Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested
washington.edu
washington.edu
Just because the universe may operate with computer-like regularity and grid-like data structures does not mean "the universe is a computer simulation." At best it means the fundamental laws of physics are "computer-like".
Whether "resembles a computer simulation" equals "is a computer simulation" is a metaphysical/philosophical question.
Finding uncanny resemblance between our own reasoning concepts and the universe is not new - and this uncanny mirroring between abstract mathematical concepts and the laws of physics has been known for quite some time. It's a mystery, not an answer. See: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by Eugene Wigner:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html
They could just hardcode it..
Imagine intelligent life evolved in huge game of life grid (it's possible assuming inteligence is turing-complete). We may look at the strange patterns and never know they are intelligent, never mind communicating with them, or decoding what they're up to from the patterns.
This work attempts to draw out the presence of a simulation by looking for tiny violations of known/expected symmetries, which is always worth doing. We should note, however, that an excellent simulation could exactly cover its tracks, lest the underlying architecture cause unintended artifacts.
From a CS perspective, the simulation's developer might create unit tests that guarantee the preservation of symmetries.
A theorist who develops an experimental test that could prove we do not live in a simulation should be lauded. There are experimentalists (like me) just waiting for such guidance. John Bell's theorem [1] was/is a shining guidestar for physics.
"With finite resources at their disposal, our descendants will likely make use of effective theory methods, as is done today, to simulate every-increasing complexity, by, for instance, using meshes that adapt to the relevant physical length scales, or by using fluid dynamics to determine the behavior of fluids, which are constrained to rigorously reproduce the fundamental laws of nature."
It's possible that if we were simulated, the simulators aren't actually trying to hide the nature of our universe from us. It's also possible even though the simulation started with a 'simple' framework that they could have hidden better if desired, that by becoming a self aware information system we can no longer be switched off / restarted without violating their ethical constraints. So it's possible that the limits a simulation actually are detectable.
Of course as someone said, if the simulators were actively monitoring your thoughts with the intent of stopping you from finding the boundaries then there truly would be nothing you could do.
That sounds like they would be proving a negative, which is impossible to do.
> a proof must demonstrate that a statement is always true
It would seem that, if you can demonstrate a statement is true for a given logic, that is proof. Contradiction and exhaustion (which is a bit more controversial, I think), while less tidy than one might expect, are valid techniques for showing that a statement is always true, and therefore are valid ways to construct a proof.
Note: I encourage any and all maths professors to come and tell me off if I'm way off base.
Is it impossible for me to prove that I'm not wearing red socks?
But they have no reason to believe we are in that type of simulation, they just figured out a way to falsify that type of simulation.
1 down, an infinite number to go!
Certainly interesting ... I'm not sure that we could currently understand a single principle of a system capable of simulating our universe.
What they did find were abstract, mechanical laws of physics.
I'm certainly not trying to argue against pure research in any way.
And don't tell me about "likely", you have no data worth mentioning, in particular about "likely" physics or "likely" motivations of simulators.
See for example Taam Eytzo by R. Pinchas Eliyahu Horowitz of Vilna (18th century philosopher and mystic): http://www.hebrewbooks.org/21931
There are a few papers published on this subject:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01445340.2010.506...
Yes, computation is finite, but that doesn't mean that the authors of the simulation can't use more resources than usual simulating your test of the simulation. Not all parts of the simulation need to run at the same level of detail.
But that's not the only way to run a simulation - you can make the fundamental particles the building pieces and simulate them - they can move anywhere they want, in any direction, they don't live in a grid.
The only thing that matters is their relationship to the particles near them.
Which follows very nicely from relativity which shows that there is no absolute coordinate system, or absolute energy, only relative distances and relative energy differences.
i.e. like the difference between polar coordinates and rectilinear ones.
...I imagine that in a very distant and complex hypothetical future, the only way that super-intelligent beings could reproduce in a way that the offspring would truly be similar enough to their parents, so that they could feel empathy one towards another would be either by: (1) clone and mutate an existing individual (think mind-cloning, like software copying) and mutate, and (2) create "children from scratch" and raise them, for at least a few "eons" in successive simulations of their parents or ancestors pasts (any other alternative, I'd imagine, in a post-singularity world evolving incredibly fast, would result in offspring so different from their parents that it would make empathy and the existence of a shared culture with shared artistic and aesthetic values impossible...)
...maybe we're just "babies" in the first level of a simulated nursery, waiting to complete the stages to "adulthood" in world of unbound, "software like", intelligent beings :)
EDIT+: ...just realized that this could be made up into pseudo-scientific pseudo-theory of reincarnation (which I don't believe in, but I find it interesting) ...if any buddhist or hinduist mystic reads this and takes my idea and does something intersting with it, please give me credit as original author :)
At any level of simulation we know that when we take time, it takes time in the reality that hosts us too. It's nice to know we'll always have that in common.
Seems like a sensible enough proposal to me. (That doesn't mean I think they will succeed).
But it is not like any other drug. It's almost unfair to call it a drug. Under its effects, reality looks radically different. You can see the math and inherent aspects within physical reality. With your eyes closed, the experience is even more profound.
Of course, it's likely just an artificial experience, a chemical delusion. But it an amazingly mystical experience, that can be duplicated over and over. It's unlike any other psychedelic and is the only scientific way I'm aware of that induces a "real" mystical/spiritual experience.
But pain and suffering seems far too real and horrible for any of this to be fake.
As for nonsense, ok I'll retract that, it is an interesting but highly implausible topic that gets a large amount of discussion relative to it's likelihood. It's actually just another way of phrasing "Does God exist?" If there was a computer (God) simulating this universe and controlling it, then it'd require a host universe for itself to exist, and it's complexity has to be greater than what it is simulating. Therefore it is less likely, and not by an insignificant amount.
Those things are largely irrelevant to the question of simulation. There should be no implicit assumption that a simulation must have any sort of "deity" behind it. Nothing with intent, purpose, planning, ethics, etc. It seems much more reasonable to me that such a simulation, if it is in fact the case, 1) arose "naturally", whatever that may mean, and 2) does not care about us. This universe, simulated or otherwise, does not care about humans. Why should we assume the proposed simulation does?
Of course, that provides another answer to the problem of pain- that this is how it was the first time 'round, and they want the simulation to be accurate.
Is that such a strange concept? The prevailing school of thought, if the universe is not a simulation, is that there is no mastermind behind it. Seems natural to me that we would assume the same about any universe simulator.
A simulation means "someone made it". They may not be masterminding details of our lives, or our civilization, or even our solar system if they only happen to care about something completely different from that and incomprehensible to us, but nevertheless calling it a simulation implies that a creator at least exists.
If we detect evidence of what the author of the paper is calling a "simulation" (that is, our universe is being simulated in a 'meta-universe'), then we know only one thing about the meta-universe: It can simulate ours. We don't know that it supports some sort of "life" of it's own, contains anything with "intent", or contains anything like that at all. We do not know that there are meta-men in the meta-universe.
Perhaps there better terminology for such implications than saying a 'meta universe is simulating our universe', but the fact that we are using that terminology in the meantime does not mean it is reasonable to make the assumptions about it that you are making. Just because we call our universe a "simulation" does not mean that there must therefore be meta-men.
(Also I do not understand the point you are trying to make about it being the "natural universe". If some sort of meta-man made a simulation that we live in, instead of the simulation arising through non-deliberate means in the meta-universe, is his meta-universe any less "natural"? Either way the meta-universe is "natural"; whether meta-men exist or not)
In a nutshell what I am saying is that we should not assume intent unless there is evidence for intent. Evidence for 'simulation' itself should not be misconstrued as evidence for intent; it would be evidence for nothing but 'simulation' itself.
Maybe there's not enough resources to completely model everything we see in the sky, so there needs to be some mechanism to throttle exploration.
Though to be honest, I would give better odds that there are dragons on a planet orbiting V12 of NCG 4203 than either of the above existing.
Now as I said, that's the short version, and in such drastically abbreviated form the argument has holes you could drive a humvee through. An alternate explanation is that the creators of the simulation simply don't care about us at all, and we and our problems have nothing to do with its purpose. One might also ask, if the creators do care about us after all, why didn't they just make everyone morally perfect so they wouldn't freely hurt each other? In which case me-with-my-theologian-hat would say "maybe a life of pain is the very process by which morally perfect people are created". But theodicy is a very large field which I cannot adequately summarize in this post, so if you want real answers, just start with that book.
A somewhat scary thought.