Simulation

>>7959737
By looking at high energy cosmic rays and discovering a discrepancy.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847

non-/sci/ here (at least not really, just a software developer), but that topic got me quite curious over the last months, and I've spent a lot of time watching Campbell's lectures and such. In fact, I'm listening to another interview with him right now.

What's the general stance here? Do you guys "believe" this digital universe stuff? Do you take anything from it into your work?

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http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2535

>>7959835
I wish it was sometimes. Do you know how fucking hard it is to simulate molecules and shit? I hate quantum multibody systems.

>>7959737
If we can "create" a digital universe,then there's no reason to suspect we're not in one.

>>7959747
could you give a dumbed-down summary? A lot of the technical terms are going over my head.

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>>7959842

>>7959858
One could argue that we are already creating digital universes left and right, with scientific simulations and video games. Really crude ones, but their complexity is improving rapidly.

>>7959860
if like everything is pixels man, it'd be harder for stuff to move diagonally than horizontally/vertically.

And if we looked at really powerful cosmic rays that travelled very far and noticed a pattern where they weren't as bright at the corners of a cube, we could tell the universe was shooped by the pixels

>>7959892
>but their complexity is improving rapidly.
On the basis of how much we can calculate within a short period of time. There's still the human bottleneck of being able to write complex simulations. I'm not sure it's possible to be able to create from nothing something more complex than ourselves, that was also stable. So the idea of creating something as complex as ourselves and the universe we reside within may be a stiff limit that's never reached, until we become godlike omniscient beings.

Simulating infinite complexity would require infinite computational power, but is the universe infinitely complex? We don't rightly know, although it may be tempting to believe not since we like to think we can grasp the basic building blocks of reality. I think if any aspect of the universe and/or reality is of an infinite nature then it is infinitely complex. The problems with putting any strict borders on reality is when you ask the question "well what if you look beyond that?"

>>7959835
I brought Campbell up here and it didn't really catch. I think most are unfamiliar. I checked out an entire seminar on youtube. I am a guy with a non science career, but I've got a Quantum Mechanics course under my belt along with some Philosophy of Science, and I've kept up on the attempts of people to interpret the implications QM, which is a tall, tall order.
I was very impressed with some of Campbell's fundamental groundwork. I expected him to abuse the findings of QM, but he refers to QM experiments accurately enough, and his contention that matter is fundamentally more understandable as information than "things" or "stuff" is to me, at the least worthy of being taken seriously.
This being said, as the seminar continued, I began to suspect him of laying a pretty good foundation, then piling atop it all kinds of things far more suspect than what he started with... and IF he is doing this, he certainly would not be the first radical to employ this technique, consciously or otherwise

>>7959923
You don't need to build an infinite universe,you need to build a finite universe in finite computational power and extrapolate it to infinite comp power.

>>7959928
That would make sense if you could prove that a slice of something is the same thing as the whole something only smaller.

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>>7959892

>>7959925
>suspect

you don't have a Quantum Mechanics course under your belt if you don't have the basic physics knowledge to understand it

if you can't tell it apart from bullshit, it's useless to you

>>7959892
That's Campbell's exact view, with the creator(s) falling into the "unknowable" category.

The digital processing speed is what we perceive as the speed of light

>>7959923
>I'm not sure it's possible to be able to create from nothing something more complex than ourselves, that was also stable.

Then does that mean something more complex than us created us? We aren't so complex, but sufficiently so to be more complex than an atom. Or a molecule or a cell.... Which based on most accepted theories, we originated from.

Based on that trajectory, humanity, with any luck, can and might create super intelligence which will become so powerful that it will create yet a more super intelligence...which will use all matter in the universe as a complex calculator and perform an operation who's result is 42.

And then it will implode and collapse into a single infinitely small point taking all matter with it.

>>7959933
As far we know, integral of dS is equal to S.

>>7959925
I think one problem/reason is, Campbell tried to reach out to the scientific community with his ideas and didn't get much feedback. So now he dedicated himself to spread the theories regardless, to the public, and for that to work out he needs to "dumb them down" for the pop-sci audience. Many things he says make me kinda cringe (like using terms and scenarios from MMOs, players and avatars and elves)... I get what he means, but I can understand why "serious" scientists would be hesitating to embrace it.

>>7959936
The basics of QM aren't easy, but they are not as difficult as they're made out to be either.
>>7959954
I can understand why scientists making their living in the field wouldn't want to go anywhere near Campbell, but one has to acknowledge that there are social reasons for this (i.e. career suicide) along with any legitimate intellectual reasons.
I think there's a problematic catch 22 situation in interpreting quantum physics. The pure scientists would cease to be pure scientists if they attempted any real interpretation, yet they are the most qualified people to do so.

>>7959737
If you spin in a circle really fast you can create magnetic infeterrence in the simulation and break it

>>7959737
How could we tell anything without anyone?

If you assume that is possible to create a virtual universe is a fact that there will be more virtual universes than real ones.

So by probability you can say that we very likely in a virtual universe.

>>7959916
Voxels Mang...
Question is, cubes or something more exotic like rhombic dodecahedron or the truncated octahedron.

Maybe I don't know what I am talking about, but is it true that if we can find a repetition in irrational numbers we could prove we are in a simulation, because a computer can come up with a true irrational number?

>>7959747
bro man dude buddy lad bud
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>>7960648
too bad the universe isn't quantified and reality isn't made up of pixels

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>>7959737
Go back to bed Mr. Anderson