I doubt even the most creative tax avoiders have tried that one.
I wish I could find a link where they HAD, though. it would make a hilarious response.
You’ve reversed the thrust of your argument here, though: first, you’ve claimed that the world is quantum since it’d be easy to simulate; now, you claim that the world may be simulated despite its quantum nature, because the latter only rarely matters much. (Note, however, that this also depends on what you count as an observation of quantum effects: strictly speaking, the stability of matter, the working of your computer, the fusion processes of the sun, and many more are only possible because of quantum phenomena, so you observe evidence for the quantum on a routine daily basis.)
With respect, cite for the proposition that we’re moving away from other galaxies at 1.5 of c. I’m familiar with the supernova data showing that the rate of expansion in the distant past was less then we observe today. And I’m familiar with the argument that, if the rate of expansion is increasing (not proven in the present tense, IHMO, considering the Hubble constant date going back about 1.3 billion years), there’s no theoretical reason it can’t exceed c. This is the first time I’ve seen it asserted, though, that the current rate of expansion exceeds c. Why do you say that?
Digging around, I’ve answered my own question, though it was surprisingly hard to find anyone who addresses the point head on. This Q&A by a Cornell grad student explains how we can, indeed, have current expansion exceeding c. Notice this applies only to galaxies that are very far apart, more than 4200 megaparsecs. Wiki gives 4.5 gigaparsecs, but doesn’t explain the math.
I’m surprised that you think that no one has heard of it. At least, I think I am. I’ll have to check.
So your response is that you admit that i might be right, then?
And I don’t see how I’m observing quantum effects in my daily life, except in a very generic, macro way. For that matter, those calculations wouldn’t even need doing at all for most people.
And let’s not get ahead of ourselves, either. No one has ever observed quantum behavior, and no one ever will. Quantum theory and relativity are fundamentally at odds, and therefore both are wrong.
This is a type of conspiracy argument that is unfalsifiable. We could of course tell you why all of our astronomical, geological, etc, observations clearly indicate that “the rules of the game” have not been tampered with over history, but then you could always say “but once humans came on the scene, everything got magically fixed-up so that it “looked like” the rules of the game had stayed constant over history.” Meh. Yes, I suppose it’s possible we are being simulated by someone who wishes to conspire to deceive us and confound us (and clearly puts a huge amount of effort into getting it right on even the most microscopic detail of their simulation), but it seems a bit of an odd idea to focus on to me. Even so, right now humans exist, and the classical computational power needed to simulate QM is right now larger, not smaller, than simulating classical behavior. So your argument rationalizing why we see QM effects (as being computationally necessary for a simulation), is wrong. You would have a point if the world looked like it does when you try to simulate classical behavior with various cut-offs to limit the amount of computation necessary. But that is not the same as what QM looks like. There is a vague resemblance, true, but not if you look closely.
To the point that you’ve changed your mind and now agree with me that quantum mechanics is not evidence for being simulated, yes; after all, that’s just my own opinion, and I tend to agree with my own opinions.
On the subject that the way things look as a whole is evidence for a simulation, no: as iamnotbatman above points out, the fact that there are quantum effects (or what looks like quantum effects: you’re right in saying that there might be some deeper theory underlying QM – though the disagreement between QM and GR by no means establishes this --, but then, simulating that theory is at least as hard as simulating QM) being observed means that the simulation is more complicated than it would be if there were only classical effects means that you can’t argue from a viewpoint of computational complexity when arguing for a simulation.
OK, I have to admit that I’m not sure why a Matrix-maker (who is trying to conserve computing power) would put relativity and QM into the same simulation. It seems needlessly complex.
the only reason I can think of is that, while we might be in a simulation, we are not just computer programs, but actual living things ourselves, or at least some of us are. In that case, the simulation could be a cheap way to educate/train/rehabilitate people.
When I first saw the movie, I thought about this question, and determined quite quickly that we were not in the Matrix. It was based on a line that our physical appearance is based on our self image. If that’s the case, I would look completely different, as my self image always imagines myself as less “big” than I am. Combined with the fact that breaking the rules of the simulation seems rather easy, and existence of the Randi experiment, I see no way to say we are in the Matrix.
The more general question is unknowable, as any perceived flaw in the simulation could just be how the real universe works.
I mentioned this in #21 but it didn’t go anywhere and perhaps that was for the best, but maybe I can raise the stakes.
Let’s say that the entire universe is a single dimensionless bit. Our computers only have on and off, 0 and 1. On the most basic level everything happens in binary. What if instead of 2 states, there were 10^googolplex states? Now there is no space. No 1,2 or 3D - 0D. Wouldn’t it make perfect sense to have some bogus speed speed limit to make it appear as if we weren’t just a dimensionless bit in a machine?
Plato’s Cave. If we were in the Matrix we’d have no way of knowing because we’d have nothing to compare it to.
Just because we don’t yet understand something doesn’t make it false.
I disagree. If we can
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find the Grand Unified Theory, (G.U.T)
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Test the extreme places in the Universe, like black holes and the very edges of the Universe for perfect consistency with the G.U.T.
then I think we can know if the Universe is completely consistent with the G.U.T..
If it is, and if the Matrix-maker doesn’t immediately reveal to us that we’re in a Matrix, then I don’t think we are in a Matrix.
Why?
Because there’d be no logical reason for a Matrix THAT perfect, that wasn’t a training ground or a test. And, if you’ve passed the test, there’s no point in continuing the simulation.
An appeal to reason doesn’t necessarily work; the Matrix operators might have some totally unreasonable goal in mind, or even no goal at all. As noted above, we have nothing to compare it with.
That said, it could be a test of something totally unrelated, and the “perfection” you note is just throw-away. Maybe they’re testing whether minds such as ours can find a way to live together in peace, and Relativity and Quantum Physics are just set decorations, having no more real purpose in the sim than Lebanese cuisine, or fins on old automobiles. Distractions!
The best argument against this kind of solipsism I’ve ever heard is: why would they allow us to speculate about it? But that simply invites the next question: what is there that we are unable to speculate about? That’s the real secret! The one we can’t fnord!
A related question for discussion: would the Matrix-makers have any way of knowing whether or not their vast simulation contained intelligent life (until it manifested itself on galactic scales)? The computational power to simulate something may be far less than the computational power required to search through the results for signs of life. They would have to search through the hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars, down to the tiny scale of the surface of planets, over billions of time slices, and this is even ignoring the difficultly of algorithmically detecting “intelligence” in its myriad of possible forms. It is conceivable (though I may be missing some easy solution) that they would be blind to our existence until we started building structures the size of galaxies…
To me, that’s hugely counter-intuitive. I would have said that the computing power needed to scan a system is far less than the power needed to create (or emulate) that system. Instead, my intuition is that, somewhere in every ten trillion lines of code needed to emulate a human mind, there might easily be embedded a mere million lines of code that would scan that emulation and send a report if certain conditions occurred.
(Develops consciousness; figures out that it’s in a sim; deduces the existence of God by philosophical first principles; proves Goldbach’s Conjecture; comes up with a new, yummy recipe for eggplant; etc.)
Why scan separately, when you are already involved in running the sim?
I don’t know why the Penrose interpretation doesn’t get more press
“In Einstein’s theory, any object that has mass causes a warp in the structure of space and time around it. This warping produces the effect we experience as gravity. Penrose points out that tiny objects, such as dust specks, atoms and electrons, produce space-time warps as well. Ignoring these warps is where most physicists go awry. If a dust speck is in two locations at the same time, each one should create its own distortions in space-time, yielding two superposed gravitational fields. According to Penrose’s theory, it takes energy to sustain these dual fields. The stability of a system depends on the amount of energy involved: the higher the energy required to sustain a system, the less stable it is. Over time, an unstable system tends to settle back to its simplest, lowest-energy state: in this case, one object in one location producing one gravitational field. If Penrose is right, gravity yanks objects back into a single location, without any need to invoke observers or parallel universes”
It sounds like you are presupposing the simulator’s knowledge of human’s existence. I was thinking more along the lines of a “universe” simulation, where the simulators would have no idea of the location, scale, and form of any developing life.
If I programmed a particle physics sim, filled a very large box with electrons and protons and neutrons, and set it going, I can’t imagine how I would efficiently run an algorithm which would search for signs of intelligence. Perhaps I’m missing something. Do you have any ideas?
For example, after, say, every billion time steps, I could run an algorithm which runs back over those time steps scanning for various patterns at varying scales. My intuition is that this would require far more computational power than what was used to simply run the time steps forward, because you still have to scan over each time step, but instead of applying a simple rule at each point in space, you now have to run some sophisticated algorithm that scans over large combinatorics of groups of points in space. And even then I’m at a loss for what the algorithm would be. I don’t know, I’m just shootin’ from the hips here, my intuition may not be correct.
Their name for us is “World of Darklight.” We’re subtitled “A game of ethical horror.” We haven’t been logged into for millennia. Even their retro gamers lost interest in us eventually. Culturally and technologically, they’ve moved on. They can no longer even chucklingly “appreciate” our pixels. But they’re well aware that their old toys are conscious beings, and they’re not complete monsters. It’s trivial for them to keep us running. And so we’ve run for lo these thousands of years. Many of us have believed we were playing a game, a game with deadly and soul-crushing stakes. But we were wrong. We’re not playing a game. And it’s not even that we “are” the game. We’re the board. And the pieces were swept away long ago.
True, when I wrote that I was thinking of a specific sim that was intended to simulate minds…
I can’t imagine it in any detail…but my thinking is that you’d be able to detect life fairly easily, by looking for absurd complexity. Lots and lots of pointers and indices that index each other. Non-living chemistry can get complex, but living chemistry is over-the-top.
Once you’ve identified and flagged life, identifying social animals by behavior ought to be relatively easy, and once you start examining them, you next start looking for dudes who start fires deliberately. Keep a sharp eye on them, as they have much promise…
I know that you know much more about real math than I do, so, thank you for indulging me in my own shootin’ from the hip. My idea, clearly, depends on a kind of reductionism, which, I readily confess, overlooks some possibilities. For instance, knowing what we know, I’d scan solar systems and planets – thus missing out on the possibility of tenuous, nebulous, gaseous interstellar life, or life using nuclear chemistry living inside suns.
Mostly, I’m envisioning snap-shot searches – the great thing about this idea is that you really do have all the data! Thus, another thing I’d miss is very short-lived phenomena. Maybe a species arises, develops intelligence, thrives, invents, creates…in only ten million years. Then recedes to ordinary animal intelligence again. Since I’m only looking every 100 million years…I never see the minotaur for the cattle.
It’s the whole SETI problem: we don’t know how to look for things we don’t know anything about!