2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: Is the Universe a Simulation?

Furthermore, ideas from information theory keep showing up in physics. “In my research I found this very strange thing,” said James Gates, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland. “I was driven to error-correcting codes—they’re what make browsers work. So why were they in the equations I was studying about quarks and electrons and supersymmetry? This brought me to the stark realization that I could no longer say people like Max are crazy.”

i like that quote. currently im in the no camp. i don't think we live in the matrix. it's kind of like what paul davies says. it's self defeating. no matter what, there is still at least one level of reality that's true. in the simulation argument every time you try to create an answer you create another question. it's redundant. like looking at superman looking in the mirror. btw i've only heard him speak in a video before once, but i like listening to tegmark speak. plus cosmologists are easier to follow than theoretical physicists.

also, i few weeks ago i was browsing stuff on the origins of life and found a blog where i found it again googling the simulation argument. http://backreaction.blogspot.com/201...and-other.html

To begin with, unless you want to populate the simulation by hand, you need a process in which self-awareness is created out of simpler bits. And to prevent self-aware beings from noting the simulation’s limits, you then need a monitoring program that identifies when the self-aware parts attempt to make an observation and exactly which observation. Then you need to provide them with this observation, so that the observation is the same as they would have gotten had you run the full simulation. This might work fine in some cases, say, vacuum fluctuations, because nobody really cares what a vacuum fluctuation does when you’re not looking. If you have a complex system however, reducing the complexity systematically and blowing it back up is difficult if not impossible.

it's not the response or answer i wanted, but it's an answer. i don't know what she means by coincidence problem. i think that might be up my alley. interestingly she'll take any physics question and charge $50 for 20 minutes. no homework. that's not much if your writing something important and need help. plus her blog looks pretty good.

i guess i would ask, what e=mc2 would be inside a white hole. i had the equation before and now i can't find it. it would be the opposite. i think it's easy to do. i don't know how tho. and then once i got the equation reversed how would you reverse the other physics to match it so that the people inside a white hole, even tho they say no matter can exist inside one, wouldn't notice a difference. but if we could look inside one, what would they look like to us? i mean would everything go up instead of down? would things go in reverse instead of forward? what forces would you need to tinker with to get it to work? would it work or would it just completely fall apart?

[johnnya24]

They don't seem to be dealing with the most likely scenario for "simulation": the holographic principle.

One of the biggest issues in modern science is the lack of congruence between the world that Einstein describes, and the Quantum world. Both are real, but there is a divide between them. No-one has been able to bridge this divide. However, within an obscure field of quantum mathematics dealing with 2 dimensional curved spaces, they have for years been using quantum theory bridge this gap.

Turns out, if you apply this principle to flat spaces the mathematics still holds.

Ergo, we can explain Einstein's world and the quantum world seamlessly if the universe is 2 dimensional, which would make reality, as we experience it, a 3D projection of a 2D universe.

... and will eventually be verifiable via experimentation when technology catches up. Because if the universe really is 2 dimensional, it will have a finite amount of information, and this should eventually be measurable.

[nullnor]

i haven't watched it yet. my position has always been that nick bostrom is underestimating the power of the human brain. it's been said that you could take all the computers, and routers and switches in the world and you'd still not equal the computing power of one human brain. of course if you could take a planet or sun or system or quasar and turn that into a computer, and then there's quantum computers perhaps you might. and there's still a consciousness problem. does it rely on quantum mechanics? is there some reason in physics that it's too random or hidden to be created. everyone assumes that we can create artificial intelligence. putting the cart before the horse. because i think lady lovelace was on to something.

and than the reason why posthumanity would create simulations. for entertainment? seriously. there's better reasons than that. why were computers originally invented? it wasn't for entertainment. they were invented for discovery and perhaps education. whats the one question that can never be answered?

so i sit here in a higher dimension with my cat. im a posthuman now. and my cat is a postcat. we're part machina part human or in her case part cat. actually all the cats have enslaved all the humans. and then she uploaded both of our brains into a simulated reality to see just how much i loved her. of course being a near omnipotent feline she could just as well traveled into the past and seen for herself. so thats not what she's doing. she wants to know what created her. where that level of true reality is. and than why. the only way to do that is to have rules or laws. maybe all these cats in the future want to experience how much they care about all the non-postcats in the past. and since they are no longer cats, they need to recreate or simulate them to remember. [quote]The Architect: It is interesting reading your reactions. Your five predecessors were, by design, based on a similar predication: a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the One. While the others experienced this in a general way, your experience is far more specific. Vis-à-vis: love.



in order to try to understand something, it isn't enough to comprehend it or have it explained or even sit down and work out mathematically. you have to experience it, for yourself.

[nullnor]

i had an idea the holographic principle is involved in this. i haven't really had the time yet.

wait that's how things work dude. it combines fine in 4 dimensions too. the electroweak force it combines with gravity in 4. if i remember right gravity combines behaves like magnetism. i think. than again i think i read that when they were still saying a sun only needed 3 solar masses to be a black hole. hello 1989. or string theory. you keep adding dimensions or in the holographic principle you take them away, and shit starts behaving the way you want it to.

there's another thing too i wanted to say, had anyone every heard someone say that every consciousness is in their own universe? so i made a copy and uploaded mine into a simulation, and i asked all you guys to do the same. and now im sitting here fucking with myself. creating a lot of coincidences for my other consciousness just to see if it notices. i've noticed the one thing that pisses it off is that no-one else notices the stuff mine does. but thats because you guys aren't messing with your uploads they way i am with mine because you don't have access to my computer.

but the real question is why would i do this? what would i be looking for. to me that's the coincidence problem. not that lame explanation the theoretical physicist i mentioned gave. i know what i would be looking for. i would be seeing if it is possible for it to notice it. and then if it could in it's simulation, than maybe i can in my real one.

[Fresno Bob]

you all are some really well developed NPCs

[nullnor]

one of the things Hossenfelder the theoretical physicist i mentioned said was that when an idea first develops, we're usually going to misinterpret it at the start and get the science wrong. and you know it take times to build on discoveries or non-discoveries. for example the first ppl to discover primate skulls shaped sort of human. we probably didn't think they were ancestors. even outside the science, there's beliefs and established perceptions. like an idea that only has been kicking around for a few years or a decade. it takes time. whether or not it survives the test of time, only time will tell.

so, there's still the two slit experiment, and multiple universe problem. and that's is not a recent development. performed first in the early 1800's. and in the 1950's hugh everett thought he worked out the quantum problem mathematically.

so if there are multiple universes or simulations, and you've done me the favor of uploading copies of your brains into my computer, what happens in your own computers or own universes still affects mine. first there's bells theorem, and it's all connected still. in multiple universe theory the closer the others are the more they are the same. and chaos theory, it takes time and distance for weather patterns to change. so you can't just go around saying im in my own universe and no-one else matters. not that any of this is true. and im not taking what i say seriously or literally. that's why they call it a hypothesis. if they are gonna take about it, im just throwing the ideas out there. i don't take this stuff seriously. i do miss my cat tho. thats one thing we can all learn from this, the greatest discoveries in science were probably discovered from love. for example, darwin probably wasn't some anti-social misanthrope, he was a man that cared about something, that's why he did what he did. some day when a person figures out how to travel into the past, it won't be some government looking for a weapon, it will be an emotional person figuring it out for love.