I had a shower thought a few years ago, something that never really left me. A future civilization who wants to advance their technology *faster* could simulate a civilization from scratch with similar physical limitations to reality. They would do this for the express purpose of examining how this alternate civilization might approach and solve various problems differently than its creators. You would also have the byproduct of being able to take that simulation's works of art, especially music, and consume that media.
I've seen a lot of people comment on the improbability of this theory SOLELY based upon the capabilities of our own computers. That doesn't make much sense. How are we to assume that the laws that govern our reality are the laws that govern others? Perhaps the beings that wrought such a complex simulation surpassed the use of such devices like "disk space", if even disk space existed. Is our reality even remotely complex in comparison to this theoretically "real" reality? This realm of ours could very well be the simplest "game of life" to these sentients. I don't think we should discredit this theory based upon the laws that govern OUR realm.
I am not convinced by the "it from bit" theories. It is said that if your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like a nail Likewise, if your model tool is a computer, everything starts to look like a computation.
I always thought of it like this: "if it was just a simulation, so what? Nothing you can do about it but continue living life as you have. I guess there is a saying about a herd of sheep but what can you really do? If going against the herd is living in denial/strained and stressed existentialism then I'd rather not. Knowing about it doesn't really change much either. Life would go on as it always has, whether you knew it was simulated or it wasn't."
This also is why on a quantum level, particles behave differently when observed. Usually the simulation generalizes and only has to be precise, when you take a close look. (stupid idea, but fun :D)
One reason this makes intuitive sense to me is that the way we describe the universe now, as a collection of particles whose exact position cannot be determined, looks an awful lot like a digital signal, which is essentially a series of little fields describing the probability of the value of the input.
The problem with simulations is that as more and more are nested, the power to simulate decreases greatly. Not only in speed, but most importantly in state space. This means that however big the first simulation authors might be, in a few steps, no more intelligent life can be simulated. This puts a serious restraint to the Bostrom's argument.
I think the concept of LOD ("level of detail") is important in discussions of computer simulations. Also the simulation could be monitoring people's minds to make sure that LOD always gives people enough detail so that people don't find weird simplifications in their experiences.
A single star contains at least 10^56 atoms, all throwing out billions of photons. There are billions of stars in a galaxy and billions of visible galaxies. We can point at spectroscope/telescope at any star and analyse the photons emitted by any atom of any star of any galaxy. A computer requires energy to compute. A computer capable of simulating a universe would need to generate MORE entropy than the universe it's simulating, and would throw that entropy into its own universe. Indeed, it could be the single largest artificial entropy generator in its own universe. This is awfully extravagant for a simulation. While I can't prove we're not in a simulation, I find these two points compelling evidence that we aren't.
Not if the host universe is, for say, 4D. Think about it. Simulating a 2D universe would not require that big of a computer(relatively), and could be (relatively) easily done.
You make an assumption that a processor and storage system in 4D is automatically many orders of magnitude more powerful than a 3D processor. I think that's an assumption you need to justify.
2 things: 1. why would we want to simulate the next iteration's universe exactly as ours? why not eg limit it to 2 space-dimensions or increase the planck length by 1000 and reduce the number of stars to 42? 2. DMT changes everything
what if the constraints of thermodynamics are forced upon us by our modelers to ensure that recursion as you described it is impossible? we are the model, they are the reality. no more. google N,N-Dimethyltryptamine
A simulation always have overhead unless the simulator is supposed to simulate itself wich is not very interesting. This means that any simulator must be in a universe that is more complex (has more matter, energy, more complex laws of nature ets) then the universe it is simulating. If multiple simulators reside in the same universe the sum of the complexities of the simulations can not exceed the complexity of that universe. All this means that we can never simulate our own universe or do multiple simulations of it unless the models of the simulated universes are simplified in some way. If we are living in a simulation the real universe that the simulator is in is more complex then the one in our simulated universe.
In the bitstorm game of life, is there a way to produce an "irrational system?" After playing the game I've realized the outcomes are: everything dies out and disappears, everything becomes completely static, everything dies out and there are rotating pieces for infinity, or a cyclical, repeating pattern forms for infinity. Is there some arrangement that will produce a constantly changing system that does not cycle or repeat for infinity?
To answer your question: yes, there are some arrangements that will produce a constantly changing system that does not cycle or repeat for infinity, but they take up an infinite amount of space. Edit: After thinking more, I realized that two gliders moving away from each other does not repeat. I love 'Video Game Song (Nightcore) with Lyrics'. :) You are awesome for making that song.
They say that when humans feel deja vu. That in itself is a glitch in the "computer program" because no matter how powerful or sophisticated a program is there will always be glitches within the program. Crazy right??
Can the game of life be inverted, is there an algorithm/ enough information to invert the apparently random output of the game of life algorithm to determine the initial state?? Kindly like to promote.
As a kid I had this game on my computer and I NEVER understood the point of it. You just opened my eyes and gave me some amazing nostalgia. Amazing video!!
Dwarf Fortress. If anyone here hasn't heard of this game you really need to check it out. It is to my knowledge the most developed human design of a world creation simulator dressed up as a game. The game is a prime example of a simulator that, in a sense, creates a living breathing world from still a relatively simple rules and makes it very believable. I'm playing the newest version of it now and it is not just an interesting game from the scientific standpoint, but also a pretty darn good and enjoyable game to play.
I think this theory is very well reasoned, but there's one problem I regularly observe when reading theories about the creation of our universe. It's the fact that we mostly need to assume that there's (was) something involved that we know, although that is very risky to do. People already wrote that their computers wouldn't be able to save PII and other infinite values. Who said that their computers need to be like ours? It's a problem that we can only come reasonably closer to solving if we keep increasing our knowledge and project it in some way.
There is solid logic behind the simulation argument. I believe that it is most likely the answer. Sure it's not elegant but we will just have to deal with that.
I propose a counterargument: Assume we are in a computer simulation, and our universe is running inside a computer. That computer must have finite computing power. If we create a computer in our universe that can simulate another universe inside it, then it is actually less likely that we are part of a computer program, as that computer's power would need to be now twice as powerful as it would need to be if it were only simulating one universe. The computing power requirement would increase exponentially as you move up the simulation hierarchy.
***** Are you even arguing against my point? Because it doesn't seem so. You haven't said anything about a computer running a simulation of a universe running a simulation of a universe yet. In that case, the computer running the simulation would need the power to simulate two universes, not just one.
Ok so what you're wondering is how this universe could simulate a universe inside it without magically doubling the total energy /matter. (conservation of energy...and perhaps Occam's razor ) What I have been essentially wondering is why that bothers you, because you don't need to simulate an entire universe for the conscious beings in it to think the universe is real or that there is a universe at all. One argument back to your point would be we can't simulate a universe inside a universe, we might be able to simulate a universe with far less complexity though , but this means that if our universe is simulated then our parent universe would have to be more complex. many worlds interpretations, I mean isn't that the same issue? If there's more than one universe then there's a larger universe spawning smaller universes with less total energy, (you'd assume) than the one spawning them.
the scary part is what if you're in another place in a different type of body and then the simulation ends and someone takes the virtual reality mask off your face how scary would that be?
My main problem with the simulation argument is that you require at least as much and likely more information to simulate information so the computer simulating our universe would have to be at least as large if not larger than our universe itself which would wouldn't function.
This is one of the more mind-blowing videos from Computerphile or Sixty Symbols. I got a bit more out of it after a second watch. Professor Moriarty is my favorite!
Double slit experiment. If it were a program it would need to conserve processing power, thus if the photon is not observed going through the slit you will get an area of probability of where it could land -- resulting in many lines appearing or however many depending on how you set up the experiment. However if the photon is being observed then the program must render exactly where the photon must go, thus resulting in two lines of light.
I always tell my friends about "The 13th Floor" whenever discussions about concepts like this come up. I thought it was a pretty good film and also takes into account the limits of processing power available in each "reality".
MINDBLOWINg: If a simulation like that can be done, then it means that many simulations can be done (maybe, with different purposes). If the simulations are a large number but there can only be 1 reality, then the chances that we are in a simulation are very high.
+icemd24 And if the universe was infinite, then there would be an infinite number of simulations, so the chances of being in a simulation would be oo / oo +1 wich ecuals 100% BINDBLOW :DD
Imagine this : You simulate a universe and you find out that creatures have become so advanced that they are trying to simulate their own universe inside your universe :P Crazy Thought Right ?
I want to add this bit of semantics to the discussion. Simulation is called simulation because it is not the thing it simulates, right? Simulation and model are essentially the same thing, are they not? You use models to simulate physics and see how things progress, for example planet movement. "Model" is the rules, computing power is the space and "simulation" part is time. If we go for simulating our universe with a "different pattern" would that essentially mean we would arbitrary decide what the primal quantum fluctuations were? And continuing the "simulation" hypothesis - could someone have written weird smiley face, out of which everything originated?
Well elucidated video on the topic, my compliments. Many years ago I independently concluded this universe is a computer simulation, and the free will decisions made by all the conscious beings inputted into how the simulation played out. Later I discovered I wasn't the first person to think in this way.
Silas Beane, Zohreh Davoudi & Martin Savage came up with a way to test the simulation hypothesis in the "real world". They presented it in the paper "Constraints On The Universe As A Numerical Simulation".
I think there was a Vsauce episode about this, and the argument against life being a computer simulation was the existence of irrational and infinite numbers. For us to have any circular objects in our simulated reality (which we do) then Pi must also exist somewhere in the code or resulting calculations of the simulation, which would be paradoxical because Pi is infinite. Fascinating stuff!
"You know what I meant. I realize Pi isn't infinite, but the number of digits in Pi are, " That's true for any number. a third is 0.3333... with infinitely many threes. The number 0 is also 0.0000 with infinitely many zeros. Every number has infinitely many digits. That's no specificity of pi. Once again, pi isn't infinite in any way. "would have to be stored in memory or cache somewhere." No it would not. Let the universe aside for a moment, and let's talk about a simple computer program. I can make a program that draws circles on my monitoring screen. This program will never have pi stored in it's memory. Because the number pi isn't required nor even useful in the drawing of circles. If you do draw a circle then you can deduce pi, not the other way around. "meaning it would still require an infinite amount of storage to exist, wouldn't it?" Not at all. What is infinite is the decimal representation of pi. And this decimal representation is never found in our universe in its entirety, there are infinitely many digits it couldn't fit in the universe, and it doesn't. But the decimal representation of a number is not the number, nor is it really interesting at all I might add. pi is "the ratio between the circumferance and the diameter of a circle". What I just said IS pi, and it's stored right between those quotation marks, which is quite a finite amount of space. If you tell me pi cannot be stored in a finite memory because it has an infinite decimal representation. Then I can answer you that zero cannot be stored in a finite memory either because it also has an infinite decimal representation.
DeusGladiorum but we can create computers which deal with irrational & infinite numbers just fine. the problem is with defining those numbers, not dealing with them. irrational numbers are not a problem for simulations.
pepe6666 Sorry, but that's not actually correct. We can do really big numbers and really small numbers, but not infinite or irrational. At its heart, a computer is basically a glorified abacus that uses light switches instead of beads. I know that almost sounds like describing the internet as a "series of tubes", but it's closer to reality than you might think.A computer has a certain number of bits that it can use to make calculations. Each bit is quite literally a conductor that can either electricity to it switched on or off. This is why computers use a base 2 number system. You know how we use a ones place, a tens place, a hundreds place, and so on? computers do that too, the theirs is ones, twos, fours, and so on. Say we've got four conductors "0000", they're all off right now but if I wanted to add one I'd turn the ones place on, "0001". Count up: 2 "0010", 3 "0011", 4 "0100", 5 "0101", 6 "0110", you get the idea. you double the number you can count to every time you add another bit so you and do a lot, but you can't put an infinite amount of conductors in a in a computer. You can round to a really high degree of precision with irrational numbers, but you'll always be dealing with a real number. Some might say that if you had an analog computer (a computer that calculates based on the amount voltage a conductor has applied to it instead of the off/on binary system) you could represent irrational numbers, but this isn't actually true either. First off, you end up with less precision because of any random noise or power fluctuation. Secondly, you're designating voltage ranges to represent real numbers, so you're still stuck with real numbers. Thirdly, even if you don't designate ranges and try to use the true voltage for your calculation so you can get rational numbers (Voltage = current / resistance, so that's possible), you're never going to get the exact irrational number you want (I guess unless you want to calculate based on the random irrational numbers of that particular circuit). At best, you can only get to the degree of precision you've calculated the irrational number you want to use and the irrational numbers of the circuit to. Any degree beyond what you have measured is a guess were your odds being right are 0 to infinite.
Game of life looks like an early precursor of the game No Man's Sky. Where they are using procedural generation to create a universe. I'm super hyped for the game. Although Hello Games are currently in court discussing the source as the Superforumla they are using. Johan Gielis is the owner of the IP underpinning NMS.
I completely love the final theory. The fact that we could be a simulation and we could eventually create a simulation is incredible. An the fact is that we would never know
This concept is very important for biology as well, especially in the behavior of schooling or flocking animals. Seemingly complex behavior, governed by just a few simple rules.
When I first started seriously thinking about quantum physics I thought if matter and energy are quantized wouldn't space and time also be quantized? Then I read that relitivity treats spacetime as a continuum. However I have seen big name physicists talk as though spacetime was quantized. I guess they just haven't found a way to prove it as they have with energy.
If what we are talking about is the manipulation of symbols (turning ones into zeroes and vice versa), or what is thought of as "computation", then this alone cannot create sentience, or anything involving the semantics of a language, or intentionality, or subjective states, etc Imagine in your mind's eye being locked inside a room and you have no connection to the outside world beyond a slit in the wall that cards slide through and into and out of the room. These cards have strange alien symbols written on them. Inside the room is a manual and a stack of cards, also with alien symbols on them. You are tasked with taking these cards, looking at the symbols and matching them up with another card based on the instructions of the manual. You do this repeatedly for a length of time. Unbeknownst to you, a person who knows this alien language is sitting outside the room passing cards in. They do not know that you are inside. They do however get other cards in response to the cards he puts in. The person outside is carrying on a conversation with you and the cards you are pushing back out the slit in the wall are comprehensible responses from the perspective of the person sitting outside. At no point do you actually know a conversation is taking place, much less what the topic of conversation is. In fact, no matter how well the manual matches cards, and no matter how quickly you match push those cards out the room, you are not any close to understanding what that there is a conversation happening and what it's about. In the computer analogy, we are taking inputs and preparing outputs. You in the room are the CPU and other computer guts (to use a technical term). This thought experiment is the Turing Test for a computer's hardware and software capacity to basically fool a human into thinking it's another human being, presumably using the computer to communicate to you. It's a test of artificial intelligence. A computer program can absolutely fool a human into thinking it's not a computer simulation, but that's not the same thing as saying it's understands anything, has meaning, or is conscious. You can argue that humans are not really conscious either, in which case you get around this problem, but you create a whole lot of new problems.
Kevin Beal "Chinese Room" Here's an interesting tidbit: your comment could have been pasted from some store of text without requiring any *understanding* on your part, whereas my simple two word response required making logical connections from your comment to my past experiences and other various thought processes. So now, I ask, who would be more likely to be mistaken for a deterministic simulacrum of consciousness?
Kevin Beal Given how people name their cars and attribute anthropomorphic qualities to machines and animals, I think the vast majority of people will readily accept that a computer that can pass the Turing test really is able to think and feel like they do.
Kevin Beal I completely see where you're coming from in this, but at the end of the day, how do you really know that you're not the only person on the planet who's self aware, and the rest of humanity are not just mindless automatons? What makes humans qualitatively different from Turing-enabled machines?
***** The computer is like the man inside the enclosed room. Humans are like a human having an actual conversation with the person outside. That's like the whole point of the thought experiment. For practical purposes, artificial intelligence is going to be more than good enough for most tasks, once we get the hang of machine learning. But it being artificial is not unimportant. It's sort of an amazing and wonderful thing that humans have consciousness that is completely taken for granted, especially by computerphiles. It's not magic, but it might as well be.
The calculation weight of any simulation within a simulation would only affect the "computer in the simulation", but not on the master simulation because the master simulation is already calculating all the fundamental interactions with or without a simulated computer existing within itself.
If the universe is a computer simulation: What if every universal computer simulation a multiverse simulation? What if every multiverse simulation is a...
Well, there's already a program that simulates the entire known universe with an infinite number of galaxies (google Space Engine). All of which you can individually explore, as well as every single star system within each galaxy. Each planet with mountains and varied terrain. Its truly amazing to see.
Vaguely speaking, we can today represent a small part of the universe in variables and using algorithm compute the future in universe. What I mean, is for example if you know mass, temperature and pressure of the water, you can calculate how much energy you need to bring it to a boil and how long it will take. This example might not be vivid enough, but it shows the possibility.
Phil, you never cease to blow my mind. If only I had a science teacher with the passion you display. I would most likely have chosen a different career path. I can't help but ask a most likely unanswerable question. If what you are speculating was to be correct, would that mean there has to be a real reality, that began the simulation in the first place? And if so, I wonder if it would appear the same as the simulation... The mind boggles.
Even if someone discovered that the universe is just a simulation, I doubt that would get released to the public, I dont think people would be able to handle it.
The layers are interesting concept, and as time goes, the probability for that is bigger, but the actual real computer would need to be really, really super to be able to handle "infinite" universes.
"... and how would we ever know." - A postulated answer to the questions posed in the 'are we a simulation' hypothesis (and forgive me, I cannot find the name of the person who responded, nor his exact phrasing) would be that we COULD know by telltale signs that would exist in a simulation we create: For example: "Arbitrary 'rules' such as speed limits on certain interactions.. ex: Light". That one's kept me up at night!
There are some days, where my opinion of Humanity takes a hammering as I read or listen to the latest news about some horrible event or other happening in the world, where I wish the Universe was a computer simulation. At least someone could press CTRL-ALT-DEL, kill the process and then tweak the simulation with better initial conditions to avoid all the crap going on. The first variable I'd tweak is the ratio of rational to irrational thinking and bump the former up by several orders of magnitude. :)
Another related concept is whether the Universe is actually Mathematical. Anyone interested in these abstract notions of the fundamental nature of reality should grab Max Tegmark's book 'Our Mathematical Universe'. It's fascinating.
In physics, time counts as a dimension exactly as the three dimensions of space. You have to specify spatial dimensions. I know he did but I was replying to the most recent comment saying that dimensions are an arbitrary construct, which they are not.
How is an external computer simulating the universe different from the universe, considered as a quantum computer, computing itself? It seems to me that any other device capable of doing the simulation could only be less efficient--in other words, that any computer existing within the universe can simulate itself, or can simulate a smaller world, but not a bigger one. If this isn't obvious, consider the smallest computer you could build to simulate the behaviour of a single photon. Is your computer smaller than a photon? "Bigness" here would be number of possible quantum states of the system, or something similar. The question that really seemed to get the professor excited was whether consciousness could arise in a "machine". And that's much harder, as we don't seem to have much idea about how consciousness works, or even how to test for it. Interesting stuff, all of it!
Saying that reality is information is not equivalent to saying that reality is digital ("quantum-based"). Information can be analog. The premise of this video is an assumption heavily based within the modern digital information age, i.e., assuming that information is necessarily digital. In terms of mathematics, this video is amazingly trendy. Determinism is long outdated. Brady's questions are apt. At the fundamental level, "non-existence," by definition, DOES NOT EXIST. Thus, we have existence everywhere, and existence is perfectly continuous. Existence is a continuum. It is not digital because there is no 0 (zero) when it comes to existence. Non-existence does not exist. Since there is no "non-existence," existence itself (all that exists) is fundamentally continuous.
I'm being optimistic. Each is going to have a certain state (not possible to determine exactly, I know). Position, spin, & momentum can all be represented in a quantifiable amount of states. Let's say there are 10^900 possible states a single particle can be in. We can upper bound this estimation at 10^1000 possible universe states for all particles. That is 2 ^ 3500 bits. Therefore, any computer that simulate 2 ^3500 bits can be represented by a computer. That is only 3500 bits. Ones and zeros
As i thing, we don't even need a computer for it. Ex, "In GOL rules glider moves" - is just mathematical fact, and it is true even whithout humanity at all, even before Conway was born it was true, and it is true outside our universe. In universe "A" people created a simulation of the universe "B". - Ok, they just visualised some rules, that allows them to watch some moments from universe "B". But "B" is not nested in "A", it is not inside their computer. Computer in universe "A" is used as a telescope. People of "A" didn't create a new universe. Nobody can create a new universe, because any universe already exists.
In answer to your first statement, when we decide something, it is influenced by neural activity of which stems from environmental factors. Our subconcious decides things for us, such as reflexes. It's much more logical for things like that to happen than for us to take the time to "decide" it ourselves. For a full answer to this question, the act of decision needs to be better defined. For 2, take a look at string theory. Higher micro dimensions can be considered quite satisfactory to explain.
right. though you may use some tricks or optimizations to make it seem like you've overcome that limitation. for example, find similar objects and store the basic pattern once, then deviations from the basic pattern per instance. or have junks that usually act like one thing consist out of smaller pieces, but that information is completely hidden unless its made relevant by interaction with those smaller pieces. so most of the time only junks would interact with junks
you're absolutely right we can model reality, we can't simulate it entirely. if you have a statement which can't be proven true(equal how complex), you have a little problem calculating it, or as the case is calculate the consequence from it(halt problem). and the simple fact that you are able to think about such a statement shows, that we can't be in a computer simulation. or at least not done with the kind of math we know today
If we live in a computer simulation which was made by some intelligent being, they should be laughing their pants off right now for watching us being enlightened that we might live in a (/their) computersimulation. And now they are laughing twice as much for me mentioning that... And now they are laughing even more :D lets keep making them laugh so that we kill them XD
You know shit was about to get real when he stood up
***** HAhaHAhA I do the same when explaining things and I get excited.
I had a shower thought a few years ago, something that never really left me.
A future civilization who wants to advance their technology *faster* could simulate a civilization from scratch with similar physical limitations to reality. They would do this for the express purpose of examining how this alternate civilization might approach and solve various problems differently than its creators. You would also have the byproduct of being able to take that simulation's works of art, especially music, and consume that media.
If this is true... Then I hope a new patch is released ASAP.
You would be able to tell if one day you add 0.1 to 0.2 and you get 0.3000000000001
the universe admins watching be like: (⊙_⊙)
Imagine we'd simulate a universe containing life and one of the species in it would recognize that they are just a simulation...
Whos to say that we weren't put on earth 5 seconds ago with memories about all we've been through and knowledge about what we know?
I've seen a lot of people comment on the improbability of this theory SOLELY based upon the capabilities of our own computers. That doesn't make much sense. How are we to assume that the laws that govern our reality are the laws that govern others? Perhaps the beings that wrought such a complex simulation surpassed the use of such devices like "disk space", if even disk space existed. Is our reality even remotely complex in comparison to this theoretically "real" reality? This realm of ours could very well be the simplest "game of life" to these sentients. I don't think we should discredit this theory based upon the laws that govern OUR realm.
I love how enthusiastic this guy is
I am not convinced by the "it from bit" theories.
It is said that if your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like a nail
Likewise, if your model tool is a computer, everything starts to look like a computation.
Let's hope they make regular backups.
This idea is so crazy and out there, yet it makes the most sense about how our universe exists.
I always thought of it like this: "if it was just a simulation, so what? Nothing you can do about it but continue living life as you have. I guess there is a saying about a herd of sheep but what can you really do? If going against the herd is living in denial/strained and stressed existentialism then I'd rather not. Knowing about it doesn't really change much either. Life would go on as it always has, whether you knew it was simulated or it wasn't."
Hey! This guy was kidnapped from Sixty Symbols!
"The Matrix" is in my opinion one of the greatest Sci Fi movies
Why should there be a smallest thing? The world could be generated like a fractal: when we zoom on smaller things, it generates it.
This also is why on a quantum level, particles behave differently when observed. Usually the simulation generalizes and only has to be precise, when you take a close look.
(stupid idea, but fun :D)
Dear Architect,
Thanks. This was neat.
Sincerely,
A blip on your screen.
One reason this makes intuitive sense to me is that the way we describe the universe now, as a collection of particles whose exact position cannot be determined, looks an awful lot like a digital signal, which is essentially a series of little fields describing the probability of the value of the input.
The problem with simulations is that as more and more are nested, the power to simulate decreases greatly. Not only in speed, but most importantly in state space. This means that however big the first simulation authors might be, in a few steps, no more intelligent life can be simulated. This puts a serious restraint to the Bostrom's argument.
Thanks for triggering another existential crisis guys
Simulations within simulations to millions of levels? Imagine if one of them gets the Blue Screen Of Armageddon.
I think the concept of LOD ("level of detail") is important in discussions of computer simulations. Also the simulation could be monitoring people's minds to make sure that LOD always gives people enough detail so that people don't find weird simplifications in their experiences.
that would explain the bad graphics
I recommend a very good SciFi movie about simulating our world: The Thirteenth Floor
A single star contains at least 10^56 atoms, all throwing out billions of photons. There are billions of stars in a galaxy and billions of visible galaxies. We can point at spectroscope/telescope at any star and analyse the photons emitted by any atom of any star of any galaxy.
A computer requires energy to compute. A computer capable of simulating a universe would need to generate MORE entropy than the universe it's simulating, and would throw that entropy into its own universe. Indeed, it could be the single largest artificial entropy generator in its own universe.
This is awfully extravagant for a simulation. While I can't prove we're not in a simulation, I find these two points compelling evidence that we aren't.
Not if the host universe is, for say, 4D.
Think about it. Simulating a 2D universe would not require that big of a computer(relatively), and could be (relatively) easily done.
You make an assumption that a processor and storage system in 4D is automatically many orders of magnitude more powerful than a 3D processor. I think that's an assumption you need to justify.
2 things:
1. why would we want to simulate the next iteration's universe exactly as ours? why not eg limit it to 2 space-dimensions or increase the planck length by 1000 and reduce the number of stars to 42?
2. DMT changes everything
ni ko You don't understand my argument. It doesn't matter what type of universe we simulate.
WTF is DMT??
what if the constraints of thermodynamics are forced upon us by our modelers to ensure that recursion as you described it is impossible? we are the model, they are the reality. no more.
google N,N-Dimethyltryptamine
A simulation always have overhead unless the simulator is supposed to simulate itself wich is not very interesting.
This means that any simulator must be in a universe that is more complex (has more matter, energy, more complex laws of nature ets) then the universe it is simulating.
If multiple simulators reside in the same universe the sum of the complexities of the simulations can not exceed the complexity of that universe.
All this means that we can never simulate our own universe or do multiple simulations of it unless the models of the simulated universes are simplified in some way.
If we are living in a simulation the real universe that the simulator is in is more complex then the one in our simulated universe.
In the bitstorm game of life, is there a way to produce an "irrational system?" After playing the game I've realized the outcomes are: everything dies out and disappears, everything becomes completely static, everything dies out and there are rotating pieces for infinity, or a cyclical, repeating pattern forms for infinity. Is there some arrangement that will produce a constantly changing system that does not cycle or repeat for infinity?
To answer your question: yes, there are some arrangements that will produce a constantly changing system that does not cycle or repeat for infinity, but they take up an infinite amount of space.
Edit: After thinking more, I realized that two gliders moving away from each other does not repeat.
I love 'Video Game Song (Nightcore) with Lyrics'. :) You are awesome for making that song.
Mark Gerads haha oh thanks! I didn't think about two gliders moving away from each other. But yeah, it would require an infinite space.
They say that when humans feel deja vu. That in itself is a glitch in the "computer program" because no matter how powerful or sophisticated a program is there will always be glitches within the program. Crazy right??
Can the game of life be inverted, is there an algorithm/ enough information to invert the apparently random output of the game of life algorithm to determine the initial state??
Kindly like to promote.
As a kid I had this game on my computer and I NEVER understood the point of it. You just opened my eyes and gave me some amazing nostalgia. Amazing video!!
Dwarf Fortress. If anyone here hasn't heard of this game you really need to check it out. It is to my knowledge the most developed human design of a world creation simulator dressed up as a game. The game is a prime example of a simulator that, in a sense, creates a living breathing world from still a relatively simple rules and makes it very believable.
I'm playing the newest version of it now and it is not just an interesting game from the scientific standpoint, but also a pretty darn good and enjoyable game to play.
Embedding the Game of Life into this opening. Brilliant.
I think this theory is very well reasoned, but there's one problem I regularly observe when reading theories about the creation of our universe. It's the fact that we mostly need to assume that there's (was) something involved that we know, although that is very risky to do. People already wrote that their computers wouldn't be able to save PII and other infinite values. Who said that their computers need to be like ours? It's a problem that we can only come reasonably closer to solving if we keep increasing our knowledge and project it in some way.
There is solid logic behind the simulation argument. I believe that it is most likely the answer. Sure it's not elegant but we will just have to deal with that.
I propose a counterargument: Assume we are in a computer simulation, and our universe is running inside a computer. That computer must have finite computing power. If we create a computer in our universe that can simulate another universe inside it, then it is actually less likely that we are part of a computer program, as that computer's power would need to be now twice as powerful as it would need to be if it were only simulating one universe.
The computing power requirement would increase exponentially as you move up the simulation hierarchy.
***** Are you even arguing against my point? Because it doesn't seem so. You haven't said anything about a computer running a simulation of a universe running a simulation of a universe yet. In that case, the computer running the simulation would need the power to simulate two universes, not just one.
Ok so what you're wondering is how this universe could simulate a universe inside it without magically doubling the total energy /matter.
(conservation of energy...and perhaps Occam's razor )
What I have been essentially wondering is why that bothers you, because you don't need to simulate an entire universe for the conscious beings in it to think the universe is real or that there is a universe at all.
One argument back to your point would be we can't simulate a universe inside a universe, we might be able to simulate a universe with far less complexity though , but this means that if our universe is simulated then our parent universe would have to be more complex.
many worlds interpretations, I mean isn't that the same issue?
If there's more than one universe then there's a larger universe spawning smaller universes with less total energy, (you'd assume) than the one spawning them.
the scary part is what if you're in another place in a different type of body and then the simulation ends and someone takes the virtual reality mask off your face how scary would that be?
I think I just figured out alien abduction
My main problem with the simulation argument is that you require at least as much and likely more information to simulate information so the computer simulating our universe would have to be at least as large if not larger than our universe itself which would wouldn't function.
I love his level of excitement when he explains this.
This is one of the more mind-blowing videos from Computerphile or Sixty Symbols. I got a bit more out of it after a second watch. Professor Moriarty is my favorite!
Double slit experiment. If it were a program it would need to conserve processing power, thus if the photon is not observed going through the slit you will get an area of probability of where it could land -- resulting in many lines appearing or however many depending on how you set up the experiment. However if the photon is being observed then the program must render exactly where the photon must go, thus resulting in two lines of light.
I knew my intelligence was artificial.
I always tell my friends about "The 13th Floor" whenever discussions about concepts like this come up. I thought it was a pretty good film and also takes into account the limits of processing power available in each "reality".
The first half of this interview is very interesting, and the second half is utterly insane.
I hear that 4-AcO-DMT can temporarily extract you from the simulation.
so if we really are in the simulation, could we in distant future hack this simulation and change stuff at will?
What is this! Started a channel called Computerphile and didn’t tell me? Now I have to watch all these new great videos. Thanks!
MINDBLOWINg: If a simulation like that can be done, then it means that many simulations can be done (maybe, with different purposes). If the simulations are a large number but there can only be 1 reality, then the chances that we are in a simulation are very high.
+icemd24 And if the universe was infinite, then there would be an infinite number of simulations, so the chances of being in a simulation would be oo / oo +1 wich ecuals 100% BINDBLOW :DD
What I want to know is: What do we do if we found out that we are?
Imagine this :
You simulate a universe and you find out that creatures have become so advanced that they are trying to simulate their own universe inside your universe :P Crazy Thought Right ?
I want to add this bit of semantics to the discussion.
Simulation is called simulation because it is not the thing it simulates, right? Simulation and model are essentially the same thing, are they not? You use models to simulate physics and see how things progress, for example planet movement. "Model" is the rules, computing power is the space and "simulation" part is time.
If we go for simulating our universe with a "different pattern" would that essentially mean we would arbitrary decide what the primal quantum fluctuations were? And continuing the "simulation" hypothesis - could someone have written weird smiley face, out of which everything originated?
Well ,if life is a computer simulation it is a buggy one. That respawn bug tho.
If the universe is running on a computer somewhere, i hope the owner remembers to pay his/hers/its electric bill ☺
Well elucidated video on the topic, my compliments. Many years ago I independently concluded this universe is a computer simulation, and the free will decisions made by all the conscious beings inputted into how the simulation played out. Later I discovered I wasn't the first person to think in this way.
Silas Beane, Zohreh Davoudi & Martin Savage came up with a way to test the simulation hypothesis in the "real world". They presented it in the paper "Constraints On The Universe As A Numerical Simulation".
Why would it have to be just 1 bit/unit of space? Why couldn't it be x number of bits/unit of space to represent multiple different particles?
I think there was a Vsauce episode about this, and the argument against life being a computer simulation was the existence of irrational and infinite numbers. For us to have any circular objects in our simulated reality (which we do) then Pi must also exist somewhere in the code or resulting calculations of the simulation, which would be paradoxical because Pi is infinite. Fascinating stuff!
"You know what I meant. I realize Pi isn't infinite, but the number of digits in Pi are, "
That's true for any number. a third is 0.3333... with infinitely many threes.
The number 0 is also 0.0000 with infinitely many zeros.
Every number has infinitely many digits. That's no specificity of pi. Once again, pi isn't infinite in any way.
"would have to be stored in memory or cache somewhere."
No it would not. Let the universe aside for a moment, and let's talk about a simple computer program.
I can make a program that draws circles on my monitoring screen. This program will never have pi stored in it's memory.
Because the number pi isn't required nor even useful in the drawing of circles. If you do draw a circle then you can deduce pi, not the other way around.
"meaning it would still require an infinite amount of storage to exist, wouldn't it?"
Not at all. What is infinite is the decimal representation of pi.
And this decimal representation is never found in our universe in its entirety, there are infinitely many digits it couldn't fit in the universe, and it doesn't.
But the decimal representation of a number is not the number, nor is it really interesting at all I might add.
pi is "the ratio between the circumferance and the diameter of a circle". What I just said IS pi, and it's stored right between those quotation marks, which is quite a finite amount of space.
If you tell me pi cannot be stored in a finite memory because it has an infinite decimal representation.
Then I can answer you that zero cannot be stored in a finite memory either because it also has an infinite decimal representation.
I agree, but the only thing is that do we ever have perfect circles? Computers can generate near perfect circles.
DeusGladiorum but we can create computers which deal with irrational & infinite numbers just fine. the problem is with defining those numbers, not dealing with them. irrational numbers are not a problem for simulations.
DeusGladiorum this is genius !!!
pepe6666 Sorry, but that's not actually correct. We can do really big numbers and really small numbers, but not infinite or irrational. At its heart, a computer is basically a glorified abacus that uses light switches instead of beads. I know that almost sounds like describing the internet as a "series of tubes", but it's closer to reality than you might think.A computer has a certain number of bits that it can use to make calculations. Each bit is quite literally a conductor that can either electricity to it switched on or off. This is why computers use a base 2 number system. You know how we use a ones place, a tens place, a hundreds place, and so on? computers do that too, the theirs is ones, twos, fours, and so on. Say we've got four conductors "0000", they're all off right now but if I wanted to add one I'd turn the ones place on, "0001". Count up: 2 "0010", 3 "0011", 4 "0100", 5 "0101", 6 "0110", you get the idea. you double the number you can count to every time you add another bit so you and do a lot, but you can't put an infinite amount of conductors in a in a computer. You can round to a really high degree of precision with irrational numbers, but you'll always be dealing with a real number. Some might say that if you had an analog computer (a computer that calculates based on the amount voltage a conductor has applied to it instead of the off/on binary system) you could represent irrational numbers, but this isn't actually true either. First off, you end up with less precision because of any random noise or power fluctuation. Secondly, you're designating voltage ranges to represent real numbers, so you're still stuck with real numbers. Thirdly, even if you don't designate ranges and try to use the true voltage for your calculation so you can get rational numbers (Voltage = current / resistance, so that's possible), you're never going to get the exact irrational number you want (I guess unless you want to calculate based on the random irrational numbers of that particular circuit). At best, you can only get to the degree of precision you've calculated the irrational number you want to use and the irrational numbers of the circuit to. Any degree beyond what you have measured is a guess were your odds being right are 0 to infinite.
Game of life looks like an early precursor of the game No Man's Sky. Where they are using procedural generation to create a universe. I'm super hyped for the game. Although Hello Games are currently in court discussing the source as the Superforumla they are using. Johan Gielis is the owner of the IP underpinning NMS.
"And how would we ever know?" That is the thing that gets me
Ah simulation theory. We are a video game 0_0
I completely love the final theory. The fact that we could be a simulation and we could eventually create a simulation is incredible. An the fact is that we would never know
This concept is very important for biology as well, especially in the behavior of schooling or flocking animals. Seemingly complex behavior, governed by just a few simple rules.
the idea that the universe is just a computer program or simulation is not an exotic feeling
When I first started seriously thinking about quantum physics I thought if matter and energy are quantized wouldn't space and time also be quantized? Then I read that relitivity treats spacetime as a continuum. However I have seen big name physicists talk as though spacetime was quantized.
I guess they just haven't found a way to prove it as they have with energy.
If what we are talking about is the manipulation of symbols (turning ones into zeroes and vice versa), or what is thought of as "computation", then this alone cannot create sentience, or anything involving the semantics of a language, or intentionality, or subjective states, etc
Imagine in your mind's eye being locked inside a room and you have no connection to the outside world beyond a slit in the wall that cards slide through and into and out of the room. These cards have strange alien symbols written on them. Inside the room is a manual and a stack of cards, also with alien symbols on them.
You are tasked with taking these cards, looking at the symbols and matching them up with another card based on the instructions of the manual. You do this repeatedly for a length of time.
Unbeknownst to you, a person who knows this alien language is sitting outside the room passing cards in. They do not know that you are inside. They do however get other cards in response to the cards he puts in. The person outside is carrying on a conversation with you and the cards you are pushing back out the slit in the wall are comprehensible responses from the perspective of the person sitting outside.
At no point do you actually know a conversation is taking place, much less what the topic of conversation is. In fact, no matter how well the manual matches cards, and no matter how quickly you match push those cards out the room, you are not any close to understanding what that there is a conversation happening and what it's about.
In the computer analogy, we are taking inputs and preparing outputs. You in the room are the CPU and other computer guts (to use a technical term). This thought experiment is the Turing Test for a computer's hardware and software capacity to basically fool a human into thinking it's another human being, presumably using the computer to communicate to you. It's a test of artificial intelligence.
A computer program can absolutely fool a human into thinking it's not a computer simulation, but that's not the same thing as saying it's understands anything, has meaning, or is conscious.
You can argue that humans are not really conscious either, in which case you get around this problem, but you create a whole lot of new problems.
Kevin Beal "Chinese Room"
Here's an interesting tidbit: your comment could have been pasted from some store of text without requiring any *understanding* on your part, whereas my simple two word response required making logical connections from your comment to my past experiences and other various thought processes. So now, I ask, who would be more likely to be mistaken for a deterministic simulacrum of consciousness?
frtard I don't know. You?
Kevin Beal Given how people name their cars and attribute anthropomorphic qualities to machines and animals, I think the vast majority of people will readily accept that a computer that can pass the Turing test really is able to think and feel like they do.
Kevin Beal I completely see where you're coming from in this, but at the end of the day, how do you really know that you're not the only person on the planet who's self aware, and the rest of humanity are not just mindless automatons?
What makes humans qualitatively different from Turing-enabled machines?
***** The computer is like the man inside the enclosed room. Humans are like a human having an actual conversation with the person outside. That's like the whole point of the thought experiment.
For practical purposes, artificial intelligence is going to be more than good enough for most tasks, once we get the hang of machine learning. But it being artificial is not unimportant. It's sort of an amazing and wonderful thing that humans have consciousness that is completely taken for granted, especially by computerphiles. It's not magic, but it might as well be.
The calculation weight of any simulation within a simulation would only affect the "computer in the simulation", but not on the master simulation because the master simulation is already calculating all the fundamental interactions with or without a simulated computer existing within itself.
Tom Campbell - My Big Toe
Great explanation of our virtual reality.
God is the computer scientist
If the universe is a computer simulation:
What if every universal computer simulation a multiverse simulation?
What if every multiverse simulation is a...
Well, there's already a program that simulates the entire known universe with an infinite number of galaxies (google Space Engine). All of which you can individually explore, as well as every single star system within each galaxy. Each planet with mountains and varied terrain. Its truly amazing to see.
This video is a never ending loop - ||see more footage ---> see full video ---> see more footage ---> ad infinitum
If true that "reality" is just information instead of "physical stuff", then behavior becomes the only thing of true significance.
Tom Campbell is a guy to youtube on rhis fascinating subject.
Vaguely speaking, we can today represent a small part of the universe in variables and using algorithm compute the future in universe. What I mean, is for example if you know mass, temperature and pressure of the water, you can calculate how much energy you need to bring it to a boil and how long it will take. This example might not be vivid enough, but it shows the possibility.
Phil, you never cease to blow my mind. If only I had a science teacher with the passion you display. I would most likely have chosen a different career path.
I can't help but ask a most likely unanswerable question. If what you are speculating was to be correct, would that mean there has to be a real reality, that began the simulation in the first place? And if so, I wonder if it would appear the same as the simulation... The mind boggles.
Even if someone discovered that the universe is just a simulation, I doubt that would get released to the public, I dont think people would be able to handle it.
I call that 'the divine programmer' :)
The layers are interesting concept, and as time goes, the probability for that is bigger, but the actual real computer would need to be really, really super to be able to handle "infinite" universes.
"... and how would we ever know." - A postulated answer to the questions posed in the 'are we a simulation' hypothesis (and forgive me, I cannot find the name of the person who responded, nor his exact phrasing) would be that we COULD know by telltale signs that would exist in a simulation we create:
For example: "Arbitrary 'rules' such as speed limits on certain interactions.. ex: Light".
That one's kept me up at night!
There are some days, where my opinion of Humanity takes a hammering as I read or listen to the latest news about some horrible event or other happening in the world, where I wish the Universe was a computer simulation. At least someone could press CTRL-ALT-DEL, kill the process and then tweak the simulation with better initial conditions to avoid all the crap going on. The first variable I'd tweak is the ratio of rational to irrational thinking and bump the former up by several orders of magnitude. :)
notice how it stops at the end, ,,mmmm very interesting.
Another related concept is whether the Universe is actually Mathematical. Anyone interested in these abstract notions of the fundamental nature of reality should grab Max Tegmark's book 'Our Mathematical Universe'. It's fascinating.
In physics, time counts as a dimension exactly as the three dimensions of space. You have to specify spatial dimensions. I know he did but I was replying to the most recent comment saying that dimensions are an arbitrary construct, which they are not.
159 gods dont like this video
sooooo how much is the fps?
How is an external computer simulating the universe different from the universe, considered as a quantum computer, computing itself? It seems to me that any other device capable of doing the simulation could only be less efficient--in other words, that any computer existing within the universe can simulate itself, or can simulate a smaller world, but not a bigger one. If this isn't obvious, consider the smallest computer you could build to simulate the behaviour of a single photon. Is your computer smaller than a photon? "Bigness" here would be number of possible quantum states of the system, or something similar.
The question that really seemed to get the professor excited was whether consciousness could arise in a "machine". And that's much harder, as we don't seem to have much idea about how consciousness works, or even how to test for it. Interesting stuff, all of it!
Would love to see what happens if after a certain amount of cycles the rules you set for one of the cells would "replicate" improperly.
Saying that reality is information is not equivalent to saying that reality is digital ("quantum-based"). Information can be analog. The premise of this video is an assumption heavily based within the modern digital information age, i.e., assuming that information is necessarily digital. In terms of mathematics, this video is amazingly trendy. Determinism is long outdated. Brady's questions are apt. At the fundamental level, "non-existence," by definition, DOES NOT EXIST. Thus, we have existence everywhere, and existence is perfectly continuous. Existence is a continuum. It is not digital because there is no 0 (zero) when it comes to existence. Non-existence does not exist. Since there is no "non-existence," existence itself (all that exists) is fundamentally continuous.
***** I agree.
"It from bit"
I'm being optimistic. Each is going to have a certain state (not possible to determine exactly, I know). Position, spin, & momentum can all be represented in a quantifiable amount of states. Let's say there are 10^900 possible states a single particle can be in. We can upper bound this estimation at 10^1000 possible universe states for all particles. That is 2 ^ 3500 bits. Therefore, any computer that simulate 2 ^3500 bits can be represented by a computer.
That is only 3500 bits. Ones and zeros
As i thing, we don't even need a computer for it. Ex, "In GOL rules glider moves" - is just mathematical fact, and it is true even whithout humanity at all, even before Conway was born it was true, and it is true outside our universe. In universe "A" people created a simulation of the universe "B". - Ok, they just visualised some rules, that allows them to watch some moments from universe "B". But "B" is not nested in "A", it is not inside their computer. Computer in universe "A" is used as a telescope. People of "A" didn't create a new universe. Nobody can create a new universe, because any universe already exists.
layers upon layers of simulations? like the 13th floor then?
matrix sequels?
never heard of them.
In answer to your first statement, when we decide something, it is influenced by neural activity of which stems from environmental factors. Our subconcious decides things for us, such as reflexes. It's much more logical for things like that to happen than for us to take the time to "decide" it ourselves. For a full answer to this question, the act of decision needs to be better defined. For 2, take a look at string theory. Higher micro dimensions can be considered quite satisfactory to explain.
right. though you may use some tricks or optimizations to make it seem like you've overcome that limitation. for example, find similar objects and store the basic pattern once, then deviations from the basic pattern per instance. or have junks that usually act like one thing consist out of smaller pieces, but that information is completely hidden unless its made relevant by interaction with those smaller pieces. so most of the time only junks would interact with junks
Infinite regress solves nothing.
'What if the universe is a computer simulation?' Answer: Doesn't make one iota of difference to the crap we have to put up with on a daily basis.
Brady, I didn't know you even had a computerphile channel.
This is awesome.
You should list all your channels in every video description.
you're absolutely right we can model reality, we can't simulate it entirely. if you have a statement which can't be proven true(equal how complex), you have a little problem calculating it, or as the case is calculate the consequence from it(halt problem). and the simple fact that you are able to think about such a statement shows, that we can't be in a computer simulation. or at least not done with the kind of math we know today
If we live in a computer simulation which was made by some intelligent being, they should be laughing their pants off right now for watching us being enlightened that we might live in a (/their) computersimulation.
And now they are laughing twice as much for me mentioning that...
And now they are laughing even more :D
lets keep making them laugh so that we kill them XD