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The whole concept in quantum mechanics of a particle's wave function collapsing into a single point due to an observation event is just weird enough, and feels just enough like some otherworldly programmer's hack to save tons of resources, that I am not sure I will ever be fully convinced that we are not in a simulation.
I'm not asserting that we're in one, and I don't know of any reasons to believe that we are in one, but I think I'll always have that little suspicion.
I'd point out that 'an observation event' is just hitting one thing with another thing, which is always going to have some kind of effect. And wave-particle duality is probably more of a spectrum than we give it credit for. Particles vibrate constantly and can be easily made to do wave-like things, like resonance. Collapsing a waveform into a particle may be less of a mode or type change and more like putting your finger on a resonating tuning fork.
That's right about observation events. They are often called interactions instead.
But the wave-particle duality applies to literally everything at the quantum level, per the standard model and quantum field theory anyway. And that's a model with an incredible track record.
Looking at a particle as a wave is usually in the context of that particle by itself moving in a straight line through a vacuum. There isn't really vibration and temperature; there aren't even atoms! You just have the particle's energy in eV.
Whether we can subjectively compare the packets of energy in quantum fields with the waves of energy through matter, I have no idea. The math is solid though.
I really don't buy this. It's the same sort of bullshit logic of robots exploding when they read contradictory logical statements. I don't really believe we're in a simulation but I see no reason why, given infinite storage, time, and processing power, some higher reality could be simulating what we live in.
Okay, I hate to be "that guy" but the over use of "—" in the writing next to certain phrases like "not X, but something more, something deeper, it's Y". Makes this article look 100% AI written to me. Like, I'm more than reasonable certain it is just copy pasted AI. Someone will need to prove to me that it isn't at this point.
My guy, the reason AI uses so many em dashes is because it was trained on proper writing that properly uses appropriate punctuation. Those of us who know how to write have been using em dashes, semicolons, parenthetical statements and more for decades longer than AI has been around. You could very well be reading the work of a journalist who actually knows how to write rather than stringing together Twitter posts into an article.
We know, this is not an attack on em dashes.
It’s still ai slop.
I use em dashes all the time myself, I also make this critique and people always respond with a defence of em dashes.
Its the use patterns on how and when they are used combined with other patterns that makes it evident that it is AI. Its just the most easily recognisable tell. When you see over use of em dashes in a an article online, you check for those other tells.
Well the images are already dumb AI slop. I don't know who the article is for but the images scream "don't think about me!". For me it's hard to take it seriously at that point.
The notion of a simulated universe is a bit of a misnomer IMO. It doesn’t mean the nature of our reality is unphysical as in order to exist as a simulation all of it must be represented physically in whatever the “top level” universe is. It just means that what we experience is built and described in a way that is not inline with our subjective reality, which is true in any case.
Another fun opinion is that it would be easier for a technological civilization to discover it is in a simulation than it would be to develop interstellar travel. Upon discovery of the fact that it is simulated a civilization would either abuse that fact or change it’s behavior both of which ruin the validity of the simulation’s outcome. The natural response to this by whoever is running the experiment would be to cull that part of the data to preserve the fidelity of the result. Thus the Fermi paradox is explained.
When you use the word simulated do you mean to imply intent? Or are you speaking to something that is computational in nature?
Gotta tell you, this sounds like bullshit. Godel's incompleteness theorems prove that there are some questions that cannot be proven by axiom (or consequently, by algorithm). But that in no way rules out simulating our reality. Cuz I got news for you, Godel's incompleteness theorems hold true here inthis universe too, my guys. And yet we still have a functioning universe.
Godels proof only applies to mathematical abstracts like the nature of natural numbers. It shows that we will never have a complete, self consistent, provable description of things like natural numbers. But we still use them all the damn time, particularly in computation. And things that aren't abstract? Things that can be observed, and described? That can all be simulated.
Their argument seems to come down to the idea that you need a non-algorithmic higher order logic to have a universe. Insert whatever mystical unknowable source you want in there. Cool. We would still have that in a simulated universe, sourced from the universe doing the simulation. You dont have to recreate the nature of mathematics in this new universe to simulated it. The math already exists, and you apply it to the simulations. Godel's theorems hold true, and observable physical nature is simulated without issue. The only thing that is actually difficult to simulate algorithmically is true randomness, but there are already plenty of ways to generate random numbers from measurements of our own physical world's randomness, so this too can arise from the higher order world too.
I'm not saying that I think we are actually in a simulation, I'm just saying that the aspects of this "proof" that they mention in the article seems very weak.
if it's simulated why can we inspect our own bodies? wouldn't the ones who created the simulator stop from having the simulated lifeforms from inspecting themselves so deeply?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
Nothing says that our computers can't eventually operate on the same principles as the universe.
Also nothing that says the computers running the simulation have to behave the same as ours, or even that the laws of physics in the simulating universe have to be the same as ours.
All they proved is that we currently aren't capable of simulating our universe. Congrats guys, great science thanks for the contribution to human knowledge.
This was my exact thought as well. There's really no reason why sufficiently advanced computers couldn't eventually simulate anything and everything. I'm going to go a bit off-topic but there's a theory about the simulation in The Matrix operating from a different set of laws from the real world. Hence the reason why humans can actually work as human batteries very efficiently compared to other forms of energy.
So, there's the possibility that if we are in a simulation then the "real world" might be operating by a different set of laws and physics to what we know in here. If that's the case then I really don't know where the limit actually is or how we could tell from inside here.
If they got it right, then at least the bio-chemical computers producing their minds seem to able to handle 'non-algorithmic' understanding.
Disclaimer: not a physicist, but I am familiar with mathematical logic side of things e.g. incomplete theorem and stuff.
I have to say, terrible paper. Very light on technical details, full of assertions not backed up by arguments. I wouldn't really take this too seriously. But this is just a letter, maybe the full paper, if they ever publish one, will have more substance? We will see.
Stupid rebuttals for stupid ideas tbh. Simulation hypothesis should never have been taken seriously
It could be a good sci-fi idea though. (Wachowskis et al. 1999)
Yeah, the opening of the second paragraph on the page marked twelve basically says “we don’t have a true theory so we look at some proposals.” If anything, all it’s shown is that these specific proposals fall prey to the normal inability of mathematical systems to fully describe themselves, not that quantum gravity actively disproves a simulation. Everything after that might be sound if we trace all the sources. Nothing stood out as implausible or anything beyond some logical leaping. There was nothing that showed adding more to the system won’t fix the issues, which is the whole point of things like the updates their choice of set theory added to ZFC.
All I read is "The computer simulation we're living in fooled some mathematicians"
This.
The models we have of reality are based on observations and forming theories that attempt to describe the observations.
Our models are, by definition, models and not the reality itself.
Since the paper is only based on the models and not on reality itself (which it can't be since we don't have access to the real inner workings of reality, so to say the "source code of reality"), the paper cannot actually say anything about reality, only about our understanding of it.
And pretty much any physicist worth their salt will freely admit that our models and our understanding of reality are flawed and imperfect. They are good and good enough to be used for a ton of real-world applications, but they are far from perfect and physics is far from solved.
Wow, this just made me realize. If we really live in a simulation the simulation or some parameter of it could be changed anytime.
This information exists in what physicists call a Platonic realm
Friend-zoned by the universe. That's gotta sting.
Mathematical proof sponsored by:
I don't buy the simulation hypothesis, but I also don't understand why the simulation would need to be 'complete' as long as it's sufficiently consistent - after all, wouldn't the same argument apply to simulations we do have, such as emulators and VMs? But they work anyway