is an anti-particle that cancel each other out. Somewhere though, some energy field got a little too excited (the big bang) and threw those 2 apart.

If you wait long enough, however, they'll all find each other. I mean LONG.

Knowing this, we took the steps to isolate the matter (US and everything we can touch), and created our own world. At that point, you would have the capabilities to manipulate atoms themselves. Think turning a lead atom into a gold atom.

Would that make it a simulation we created from ourselves?

Sort of like, if a robot gets blown up, and its pieces fly everywhere. Some parts are still functioning, so what did not disintegrate upon impact, can be patched together to put together something resembling...a Frankenstein version of the original.

(Also random bit of sci-fy. I think black holes are just elaborate Dyson-Spheres, and the question of whether we are alone in the universe is so over our heads. We're just too dumb to see it staring us in the face, because we're a type 0 civilization on the "Kardashev Scale." We get our energy from dead plants in the earth. A conventional Dyson Sphere surrounds a sun and collects its energy. But we know a sun can only output so much energy, before it goes poof. Small amount compared to a black hole. I mean can you even run a quantum computer to simulate the universe from a sun? I think not! So what do you do? You invert the sphere, and absorb LITERALLY EVERYTHING. matter and energy. After all, matter = energy. There are a million reasons why this is wrong, but still fun to speculate)

I think you're conflating a few things..

For every type of particle there exists a corresponding anti particle. It is not the case that for every particle of matter in the universe there exists an anti-particle. In fact, we live in a universe that is overwhelmingly comprised of only one type.

The matter / anti-matter asymmetry is a known problem, and is indeed a prevailing mystery in the laws of physics. There is no widely accepted explanation yet as to why one type is dominant and the other seemingly absent.

The big bang didn't throw the matter and anti-matter apart. It's not literally an explosion. It's the singular (in time) point at which the known universe came into being. All matter "condensed" out of the energy produced in the big bang, and at some point some unknown laws of physics conspired to make it so that we live in a universe comprised almost solely of matter.

 

[ApparentHorizon]

I think a question to ask is how is it possible that humans are even capable of understanding the universe in the first place?

If we are a product of evolution doesn't that mean that theres intelligence intrinsic to nature? So now that us understanding things is the same thing as nature understanding things. Almost like a mirror.

So it's almost like saying yes we created the simulation cause nature did as well.

Basically yes.

We are the way the universe understands itself.

If you compare the kind of atoms we are made of, to the rest of the universe, we match.

I cant find the exact numbers right now, but for example. The % of Carbon we observe in the universe, is the same % that comprises our bodies. (Discounting helium b/c that doesn't want to play nice)

 

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[ApparentHorizon]

I think you're conflating a few things..

For every type of particle there exists a corresponding anti particle. It is not the case that for every particle of matter in the universe there exists an anti-particle. In fact, we live in a universe that is overwhelmingly comprised of only one type.

The matter / anti-matter asymmetry is a known problem, and is indeed a prevailing mystery in the laws of physics. There is no widely accepted explanation yet as to why one type is dominant and the other seemingly absent.

The big bang didn't throw the matter and anti-matter apart. It's not literally an explosion. It's the singular (in time) point at which the known universe came into being. All matter "condensed" out of the energy produced in the big bang, and at some point some unknown laws of physics conspired to make it so that we live in a universe comprised almost solely of matter.

I'm grossly oversimplifying everything.

We can't account of 90%+ of all matter, so moot point.

I have also seen people saying we actually live in a net positive universe, thought I'll admit I haven't dove too deeply there.

Technically an expansion, not explosion.

 

[rogue synthetic]

Honestly I think that most of you reading this, if you're actually interested in the ideas, would do better to read the original philosophers and scientists on this topic instead of speculating about whatever cutting-edge stuff is getting play on Youtube this week.

There are whole lifetimes worth of great books written by great minds addressing all of these topics, and besides forcing you to grapple with the ideas directly it will also help sharpen your thinking, not to mention get you off the damn internet for an hour or two.

It's popular now to bash on philosophy, but then you read the big names in 20th century physics (I don't mean Hawking and Krauss and NDGT) all wrote philosophy or were very interested in it. I'm talking Einstein, Godel, Planck, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Bohm, and J.S. Bell caliber thinkers, and this may surprise, but half of them were religious and the ones that weren't all took most of their own speculations from ancient and early modern writers.

It turns out that even the people at the cutting edge still didn't have the first idea of what was beyond or behind the science, and still used very non-scientific concepts and methods to try and figure it out.

The good news is that you don't have to grapple with the technicalities of quantum theory or information science or complexity science to get to grips with the ideas. Pick up some of Plato's dialogues, a copy of the Parmenides and Heraclitus fragments, maybe throw in Epicurus, Lucretius, and Sextus Empiricus just for fun, and you'll have canvassed most of the major options.

If you want something a little more recent, have a look at Descartes's Meditations (dualism of mind and body and materialism), Berkeley's Dialogues (idealism), Hume's Enquiry into Human Understanding (empiricism) and you'll have most of the bases covered.

It might surprise you is how little is really new in the Simulation Argument once you dig into the history of ideas.

 

[socaldude]

Pick up some of Plato's dialogues, a copy of the Parmenides and Heraclitus fragments, maybe throw in Epicurus, Lucretius, and Sextus Empiricus just for fun, and you'll have canvassed most of the major options.

Don't forget Spinoza. Probably the closest thing in philosophy you can get to the idea of simulated reality.

If sense-perception is not the way to true knowledge and freedom then what is? Does that mean our experiences have the metaphysical status of an illusion? That must mean our mind is connected to higher intelligence because we can't trust the sensory instruments of your body. True knowledge is mirroring ideas as they occur in "nature".

Just sayin what Spinoza would say.

 

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[ChrisV]

I don’t think we’re living in a simulation. Why? Because this game freaking sucks. Any halfway decent programmer could have made a better app than this.

 

[ApparentHorizon]

I don’t think we’re living in a simulation. Why? Because this game freaking sucks. Any halfway decent programmer could have made a better app than this.

At least the graphics are good.

 

[CROJosh]

Maybe, but does it matter? It doesn't change what we do or how we do it, nor how or what we'll do in the future.

Everything goes on forever in every direction, from the universe to quarks- what exists is only limited by the tools we have to observe it, not to mention we have no clue as to why or how things exist within the systems that they do.

Also when you consider that we only get about 80 years to wrap our minds around this shit you start to realize that there isn't one answer and we're probably not supposed to dissect or even comprehend it all.

As it relates to business: I think the fascination with simulations is due to people wanting a cheat code, an advantage or secret knowledge that they're privvy to that others aren't. No harm in seeking but they're barking up the wrong tree for that.

Real cheat code: Human nature hasn't changed. What we love, hate and fear is the same as it's always been and it's not going to change. Understand that we're ALL emotional bags of meat driven by survival who desperately want to be something more and you have the fundamental knowledge for all the money and power you could want.

 

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[rogue synthetic]

Don't forget Spinoza. Probably the closest thing in philosophy you can get to the idea of simulated reality.

If sense-perception is not the way to true knowledge and freedom then what is? Does that mean our experiences have the metaphysical status of an illusion? That must mean our mind is connected to higher intelligence because we can't trust the sensory instruments of your body. True knowledge is mirroring ideas as they occur in "nature".

Berkeley is the better option for an IV-drip of pure unrefined Idealism. Spinoza is harder to nail down on this (he is arguably not affirming either idealism or materialism in the ordinary meaning) and he's not nearly as accessible to a lay reader.

I'm not sure what you mean by "way to true knowledge and freedom". If you mean that you want some belief that could never be proven false no matter what, well, good luck -- we've been looking for that for at least 2500 years (that we know of) and nobody has come close to a good candidate. Anything you say is beyond doubt is a giant bull's eye for the next guy, who is going to say "prove it".

To use a little jargon, you're either facing an infinite regress -- the questioning can go on forever -- or a circularity -- you define one term by another term, and that term by the first term.

But I wonder why you would want this kind of security in your beliefs. You have all kinds of contact with the world, through vision, smell, touch, even the feeling that your body is oriented upright, that there are some things near you, other things you'll have to move to grab or touch, and on.

None of that amounts to things you believe. Most of it is unconscious, until you read the words and directed your attention to the feelings. It's all a mode of experience that has to be there for you to even develop language and ask the question in the first place.

What would it mean for that to be an illusion?

More importantly, why would you begin to question it?

Going even deeper, how could you question it if you didn't already suppose a whole lot of things -- like the ability to form sentences and ask questions?

Think less in terms of the big metaphysical or epistemological questions and start closer to home: what would you have to think about yourself, about human beings, for these worries to become worries?

Read some of the speculation about the mind, especially in pop-culture treatements from cognitive and neuroscientific theorists, and you will be startled at how close it is to the theories of psychology you'll read in Descartes, or Hobbes, or Luther or Calvin for that matter.

Wouldn't it be strange if the best picture we can paint of the mind even with all the shiny tools we have now doesn't look conceptually different from the cutting edges in the 17th century?

Skepticism is a possibility because of what is assumed about how the mind must work and what knowledge could be.

What would it mean if you didn't have to imagine the mind as a disembodied blob that only knows the world through some special point of contact called "knowledge" or "sensation"?

 

[ellepro]

I agree with Musk. Its all atoms and electrons and vibrations. Just like its all pixels in a videogame