David Sklansky .... Your thoughts?

[m_the0ry]

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To simulate to a level of detail where the laws of physics are consistent across essentially infinite observations requires a computer able to store (and continuously process) as much information as exists in the observable universe.

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Why would the physics need to be consistent with the physics where the simulation is being run? I do not understand where this constriction comes from.

I can definitely see how this argument is technically feasible, but its lack of falsifiability makes it a pretty weak theory. And in that respect it is too existential and metaphysical to really extract any meaning from. For example, let's assume that we are a simulation. Thus far, we have no evidence ('miracles' etc) that the simulators have found it necessary to interfere with the simulation. If the simulation is continuous in this respect, then the differences between a simulation and 'real' consciousness/existence are completely semantic.

[bunny]

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To simulate to a level of detail where the laws of physics are consistent across essentially infinite observations requires a computer able to store (and continuously process) as much information as exists in the observable universe.

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Why would the physics need to be consistent with the physics where the simulation is being run? I do not understand where this constriction comes from.

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Agreed - there doesnt seem any reason we cant simulate universes with cubic laws of gravitation.

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I can definitely see how this argument is technically feasible, but its lack of falsifiability makes it a pretty weak theory. And in that respect it is too existential and metaphysical to really extract any meaning from. For example, let's assume that we are a simulation. Thus far, we have no evidence ('miracles' etc) that the simulators have found it necessary to interfere with the simulation. If the simulation is continuous in this respect, then the differences between a simulation and 'real' consciousness/existence are completely semantic.

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Perhaps the existence of "bugs" in the code would provide a differentiation. Subtle bugs (as in some constant not being the exact value they wanted or some such) wouldnt be distinguishable. I wonder whether a simulation might run into the problem of identical initial conditions producing different answers, for example. Or giving nonsensical results (the law of gravity being inversely proportion to the square of the distance, except when d=1 in some unit).

It still seems not very useful. But existence of anomalies like this might make it a more credible hypothesis.

[TomCowley]

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Why would the physics need to be consistent with the physics where the simulation is being run? I do not understand where this constriction comes from.

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It doesn't, but it does need to be consistent throughout our observable universe, since that's what we have observed. Humanity has done a shitton of repeatable sceintific experiments. If "the computer we live in" were using significant shortcuts to the laws of physics (which would introduce measurable anomalies), we'd probably have evidence of it by now.

In other words, if we are in a simulation, and we haven't found anomalies, it is overwhelmingly likely to be a simulation by a computer powerful enough to continuously and coherently model the laws of physics for every particle and field in the universe, which is a ridiculously complex task. Saying we're 50 years away from anomaly-free real-time dynamics of a water droplet is enough of a stretch, much less a simulated mini-verse with sentient beings trying to poke holes in it.

[Subfallen]

I'm sure Bostrom is aware of what his simulation-theory implies: complete determinism.

A civilization able to simulate the universe in a way that gives consistent feedback to unpredictable (freely willed) exploration would be indistinguishable from God. And presumably Bostrom does not think God is going to result from any amount of technological evolution.

[VarlosZ]

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I'm sure Bostrom is aware of what his simulation-theory implies: complete determinism.

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It only implies complete determinism for "our" universe. If we're in a deterministic simulation, it's still possible for the underlying reality to be non-deterministic.

Not that it matters, of course.

[chezlaw]

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I'm sure Bostrom is aware of what his simulation-theory implies: complete determinism.

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It only implies complete determinism for "our" universe. If we're in a deterministic simulation, it's still possible for the underlying reality to be non-deterministic.

Not that it matters, of course.

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It doesn't imply complete determinism anyway. If there true randomness in the outer universe then they can use it to generate random numbers in the simulated universe.

chez

[soon2bepro]

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if we are in a simulation, and we haven't found anomalies, it is overwhelmingly likely to be a simulation by a computer powerful enough to continuously and coherently model the laws of physics for every particle and field in the universe,

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If we're in a simulation, all our memories, thought processes, etc, could be manufactured. Also the simulation may not last more than a millisecond which would be this instant, and everything before that could just be manufactured.

So if we're a simulation there's no sense in start deriving conclusions.

In fact, there's nothing we can do about it. It shouldn't change anything about our lives. This religious mania that some are proposing is ridiculous, even if we knew for sure that we are a simulation.

[m_the0ry]

computational power is not a convincing argument here. Every day us humans run computationally trivial simulations. This is accepted as standard procedure. Seeing as how there is no conceivable way for us to know anything about the simulator's universe, it may be that their physical laws make the 'human universe' problem a trivial computation.

Again my main quarrel with this idea is its lack of falsifiability. It proposes that we live in a universe that communicates its state to some other universe, but no information ever would need to come in to our universe. There is no conceivable way to disprove this theory. It also makes it for all practical purposes worthless to act upon .

[Shandrax]

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But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

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Although possible, it seems to be another ridiculous assumption to push the self-explanation problem a level deeper.

Even this "computer simulation" doesn't come from nowhere and it could very well come from another society in another universe that has the same trouble to explain it's own existance. Maybe they believe that they are part of a computer simulation also...

[CrayZee]

I only read up to the "my gut feeling" part. Pretty stupid [censored]. This is almost like a scientific religion or faith thing.

All that would really be interesting is that there's a computer algorithm determining the shape, density, and number of corns in my turds. Hopefully there's an infinite database to keep track of this important information, too.

I guess you gotta make money somehow if you're an academic...interesting sounding gobbledygook is one way I guess. Better to write scifi novels than actually try to pass this off as adding to the human knowledge base, tho.