Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Starver]

Like all things everywhere depend on the distances between things being precisely as they are.

Precisely, give-or-take the uncertainty principle?  I'm happy (given such a 'software universe' conceit, for anyone who wants to go down that route) to consider the possibility of rounding errors to be the basis of all kinds of quantum weirdness, at a level lower than we can reliably test because of our limitations.

My old standard in this thought-experiment is imagining a Conway's Game Of Life creature.  A highly complex (and large) pattern upon the square grid that (by its own standard) is a thinking, sentient being.  There's nothing barring this from happening (save that it'd be very large), whereby internal ideas equivalent to "cogito ergo sum" arise within such a pattern.  Although don't ask me to design it (it would be an exercise in practical theosophy, perhaps).

Anyway, whilst a suitably-constructed/developed/evolved GOL-creature would interact with its immediate environment by its 'edge effector' cells reacting to the touch of nearby patterns it comes in 'contact' with, there would be no way that it could detect the individual living/dying/flipping unit cells that we would know about (and could observe).  There's even good reason to believe that neither would they be able to think "hey, I'm on a strict grid... the real world isn't on a grid".

(Even if they could, they'd misunderstand it.  'Gliders', perhaps the basis of force/information transference in Grid Physics, move 'quicker' diagonally than orthogonally (and not as quickly as information could technically be conveyed, but not a "wave soup", kind of way) and so it would look like distance in the diagonals is 'squashed'.  And it'd look entirely normal.)

And who's to say that our own POV isn't similarly limited by simulation concepts that don't apply to the meta-programmers that set up our own universe?  (Who, by the way, probably would understand our own existence as little as we could understand the existence of this large GOL pattern.  Oh, we (they) could poke away at the GOL-grid ('real world simulation') and observe the interactions between cells (perhaps, for us, it'd be quanta), but... understanding the entire pattern that forms a living 'person', or even just the bit dedicated to their 'consciousness'?  I think that'll difficult to the extent of impracticality.  It'd just look like a pretty picture, I think.  As, indeed, GOL-patterns actually do, when they 'live' and develop.)

Also, how about fields? Like, electromagnetic fields, that must be defined at every point of time-space and if they're quantized at any point, the math starts to break down rapidly because of "numerical friction" messing things up?

That's a continuous function, across all space (and time) dimensions.  It needn't be resolved/queried below the 'grid-level', but it can be integrated at any point to derive field-force upon (quantised) point-masses, etc., whilst ensuring that no element in the point-particle array (a record of position, inertia, etc, these values quantised to grid) get so close as to create a greater-than-Planck-Mass entity, or deal with such effects by maintaining the quantum foam 'fudge' to absorb such impossibilities.

Don't even start on how to model frikking relativity and all the effects which mean that you not only have to keep the memory of all the current things, but also of ALL things in the past! That's one louse simulation, with constantly increasing memory size taken.

Firstly, you're mistaking this as a program that's operating on Real World hardware.  You can create a form of computer within DF/Minecraft/etc, but it'll never be of the power of the computer that the simulation is being run within.  (Nor, strictly, the speed, although you could 'simulate' a high-speed processor by 'telling' the simulation that one simulation-tick is a femto-second, even if it takes one second per tick in 'our' world... but there'd necessarily be nowhere near as much memory available to the simulated computer as the computer that is simulating.  Now extrapolate backwards.

Secondly, relativity might not exist in the simulator's universe.  That might be one of the fudges their program requires.  It might be difficult to understand, ourselves, and we may misinterpret it as "no single 'true' frame of reference", but in the format that the master-simulator computer maintains our universe's data it may well be quite simple.  Perhaps the 'speed of light' is something to prevent having to perform infinite-upon-infinite interactions between quanta at every stage of the simulation.  Perhaps time itself does not exist in the external world (or certainly not as we know it), but there's likely to be less limitations towards calculation and computing power at that level because necessarily there'd be a greater limitation of calculations within our own...  What we see as a universal limits is just an artefact of the simulation parameters.

(And that'd apply to the further relationship of the next level out, if that's even a thing...)

That aside, all I know is that I, personally, am probably a figment of someone else's imagination.  Is it you?  I'd love to know who it is who is so warped and deranged...

Stop with that solipsism, the universe is not nearly as inconsistent as any imagination that I know of.

Also, "warped" and "deranged"? Such words cannot possibly apply to our universe.

Universe?  In this instance I'm not talking about nested universal simulations, I'm just talking about me.  The universe might be real, but I may be a shared delusion concocted by someone else.

Or, to put another spin on it, what if I'm just a clever chatbot, designed to pass the Turing Test by conversely claiming that I'm not a real person with 'faulty' logic and retro-solipsism (or 'aggripsism')?  What if I'm so good at my impersonation that I've not been formally subjected to such a test.  Or recognised as passing, at least.

But that'd be ridiculous, obviously.  You'd have to conclude that I might have been trying to make a separate point altogether, instead.

[LordBucket]

We're all just a software simulatio

Isn't the standard, mainstream interpretation of reality that we're experiencing a simulation? Produced by the brain?

Also, I recall... I think it was LB pointing out that if it WERE a simulation, we'd probably have artificial limits to prevent too much data being used, such as a maximum speed, or a minimum temperature.

I don't think that was me.

I don't think you understand just how much computing power you need to simulate universe.

Why bother to simulate an entire universe? Why not simulate a single solar system and then make a few simple routines to dynamically generate inputs that look like a rest of the universe? I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the rest of the universe doesn't seem to be doing very much. We could probably generate and stream all the data being received by planet Earth with current technology right now.

For that matter, why bother to simulate an entire solar system? Why not simulate a single mind and feed in dynamically generated sensory data that looks like a coherent life's experience full of other people having conversations with it?

I'm happy (given such a 'software universe' conceit, for anyone who wants to go down that route) to consider the possibility of rounding errors to be the basis of all kinds of quantum weirdness

That's an amusing thought. Related, I've often that the Planck length resembles pixelation in a display.

[Bauglir]

http://theawakenment.com/theoretical-physicist-james-gates-finds-computer-code-in-string-theory-equation/#sthash.sHwZ7w8J.dpbs

Relatively recently, whilst exploring the mathematics of string theory, Theoretical Physicist James Gates and his researcher discovered something rather interesting buried deep within the mathematical equations of super symmetry.

They found computer code.

And it isn’t just random 1’s and 0’s either. Bizarrely, the code they found is code which is used in computer browser operating system software.

Specifically; Block Linear Self Dual Error Correcting Code.

So apparently some physicist found known binary error-correcting codes hidden in string theory.

What... does that even... what?

I read your link, and it doesn't make any attempt to explain what's going on, here. You don't just find stuff "hidden inside" a theory; I know what an error correcting code is, but I don't have any idea what relevance they could have to theoretical physics. The linked thing makes no attempt to explain it, and I can't find a reputable (non-media) source after admittedly very brief googling. It's presented in the same way as the word "quantum" in New Age spiritualism, and that worries me a lot.

[Reelya]

It's attributed to a reputable scientist though. He's one of the authorities on supersymmetry theory. So it's not like he's some unknown guy trying to make his name and has no credentials in this field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_James_Gates

[ChairmanPoo]

As Albert Einstein said, "Don't believe every attribution you read about on the internet."

[Bauglir]

Yeah.

Quantum mechanics is the key to understanding the true meaning of consciousness.

I looked at Dr. Gates' CV as part of that Googling. There is one paper that sounds relevant, "Relating Doubly-Even Error-Correcting Codes, Graphs, and Irreducible Representations of N-Extended Supersymmetry". If that's what they're referring to, then they're taking pretty significant liberties; that's like saying D&D relies on cryptography techniques because it involves random number generation. That a similar mathematical structure is relevant in two things doesn't in any way suggest a concrete relationship.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong; I'm no physicist, so this is out of my depth. But this seems like nonsense from a layperson grasping at straws left by somebody who knows what they're doing, and I'm saying this as somebody who sees it as pretty possible that we're simulated.

[Reelya]

Well, here you go. arxiv paper by Prof. Gates
http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.0051

Video confirmation : Neil DeGrasse Tyson discussing the theory with Professor Gates in a talk panel. The relevant part starts 1 hour 1 minutes in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYeN66CSQhg

The physics professors are the guys sitting there making the comparisons between the given theory and a simulated universe, and saying it seems to imply we may live in The Matrix, so it's definitely from the horses mouths and not something that laymen tacked on that the theorists never intended.

[Bauglir]

Okay, the talk is a lot better (the paper itself, near as I can tell, is exactly what I said it was - "Hey, this mathematical structure happens to crop up here, too" which is pretty damn cool, but it doesn't have anything like the implications you'd been talking about). I'll leave you to it, though, those guys are way better qualified to speculate on the meaning of their science than I am.

[Zrk2]

I still have yet to see a good argument for the possibility of machines becoming self-aware, so I have to dismiss this as pure poppycock.

[Starver]

I still have yet to see a good argument for the possibility of machines becoming self-aware, so I have to dismiss this as pure poppycock.

I'm not entirely sure this is a relevant to the issue.

But it depends on what one thinks the issue is, naturally.

[Reelya]

It's not relevant to the debate. Machine sentience isn't part of this discussion.

But on that matter, there is a simple proof. The question is "is X possible?". Well, you can look for examples of X, and if they already exist, then the answer to the question is a no-brainer "yes they are possible because there's one over there!"

Life makes sentience out of raw materials every day. And when building machines, we have access to all the same laws of physics that govern organic cells. So it's kind of a no-brainer that sentient machines do not break any fundamental laws of physics, and not only that, they're technically feasible. We know that because sentient machines already exist all around us. Sentient machines arose in our world already by pure chance, so who are we to say intelligent beings couldn't design one?

So, the question isn't for me to prove that sentient machines can exist, because they do. We know that brains can be constructed from materials around us, and they work according to the laws of physics. It's a basic principle now. It would actually be really weird if that principle only applies to things made of meat.

Think about the probabilities involved. DNA arose by chance, cells evolved by chance, animal nerve cells evolved by chance. In other words, the stuff that our brains are made of is an incredibly unlikely material, and could have easily evolved as different stuff. What are the odds that this stuff that arose by chance just happened to be the only substance in the universe capable of building sentient machines out of? Really, if that's the case it's a miracle that we're sentient at all.

[Sergarr]

I wouldn't call string theory at this point as being "physical", or even "scientific", because:
1) It's not actually a theory, it's a hypothesis.
2) It's not actually one theory/hypothesis, but a whole bunch of them grouped together. By "bunch" I mean "an astronomical number".

Obviously it cannot be proved at this, if only because there are many many many different variations of string theory, and all of them are false and mathematicians are trying to find the "ultimate one". But I feel that the way they're moving to is way too complex, compared to the simplicity and elegance of Standard Theory which explains almost everything through symmetry and rotations.

[Reelya]

If the Standard Model explained anything they wouldn't be looking for anything else. There are well-known problems with the Standard Model. It's purely descriptive, not explanatory, and there are about 30 arbitrary constants that don't connect to anything, and we have no theory about why they have the values they have.

As the Standard Model is almost entirely descriptive of what we already know, it's reached the end of its usefulness in making predictions too. It really can't predict anything since most of the model is just tabulating data we already have.

[Sergarr]

String theory isn't explanatory, too. It's not even predictive at all.

Also what prevents the Grand Theory of the Universe using 30 arbitrary constants that don't connect to anything? It's not like the Universe must have only one arbitrary constant on which everything depends.

[Reelya]

That's entirely not true. It is explanatory, since it hypothesizes the strings etc. and other structures. i.e. string theory talks about hypothetical underlying structures, which are the root causes of the larger-scale phenomena we observe but have no current explanation. This is basically the definition of an "explanatory" theory.

Also, a large number of predictions came out of string theory. That's how they have culled different variants, by LHC experiments at high energies and they couldn't find the particles predicted by several variants of string theory. So, it's the complete opposite of your claim that there have been "no predictions at all".

Also what prevents the Grand Theory of the Universe using 30 arbitrary constants that don't connect to anything? It's not like the Universe must have only one arbitrary constant on which everything depends.

you're right, maybe there's no rhyme or reason to the rules of the universe. they could be "const vars" in the Great Computer after all.