Why the universe pops into existance...

Great Debates
1

I read an interesting essay the other day, it was about “The Matrix” film but please don’t hold that against it.

Without going into too much detail and retelling the story, the basic idea was that at some point in the future computer systems are going to rival the human brain in terms of complexity. Given the right inputs it might think it’s a person living a life. The next step would be a system that could simulate many, or many many, of these intelligent systems and allow them to interact.

If we accept that computer technology will continue to increase then this is a likely scenario, even if it might be quite a long way into the future.

So, as the cost of this technology drops, as technology does, every teenager looking for a hobby or science experiement could run one of these simulated worlds. Given the sheer number of these worlds that would exist over time it seems likely that we’re in one of them not the “Real” world at all.

The argument had a few too many assumptions in it for me, but it certainly makes a lot of sence, but the question “how did this universe come into creation?” would really take some answering in such a world.

Anyone who’s played “The sims” knows you can poke, prod and try and steer your little simulated people and have great fun doing it, creating an idea of God, but since this interaction would break the laws of physics as the little simulated people can establish, there could never be any proof of his existance. So that’s the answer to how God could exist outside the laws of thermodynamics, how he could interact with us without the rules applying to him. They don’t really apply to us either, they’re just imposed on us and we perceive them as universal laws.

Just seems a lot like our universe it scared me for a moment, reading all the debates about the nature of God/Creator.

Not that it ultimatly matters, if our “God” 's mum comes in and unlpugs the experiement to hoover his room we’ll blink out of existance before we know about it anyway, so it’s not worth worrying about.

2

This argument in favor of us inhabiting a virtual universe rather than a ‘real’ one (whatever that means) occured to me several years ago when I was in college. I shared it with several friends; some agreed and some did not. Now, however, I’m not sure whether I agree or not.

Let’s make things precise. Let R be the number of real universes in the multiverse and V be the number of virtual universes. Then the probability that we live in a real universe is R/(R+V), and the probability that we live in virtual universe is V/(R+V).

Scenario 1. Suppose there’s only one real universe. Then R = 1. If the inhabitants of this real universe spawn a large number of virtual universes, then V will be very large. Then by basic mathematics, the probability of us living in a real universe is close to zero, while the probability for a virtual universe is close to one.

(We note that this logic holds if R is any finite number.)

Scenario 2. Suppose there are infinite real universes. In that case, even if the inhabitants of each real universe spawn billions of virtual universes, R and V are still the same. Specifically, R and V are both infinity. Hence we’re equally likely to inhabit a real or virtual universe.

Plainly it all depends on figuring out which scenario we’re in.

3

This, rather than the statistical question, is the sticking point. It’s unreasonable to assume that computer power will continue to increase indefinitely and that it could increase to the point where a whole universe could reasonably be simulated.

4

It’s unlikely that computer power will indefinitely, true, but it’s unnecessary for it to reach a level capable of simulating a universe for the Matrix/brains-in-a-jar scenarios to work. We, after all, do not perceive the universe directly, or all at once. The universe only needs to be simulated well enough to fool us, or our perceptions/thoughts shaped so we don’t notices the flaws ( not that hard if “they” have access to our minds ), or both.

5

Would certainly explain uncertainty and the observer effect, wouldn’t it? Only compute the state of those objects that are being observed.

6

But isn’t this the “King of France” fallacy? (That is, it’s extremely improbable that any particular Frenchman is the King of France).

7

I don’t think it’s a fallacy in this case. If I hold up an envelope containing the name of a random Frenchman, the odds of that Frenchman being the King is low indeed.

8

I think thats why it appealed to me so much, despite how meaningless and absurd the idea is. It would actually explain a few things that we can’t seem to prove any other way

9

Yup. The largest hard drives hold far more data than the human brain does, and while I’ve never seen an exact figure for how many “bytes” of data from the senses the brain processes each second, computers would surely be able to provide that much data already.

Moreover, we need to avoid erroneous thinking about the necessary size of the universe. Sure, our universe appears to be huge. But if it’s simulated, the majority of the space would not need to be simulated well to fool us. We’ll never inspect most of that space closely, so it could only be simulated roughly.

10

You should check out The Simulation Argument

11

Why would anyone want to make a simulation of my life? Why would any simulation create a conscious entity with such a minor and uninteresting role in the world?

12

I think the problem is that you’re assigning the same probability to us living in both types of universes.

There has to be at least one real universe for there to be any fake universes at all, so we know that there is a real one. Because everything here behaves exactly as if it was the real universe, we have no reason to believe that we’re in one now. We don’t know if there is even one fake universe at this time, and only conjecture to support to the theory that there will be a fake universe that behaves exactly like a real on. Is it even possible to construct a fake universe that controls the motion of ever single particle the same way a real universe does?

The simulation of all the inputs, decisions, and outputs of a human mind is very complex, and the simulation of an entire universe of such minds would be stupidly complex. There is a practical limit to how fast a computer can be, the speed of light, how much energy it would consume, etc. I don’t think its correct to assume that every teenager will be able to create perfect simulations of a universe on his home computer. I’m not saying we won’t ever be able to make a computer this powerful, I just don’t think there will be as big a number as is being assumed here.

13

Are you kidding? You can probably fill up the largest hard drive with just the movies you remember over your entire life.

A computer and a human brain are fundamentally different in how they store, access and process information.

I dont know. Why do people play The Sims to watch virtual people take a crap and go to work every day?
Fact of the matter, all this theorizing about “do we live in The Matrix” is largely mental masturbation (usually by baked college students). From our perspective, it is irrelevant whether we are living on real Earth or a Sim Earth created by our decendents a million years from now since we are unable to break out of the Sim.

14

Huh? At 1GB per movie, my computer’s combined hard drives could store all the movies I watched in my life.

15

All sorts of reasons. As a sociological experiment. As a toy; sentient Sims. As a history exhibit, the recreation of an ancient, long dead species. Or simply as part of the casual thought processes of some super AI, that thinks in simulations the way we think in images.

Who knows, but as pointed out be me and others, it’s unnecessary.

16

But I don’t remember every pixel of every movie I’ve ever seen. My brain probably holds only a fraction of a percentage of all the information in any movie, even one like Monty Python and the Holy Grail that I practically know by heart.

A human brain is fundamentally different from any computer we currently have, but not from every theoretically possible computer. Researchers are already investigating the possibility of computers based on biological molecules. Hence there’s no reason why an advanced civilization in another universe couldn’t simulate our universe.

If the nature of the universe is “irrelevant”, then what is relevant?

17

They’re already developing quantum computers that will be able to perform functions millions of times faster than any computer today, using the principle of quantum entanglement. Remember that a few decades ago people thought computers would never get any smaller than the size of a room or have more than a few megabytes of memory.

18

That’s not what I meant. What I’m saying is that it’s hard to compare a brain to a hard drive. A casual Google search turns up brain storage estimates of 1-10 terrabytes-about the size of one of our servers at work. But we don’t know what kind of compression algorithms our brains use. 1 GB of brain storage is probably a lot more than 1 GB of HD space.

We can only investigate the nature of the universe from the standpoint of what we can observe and measure. If there is a God or a Matrix or a kid playing Sims X running the universe who can’t be observed or interacted with, then they are unprovable and irrelevant. Yeah we could be a simulation. But you have to assume we aren’t.

19

The brain isn’t just a storage device anyway; the thing that makes simulating a brain difficult is not the storage of memories, it’s the operation - all those subtle interactions and interconnections. The task of storing an approximation of the memories of an average human pales into insignificance against the task of modelling a whole brain (or approximating the processes going on in one) with sufficient accuracy.

It may very well be that the human brain doesn’t represent anything close to an optimally simple solution for the tasks it actually performs though…

20

Yup, the same limits that apply to biological systems.

Biological systems use multi-state relays, and so far computers stick to dual-state relays, but thats a whole other area computer science can investigate to improve speed. So far in computer history when we reach the limits of one set of technology a whole other *kind * of computer technology had taken over and the process of refining that technology has begun again. The demands placed on computers have therefore increased and encouraged the rate of development to increase.

My best information is that the human brain operats at about 6Mhz. Thats a thousand times less than a commercially available PC can. (though not a common commercially available one) The reason we’re smarter, despite this, is our huge parallel processing ability. Something PCs are just now begining to have.

Given the number of fields open to computer developers, (Optical systems, Parallel systems, multi-state systems, maybe even quantum systems one day), it seems fair to say that CPU power will continue to increase for a long while to come. How long remains to be seen, and how far is just theoretical.

Also I’d be careful of calling such conversations “mental masturbation”, as masturbation makeos it sound bad, and of course masturbation is wonderful.