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Comment by bottlepalm | Hacker News Reader

I don’t want to think reality is a simulation, but wouldn’t our everyday experience being generated by a neural network be far far simpler to achieve than a universe of infinite minuscule atoms all interacting.. like ozcam’s razor is pointing towards our lives being a realistic dream.

Like in 10 years you could plug this tech into high end VR and get a prompted reality dynamically generated that would be indistinguishable from our own.

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That what we're seeing is really reality is the simpler explanation. Because the alternative is that what we see is a simulation ... inside another reality that has full complexity. Which increases the overall complexity. Thus, Occam's Razor says what we see is likely real and not a simulation.

The ‘outside’ reality only needs to be the size of a data center, not the entire universe. And maybe the outside reality only needs to be a trained 100gb model. A much simpler outside reality than we have now. You don’t even need to sim 8 billion people, just 1, you.

Occans razor in this case applies to the complexity giving rise to a situation here though, not the complexity of a described system.

Conventional physics giving birth to our universe is currently the model with the fewest assumptions.

What would have to take place to give rise to a universe the size of a data center, running an AI model of a human? It feels like we have to bake in assumptions of stable physics, a rise of a stable system for that data center, and some path towards creating it and modelling a human.

That said, if we believe we're capable of running billions of believable simulations, then we're more likely to be in such a simulation than ground reality. But a datacenter pocket dimension bakes in a lot of assumptions that make it less likely than our own universe.

The outside universe doesn’t require our complex particles or physics - all that is overkill to run a neural net. Also think of all the data we can store in a fingernail, stable diffusion is like 4gb, what could a 4tb model produce?

You only need a universe the size of a data center with nothing in it but a bit of vacuum fluctuation that causes particles to appear sometimes. Then just wait.

Check out the original simulation argument paper[0]. The issue is, if we think we are heading to a world in which we can do simulations, it becomes increasingly likely that we are in one of those (presumably very many) worlds, rather than in the one world that existed before the advent of such simulations.

[0] https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf

Sounds good because it seems like it explains what our reality is, but it really doesn't. It just pushes the fundamental problem up X simulations into the supposed "real reality". It also assumes that simply simulating a universe would generate consciouss beings which nobody knows the answer to, but my guess is that it would not.

It does push the problem up, but it does let us factor out a lot of complex particle physics which are not needed to run the simulation.

Remember in this case the simulation is not running a model of physical reality - it’s only running a neural net that is fed into your senses.

In that case there are no ‘atoms’ it’s just a concept fed into your mind. Just like in dream it’s hard to question reality, you just go along with it.

These particle physics are still needed. We generally assume the dream you have at night does not take place within a whole universe, yet it is still governt by some rules - for example you may experience gravity within your dream and understand that to move around when actually there isn't any gravity but it seems like it is.

It's equally important to understand and study the rules of this waking dream you are having while reading, not because there are actually atoms out there but because it behaves like there are. You can do physics without metaphysics, altough the two usually get entangled somewhat.

Once I heard or realized (don't remember which) that simulation theory is just deism for techies, I stopped entertaining these ideas.

Exactly. The simulation theory proponents almost always seem to presume the existence of some sort of being that deliberately created the simulation. What if the simulation is a complete accident that has arisen from the complex interaction of brainless bacteria competing for scarce resources on the surface of a big rock? An accidental simulation emerging from randomly initialized 'cellular automata' on one rock in a host universe containing trillions of such rocks.

The usual presumption of the simulation being a deliberate construction of a conscious being makes the whole thing seem like nu-religion for people who reject supernatural things. With the presumption of a being deliberately creating the situation, you pull in these notions: We're special, we exist on purpose, we are probably being examined and judged. This reeks of religion.

Because even if our reality came from that rock bacteria, we're on the cusp of creating simulations within and statistically beings may still expect to be in a deliberate simulation, if we think we'd eventually simulate more beings than exist.

The rules of the presumed host universe are unknown, but which do you guess is more common in ours? trillions upon trillions of rocks, may of them probably covered in organic goo interacting with itself, or intellectually sophisticated computer scientists deliberately designing simulations? I think it's got to be the goo.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.01540

The neural net itself needs something to run in (some universe). If the argument is that it needs a smaller or simpler universe than ours: first of all it is simulating our universe so all complexity of ours is included anyway, but also, maybe a neural net in a big chaotic universe is more likely than a tiny universe designed to perfectly fit one neural net

Neural nets as an abstract concept don’t necessarily need to be built with atoms, just the substance of the external universe which may be far simpler.

I also didn't imply this neural network's universe needs atoms, but it needs to run the computation somehow, the computation itself is the complexity, no matter with what physics or other manifestation it shows up

And if it is simulating our universe's atoms, then that part of it basically is our atoms. But is a neural net doing that really simpler than the atoms just running with a more direct mathematical model?

You don’t need atoms, just a universe with the minimal blocks to build a turning machine. Like building a computer in Minecraft they could conceivably run these neural nets without any sense of ‘atoms’. The point is the outside universe could have extremely simple design.

If you're assuming each atom is independent of other atoms then yes. But if you believe the universe is deterministic and atoms are just following the laws of physics then you can think of the universe as nothing more than a computer with electrons instead of atoms just floating around.

It’d be simpler to say there are no atoms, just a neural net fed into your senses making you think that there are atoms.

The neural net itself is built on a much simpler substrate in an external universe.

And what exactly are your senses and your brain made out of?

In the sim theory, the external neural net tells us our brain is made of atoms.. you could theoretically feed your senses a Minecraft reality and you'd think your head is full of interacting blocks - which is still capable of performing the same NN functions as a wet brain... So I don't know, the brain could be made out of anything that fits the requirements of running the computation.

That's assuming there even really is one - senses can be hijacked, just like in dreams, so we may only think we have a brain - so strange.

Why then program the brain to try to understand that it's in a simulation when the goal was to create a realistic simulation in the first place? That'd be a rookie mistake on part of the simulation developers.

Thought of the exact same thing, this seems plausible.

Ever wonder why you weren't born a medieval peasant?

Well, from the outside reality's perspective, it's helpful for people to spend the first few decades of their lives in an early 21st century simulation, just so they can gradually acclimate themselves to all this technology.

/folly

That thought has crossed a lot of peoples minds especially after the Matrix.

Yeah, my grandfather once said that he lived in the most exciting possible time, having been born before the first automobile, and having lived to see a man on the moon.

But even so, this era feels like it could be a singular phase shift. Maybe.

ozcam’s razor is a human made concept, the universe doesn't obey human laws, it's the opposite

> Like in 10 years you could plug this tech into high end VR and get a prompted reality dynamically generated that would be indistinguishable from our own.

They said that 10 years ago about VR and it still is dog shit

It’s funny because the last 10 years has seen the most advancement in VR ever.

The original Oculus was a step change, and current VR is a step change from that.

8k VR is coming and will be close to indistinguishable from reality visually at least.

8k video games are here and very distinguishable from reality

At the end of the day you're still sitting/standing out there with two tv screens 2cm from your eye balls

A better test would be a 8k real life recording running in 8k goggles.

If the screen is wide enough with eye tracking and divested rendering, how could you tell the difference?

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