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Comment by iamarkadyt | Hacker News Reader

There is actually a different physics phenomena that in my opinion proves that we live in a simulation.

It's called "Wave-particle duality". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality Basically a light wave can behave like a bunch of particles flying in one direction or like a wave. And it has been tested in the famous "double slit" experiment, where the interference image was disappearing on the other side of the barrier with two slits when the light wave was observed up close.

That switching back and forth is caused by something known as "Quantum observer effect". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_(quantum_physics)

All this feels like an optimization, it would be rather expensive for the Universe to calculate locations of all particles at all times, so it just simplifies it with a wave function. Sort of what we do in video games.

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That would be a very stupid optimization. The phenomenon you described makes physics more difficult to simulate, not easier. That is where the whole excitement about quantum computing comes from.

Actually it would make physics easier to simulate in some cases, depending on what you'd like to achieve.

Specifically, if you wanted random outcomes calculated at interaction, waves allow you to describe the potential positions continuously instead of needing to calculate a trillion+ potential positions for single particles.

Why someone would need to calculate outcomes at interaction is a different question entirely, but I would avoid making too specific assumptions about our overlords at this point.

No, quantum phenomena do not make physics easier to simulate in any setting that obeys the already measured laws of physics in our universe. Your example does not really have anything even remotely to do with the wave-particle duality. You are making a significant categorical error: the duality is not that things are both particles and/or waves. "Things" are quantum fields that are more difficult to represent than either of classical counterparts, but they do happen to kinda behave like them (particles or waves) in some parameter limits. The metaphor you are using is simply wrong.

I know you will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're just stating that the world operates on quantum fields. I'm not questioning that. It is just that the fact that our universe harbors intelligent life, and perhaps organization in general, seems to be dependent on the fact that quantum fields behave "particle-like" in interactions.

The fact that the bottom seems to be quantum fields instead of either particles or waves doesn't in any way exclude the possibility that this was a deliberate design choice to compute random outcomes from continuous possibilities at interactions.

Yes, you are right. However, this "design choice" makes things less efficient and more cumbersome to compute, not the other way around. There are easy ways to get random numbers from continuous dynamics that do not involve something as painful as quantum fields. There are also some consistency arguments (contradictions arising in classical theories that do not exist in quantum theories, so maybe it was not even a "choice", but the only way to make a self-consistent simulation). And there is the whole interpreation-of-quantum-mechanics issue: it is a separate can of worms to even claim that measurements of quantum observables produce random outcomes (but that question is too philosophical for me).

The simulation 'hypothesis' is pseudo-science gobbledygook by any measure. There is no way, even in principle, to tell if we are in a simulation, unless the runners of the simulation decide to tell us.

In fact, the simulation idea is exactly transcendent religion coated in scientistic terms. The simulation is like Hindu Maya, where the real world is Brahman, the ultimate truth. Or Buddhist nirvana. Or even Abrahamic notions of the earthly world vs the Kingdom of God.

> There is no way, even in principle, to tell if we are in a simulation, unless the runners of the simulation decide to tell us.

Some people have different ideas.

https://www.washington.edu/news/2012/12/10/do-we-live-in-a-c...

That discussion makes the baseless assumption that the simulating world must resemble the laws of physics of our simulated world. Under such constraints the theory could be testable, but the idea behind it will always be able to retreat to other constraints on the simulating world.

Similarly, if we assume that God must have certain properties, than we can make falsifiable predicitons. For example, if God is as strong as a human, we can prove that God couldn't have created the Earth. Does that tell you anything interesting about religion?

Does it prove it, though, or just suggest it? I don't actually disagree with the suggestion but I don't think it's proof either.

There haven’t been successful attempts to design an experiment that could prove or disprove this. It would (interestingly) require that one was able to step outside of our 4D-space-time box (which humans probably can’t do).

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