Is reality a simulation?

[PB666]

I don't think I can add anything to it, i am watching it right now.

[luizopiloto]

With that sunglasses... they looks like agents from Matrix...

[YNM]

I don't care about whether it's a simulation or it isn't... I care more of making hopefully the most of it.

And staring at it. Don't speculate, Observe !

[Godot]

12 minutes ago, luizopiloto said:

With that sunglasses... they looks like agents from Matrix...

 

That´s intended, because they are

The more important question is, how you can itneract with the API of the universe, in order to let your own programs interact with it.

I´d like to use it in order to duplicate my Godot-Self, with the "needs food", "needs water", "gets tired" and "has free will" - flags disabled ... 

so that I can use my duplicate in order to do menial boring tasks for me

[luizopiloto]

you first have to know if the universe don't have hook protection or anti-cheat modules...


well... it's easy to know if something is simulated if you're outside... but how to know it from inside the simulation?
the light speed limit always intrigued me... is it the host's CPU max speed?

Edited April 25, 2016 by luizopiloto

[Bill Phil]

It's pointless to debate if it is. There's no good evidence for it or against it.

[PB666]

After watching the debate actually its not pointless, fine scale resolution of the universe is key to quantum mechanics.

Zorah has a very important point, at least to me. HIstorically, we actually cannot see direct evidence of quantum mechanics except via developmental or evolutionary process, evolution was all about us but it was only darwin and mendel, using highly theoretical constructs stipulated that quantum effects were causing macroscopic presentation and preservation of the information. IOW a blip occur and was captured and carried.

Just about everything we see is a direct consequence of the laws of mass action, the action of the water in the glass used so many time. As one presenter points out this is a rational scale observation completely fitting in its description, but once you throw in life, its no longer fitting, because life can (key word is can, and but rarely does) replicates quantum events, no matter how unlikely or thermodynamically unfavorable in the biological context, they can eventually be trapped and placed in a favorable context. This is were the universe gets screwed because the fine scale laws run into problem, because the laws that disorder the universe order life. So once we are talking about biology the distinction becomes important. But if this can occur with biology, it can occur with other things also. The contradiction of biology is that the probability that a mutation is retained is rare in the course of evolution, probabilistically, (given both position and representation) is so remotely low as to say its impossible. But, the combinations of these 'events' (which we call spontaneous, but at the quantum scale are really just the normal operation of the universe) and thermodynamic and kinetic forces eventually stabilize and create a diverse systems that is responsive to change and appears to progressively evolve (although we have this fuzzy disclaimer that mutations cannot predict evolution, except sometimes when it does de-facto predict within statistical limits). Fine scale evolution does not progress, so a quantum mutation cannot feel the progression of the responsive state, but at a macroscale it does (meaning over long periods of time and observing the states between individuals). IOW if we go back 400 million years, there was nothing on the planet that could have become space-worthy species, not even within 50 million years of highly selective evolution, but over 400 million years of reciprocating chaotic mostly low selection and much of the heavy stuff on immune genes and digestive genes, we get there. There is nothing innate to the Earth system that predicts this would happen, so many things could have gone wrong, the progressed state has so many ways to destroy itself, but one particular aspect, the progressed state is chaotic in the way it creates diversity (which we are rapidly reversing). 

We advanced now to a point we can see quantum effects (such as double slit experiment or PMT measuring nuclear decay). So we can fashion ourselves as hypothetical beings. With plum-pudding models replaced by a nucleus and a electron (wave/particle) we can now see some digitalization of the universe, but the physics says no, it goes much deeper, at least 10^30 times smaller, both in time and space, and in fact space-time is irrational at that scale. Suppose there is a simulation and a being that controls the simulation, in this hypothesis we presuppose that the being can only control say things like how fast the universe can inflate, and the relationships between quantum gravity and space-time (i.e. gravitational constant which I don't believe is entirely fixed), plank's constant etc. He might be able to shift things here and there a bit.

Now suppose we are the privileged life form on earth, and as part of that Einstein is something that the being has been pushing.

So the development of Einstein and Mutations that form the germ line that formed him, these are quantum effects.

So lets now say that a cosmic ray traveling to earth with an energy of 100 TeV and so close to the speed of light from our perspective its clock is moving at plank's time. IOW it has no ability to change. Its moving in its own space-time, which is to say one space-time of a near infinite quantity.  So you have de-facto infinite parallel universe in the observable universe from our many space-time perspectives. Now suppose there is a finite scale to the processor. That particle collides with the outer atmosphere and either that shower creates the Einstein gene or developmental abnormality or does not. If there is a reasonable fine scale, say plank's length, then beings cannot really control. For a being to control it would have to have something much finer than plank's scale and time, it would have to be able to deduce precisely what is going to happen as quantum effects. Which space time is the being in, ours or the particles, if its in the particles it cannot deal with the complexity of earth-space times, if it is in the earths then the particles space-time is all but untouchable until that initial interaction. That being would have to operate in all possible space-times at once if not that being is operating error correction it would have to have the ability to stop the universe in a local and implement a sort of anti-dithering corrections that would allow fine scale control. So that's one way to get around size, lets take the other argument. Suppose we have infinitely small scale control, and of course now we can see below plank's time, and we also have infinitesimally large number of space-time frames. Lets say we have a perfect computer in which we need only say 1000 units to store each bit of information (position, space-time vectors, etc) and each unit can have its own processor that can do any of the basic calculations.That machine to calculate what happens in our universe would have to be many times the size of our universe, it would have to be potentially as many times our universe as there a 'points' in our universe. That in and of itself is not evident in the physics of our universe. It would be assumptively impossible for a being to have both a simulation and control of the universe to a level that Einstein's precise existence is controlled. The maximum control is that the being could establish conditions (for example the entropy and enthalpy arguments) such that evolution is likely to occur and then maybe changes the gravitational constant around a meteor that steers it into earth 65,000,000 years ago. 

This then devolves to the next question; ok how much control can we actually have? If your program any simulation you realize one thing, the amount of control you have is much less that amount of resources that are available to control, So for any machine we can create, no matter how great we can only control down to magnitudes greater than the simulation scale, that is because our control is composed logically of simulation scale complexity. Since we can only observer, very indirectly,  to a certain scale, our control is far smaller. Fpr the most part human beings are natural manipulators, we do not control, we put two fish in a barrel, they breed and we take their spawn and put them in a pond and allow them to feed, or we chose cattle and allow them to mate, produce calves, we plant the grass but it determines how it grows. The most genetically modified organism is not from a laboratory, its bread wheat, we did not create it but by selecting emmer's wheat and then allowing emmer's wheat to grow near goat grass and then selecting the hexaploid version and then refining that selection we get something that might take 100 years of molecular biology to replicate from the same starting species. It is through manipulation, not creation that humans largely control. We don't create the rain, we irrigate, we discourage herbivores not of our liking and encourage those of our liking. We remove competitors, sometimes foolishly, then add them back (such as your dog). We are great because we are one of the (if not the most) environmentally exploitative species.

So that answer the question 'that god doesn't play dice with the universe', the question is the universe a simulation, philosophically, answers the question that control beings have little choice but to play dice, just as we play dice, otherwise they would be inefficient beings in their control, but as manipulators we are sometimes inefficient, we make bad gambles is that necessarily a function of scale. I think ultimately scale is limiting. In fact you could say that gambling addictions show how irrational we can be about risk taking, but once again chaos in the system prevents this from imploding the human system.

So then the next question is mathematics in control of the universe or is mathematics a thing that just pops out of the way natural systems can logically behave and interact. If the first is true, if mathematics leads the physics, then we are essentially living in a simulation, but if the second is true that it is coincidence that we can do with vending oranges and apples what the relationships of things at the lowest scale, that probabilities designed for banking system just happen to also work in a modified sense at quantum scale. Just coincidence. The problem is that economics is nothing more than ecology of sentients, and mathematics formalizes the distinction (meaning that non-sentients cannot rationalize and abstractualize their actions and examine the derivatives and integral of their actions at the limit of the processing capability of the analytical systems). Because we could say that physics is the chaos of the ordered universe and mathematics makes the distinction.  Philosophically we could reason that life can create order from increasing disorder because it exerts control (can manipulate whether things become more disordered or not) that life begins to usurp control from the machine, little by little, until it fathoms mathematics and begins whole scale ordering. In theory if the universe is a simulation then life is an instability in that system that could eventually cause the simulation to collapse.

Nobody asked the panel what is the relevance of planks scale units.

[Bill Phil]

Evolution is not about us. We're not a product of evolution. We're a part of the process.

[PB666]

4 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Evolution is not about us. We're not a product of evolution. We're a part of the process.

That is core of the non-predicatability, but unfortunately its not fully true, there are parts of our genome that we can predict statistically, but not exactly future evolution.

Not that those parts are really important to our evolution, but it goes to show that non-anticipability is not perfect, and these imperfections may be important to our existence.

 

 

[Bill Phil]

14 minutes ago, PB666 said:

That is core of the non-predicatability, but unfortunately its not fully true, there are parts of our genome that we can predict statistically, but not exactly future evolution.

Not that those parts are really important to our evolution, but it goes to show that non-anticipability is not perfect, and these imperfections may be important to our existence.

 

 

Evolution has a lot to do with environment. We can't predict the future environments.

[PB666]

1 minute ago, Bill Phil said:

Evolution has a lot to do with environment. We can't predict the future environments.

That is also true.

Just listening to the video that panels average prediction that the universe is a simulation is 27% +/- 15%, Zorah refused to give an answer.

NdGT is pontificating about why he thinks it is high probability we are part simulation. High, 42, 0, 1, 17, nop.

I just had a thought what if the being steered the chixuhub asteroid to get rid of the sentient potential, and it turned out life unexpectedly survived? lol.

Ahhhh, the useless futility of trying to assume the position of an omnipotent being.

So, the bottom line here is that supersymmetry points the universe toward simulation state, symmetry breaking appears to be a universe level versus physics level control, although how a universe level control can by non-physical just waves the problem down the road. The information density problem is also shifted down the road argueing that beings that make universe processors are not limited to the information density of our processors.

I think supersymmetry is dead, so we have to thus fundamentally have to find out how symmetry breaking occurred, was it a random cascade or are we missing something from the laws of physics.

The other major problem, even though strong force is very important, stong force is not the most important problem. Despite its low force potential the quantum gravity/space-time interactions are more important than the strong force. This is something we have predicted, but still do not understand all that well. As a consequence we can defer asking the question to some later date.

 

 

 

[WestAir]

I'm going to try an attempt at a joke here. Typically doesn't go over well because people always want to take me seriously and at face value, but in lieu of anything substantial to add...

Joke: "The cat is simultaneously both dead and alive. Glitch in the Matrix. Simulated reality confirmed."

[Ser]

3 hours ago, luizopiloto said:

well... it's easy to know if something is simulated if you're outside... but how to know it from inside the simulation?
the light speed limit always intrigued me... is it the host's CPU max speed?

Why should we be sure if it's a simulation or not? We just have a world that exists on its own principles and we just study them and describe.

Actually, the speed of light isn't a "mysterious" limit but just a speed of interaction. What could be more fundamental than that? Our sizes, messures and scales just depend on it.

[kerbiloid]

If reality is a simulation, there should be cheat codes.

3 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

There's no good evidence for it or against it.

Time.

There is no rational reason why one of dimensions is privileged and not reversable, except if it is a CPU command sequence.

[Ser]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

If reality is a simulation, there should be cheat codes.

I'm certainly don't want to be here during the buffer overflow attack

[Ser]

12 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

If reality is a simulation, there should be cheat codes.

Time.

There is no rational reason why one of dimensions is privileged and not reversable, except if it is a CPU command sequence.

If we look at the present moment as on a set of interaction states that are distributed with elementary particles then all the past exists in the Universe simultaneously. The trace of our last year is just one light year away and gets further every moment. So time may appear to be as irreversible as just the photon particles are.

[KAL 9000]

Cheat Codes?

HUMAN

{

name=KAL 9000

badS=true 

Stupidity=0.25 

Courage=0.65 

needsFood=true //Hahahaha! false 

needsWater=true //Boo-yah! false 

needsAir=true //Not anymore! false 

freeWill=true 

hasPoo=true false 

hasPee=true false

awesome=true

}

Editing the persistence file of reality!

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, Ser said:

If we look at the present moment as on a set of interaction states that are distributed with elementary particles then all the past exists in the Universe simultaneously. The trace of our last year is just one light year away and gets further every moment. So time may appear to be as irreversible as just the photon particles are.

Exactly.
So, seems like the only reason why we can get something in a light nanosecond (i.e. 1 ft) from us, but can't get it just from a nanosecond through time, is that we can't get out from the CPU command sequence.

4 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

Editing the persistence file of reality!

You forgot RESOURCE { name = Money   amount = 1000000000 }

Edited April 25, 2016 by kerbiloid

[PB666]

16 minutes ago, Ser said:

Why should we be sure if it's a simulation or not? We just have a world that exists on its own principles and we just study them and describe.

Actually, the speed of light isn't a "mysterious" limit but just a speed of interaction. What could be more fundamental than that? Our sizes, messures and scales just depend on it.

Well at least on of the physicists agrees with part of that, and oddly so do I. The basic problem i have is that plancks length is supposed to be the low limit in quantum physics, and yet we are seeing quantum FTL transfers on the nanometer scale. We are talking about 10s of magnitudes difference and we haven't even begun dealing with resonance orbitals such as in graphene and the issues of the rf resonance thruster. 

At least to her point we have not studied enough and described enough to make a coherant risk estimate. I agree, it seems there are gaps in our understanding of space time and big gaps in our understanding of quantum physics. 

Is the universe crazy mysterious, its not like humans have spent a crippling amount of time studying it. 

[Bill Phil]

51 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

If reality is a simulation, there should be cheat codes.

Time.

There is no rational reason why one of dimensions is privileged and not reversable, except if it is a CPU command sequence.

We can't prove that it isn't reversible. According to current theories and laws it isn't, but the luminiferous aether was commonly accepted before it was disproved.

[PB666]

1 minute ago, Bill Phil said:

We can't prove that it isn't reversible. According to current theories and laws it isn't, but the luminiferous aether was commonly accepted before it was disproved.

Actually none of the dimesions is reversible, we travel through space whether or not we move. And more to the point, if you sit on the earth the earth is accelerating you agaist the elliptical that is the non-inertial. That is the space-time. The feynman lectures points this out, its easier to understand if you convert spatial dimension to one and note the travel. If you are ten light seconds from me you see my space-time of my ten seconds ago, but i am now in a different space time. We use the ground as a reference frame because it is so finely-layered space time that we cannot see the differences but they are there, we appear to be sitting on a non-inertial reference frame, but the flattening of our butts on that frame tell us otherwise. The ISS shows that our system and minds developed to equate this as a low potential energy state, remove the ground under us to the center of the earth and watch what happens. if we remove what we think is a low potential energy our bodies respond by reducing the effort it spends to conteract it. 

The big inflation happened at a point so small that we cannot even measure it and now the opposite points in the universe travel away from each other greater than the speed of light at thier comoving reference frames and we are also orbiting orbits of orbits that are embedded in that mileau.  If you randomly choose any point and any reference frame it is but impossible to go back to it as time passes, but we can reach for points that happen to move with us. 

These reference frames are valid in the relativistic point of view as long as we don't convince ourselves, like newton did, that they are non-inertial and they are identicle. 

People say they gointo  space, but actually we cannot survive without comoving matter. We are never in space, even in the ISS we have removed much of the potential energy present on earth and suppoted on earth, but in space we replaced that with the kinetic energy of the ISS in which humans then create little kinetic difference. The ground we had on earth is now the walls of the ISS, so even when we can be away from these slightly different references, we chose them. No matter on earth or in space we reference ourselves to our  surroundings. The zero gravity simulator also called the puke jet, apply so named for our incompatibility with non-inertial reference frames. 

 

[PB666]

1 hour ago, KAL 9000 said:

Cheat Codes?

HUMAN

{

name=KAL 9000

badS=true 

Stupidity=0.25 

Courage=0.65 

needsFood=true //Hahahaha! false 

needsWater=true //Boo-yah! false 

needsAir=true //Not anymore! false 

freeWill=true 

hasPoo=true false 

hasPee=true false

awesome=true

}

Editing the persistence file of reality!

I feel like I have been T-boned by a 3rd grader.

Ok, i see your god mode and raise you one Feynman explanation of an unknown. A completely unit-less number that has no other function than to make the universe work. (at least the way we like it to work, if it didn't work this way, it may work the way some other type of being may like).

Quote

There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant [fine-structure constant], e – the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. It is a simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to 0.08542455. (My physicist friends won't recognize this number, because they like to remember it as the inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with about an uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to pi or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the "hand of God" wrote that number, and "we don't know how He pushed his pencil." We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out, without putting it in secretly!

— Richard Feynman

FSC = 0.08542455 0.08 and consequently you need to eat double, drink double and . . . . . . .

 

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[RainDreamer]

Well, we can also frame it as a  class ical philosophical question: can we prove that this whole universe is not just generated 10 minutes ago, exactly like how it was 10 minutes ago right down to every atoms position, and all our memories were implanted? Everything we know or thought we know might have been fabricated, and our senses simulated.

Really, there is no way to tell.

[Laie]

Solipsism by any other name is just as sweet.