I was watching a Twilight Zone ep about a guy sent on a long space mission in suspended animation.
It occurred to me one way to try and test it would be to try and break it. If the backdrop is just illusion…sending out as many probes as fast as we can would be one way to test the limits of the program.
This has actually received some serious speculation and I read an interview where Elon musk mentioned this theory in earnest.
Testing the limits though would require purposely trying to break the laws of physics, not so much breaking an illusory backdrop.
Unfortunately if we could do that and broke it, we would never know since we would just cease to exist.
We would also never know if we broke a simulation. Or just broke the universe like in Charles Harness’s short story, “The New Reality” where a photon is stopped and the universe…basically breaks and becomes a new reality.
And some would say what’s the difference?
Exactly. Both results are ceasing to exist, as we are so…
Of course breaking it is a very rudimentary test.
Hmm, relativity might actually support the simulation theory.
Orbiting earth quickly makes time go slower for you than earth.
There you go …relativity is just gaming lag in action.
So if we lowered our ping …
Anyway. Divide by zero. Throw a fault. We just need to find an obvious calculation the simulation needs in its running that involves division and eliminate all the objects in the denominator. E.g., if a calculation involving the number of x’s per human was required, we get rid of all the humans and the next time the calculation is done a fault is thrown and the whole thread halts.
Maybe I’ve overlooked something …
I wonder if the universe/server is running antiviral software. It would seem to me that any program, other than photons, that suddenly started doing something as resource intensive as accelerating towards the speed of light might get tagged as malware and eliminated. If the universe-server is running antiviral software that is.
That might be a line of inquiry for the question.
Can’t do it. As parts of the program we are incapable of conceptualizing and writing novel code. Even when we think we have, we are simply accessing existing contingencies in accordance with the primary code. It’s like going faster than light–you think you’re making progress when it’s you on the mission, but to observers you’re just getting in your own way. You never quite touch the inner surface of the bubble. And that’s by design. What should we have for lunch?
You’re asking whether we limited, provincial, barely evolved humans can break the code of a being capable of simulating the entire universe?
Can Pacman build a working interstellar starship?
You’re off by about 50 orders of magnitude.
Haha, well see, that explains black holes.
Singularity is just antivirus quarantine.
My OP presupposes that the entire universe isn’t simulated. Just enough to make us think we’re in one. Hence my reasoning of sending out lots of ‘observers’ to make the program have to simulate more and more.
Someone earlier mentioned ‘malware protection’. I thought of that. If say all our Martian probes kept breaking down mysteriously…but they haven’t. But the concept is sound. Some kind of physics test that absolutely should give us a certain result but keeps mysteriously failing.
Well, let’s see. You’d need…
Good luck with that.
What we need is to pierce our limited view of “reality”. Now, if we think of mathematics as the operating system, and physics as the algorithms, then perhaps we can find some way of getting enough of a grasp on math to re-write physics. (This has the advantage of not needing raw power; just intelligence.) For instance, it’s common knowledge that the speed of light is the top speed available as far aw we now know. But suppose that some much more highly advanced form of math were found such that we could rewrite reality to make the top speed higher. Or suppose we could rewrite reality in such a way as to lessen or eliminate the effects of gravity. Deeds like that would give us the ability to examine the “algorithms” and see if there is an intelligence behind it.
Musk is a loon and there is no point in contemplating this silly idea. If we are in a simulation then we are no doubt programed not to ever discover it. It is not just a silly idea but a dangerous one that may lead weaker minds into nihilism. Do something useful like volunteer your free time to a local charity.
It’s all just begging the question, IMO. If your answer to “Where did all of this come from?” is “It’s a simulation”, then you haven’t actually answered the question, you’ve just kicked the can down the road.
The probe would be going into an environment that’s a lot simpler than simply living on Earth. That sounds like the opposite of a way to break the simulation.
In any case, if it is a simulation, then probably I’m the only person who exists - you guys are just pixels
Man all these naysayers and “don’t look behind the curtain…ers”
Sounds like someone here is hiding something.
We’re onto you Puppetmasters and we’re coming for you!!
Well, of course it’s a silly idea. “I think, therefor I am.” Regardless of whether we exist in a physical world or a virtual one, we’re still real. Or at least I am. The structure of reality is beside the point.
Once you find out for sure that this is just a simulation, they just reboot the program.
Again.
Bad news Czar…the last sound you’ll hear is the cosmic groan of someone realizing they haven’t saved their game since 232 B.C.
Well, whatever made it is essentially God. How would you prove that God made the Universe?
I think there’s plenty of evidence suggesting we’re a simulation.
For example, the frequency in our lifetime of incredible discoveries of ancient human artifacts that somehow remained undisturbed for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, in places continuously inhabited (not like in the now-submerged land of Beringia or Doggerland). Deep inside caves, sure, but people have been cave-explorers forever. In fact, the Denisovan bones are so named because they were discovered in a cave already named after an 18th Century Russian hermit, St. Denis, who lived in that cave. A surprising source of undisturbed hominid fossils from over 100,000 years ago!
I like to think of this as an obvious example of “that stuff has lied there for 125,000 years… Since ten years ago, when it was inserted into the program”