Is reality a computer simulation? Does it matter?
aeon.co
aeon.co
If that's so, it's highly unlikely we'll be able to poke any holes in it. Nor is there any reason to believe our memories or any of history is real. Maybe scientists have poked holes in the simulation a million times, and each time, the supreme Code Monkey suspends the simulation, fixes the bug, and rolls back the state to before the hole was poked.
For that matter, it's silly to believe that our puny existence has even been noticed by whoever spun up the entire Universe.
Most of the questions that this premise supposedly solves are mostly based on fallacious reasoning. Why is the universe fine-tuned for us? What are the chances of this specific universe? How likely is it that intelligent life exists on our planet? You may as well ask what are the chances of your particular DNA sequence. Just because your specific genetic code is extremely unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible that you exist.
Ultimately, such an idea only raises more questions. So, say we are in a simulation. Now, how does the "real" world work? Where did it come from? How do we know it isn't a simulation?
If these are the answers that make the most sense to you, you've stumbled down the wrong path, and it's time to take a fresh look at the world.
I suggest you track down and read the Asimov short story "The Last Answer". I think you will enjoy it. It deals with a similar situation to what you describe, although not quite in the context of a universe simulation.
In my opinion it's obvious that some intelligent life form decided it would like to create a simulation where life and other interesting behaviour could emerge.
Well, at least I know that I (and many others) would do that if/when we have the means to do so!
Of course, we could never simulate our universe to the same detail and scale (or even close..) within itself. We would have to create a more modest simulation.
So, they could have a highly logical argument for us being in a simulation, but instead they put the words "ancestor simulation" in it. How human of use, once again, thinking the sun spins around the earth!
> Now, how does the "real" world work? Where did it come from? How do we know it isn't a simulation?
That's very easy to answer. Our parent "world" is most likely also a simulation! And so on and forth... ( https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5389450/1/The_Finale_of_the_Ult... )
Now the real question is.. Who spawned the first simulation? And where the F*CK did they come from.
This wont help our life on the day to day, but why would you say people who think about these subject should take a fresh look at the world? For those who like to think deep, this is the most interesting subject there is.
If I had the capacity to build this kind of computer simulation, I would personally do it in an heartbeat. In fact I'm feel like I'm doing this on some games. I would also consider myself to be the god of that simulation, I'm omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc...
That's why I believe there could be a god, it's possible that he isn't even aware of our existence and he is just currently playing a big game of Universe Sandbox. However I also came to the same conclusion of that article (at least, based on the title, I still haven't read it, it's on my to read list), does it really matter?
PS: Just imagine if the large hadron collider ended up opening the game console.
To claim that the Universe is a simulation means that it would be the result of some computation. Depending on your interpretation, this could mean one of two things: that the Universe does ITSELF compute, or that there is some "computer" which carries out a computation resulting in the Universe. The second is what I think the parent commenter is thinking about. In that case, where does this "computer" exist? It's certainly not in our reality. This would imply that there is some meta-reality that contains the "computer" which computes, and thus creates/contains, our reality.
If this isn't infinitely recursive somehow, then there must be an instance that is not a simulation. This is the uber-reality he speaks of.
It all depends of the definition of gods, like I said, if it's omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc.. then I feel like we can consider it our god which would include the one that made our simulation. That would means that they would respect that definition of gods towards us. In the same way, nothing stop gods from having gods themselves. I don't know too much about gods but don't some Greeks gods had some sort of power over each other? It's all relative in a way.
I'm also not actually believing it's the truth too, I'm just acknowledging the possibilities. I don't believe usual religions because I find it hard to believe their "why". The computer simulation does have a why that I believe could be a possibility.
This seems really problematic to me. Why would you assume that a full-on universe simulator has a concept of a brain? If you're in the business of simulating the interactions of nanoparticles, having a "brain" object doesn't seem to make much sense. I suppose that you could implement some heuristic to identify minds with some degree of accuracy, but then you're getting into some weird territory. Someone wants to model the entire universe just to observe life here on earth? Why assume the author of this system is even aware of us at all?
> It could be the case that one planetary civilisation is all that can be simulated, without running into computational capacity issues.
Again, why would a system like this be optimized toward the civilisation level?
The idea is cool, maybe probable, but this write up seems pretty fanciful.
Think about why we simulate systems. There are two reasons that I can think of to do so. First, to exist inside of it, like a flight simulator or Minecraft. Second, to observe the emergent effects, like Conway's Game of Life. Assuming we're in a simulation, we'd have to assume that we're in the second kind of simulation. (Now that I think about it, what we term as deities could simply be alien 'players' of our universe game. Other examples of the first I can think of are ridiculously over-powered humans like Steve Jobs or John D. Rockefeller or Genghis Kahn.)
Assuming we're living in a simulation of the second type, it's the emergent properties of these that make them interesting. Emergence means you can't make a predictive mathematical model of what's going to happen. If what you're after is something you can predict mathematically, then you'd just do that with an algorithm rather than run a much more complicated simulation. We do do things like make computers in Minecraft, but the size and complexity and overall 'seriousness' of our universe sort of implies that that would have been a design goal for our world, rather than some cosmic two-year old's science project.
It would seem to me that if you have the power to simulate the universe then you could probably model quantum effects mathematically. I mean, we already do with the classical laws of physics, though obviously not to that level. I would think that life itself would eventually top the list of research priorities for our supernatural creators. I'm not saying they'd be interested exclusively in human-like intelligence, but they already had billions of years to study cosmic physics. Why keep the thing running once life starts evolving if that's all you're after? Ethical issues aside, it would have to seriously impact the performance of your simulation algorithm, the same way that sort of thing makes our own games more complex.
Anyway, until we fuzz physics enough to detect inconsistencies in (e.g.) conservation of energy, this is an entirely fanciful and useless topic. If I may bring in Plato's allegory of the cave, it's fairly clear this line of thought is only useful if we can detect and/or manipulate it. Until then, it's fairly absurd to think what we may be "turning our back to" in the cave when we are unable to even figure out if we have a back.
If you had a computer program that printed "I'm suffering" on the screen, would you consider that real suffering? Or just a robot that doesn't actually feel anything, it just simulates it?
Or a game where your character is low on health points - is that game character really suffering?
To that other being we may be the same way. I internally "feel" real, but that being may not consider it so, and even if I tell them they may just be excited at how good their simulation is.
Are beings in a simulation "sentient"? This seems illogical.
The responses to that argument are two-fold:
1) start madly making up increasingly implausible auxiliary assumptions to save the claim that we might be living in a simulation
2) admit that the odds we are living in simulation are rather low, and in particular the argument that we almost certainly are thanks to recursion is extremely poor.
I favour the latter response, as the former seems to involve either claiming that the universe that is simulating us has fundamentally different physics, or that the simulation isn't actually a simulation but rather a game-like approximation that somehow gets updated with sufficient local detail that no matter what kind of experiments we do or observations we happen to make, there is special-case code for ensuring the results look like a consistent underlying physics.
Claiming the universe simulating us has fundamentally different physics requires that we drop any claims about it based on the physics of our universe, in which case it becomes untestable because anything we see may or may not be due to a simulation being run in a universe whose laws are not like our own.
Claiming the approximation is fixed up by special-case code whenever anyone thinks of doing an experiment or making an observation that might reveal the lack of a full physics engine is likewise putting the hypothesis beyond testability.
So either the simulation hypothesis is wrong, or untestable. Neither of these is very interesting.
The only valid answer, I think, is that nor we, nor any other lifeform, will never be able to do so. And it's impossible to predict whether we will be able to do that or not, but everything points out to the answer being yes!
But please, give me an answer I didn't think of.
PS: I completely hate the simulation argument, as it stands, as you can see in my answer to the top post.
First, we would expect that the simulation may use heuristics; that some things not "observed" may be simulated in a quicker or more crude way.
Second, there may be a way to access the computational substrate. If the universe exists within a simulation, is there a way to run software directly against the universe "computer"? Are there security vulnerabilities in the simulation that could allow access to the higher level substrate, either to discover more about it or enact otherwise impossible changes in our universe?
Finally, there is the potential for external threat. In a simulation, one time step may take a variable amount of "real" time to complete. If we do find a way to tap into the computational substrate, or otherwise find some actions that burden the simulation excessively, the amount of time each of our universe's timesteps takes to complete in the external host "universe" will increase, possibly to the point where the author of the simulation interventions to correct the problem.
I mean our simulations are just code running calculations, we don't have code that gives our programs a self awareness. I would say this would be many simulations, unless they are only running my point of view and you are all just simple code. You see we are all giving output then we are all small simulations together If it is just me then they are just looking at my output and you are just something I interact with, I cant tell if you can see, feel or make your own choices.
Anywho, whatever we are, we are.
And its not unrealistic for scientists to try and simulate something with as much detail as possible. If we simulate 3 planets, we give them a (to us) realistic colour representation. If you are simulating a world with beings that experience the simulations as if it was real life, you could easily make them all the same but not make them realise. But why wouldn't you make a real representation.
2) No.
Hell, even if it isn't, is time real? Is anything? Or do we create the reality we perceive through our perception of it?
Mused the other day on Descartes, and "je pense, donc je suis" is tautological. Everything is, as any definition of anything by us is inevitably from our reference frame, and is based on precepts we aren't even aware of.
And, considering that every civilization simulates many universes, there's an exponential growth of universes beginning from the "root" civilization. So there are (or there will be) billions of billions of universes, one inside other, like russian dolls. And possibility of us living in the "root" universe is quite low.
Either that or there's some fundamental nature law preventing us from creating a simulation of conscious intelligent mind. And even if we didn't create that simulation yet, I don't believe that those laws exist. We have billions stars to consume for energy and matter and billions of years to improve our technology. Why don't we create megacomputers with that power potentially at our hands?
So you can't go very far down the road of simulations in simulations in simulations before the "deepest" simulation is to small to have conscientious beings. So the argument that we are in all probability in a simulation seems to break down.
We are still at the philosophical stage, science is too young for these kind of answers so the question is when we will reach the necessary knowledge level to comprehend it and if this is possible because we are also part of it.
I'm tempted to use Occam's Razor but probably can't because the simulation hypothesis assumes an intelligence created it. And intelligent beings have demonstrated more than once the capability for subterfuge.
I think to test the simulation hypothesis one might have to assume a couple of things - 1) the sim has resource constraints, otherwise the creator might as well build a real universe (thanks to Pete Bonani of Falcon 4.0 for sharing a similar insight); 2) every object in the sim has a state and a function which acts upon that state.
I'm not sure how someone inside a sim might test these assumptions though I suppose we could try making babies and hopes that overloads the sim before we run out of food.
1. Reality can be simulated (to different degrees) 2. If realities can be simulated, it is more likely that you are living in a simulation than in the real world.
By the way, the "simulated" hypothesis is scientifically testable ("stacking" problem).
Lets take the state transition view of it. Our PCs, phones or any other physical thing that we agree is a system 'that computes' is just following the laws of physics, or state evolution. We engineer the initial condition so that it converges to something that is of interest to us. So does it mean it is necessary for the existence of a conscious observer / intervener / interpreter of state for something to be deemed a 'computation' ?
Even if no one is there to observe a particular state or have interest in it, if the system happens to be initialized at some state it would 'compute' the result (end state) no matter what. So what would be that fundamental difference between a simulation and a universe following physical laws ? I think the issue is not whether this is a simulation but whether someone is consciously simulating it. The thing is that it need not be an external entity, embedded entities themselves may reside (perhaps voluntarily) in a simulated experience (hallucinogenic drugs), insanity (socially imposed conformance / compliance), schizophrenia.
The notion of reality is messy business that ties one up in knots. What I find interesting is how two ancient cultures : (i) native American and (ii) Indian thought about it, how they answered when I am dreaming is that real or is that fake. It is really hard to argue that what we call real is a more privileged position than the dream world or a hallucination when we are in it. Some native American philosophies decided that both are equally real. If some one flies in a hallucinogenic trip the person is really flying in that world. There are ways to get in and out of those worlds. The ancient Indians or the vedic philosophers took another route, they chose that both these worlds are just equally unreal.
The question of whether this real or not is pretty much as old as thought.
Let me put it this way. If a fundamentalist Christian made the same kind of arguments, and said "therefore God probably exists", would you believe that it really was probable? Most likely you'd say "I'm pretty sure that God doesn't exist, even if I can't prove it, and I'm not going to change my view of the probability just because this person says something that sounds good." But if you think that's a reasonable response, why is not the same approach reasonable in response to this "the universe is probably a simulation" stuff?
I mean, the host universe may have completely different laws of nature, but assuming that the 2nd law exists in it...
Organising information (storing it in RAM, carving it on a rock...) decreases entropy and thus takes work (entropy overall increases, because you had to get the energy to do your work by increasing entropy somewhere else by more.)
The cost of accurately simulating an entire universe, down to atoms, would be extreme, like you'd need galaxys worth of stars' to even begin.
At which point, the question becomes, why not just observe the real universe?
That doesn't mean it's not.
I don't think the 'why' is the right question to ponder. It's really a matter of 'if'.
We lack the context to adequately answer 'why' one might decide to create a simulation of a universe. Any(one/thing) capable of putting such a simulation together is about as different from us as we are from bacteria. Therefore, considering motivation is a bit of a dead end.
The 'if' is a question we can at least theorize about. Is a simulated universe possible? If we accept that it is, then we also accept that we are most likely currently in one.
I'm sorry, I never was one for philosophy. How does that follow?
Doesn't this assume that the simulation is running in a universe where our laws of physics apply? Couldn't what we think of as our laws of physics be a programmed part of the simulation, running on computers in a completely different universe where it's impossible for us to do more than speculate on matters of practicality?
Scientists and engineers use many-body simulations to investigate emergent properties of systems all the time. Not all understanding comes from first principles only.
Also, Permutation City by Greg Egan is a good read.