I’m having to re-post this one as it was lost when the board was rolled back to Friday AM after being hacked; I can’t remember the exact wording, but if you posted replies to the original thread, please could you repeat them here.
Humour me…
I was reading the thread about photon behaviour; light passing through a diffraction grating exhibits interference patterns, because the light waves interfere with each other, but crank the light source down so that individual photons are passing through the grating and they still do the same, even though there’s nothing to interfere with.
This strikes me as reminiscent of modelled behaviour; in a mathematical model, behaviour often breaks down and produces odd results at the extremes.
Plus there’s the whole uncertainty thing; a probability collapses into a position only when observed (Hope that’s somewhere near the idea anyway).
That’s not unlike what you would do when optimising a simulation; you only calculate in detail the bits that matter (that interact with the active parts of the system) - the rest is handled on a general level.
Now of course this is bound to be just because quantum stuff isn’t intuitive and I don’t/can’t understand it, but I can’t quite shake off the suspicion that we’re inhabiting a mere model of a real universe.
Of course it’s not a million miles away from that particular philosophical question; are you real or am I the only one with some kind of inner life.
One of the chief objections to the simulated universe idea is that it would take unimaginable processing power to be able to track and simulate every particle in our universe, but the point is that if it was a simulation, you wouldn’t need to; you only need to simulate the bits that we happen to be looking at; the fact of it being in my (simulated) memory, or written in a book someplace (or whatever) enables anything to be kept consistent.
A plot wending that I seriously doubt “The Matrix”'s sequels will employ is that the Blue Pill in no way was a release from the illusion; that Neo fellow just got switched into a personal simulation where he got to play Chosen One, which is either where the Reality Controllers shuffle potential troublemakers, or simply a very immersive video game. He’ll wake up and find his name is really Dwight Dibbly, and that he got a very sadly low score.
I said somthing along the lines of, that I belive we are not in a simulation, that the phenomenon you mention are the result of living in a complex univers designed to support life, and that If we are (living in a simulation) what can we do about it?
I’ve not seen The Matrix - is this what it’s about?
Another thought; in a simulated universe, you might have the simulation adjust for fast-moving objects (which require more processing due to the fact that they are traversing larger volumes of space (and therefore requiring more of the generalised behaviours to be expressed specifically)) by sharing the entire calculation burden out across the usual number of processing cycles (or whatever), with the result that (from the point of view of the fast-moving object) the rest of the universe speeds up in time.
This is exactly what “The Matrix” is about. It is, at least in my opinion, the best Science Fiction movie to come out in a decade, maybe more. I won’t ruin it for you but Neo (Keanu Reeves in a role that he can’t ruin) begins to suspect that the world ain’t quite right. Much like Alice, he is given a choice to chase the white rabbit down the hole or continue living a mundane life as a computer programmer.
As to your O.P, I tend to like Carl Jung’s take on it. Our minds are limited by the stimuli they receive, i.e. our senses. It is all we know. These are inherently limited and given proper technology, can be mimicked.
I can show you how, Magnetout, but I need to know…
Simulated world? Nah, no simulated world here…crazy talk…yeah, crazy talk…
[sub]shoot, they’re catching on…[/sub]
Side note: That’s a pretty cool twist on The Matrix, Drastic. Of course, most would get really annoyed at the movie if it turned out that way.
Yes…Mr. Beeblebrox… We’ve been watching you…for some time nowwwww… It’s seems you’ve been living two lives… though that may have something to do with having…two heads…
[sub]Agent Smith is absolutely the best part of The Matrix.[/sub]
Magnetout, I had no intention of high-jacking your thread. My initial reply was written with the assumption that you had seen The Matrix and thus would understand the reference. I have made light because this is IMHO rather than GD. I hope you realize that my intentions…
<* while all are distracted, Zaphod manuevers himself near Rossarian 1.0 and says…*>
DODGE THIS!
<BANG!>
Anyway, Magnetout, your idea is a good one. You maybe able to recapture your thread if you you come back and talk about the science behind your idea. But I have limited time and must go now.
<Beebblebrox runs over to a pay phone and is…GONE.>
Sorry about that little hijack too, I got carried away.
[/hijack]
See The Matrix. While it doesn’t delve into the more scientific details like the behavior of photons and such, it does make you think about how you percieve the world around you and whether you really know anything for sure. At the very least you’ll enjoy seeing the concept fleshed out in an exciting story, even if it does have Keanu Reeves.
IANAScientist, but every time somebody talks to me about quantum physics and how particles aren’t particles at all but something more exotic and difficult to pin down, and how maybe essentlly everything around us is not made of ‘stuff’, but is probably just made of little twists of spacetime, plus all the other stuff Imentioned above, I’m left with the lasting impression that it bears striking resemblance to a mathematical model and perhaps this is responsible for the difficulty in understanding the essential nature of the universe (in the same way that a computer simulation is oblivious to (and in fact insulated from) the low-level workings of the computer it’s running on).
For an even deeper exploration of the “simulated universe” concept, I strongly recommend The Wonderland Gambit, a three-book “extended novel” by Jack L. Chalker. (There’s considerable discussion on the Web as to whether The Matrix ripped the concept off. The author seems to feel so, but not strongly enough to sue.) The motto of the series: “Everything you think you know is wrong.”
What makes TWG even eerier–to me, at any rate–is the fact that there are no A.I. entities responsible for the simulation. Which means that the simulation the simulators live in may be a simulation itself. And so on and so on . . . :eek:
