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Mathematical proof debunks the idea that the universe is a computer simulation (phys.org)

submitted 1 day ago by technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/science@lemmy.world

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Their findings, published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, go beyond simply suggesting that we're not living in a simulated world like The Matrix. They prove something far more profound: the universe is built on a type of understanding that exists beyond the reach of any algorithm.

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[–] rollin@piefed.social 1 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

It could take a year in U0 to simulate a minute in U1, and so forth, and we wouldn’t notice it.

I'm not sure about this. Our current universe is 13 billion years old. At one year to one minute, that would take over 6500 trillion years to simulate (I think).

The solar system will only live another few billion years or so. All the stars in universe will burn out in around 100 trillion years. So it would probably not be possible to run a simulation for that long.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The start and end of a simulation don't need the start and end of the universe. If I fire up a game of Sims, it doesn't start with the big bang and it doesn't end with the heat death.
The rules we know about our universe might just hold true for our simulation and have no bearing on what happens around the simulation. For example, water works very differently in e.g. Minecraft than it does in real life. For a being living in Minecraft, having a perfect understanding of in-game physics will not help that being to understand how real-life physics work.

[–] rollin@piefed.social 1 points 16 hours ago

You're mixing up nightmares now lol

Yes it's true that everything we perceive could be fake, when I turn my head to the left, the world that I was looking at before could disappear. That's not a new paranoia, it's been around for literally hundreds if not thousands of years.

The simulacrum hypothesis is a little different in that it tries to bring it up to date, and use statistical principles to show that our universe is very unlikely to be real.

The idea is that at some point, a life form will create machines so powerful that they can simulate the entire universe in a way that is indistinguishable from the real universe. There is a real universe in this vision, and it functions very much like the universe which we ourselves inhabit. We are not special in our simulated universe, just like the beings that do live in the real universe are not special. That is, every part of the universe exists in every simulation just as it does in the one real universe. By saying no beings are special, I mean that there are no shortcuts to fool one being (or group of beings) into thinking the universe is more complete than it really is - the entire universe is fully simulated.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

You're assuming that:

If this was a simulation, that it would play out all the way to the heat death of the universe?
That the life span of our universe would have any relation to or bearing upon the life span of U0? Our trillions of years could be as significant to them as a single day is to us.

[–] rollin@piefed.social 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I'm afraid you didn't understand what I wrote.

If it were to take 1 year to render each minute, it would take 6500 trillion years to simulate the universe from the big bang to now. That is, the parent universe which is running our simulation must run it for an impracticably long time.

As for your other point, yes each simulation has to be a similar universe to the one we ourselves live in. Only that way do you end up with vastly more simulated universes than real universes, and the conclusion that statistically we must be living in a simulated universe and not a real one.

If you don't have that part, then you do not have anything more compelling than Descartes' age-old nightmare that an evil demon could be deceiving us about everything we perceive.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 points 16 hours ago

. That is, the parent universe which is running our simulation must run it for an impracticably long time.

I understood that. I'm pointing out that you're making an assumption that trillions of years is an 'impractically long time'. It is to us, but there's no reason it would be to another universe. Assuming time even works the same way and isn't just a cool thing they came up with for this simulation.

yes each simulation has to be a similar universe to the one we ourselves live in. Only that way do you end up with vastly more simulated universes than real universes, and the conclusion that statistically we must be living in a simulated universe and not a real one.

Firstly, the current discussion isn't about the probability of us living in a simulation. It's about whether it's possible to begin with.

Secondly, 'each simulation has to be a similar universe to the one we ourselves live in. Only that way do you end up with vastly more simulated universes than real universes' is in itself another assumption that doesn't necessarily hold true. The only thing the simulated universes need to have in common is that they contain sentience intelligent enough to continue the chain of nested simulations. The physical rules governing each simulation might be wildly different.