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What do you think about the idea that we're in a simulation?

I don’t think that we’re in a simulation, but I do find myself occasionally entertaining the idea of it.

I think it would be kinda funny, because I have seen so much ridiculous shit in my life, that the idea that all those ridiculous things were simulated inside a computer or that maybe an external player did those things that I witnessed, is just too weird and funny at the same time lol.

Also, I play Civilizations VI and I occasionally wonder ‘What if those settlers / soldiers / units / whatever are actually conscious. What if those lines of code actually think that they’re alive?’. In that case, they are in a simulation. The same could apply to other life simulators, such as the Sims 4.

Idk, what does Lemmy think about it?

mister_monster ,

It is incredibly unlikely.

I know, “if an ancestor simulation is possible than it is much more likely you’re in one than not in one.” That’s fallacious, unfalsifiable and everyone loves to leave out the word “ancestor” which is very important to the thought experiment.

In our universe, no system is entirely isolated from the rest of it. It is impossible to create a system that does not in some way interact with the outside universe. So if it is a simulation in a universe, and the universe it is running in also has this rule we would see information from that universe leak into ours in some way. How that would appear we don’t know, but it would be possible to figure it out. Maybe heat dissipates out, maybe bit flips happen in our universe due to the parent’s equivalent to cosmic rays, maybe the speed of light is a result of the clock speed of the simulator. We don’t know what it would be, but there would be something, and it would be theoretically discernible.

at least some of the laws of our universe are laws of the parent universe. So maybe that rule, no system exists in isolation, is also true above. Or maybe our speed of light is the same for them. Whatever it is, our cumulative constraints are more than that of the simulation.

All that, unless, in the parent universe, 1) systems can exist in isolation, or 2) it is an environment with no constraints. These two are functionally equivalent, so I’ll talk about them like they’re the same thing. In such a universe, there would be no causality, no form, nothing that makes it unified. It’s not a universe at all. It’s something like a universe post heat death. In such a scenario, running a simulation isn’t possible. If it were, to create an environment in which causality can be simulated, that environment wouldn’t be a simulation, it would be a bona fide universe.

So I think, the fact that we see no evidence that we are in a simulation means we are probably not in one. So that means, if we are in one it is falsifiable and we can prove or disprove it empirically. And it also means we can escape, or at the very least destroy it.

GreyEyedGhost ,

There is no requirement for a subset of something to have the same properties as the superset. Just because everything in our universe is interconnected is no guarantee that the same applies to the hypothetical universe in which our simulation is run. This is ignoring that the idea is that we can’t see out of the simulation, i.e., there is no uncontrolled information being inserted into the simulation. This doesn’t preclude static from the outside impacting us in some measurable way…such as a background level of noise that is pervasive in the simulation, like the CMB.

I don’t know if we’re in a simulation, but a lot of people smarter than me and more knowledgeable in the field have come to the conclusion that this idea isn’t falsifiable, and I doubt your proposal is a new idea for them. This leads me to believe they probably had a good reason to dismiss it, better than my points listed above.

mister_monster ,

Just because everything in our universe is interconnected is no guarantee that the same applies to the hypothetical universe in which our simulation is run

I addressed this already.

GreyEyedGhost ,

Okay, but you’re glossing over the point, so let’s talk about black holes. They are part of our universe, information can go in past the event horizon, but no information can come out past the event horizon. Are they connected? Yes, absolutely. Can we collect any information from them, beyond a few basic physical measurements (gravity, momentum, rotation, mass-energy)? No, that whole event horizon again. So are you proposing that causality doesn’t exist in black holes, doesn’t exist in our universe, or that maybe we can have an interconnected system with a one-way transfer of information?

Again, I’m sure someone with a PhD could not only come up with better reasons for the flaw in your assessment, but has probably already articulated it somewhere. Perhaps you should search that up.

mister_monster ,

Information comes out of black holes. That’s the whole point of the Hawking radiation thing. And information enters, obviously. Also those few basic measurements are information. Black holes are falsifiable and detectable.

Causality inside black holes is not like causality out here, but it does exist. Once you enter, there’s only one direction you can go, no matter what you do. The outcome of everything was decided the moment you touched the event horizon. That outcome is that you will eventually evaporate as hawking radiation.

I’m not glossing over the point. I’ve already addressed the crux of it. An environment in which systems can be totally isolated cannot function in any conceivable way as a universe. Everything inside would not be able to interact at all. It would be more like a substrate on which universes exist, if an environment can be isolated that does not allow for anything inside it to be 100% isolated.

GreyEyedGhost ,

Energy is not information. You are misinformed.

mister_monster ,

Yes it is lol I love being called misinformed by misinformed people. You should look into hawking radiation and why it was theorized.

GreyEyedGhost ,

Well, after doing some reading, you may be right. I didn’t hear about the issues brought up, and Hawkings responses in 2004. It seems the consensus is that information is conveyed somehow, with some limits on practicality. That may still raise issues with determining whether you’re in a simulation, if the capability to determine if you are is beyond the reach of your technology. At that point though, the only way you can falsify the hypothesis is to increase your capabilities to the point where you can test that, and I don’t think we’re there now.

mister_monster ,

If we aren’t there yet, no point in believing it’s true. It’s like believing in god because we don’t have the technology to prove or disprove god. We can’t believe something that’s not currently falsifiable, we have to disbelieve it until we see evidence of it. I don’t think we are in a simulation.

I do think though that if it were true it could be detected with current capability, just that, if it is true, nobody has drawn the conclusion and investigated it yet. And information leaking in or out could be anything. The expansion rate increase of the universe could be energy leaking into the simulation. The speed of light could be a hard limit in the outside environment or something like a “clock speed” of the machine the simulation is running on. A slowly changing constant of nature, it could be anything. If it is true, there are indicators we are probably detecting, it’s just that we haven’t figured out what they’re indicating.

GreyEyedGhost ,

You can believe or disbelieve anything you want. I don’t think we’re in a simulation. I dismiss the idea because we don’t appear to currently be able to prove or disprove it and the outcome currently doesn’t have a bearing on our options.

Akasazh ,
@Akasazh@feddit.nl avatar

You presuppose that all the people in the world and scientists are actually people too. Sure the laws of the universe seem to be consistent in a Newtonian fashion as far as yourself have bothered to check. I don’t think you’ve done much personal quantum mechanics.

The problem is more Cartesian, in the first place, maybe Trumanian. The others might be bad faith actors. Are you able to trust your senses, if so the other people?

kromem ,

Information that we are in one would appear in weird ways? Like maybe side effects of simulating a continuous universe in a calculable way which would require quantization, but would leave the universe with a seemingly incompatible framework of continuous macro behavior (such as general relativity) and discrete behavior (such as quantum mechanics)?

mister_monster ,

Yeah, the apparent effect to us could be something really weird like incongruent physical laws or constants or things like that. I have no idea what it would be, only that it would be detectable.

kromem ,

Like sync errors?

mister_monster ,

Sure, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on there.

I think observation/measurement of a quantum system means entangling with the system, so the quantum system becomes larger and includes the observer. Combine that with relativity, which is absolute in the universe, and you have an e plantation for that phenomenon.

kromem ,

That wouldn’t explain why the two results end up not agreeing sometimes.

I agree that it relates to how the observer entangles with the system, but you see this kind of error class occurring in net code all the time.

Player 1 shoots an enemy around the same time as player 2. Player 1 has a locally rendered resolution to the outcome of having killed the enemy and gets awarded the xp, and player 2 has the same result.

The server has to decide if it is going to let both local clients be correct or resolve in a way that reverses the outcome for one of the clients. For things that don’t really matter, it lets both be correct.

Here, each individual outcome is basically Bell’s paradox, where we know there needs to be consistent results no matter how each observer behaves. But in this case, when a second layer of abstraction is added, the results are capable of disagreeing.

It looks very similar to a sync error, and relativity doesn’t in any way explain it.

mister_monster ,

Why doesn’t relativity explain it? It looks like a classic case of relativity to me, what am I missing?

kromem ,

Relativity only relates to the relative shape of spacetime and movement through it.

So for example, things occurring faster for one inertial frame vs another, or something being closer to an observer moving quickly than for one stationary.

It’s exclusive to the combination of spacetime curvature and one’s momentum within it.

How do you think relativity does explain it?

mister_monster ,

Well I think relativity tells us something more fundamental, that the world emerges as interactions from relative frames of reference, even in the quantum realm. It’s easy to forget, every single thing going on is a quantum system with astronomical complexity, complexity of a system is the square of the number of quantum states in the entire system. A molecule is a quantum system, a cell is a quantum system, a tree is a quantum system, a tree rustling in the wind is a quantum system. A person interacting with another person for example is entangling those systems and is itself another quantum system. And I don’t think entanglement is a binary thing, it’s a thing of degree and quality. You’re influenced by everything in your light cone, even if you’ve never directly observed a specific star for example, you still interact with it to some degree, you’re a part of a quantum system composed of the entire observable universe, and even part of the unobservable one. Once you observe it, now your interaction is more than that. You can picture it in your mind, look for it again later, tell people about it. If you could orbit it, or touch it, you’d get entangled with it even more. I think a lot more about our experience than what we realize consciously is quantum phenomena, I think we experience these phenomena directly but we just take for granted those experiences and don’t realize what they are fundamentally, just like someone who doesn’t understand gravity doesn’t realize that the experience of falling from a tree is the same force as the one that keeps the planets moving around the sun.

kromem ,

Quantum mechanics and relativity are, at least currently, incompatible theories. Relativity depends on continuous things, which is why it has singularities and what not. But quantum mechanics has minimum discrete units that don’t play nice with gravity and relativity.

Also, it’s still an open debate as to whether quantum mechanics is applicable to all sizes of things. There’s some consequences around that being the case and it’s one of the suggestions for an assumption resolving recent paradoxes around incompatibilities between the theory and our expectations for behaviors. If it does apply to larger objects, the consequences are basically that either there’s no free will and superderminism is true or else that quanta don’t actually exist until observed.

In fact, currently we haven’t been able to observe quantum behavior in anything large enough to measure gravitational effects from. Which may be where a fundamental limit exists, given the incompatibility between relativity and QM.

0ops ,

You know, whenever this theory is discussed, everybody seems to assume that this simulation that we’re allegedly living in is supposed to be an approximation of the parent universe, similar rules, but probably lower fidelity (basically the sims).

I think we should forget that assumption. It’s human centric. Who’s to say that the entity running the simulation even meant for it to be a simulation at all? Given our universe appears so much bigger than our pale blue dot from the inside, if our universe is a program running in a parent universe, I doubt that we - homo sapiens - are the point of it, or it’d be leaner, more focused. We’d be the center of the universe. But at every step of scientific discovery, we’ve found that that isn’t true. We’re just noise, sand on the beach, dust in the wind. If we live in a program, I doubt that the person running it is even aware of us specifically as a species, let alone as individuals. I doubt that they’re specifically aware of any particularly galaxy, in the same way a neural network developer isn’t aware of any specific weight in their model.

Granted, you could argue that that the rest observable universe is an illusion, a wilderness mural painted on the walls, designed by the simulation operator to make us think that we weren’t in a zoo. But that sounds a lot like “God put those dinosaur bones there to trick us”, so personally, I doubt that’s it.

Psiczar ,

Ludicrous. If we were in a simulation we’d be erased by now because they would’ve done a factory reset and started again.

kromem ,

Why? Maybe this is just history class where you learn firsthand the shit show of the 21st century that eventually gave rise to the conditions which created a world capable of simulating its past.

0ops ,

The dinosaurs 👀

CaptnNMorgan ,

It’s just new religion

user224 ,
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

“We must obey the god admin!”

Digestive_Biscuit ,
@Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk avatar

All hail the mighty SUDO

Corno ,

Simulation theory is just creationism rebranded using terms that are more familiar for a world where computers are so highly used. Someone would’ve had to have created the simulation, and ergo the entire universe, which does sound rather familiar

CaptnNMorgan ,

Exactly, it’s updating what “God” looks like from a bearded old white guy to a nerd

HobbitFoot ,

How would being in a simulation make my life less real to me?

kromem ,

That’s basically the thesis of David Chalmer’s Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy.

That there is no meaningful difference between a simulated and non-simulated existence.

Most people are still caught up on Plato’s view of a copy of an original being lesser though.

Digestive_Biscuit ,
@Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk avatar

I had a thought for a movie a while back. Perhaps it exists already. Sort of like the matrix and total recall combined. The movie starts with somebody on their deathbed after an accident or something (not really relevant what), family nearby. Emotional scene. Person slips away with eyes closed, then opens them but somewhere else. Zooms out to see they’re in a machine like a CT scanner. They’ve just lived an experience in the simulation. They then have to spend time coming to grips with what reality is for them. Is it still part of the simulation? Does it matter? What about their loved ones, does any of that even matter now? Were the loved ones other people in the simulation or some sort of programme. Life was easier in the simulation not ever wondering if it was a simulation.

kromem ,

The ending I wanted for the Matrix trilogy was that Neo wins over the machines and is at the end having finally accomplished his goals and saved humanity in the real world…and then there’s deja vu and the credits roll.

Digestive_Biscuit ,
@Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk avatar

That would have been good!

Corno ,

How’s it any different from creationism?

kromem ,

Order of operations.

Creationism says “there was nothing other than something that always existed (don’t ask how it existed), and then it created this universe.”

Simulation theory, particularly ancestor simulation theory, says that a chaotic universe very similar to the one we find ourselves in spontaneously came to exist with or without design, but that eventually that universe reached a point where it could simulate itself and we’re in that copy.

The first requires an intelligent being effectively pre-existing everything else. Simulation theory allows for the intelligent beings creating our particular version of things to have evolved from everything else having existed first.

That’s a pretty important difference.

Corno ,

That just sounds like creationism with extra steps. Many people have the belief that a god created the universe and then life evolved spontaneously.

kromem ,

Again, you’re reversing the order.

The steps in simulation theory pretty much mean that ‘God’ evolved too. Which is again, a very big difference.

There’s not a lot of religions that have beliefs even tangentially like that. I can only think of two off the top of my head, which were slightly related and both long dead.

Corno ,

It would still imply that an external being had created the simulation in the first place, which would fall under creationism. Lots of religions try to claim they’re completely different from one another. The way I see it, it’s two sides of the same coin.

kromem ,

There are degrees of similarity. But arguably it would be better to term it ‘recreationism’ as the original framework isn’t necessarily created by any intentioned being.

Corno ,

I don’t see similarity. I see people using different words to describe the same thing while being purposefully vague about how it’s supposedly different from creationism.

kromem ,

So if you draw a picture from scratch, and if an AI sees your picture and draws nearly the same thing on its own, you think those two things are effectively the same situation?

Corno , (edited )

This isn’t a thread to discuss drawing. It doesn’t matter if there’s a million simulations between us and “base reality”, the original simulation that started it all would’ve been created by someone. If the universe we are observing was the result of someone’s creation, that someone is no different from a god. What simulation theory is doing is replacing the old bearded man in the sky with the great computer nerd in the sky.

Just to clarify, I’m not dunking on creationism or religion in general. I just find it slightly amusing how a lot of the people who dunk on creationism and otherwise do not believe in a god think that simulation theory is completely different because it’s describing the same type of belief but with different wording.

kromem ,

Yeah, right. What could a thread about simulation possibly have to do with things like Plato’s analogy of the form of a bed, the physical bed, and a drawing of the physical bed?

“Doesn’t look like anything to me.”

Cwilliams ,

We could make a religion out of this!

stoy ,

If we are in a simulation, I want access to my character modification screen, I have a few things to change…

Seriously though, untill we manage to manipulate the potential simulation we exist in, it makes zero difference if we are in a simulation or not.

You still gotta eat, pay bills, sleep, and other normal stuff.

Leg ,

I like to think all advents in science are simulation modifications. We managed to make rocks think and talk to us. That sounds like magic in a vacuum.

stoy ,

I don’t agree, we didn’t make rocks think, we discovered how to use special properties to make increadibly complex tools

Leg ,

Our brains are incredibly complex organic matter. The only reason we know they think is because we experience the thinking. But we’re still just mechanically complex clumps of nonthinking objects that create a thinking one.

Digestive_Biscuit ,
@Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk avatar

And at the end you get a list of statistics. Slept X days, X hours on the toilet, could have reached level 60 if only you went for job B. Spent X hours masterbating. Killed 2 people without you or anybody else even realising. Used X KG of plastic.

Jakdracula , (edited )
@Jakdracula@lemmy.world avatar

This is a simulation and we are here on vacation.

Imagine a civilization so advanced there’s no more death. There’s no more wars. There’s no more dying of old age, sickness, or anything else. You just exist in a beautiful society day after day after perfect day.

After a couple thousand years, you might start to get bored. So you go into the simulation where you can starve to death, feel pain for the first time, fall in love, and when it’s all over, you wake up back in the advanced civilization with these great memories of what it was like to fear, to love, to be hungry…

Leg ,

This is the idea I run with. As a people, we have a natural attraction to simulated worlds. Stories, books, shows, movies, games, dreams, imagination. That’s our shit right there, and it makes sense that we’d hold onto that passion were we to go up a level.

Digestive_Biscuit ,
@Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk avatar

Ha yes my thinking too. I posted a reply further up about a movie idea, a bit like the matrix combined with total recall. Not much action though, just mind bending thoughts about what is reality once you’ve exited the simulation. Second guessing everything. More of a depressing firm perhaps.

Sam_Bass ,

Life is not a game.

foggy ,

Nothing is real

foggy ,

Before the AI boom I was on the fence. Like it’s not disprovable, so it doesn’t interest me.

But now we’re like… Running actual earth sims.

So yeah. Simulation confirmed. Nothing is real.

kromem , (edited )

Yeah, the speed and direction of advancement of AI definitely further shifted my perspective on the topic as well.

For me the biggest application that raises an eyebrow are the continued and expanding efforts at using AI to resurrect dead people using the data they left behind or to create digital copies of people in virtual worlds.

Is there any reason to think that trend won’t continue? As a person who is part of a generation leaving behind unprecedented amounts of data, it seems like the kind of thing we should be thinking about more.

Nothing is real.

Well, no matter if we are in a simulation or not, we already have experimental evidence confirming nothing is (mathematically) real in our universe. Spacetime itself could be but as far as we know that’s impossible to determine because of the fundamental limits on measurement below the Plank length. But all matter in it definitely isn’t ‘real.’ Which is convenient for simulation theory, as a universe filled with mathematically real matter would be effectively impossible to be a simulated one if free will also exists in it.

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

The idea is self-defeating. A simulation requires a higher reality for it to be contained within. Which in turn would by definition not be a simulation.

Fennek ,

So a virtual machine is a lower reality version of a computer?

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

In a sense, either “sub reality” or “para reality”. The latter is how I think.

unknowing8343 ,

Explain that, please

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

Suppose I had a copy of the Sims. Inside the copy of the Sims, the characters are looking around and notice things that seem suspicious about their world. They come to the conclusion they’re in a simulation, a video game. But nobody asks what they were made to simulate? Because it always implies there is something which, to them, is metaphysical, i.e. our world. And, if they were thinking about this, it would devalue the simulation theory itself, because if the basis is a higher world, that would be the point of reference of why things are the way they are anyways, thus saying “so-and-so is the way it is because we live in a simulation” would be a moot remark.

kromem ,

thus saying “so-and-so is the way it is because we live in a simulation” would be a moot remark.

Not quite.

For example, in Minecraft it approximates aspects of this world, but because of processing capabilities isn’t doing so at the same fidelity.

So people in Minecraft discussing why everything is made up of giant blocks would probably get great value out of the realization that they are in a simulation of a higher fidelity world that needed to be rendered at a lower fidelity for processing reasons. Scientists in Minecraft could further their understanding of the rules governing it likely much more successfully if they also understood the why directing the how.

A simulation is generally unlikely to be an exact replica of the universe simulating it, even if attempting to be a representative digital twin.

givesomefucks ,

Yeah, but the problem is people take it literally when it’s just an update of the analogy for Plato’s cave…

You’re taking it even more literally and saying if it’s not a direct match, it’s not a simulation.

Madden is a football simulation, even though it’s not the same as real life football

It’s not that your thinking deeper than the analogy, it’s the analogy soaring over your head while you claim it doesn’t exist because you’re looking at the ground

Majoof ,

Another way to look at it is as any civilisation gets sufficient technology they begin simulating entire universes, to better understand their own.

That means we’re either the OG universe and haven’t figured out how to run simulations of that size yet (so no simulated universes exist yet), or there is some chain of universes above us who are likely also simulated until you get to the OG universe.

Considering everything in our universe seems to follow a set of base rules (speed of light, attraction between masses, etc), I’m partial to thinking of those as essentially input variables prior to our sim being run.

NoIWontPickAName ,

Mathematically, it’s the only possibility

kromem ,

It’s not the only possibility, but certainly if the universe were slightly different - such as matter being continuous and not discrete - there’d be a much stronger mathematical argument that we weren’t than there is currently.

magnetosphere ,
@magnetosphere@fedia.io avatar

There’s no way to know, so meh. It’s not a reason to live any differently than I normally would.

kromem ,

We just straight up discovered sync errors in our universe and people are like “there’s no way to know if we’re in a simulation.”

I wouldn’t be so sure that there’s no way to know.

Thousands of years ago you had the story where Elihu tells Job that it’s impossible to understand creation because why it rains and where snow comes from is beyond human understanding.

Statements like that have a poor track record given enough time.

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