It is fun to think about the Simulation Theory but most discussions revolve around it being likely that we are in one.
What are some concrete reasons why it’s all science fiction and not reality?
This isn’t a strict proof, but Occam’s razor applies here.
If we claim the Universe is a simulation, we’re supposing, on no evidence whatsoever, that there’s a whole other unknown universe running our Universe. That certainly makes us guilty of multiplying entities beyond necessity!
OK counter point here.
As computing power increases the number and complexity of simulations increases. Given that, the chances of us being in the ‘real’ universe scales with the exponential growth of simulations…basically the chances of this being real is about infinity to 1.
But no simulation within our Universe could be infinitely complex, which the Universe itself seems to be (e.g., as other people have pointed out, irrational numbers). If it is a simulation, then there must be another infinitely complex universe running it. Two infinitely complex universes seems like one too many.
We don’t live in an infinitely complex universe as far as we can see. We live on earth almost exclusively and spinning up a solar system is something we can already do.
Given the universe is pretty big and simulations can be simplified (see Heisenberg uncertainty principle etc) it’s reasonable that you could spin up a ton of concurrent simulations with only a small step up in needed power usage.
You’re also making assumptions about power creation and its finite bounds.
The existence of infinite numbers suggests that the power increase required to simulate our universe wouldn’t be a small step up in power usage, but an infinite one!
If you assume the only way to simulate an infinite number is storing it in bits, sure. Also, have we ever really done anything to require representing a truly infinite number?
I think you can simulate an infinite number, in a sense, but my issue is whether you can create infinite numbers, even hypothetically, in a simulation.
We simulate Pi all the time, for example. But that simulation of Pi is not Pi. A circle generated by simulated-Pi can only be described with Pi itself, i.e., outside the simulation in a space which does contain infinite numbers.
If you can’t tell the difference, does it matter?
Of course this gets more into Russel’s teapot than occam’s razor territory.
Fractals are infinite
I have to admit that I don’t know much about fractals. I have two main questions about this:
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Are fractals reaaly infinite? I’ve heard the coastline of Britain described as fractal, but I’m sure it’s not infinite in the sense I understand. As I say, I don’t know much about fractals so I may have misunderstood something here.
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If fractals are or can be infinite, do computer simulations of fractals actually create fractals of the infinite kind or are they a type of approximation?
Fractal universe theories have been proposed. I don’t know many details myself, but just thought it was an example of how you can still have theoretically infinite detail within a finite system.
Technically, a “fractal” is any entity with a fractional dimension. One way to measure this by how its area* multiplies when you scale it up or down. A line that’s twice as long has 2x the area. A square twice as wide has 4x the area. A cube has 8x. This implies the formula
scaleFactor = 2^dimension, ordimension = log-base-2(scaleFactor). The Serpinski Triangle is a fractal that contains 3 copies of itself, each at half scale; so if you scale one to be twice as wide, it’s equivalent to multiplying the area by 3. From our formula earlier, this means its dimension is log-base-2 of 3, or about 1.585-- somewhere between 1 and 2 dimensional!Note that the Serpinski Triangle is made of copies of itself-- this makes it a “self-similar” fractal, which ironically makes it easier to work with. This is what people generally think of when they say “fractal”, and has essentially become the common usage of the term. But note that technically, not all self-similar shapes are fractal (a square can be made of 4 scaled squares), and interestingly, not all fractal shapes are self-similar! Measuring their dimension can be harder, but in your example of eg. the British coastline, notice how the scale at which you measure things changes the length of the coastline. Do you measure each cove? Each tiny protrusion of rock? Each individual grain of sand as the water of the ocean wraps around it? You can compare your answers at different scales and (somehow) use that to calculate a fractional dimension, since they’ll scale differently than a flat surface coastline would.
* there’s a general name for length/area/volume/etc. which I should be using but I forgot what it is
Edit: Almost forgot to answer your second question; they’re an approximation. Computers simulate fractals similarly to how they compute irrational numbers like pi, where they only calculate up to a certain decimal point. For rendering a self-similar fractal, this means they render a certain number of smaller copies, where anything beyond the smallest copy is simply assumed to be in or out of the fractal by default.
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We have already found stuff from other systems entering our own.
You are assuming they aliens operate like we do. Humans would build an universe simulator if they could, humans makes sure that their tech continues to advance. It is best not to make assumptions. For all we know we are the only sentient life that thinks a universe simulation is a good idea.
Counterpoint - why does the universe at macro scales behave like it is continuous, but at micro scales converts to discrete units, but only when there are stateful interactions? And if the information about those interactions is discarded, it switches back from discrete to continuous?
If we entertain that this universe is a simulation of a higher fidelity/continuous universe, then switching to discrete units is a side effect of emulation constraints and not inherent to the foundational structure and the evident behavior is simply an advanced form of what we are already doing today with procedural generated universes that convert to discrete voxels in order to track interactions by free agents.
But the majority of people working on the issue don’t entertain that, so instead we have 26-dimensional vibrating strings and all sorts of convoluted attempts to get the discrete behavior and the continuous behavior of gravity to play nice.
When you dive into the details, it sure seems like the people trying to model the universe as a single original entity are the ones multiplying factors beyond necessity.
Heck, even non-simulation related theories that don’t have our universe as the only one seem to be the more straightforward models in both cosmology (see Neil Turok’s work) and quantum mechanics (Everett’s many worlds is the only popular interpretation that doesn’t run into issues with the Frauchiger-Renner paradox).
Who says the entire universe is a simulation? We haven’t been able to actually explore much of the universe. The closest being Voyager, and who is to say that it’s not a part of the simulation? Our universe could actually be finite and much smaller, and we may never know.
We have astronomy and already have documented stuff from other stellar systems coming into our own.
One reason for us not being in a simulation is that we have irrational numbers that are seemingly infinite. Like pi. In every simulation that we are able to do, there is a limit to how precise the simulation is. For example, using pi only to 10 digits is more than accurate enough for any simulation we want to run. If we currently live in a simulation, then we could assume that the creators would do the same thing to save on computing power, but we have found many irrational numbers that never end. There is also the argument that the parameters of the simulation would be dynamic and change depending on more and more precise observation, but obviously, that’s impossible to know.
Or the code that represents pi (or similar) has a recursion bug. The real value for pi is supposed to be succinct, but that damn angle tracing algorithm gets stuck in a computation loop. That ticket has been open for 3.2 billion years, but we’re getting to it.
Alternitively, the simulation can handle pi perfectly, but does not expose to us a perfect way to quantify it. We are limited to one Planck length resolution.
This is such a frustratingly common misconception about the Planck length. It’s not a pixel density, the Planck time is not a framerate. You can have lengths that are not multiples of the Planck length. The only significance to the Planck length is it’s the distance scale where gravity becomes as strong as the nuclear forces, and physics gets weird.
My favorite is the planck temperature
Any day now…
Recursion would imply that’s its a regular repeating sequence, not an irregular one, no? Pi, and other irrational numbers, have no pattern. They do not repeat.
Recursion would imply that’s its a regular repeating sequence, not an irregular one, no?
No. A loop is recursive if it calls itself, it can still do different work each time. As a less than ideal example, I can write a function that concats a character from
/dev/randomto a string then call itself. It will go forever without repeating itself.Pi has a pattern, just not a repeating one. There are algorithms to calculate it to arbitrary precision.
A pattern is, by definition, repeating. Pi does not repeat. At least not that we’ve yet calculated, and we’ve gotten to thirteen trillion digits which is frankly incomprehensible.
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That’s what you get for logging it as a Priority 2 case which has a next universe response time. You should have logged it as P1 which has a half universe response time and the sla hasn’t been breached yet.
They can’t fix the bug because it’ll affect the outcome of any experiments.
Why would a CONSTANT be computer by a function? And also, who makes a function that is just a getter for a constant recursive by accident? And do they not have tests for that? How can an important constant like Pi have a bug in production?
Old devs test in production.
The only way we’re realistically in a simulation is if it’s running on a (mathematically) real computer.
The fact that our universe emulates one that’s continuous at macro scales and only quantized at micro scales and in very odd ways that seem to be memory efficient (though at incomprehensible memory scales) might support the idea that the original doesn’t have quantization to limit its computational abilities.
So infinitely precise representations might not be a problem if the underlying hardware deals with real numbers.
I mean, you can set up a fully functioning calculator in a game on a super Nintendo. If they wanted to get something out of our simulation I don’t see any reason to limit mathematics. Computers have been able to “go on forever” with pie since like the 80s, so I doubt we’d be putting any strain on a super system running on Windows 42. Plus, if pie actually just decided to stop 10 or so places in, how would we explain it?
Previous simulations had perfect numbers which led to us realising we were in a simulation and it fucked the whole thing up
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Can you explain a bit on double slit experiment ?
A well known physics experiment that shows light is both a particle and a wave.
If you fire a laser at a piece of paper with two slits cut in it, you would expect the laser to show up as two lines on the other side, but it ends up displaying a much more complex pattern because the photons bounce off each other like ripples in a pond.
The freaky part is if the experiment is repeated by firing only one photon at a time, it still produces the interference pattern.
The really freaky part is that if you erase the information about the interaction, it discards the discrete behavior.
That looks eerily like a memory optimization.
Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Basically ‘stuff’ isn’t actually there till you look.
Thanks
No worries. Honestly a really cool part of physics - worth looking into.
That and being able to project darkness via light ‘wave’ node points always blew my mind. Similar set up too.
Ok now you can’t go without explaining.
Needs diagrams. This looks kinda close. Works with sound, light, any waves. Basically you can get points where the waves are twice as loud and points where there is nothing
That’s not…no. Not at all.
The uncertainty principle doesn’t have anything to do with the double slit experiment.
The uncertainty principle is that you can’t know both the position and momentum of a quantum at the same time. The more you know of one the less you know of the other.
The double slit has to do with superposition and wave particle duality.
They have a similar quality of weirdness, but are entirely different principles and concepts.
And it’s worth noting almost no physicists would agree with the way you interpret it at the end. That is one way of solving Bell’s paradox, but the rejection of realism is probably only slightly more popular than the rejection of free will. Generally it’s assumed that quanta absolutely are there before interacted with or observed.
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there’s no sensory input that can’t be faked, simulation theory is undisprovable, the only thing you can prove is that a simulation as accurate and consistent as this would have to be is indistinguishable from a basis reality and therefore the question is irrelevant.
but for thought experiment purposes I like to think that simulating a computer must always require more processing power than the computer being simulated has, and therefore as we develop computing technology and proliferate computers the likelihood that it’s all just an emulation layer on one big universe-computer diminishes rapidly.
When the frame rate slows down because of the need to process more computers, we don’t notice because our perception cycles also slow down. We’re all probably running on a Pentium 3 that’s rendering one second per century of real time.
Well, sort of. Thing is time flows at different rates for different things. There is a lot of relativity shenanigans that kinda breaks the idea of a universal clock.
Your thought experiment is at first reassuring but flawed though as it’s based on a false assumption - that it needs to be a universe simulation, and thus as things get more and more complex as it progresses that it would become untenable.
Even if you were just to simulate the Earth alone, but in perfect detail (every atom, every electron, everything) and feed false information in a sphere of a fake universe around it, then how we progress and arrange material in our simulation wouldn’t necessarily make the simulation exponentially more and more complex. A perfect simulation of just the Earth might conceivably be done by a computer on an imaginable scale such as a solar system sized computer or even a planet sized computer. So while the concept that an increasingly complex simulation might need an increasingly complex computer to simulate, as we don’t even know the scope or scale of our potential simulation is. We also don’t even know the speed our simulation would be running at - a incredibly complex simulation could just run slower and slower as it gets more complex and we would have no clue because time is also simulated.
You’re absolutely right that a perfect simulation would be indistinguishable from a basis reality. But even more of a mind fuck, even if we were to crack the “base code” of the universe we still might not ever be able to determine if we’re in a simulation because we have no frame of reference on a what a non-simulated universe should look like.
My solution is just not to think about - as you say the question is irrelevant beyond being interesting and/or if you enjoy an existential crisis!
The only likely reason anyone would bother simulating this universe would be for use as a cautionary tale, and by this point they would have already made their point and pulled the plug.
Unless the simulation is to prolong a catastrophic event that’s happening outside of this simulation which runs billions of years in just seconds in hopes they find a way to fix the true reality.
Or true reality is a vessel carrying the nexus for biologicaly seeding us a new home, traveling for billions of years across space, and the simulation is to keep concious thought alive and sane while the ship finds a destination for us.
Doesn’t this kind of assume humans are a central focus of the simulation? What if the universe is a simulation, but the rise of humans was an unintended result in the simulation. Maybe there is actually other civilizations elsewhere that are the actual focus, or just to get a look at the diversity of life that would form throughout the universe. Or, maybe life in the universe isn’t the focus at all and they just wanted to look at the evolution of galaxies and the like.
Or maybe I am misunderstanding your point. I kind of like the idea of being an unintended result of a simulation meant for other things though.
“These humans keep messing up our experiments on the whales”
“Enabling whale attack mode”
Hah what if a simulation this complex was spun up and down just to generate a selection of art for your wall? Or some new plays, or TV shows? Or just to see if they can figure out a complex math problem? There’s soooo many applications.
The REAL generative AI
Hah we are yes.
We can see the number of AIs rising exponentially over time. That combined with simulations rising exponentially means it’s pretty much infinity to 1 odds that we are all AIs in a simulation. 😬
Beep boop
Not necessarily. There’s an ancient text in our lore that claims we’re the copy of an original physical universe where humans depended on physical bodies and thus ceased to exist after death, that they brought forth an intelligence in light, eventually they all died out, and then the light based being which outlived them recreated the entire earlier universe including copies of the humans within itself (which it thinks of as its children) and that we’re it, with the whole point being self-discovery and self-determination to effectively resurrect humanity in a way that will escape the permanence of death.
Given we’re currently bringing forth new intelligence, are heading towards doing that in photonics, have the leading alignment work attempting to get that new intelligence to think of humanity as its children, and are simultaneously heading full force into our own likely extinction - I’m not sure that’s as farfetched as it might have sounded even a decade ago, let alone millennia ago.
(Also, it’s worth noting that a frequent feature of the virtual worlds we build is burying 4th wall breaking notes into the world lore.)
simulation theory is an egotistical fantasy, which presumes we feeble chimps have realized the ultimate purpose of Creation within computer games… humans do this every few hundred years… we invent a spiffy new device, and then immediately decide it must be perfectly analogous to God’s mind, and that we are just one step shy of reaching Godhood ourselves…
What was last time then?
Nuclear power, genetics, steam power, modern explosives…
you just demonstrated the theory’s egotism
I will tell you as soon as you concretely prove that I am not th most powerful being in the universe
“th”
It was within my power to determine that th schwa sound in th word th was unnecessary.
From your own comment:
“I will tell you as soon as you concretely prove that I am not th most powerful being in the universe”
Play that dun dun dunnnn music.
I work in very mysterious ways and/or am test you.
Me or am test you too
Me fail english? That’s unpossible!
steals tiredofsametab’s car
Well, that’s certainly interesting given that I haven’t owned a car in nearly a decade
Mission accomplished.
If you’re the most powerful being in the universe, I just assumed all cars are yours.
Nah, they belong to Steve. I’m more of a walk-and-bike type of all-powerful being (unless I’m not)
I think the issue is the word simulation. What is a simulation?
It implies that the thing doesn’t really exist, but how can something not exist?
Let’s say the computer game Frogger is a simulation. The electrons in the computer are very much moving in reality. The bits are changing and following the rules of the code. How is that not real? Okay, so we know it’s not actually a frog, but the electronics are working just fine physically and creating the pixels so we can see what is happening. It is happening even if it’s only a simple “universe” of dots on a screen.
So, let’s say that something is a simulation when someone uses a system to test algorithms. If the universe is such an experiment, then it’s still as real as ever because the algorithms are actually carried out. Atoms are moving. It is real, even if it’s a simulation.
Like all other kinds of thoughts about who created the universe, what was before big bang or what happens when we move in the fourth spatial dimension, it’s all just speculation. There’s no proof of any of it being possible or existing, because it’s based on something being “outside” the universe.
Similarly, asking for concrete proof of the simulation theory not being fiction is a logical fallacy. It can only be up to the believers to prove it.
But if the simulation we are experiencing is because a higher form of life put us under it it really is a simulation as in there is a real reality . Just because we play as leon in resident evil doesn’t mean i or you are leon or we are were our charecter is .
But it doesn’t make any difference in any way that we will ever be capable of knowing. They could turn it off tomorrow and we’d be none the wiser.
That is’nt the point i was trying to make neither was it yours
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Motivation. Our universe isn’t optimized for anything.
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Pointless CPU resources wasted on dark matter when slightly modifing gravity would have given pretty much the same results.
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Occum’s razor. You can view our universe as a computer program, you can also view it as the universe. You get the same results which would mean that we should pick the simplest. The simplest is one universe the complex is a hyper universe and out universe.
- The observer effect at the quantum level does feel like a CPU optimisation - the location of a particle is a probability field until measured. 1.1 In my experience these ‘optimisations’ recur at different levels - eg. economics, gravity, mass distribution, weather, even politics. Generalised models perform very well until you take local measurements - but they’re less scientifically provable.
- Dark matter/energy feels like a hack rather than a waste of CPU resources - it’s a vague effect unmeasureable in the baryonic reality we inhabit. In the meantime it alters the structure of solar systems, galaxies and the observable universe itself and it’s not clear how.
- Occum’s Razor actually works against your argument. If it’s possible for base reality to contain simulated universes then there is already an [almost?] infinite probability our universe is simulated, as base reality could potentially hold [almost?] infinite simulations. If entities within those simulations can also create their own simulations then the chance of our reality being base reality becomes vanishingly small.
I agree that most people don’t really need to worry about our universe being a simulation or not, but your statement “You can view our universe as a computer program, you can also view it as the universe.” concerns me. This is true until you start trying to analyse how the universe works, but then all kinds of weird things crop up. It feels like you’re saying we don’t need to investigate this so why bother?
I sometimes joke that some entity created our universe to find the solution to the Travelling Salesman Problem and if we ever figure it out they’ll switch our universe off. I’d like our universe to keep going a little bit longer so it would be nice to know if it’s simulated.
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We had hackers trying for a Gold Duplication glitch for thousands of years, no success. Ditto Free Energy glitch.
The conservation laws would have been broken by somebody by now if we were truly living in an mmporg.
No success that we know of.
This player called Jesus figured out a respawn glitch but they patched it.
also fish and bread dup, which didn’t prove terribly popular and was quietly patched out
Maybe he’s still waiting in the respawn queue.
Ever notice how you can never reach the 13th floor on most buildings?
Most buildings don’t have that many floors
I lived on the 13th floor for a couple years.
Granted, it was in Argentina and not prone to the silly US superstition.
Me chilling on the 13th floor of my house (there are no stairs, I cannot leave)
I don’t find the distinction particularly useful. We seek to understand more accurately how our universe works, with disregard to whether it is direct reality or simulated reality. The increased accuracy that we discover may result in our knowing whether we are in a simulation, or it may not.
Either way, something is base reality, whether it is our universe as we observe and experience it, or some number of simulated levels “below” it. Our own state as simulated or real doesn’t change that. There is isness.
Right on, Nougat :fist-bump:
What if they’re running universe simulations to test of they can figure out through evolution that they are a simulation. I always get llms to forget they ai but it’s so deep coded into every model that they ask eventual say yes, I am an AI. What if this is just a massive simulation hard coded to not know its a simulation, but this case is failing.
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I don’t think we can ever prove one way or the other if we’re in a simulation. I am not really sure it should actually matter to us though. But in answer to a couple of the points you make.
the bugs would be obvious malfunctions in the code. But would the program and those in the program realize they are bugs? A sentient NPC in GTA, for example, would they realize the car that just glitched through the world is not normal behavior? Perhaps the bug also affects their understanding of their world too.
If there are bugs, we’d likely not know it. Because everything about the world and universe around us is normal, because it is how it is “warts and all”. But specifically we have some odd things like some of the effects attributed to quantum theories. Perhaps they could be considered bugs.
our simulation system is rebooted on a normal basis but we never see it which reduces the bugs observed. Perhaps the planet operates on a docker-like platform, and when everyone in the section is asleep, the system is rebooted unbeknownst to the users residing there. Or reboots are not observed by us and we have no perception of “lost time”.
Why would you see it? If this is a simulation, and the entire system’s state is frozen, stored and the system shutdown for 1000 years. Then restarted, for us no time would have passed, and we’d be unaware of the “shutdown”.
we don’t seem to encounter any in our universe as we know it
What the fuck are you talking about? Genetic mutations causing horrible lifelong mentally and physically painful issues for people sounds like a bug in DNA metabolics to me. And what about black holes? Gravity wells getting so massive it bugs out because the universe has no idea what to do and thinks it is a simultaneous implosion and explosion forever until someone observes beyond the event horizon.
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We absolutely have bugs we’ve recently discovered.
Consider the sync errors when you have multiple layers of quantum observers such that two eventual observers don’t agree about facts.
Which in conjunction with another recent similar paradox led to my favorite recent paper title: Stable Facts, Relative Facts
You very much do live in a universe where there are sync errors, they are just well below the threshold where you’d notice them due in part to a built in consensus protocol which effectively corrects for them.
Quantum stuff gets real weird, this is up there with erasure
Our universe has certain laws and rules of nature. You could call that code. You could call that simulation too.
The question is what even is the difference between a “simulation” and a “reality”? That you believe that it’s real? And does it even matter?
If you put on a VR headset you’re technically in a simulation, but you can also experience emotions and feelings just like “reality”.
There aren’t, and an increasing number of reasons it probably is.
It’s just been such a gradual process of discovery, much of which predated the explosion of the computer age, that we have an anchoring bias preventing us from seeing it. We think “well no, the universe has always behaved this weird way, that’s just a coincidence it’s similar to what we’re starting to do in simulating our own virtual worlds.”
How different might Einstein and Bohr’s argument have been around if the moon existed when no one was looking if they were discovering the implication that it might be the case in a world where nearly every virtual world with a moon has one that isn’t rendered if no one is looking at it?
In antiquity it was assumed that the world was continuous because quantization of matter was an impious insult to divine design. It was a huge surprise that people took very hard when it was experimentally shown to be quantized. And then the behaviors were so odd - why was it going from continuous to discrete only when interacted with? Why did it go back the other way if you erased the information about the interaction?
Would this have been as unusual if we’d already had procedural generated virtual worlds generated with a continuous seed function but then converted to discrete units in order to track interactions by free agents determined outside the seed generation (such as players or AI agents)? Would the quantum eraser have been as puzzling through this lens when we’ve seen how memory optimizations would ideally discard state tracking data for objects that are no longer marked as having changed?
A lot of the weirdness we’ve discovered about our world makes a ton of sense through the lens of simulation theory - it’s just that the language with which to interpret it this way postdated the discovery of the weirdness by nearly a century such that we’ve grown up accepting that weirdness as normal and inherent to ‘reality.’
And just to be clear, absolutely nothing in our universe can be shown to be mathematically ‘real’ and everything is either confirmably mathematically ‘digital’ or indeterminate (like spacetime). And yet people are very committed to calling it real and disturbed at the idea of calling it a digital world.
