Why reality could be a computer simulation

[The Transcended Omniverse]

I have heard many arguments supporting the idea that this universe could be a computer simulation, but there is one other idea that I haven't heard in support of the computer simulation theory which is that when it comes to computers, there are viruses. As we can see, there are viruses in this life when people catch the flu or when they get AIDS.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

It seems that the debate is increasingly about the nature of our world's intelligent creator, & that the old idea of an entirely accidental creation, is looking ever more improbable.

Viruses are life, good and bad, challenges and rewards, just one more fingerprint of, and argument for, Intelligent Design.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I have heard many arguments supporting the idea that this universe could be a computer simulation, but there is one other idea that I haven't heard in support of the computer simulation theory which is that when it comes to computers, there are viruses. As we can see, there are viruses in this life when people catch the flu or when they get AIDS.

It is impossible to simulate the universe on or with any physical system (any computer) other than one that is as "large" and "runs" as "fast" as the universe. That is, if the universe is a simulation, the system simulating it could only do so in real time, making it reducible to the universe itself.

 

[Valjean]

I have heard many arguments supporting the idea that this universe could be a computer simulation, but there is one other idea that I haven't heard in support of the computer simulation theory which is that when it comes to computers, there are viruses. As we can see, there are viruses in this life when people catch the flu or when they get AIDS.

I don't follow. What do viruses have to do with whether we're living in a simulation?

The idea isn't without adhearants in scientific circles, though:
We might live in a computer program, but it may not matter

In June 2016, technology entrepreneur Elon Musk asserted that the odds are "a billion to one" against us living in "base reality".

Similarly, Google's machine-intelligence guru Ray Kurzweil has suggested that "maybe our whole universe is a science experiment of some junior high-school student in another universe".

Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?

Moderator Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the museum’s Hayden Planetarium, put the odds at 50-50 that our entire existence is a program on someone else’s hard drive. “I think the likelihood may be very high,” he said.

 

[Shem Ben Noah]

For those who are Sci-fi fans, Chalker wrote a 7 book series way back in '77 which featured this, called the Well of Souls

All-time fav series, right behind Foundation

 

[Shem Ben Noah]

It is impossible to simulate the universe on or with any physical system (any computer) other than one that is as "large" and "runs" as "fast" as the universe. That is, if the universe is a simulation, the system simulating it could only do so in real time, making it reducible to the universe itself.

This may be false. This points out the fact that we actually pay attention to very little of the universe, at any given time. So maybe the sim need not run all that background stuff all the time.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

This may be false. This points out the fact that we actually pay attention to very little of the universe, at any given time. So maybe the sim need not run all that background stuff all the time.

Actually, it is a mathematical fact given by the nature of differential equations even in classical physics and the importance of infinitesimal differences of initial conditions in even merely epistemic indeterminate system evolution. This is compounded in all formulations of modern physics. It has to do with computable models, (quantum) information theory, and computability

 

[Brickjectivity]

I am not sure L.O., but what you are pointing out is that the universe is a huge swirling interconnecting system that changes wildly depending upon the slightest change in its initial state and in slight differences in changes beyond that. In addition you refer to computability and the laws of information.

I think of it this way. It wouldn't resolve questions of existence or of God or morality. If this was a simulated universe, then you'd still have the problem of where the outer universe came from. It'd be the same problem; so it wouldn't solve the question of existence, the nature of God or of morality. All it does it make this into a Discworld on top of 4 elephants on the back of a giant turtle. You still have to ask about the elephants and the turtle then.

There are better alternatives to the simulation idea.

@LegionOnomaMoi

 

[Revoltingest]

It is impossible to simulate the universe on or with any physical system (any computer) other than one that is as "large" and "runs" as "fast" as the universe. That is, if the universe is a simulation, the system simulating it could only do so in real time, making it reducible to the universe itself.

The simulation needn't model the entire universe & all its details.
It need only simulate what we observe to the extent we observe it.

 

[loverofhumanity]

Finally we are realising that there is just way too much fine tuning and intricacy in the universe as well as laws that we are beginning to think that it couldn't be just a coincidence and that a super intelligent being is behind all this.

Interesting.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

It is impossible to simulate the universe on or with any physical system (any computer) other than one that is as "large" and "runs" as "fast" as the universe. That is, if the universe is a simulation, the system simulating it could only do so in real time, making it reducible to the universe itself.

See "procedural generation." Extrapolate.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I haven’t done a good job at trying to explain my point. Although somewhat different from that point I wished to make, there exists a similar position described in a popular physics book I’ve decided to steal from; better to express something similar to my point well in another’s words than to express my own point too poorly to be understood. To that end:

“Even if we were to commandeer the entire observable Universe and use it as a digital computer, its information storage capacity would still be finite, and it could not even “remember” one irrational number with complete precision…Determinism implies predictability only in the idealized limit of infinite precision…This infinite precision is, as we have seen, impossible…

The universe itself cannot “know” its own workings with absolute precision, and therefore cannot “predict” what will happen next, in every detail…deterministic chaos seems random because we are necessarily ignorant of the ultrafine detail of just a few degrees of freedom, and so is the Universe itself.”

Davies, P., & Gribbin, J. (1992). The Matter Myth. Simon & Schuster.

There are two points important in the above quotes. The first is that any simulation of any physical system that would seek to be so exact that the physical “universe” we experience is that simulation must necessarily be so imprecise that the set of input values which can even in principle be used consists of a set of measure 0 (the rational numbers are infinitely close to one another, but are negligible; almost all numbers are both irrational and non-computable). As infinite precision is necessary to simulate even extremely simple systems in our would-be “simulated” reality, this means that such simulations are impossible.

The second and related point is that even if we consider the actual universe as somehow “computing” future states based upon past states, we are again at a loss (even if we assume classical determinism). The only way this computational universe could take current states and apply the laws of physics to output future states is via something like inherently and intrinsically stochastic probabilities: the universe itself cannot “compute”, predict, or in-principle simulate future states based upon the present state (only the next state).

Of course, the cosmos is fundamentally indeterministic, the laws of physics don’t apply to open systems or the universe (but to isolated, closed systems), and we cannot even conceive of a method whereby any computational system (even one capable of handling infinitely large sets) can precisely simulate fairly simple systems that are ubiquitous in our would-be simulated universe.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

See "procedural generation." Extrapolate.

See modern theories of physics. Learn.
Also, you might look at the nature of the computational approach to physics and its consequences and failures. First, it is fundamentally fallacious (see The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time by Lee Smolin and Roberto Mangabeira Unger, the award-winning essay published in Springer'sThe Frontier Series volume Questioning the Foundations of Physics) "The Universe Is Not a Computer" (see attached)
It is one thing for us to simulate physical systems. We do not need to do so with the precision necessary for our "universe" to be such a simulation. It is another to apply computational procedures, modelling methods, and computability theory more generally so as to apply them to our "universe" as a simulation in terms of said approaches/methods.
It is already bad enough that the neo-mechanistic worldview, in which mechanism is replaced by computation and material by information, is for many the foundation of all physics and the foundational approach. It is far worse to extrapolate from the assumption that the cosmos can be treated as a computational system in which future states are "computed" via the laws of physics and the input from past states to the notion that this computational cosmos is in reality somehow a simulation of some large computational system which defies everything we know about computational systems, computation itself, information processing, etc.

 

[psychoslice]

It all sounds silly to me.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

See modern theories of physics. Learn.
Also, you might look at the nature of the computational approach to physics and its consequences and failures. First, it is fundamentally fallacious (see The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time by Lee Smolin and Roberto Mangabeira Unger, the award-winning essay published in Springer'sThe Frontier Series volume Questioning the Foundations of Physics) "The Universe Is Not a Computer" (see attached)
It is one thing for us to simulate physical systems. We do not need to do so with the precision necessary for our "universe" to be such a simulation. It is another to apply computational procedures, modelling methods, and computability theory more generally so as to apply them to our "universe" as a simulation in terms of said approaches/methods.
It is already bad enough that the neo-mechanistic worldview, in which mechanism is replaced by computation and material by information, is for many the foundation of all physics and the foundational approach. It is far worse to extrapolate from the assumption that the cosmos can be treated as a computational system in which future states are "computed" via the laws of physics and the input from past states to the notion that this computational cosmos is in reality somehow a simulation of some large computational system which defies everything we know about computational systems, computation itself, information processing, etc.

Or don't. I don't really expect someone who already knows everything to be open to hearing and really thinking about any outside views. This is another aspect of knowledge versus wisdom. Just something to think about if you ever reach that point. Have a pleasant day.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Of course, the cosmos is fundamentally indeterministic, the laws of physics don’t apply to open systems or the universe (but to isolated, closed systems), and we cannot even conceive of a method whereby any computational system (even one capable of handling infinitely large sets) can precisely simulate fairly simple systems that are ubiquitous in our would-be simulated universe.

But, of course, any sufficiently advanced intelligence could conceive of, and potentially implement, a whole range of methods and processes far beyond our current ability to even conceive of. Unless, of course, one was so arrogant and naive to assume that the current conceptions of human beings is anywhere near the ultimate limits of conceivable conceptual, theoretical, and technological understanding and implementation.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Or don't. I don't really expect someone who already knows everything to be open to hearing and really thinking about any outside views.

I am at a loss here to understand what views might be so outside of my own so as to bar me from hearing or thinking about them (but then, I don't know everything so the above doesn't apply to me).

But, of course, any sufficiently advanced intelligence could conceive of, and potentially implement, a whole range of methods and processes far beyond our current ability to even conceive of.

Like God could. Or some Laplacian intellect. Or the three-fold law. Or anything we have or might dream up but have little or no reason for taking seriously as anything remotely approaching a scientific basis for scientific models/theories.

Unless, of course, one was so arrogant and naive to assume that the current conceptions of human beings is anywhere near the ultimate limits of conceivable conceptual, theoretical, and technological understanding and implementation.

Or unless one were so familiar with the basis of computability, mathematics, uncountable infinities and set cardinality (and their relevance to physics in e.g., ergodic theory or the space of allowable quantum states), that one could legitimately conclude that it has been mathematically/formally proven than there cannot exist any system which could even in principle precisely simulate any sort of system that has any set of requisite "values" (such as position, momentum, etc.) which at the least require the real numbers (or some Cartesian product space of these) as does the entirety of classical and modern physics and any hypothetical system we might imagine possessing any property with values taking on the continuum.
Basically, we can be only so arrogant as our conscious demands, which in this case need be only so arrogant as to suppose that we need basic logic and inferences using this logic. Simulation of any system which requires a single irrational number needs be infinite; if any physical system in the universe (or if the universe itself) depends upon any continuous range of values at all then necessarily even an infinitely large "computer" could not possibly simulate it; if we do not constrain the "ultimate limits" you refer to, then we abandon the sciences, metaphysics, and most of philosophy along with the better part of the whole of scholarship.
But feel free to freely speculate nonsense unconstrained by knowledge, logic, mathematics, physics, etc.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

But feel free to freely speculate nonsense unconstrained by knowledge, logic, mathematics, physics, etc.

And continue to feel "free to freely" assume you know everything about the universe. Feel free to freely add a list of end notes and references to prove this.

 

[David T]

I have heard many arguments supporting the idea that this universe could be a computer simulation, but there is one other idea that I haven't heard in support of the computer simulation theory which is that when it comes to computers, there are viruses. As we can see, there are viruses in this life when people catch the flu or when they get AIDS.

Christian accedemic theology and modern philosophy have been preaching this for thousands of years. I was just having this conversation with a seagull the other day and the seagull said " if ypu toss me a morsel of food i will explain to you the virtual reality in which we find ourselves. So i tossed the seagull some bread. The seagull then said if you toss me a morsel of food i will explain virtual reality to you" I protested " you already said that to which the seagull said " I will answer that if you toss me a morsel of bread" I finally had enough of the seagull in protest I said " you are an idiot bird all you care about is me tossing you some bread," to which the bird responded " I will answer that if you toss me a morsel of bread". I left in disgust with the bird, went home realizing I had gone out to get some bread from the grocery store to make French toast so I could have a lovely breakfast while watching nature on the nature channel, get my morning news on the internet, so some shopping at Amazon for christmas, and plan a trip to Disneyland. I just love the science of it all.

 

[Milton Platt]

I have heard many arguments supporting the idea that this universe could be a computer simulation, but there is one other idea that I haven't heard in support of the computer simulation theory which is that when it comes to computers, there are viruses. As we can see, there are viruses in this life when people catch the flu or when they get AIDS.

Biological viruses are not the same. That is a false equivocation. Sorry