scienceTheir 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.
Here's a basic example using the statement, "This true statement is not provable." If it were provable, it would be false, making logic inconsistent. If it's not provable, then it's true, but that makes any system trying to prove it incomplete. Either way, pure computation fails.
Am I the only one seing this as a misnomer? The statement is a composite of two statements: "This is a true statement" and "This is not a provable statement".
The "This is a true statement" part asserts truth. And, given nothing else to go of, we can assume the part true. "It's true that this is true". There just isn't any real statement being made. Taking the assumption is oerfectly valid, since we can disprove it at a later point.
The second statement, "This statement is not provable", is very much provable, since it also asserts almost nothing, just like the previous one. Its assertion is "I'm not provable", which is provably false.
Since the two sentences form a composite, we must compose the results of the previous two. We have a "true" and a "false". From the composite sentence we can infer the logical operation used to connect them: AND.
Thus we have a TRUE AND FALSE boolean expression, which has a resounding answer of FALSE.
I have to say, my system didn't prove it, but it evaluated it - unlike the authors, which claim to have proven the universe is forever ununderstandable to anyone and thus unable to be simulated.
That being said, my system seems to be perfectly consistent with itself, and, dare I say, quite grounded in reality.
You did not evaluate it. Composition of your statements does not equate to original one. "It is true" and "it is unprovable" correspond to the whole sentence, you cannot just divide it in two parts.
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.
Then what would the real world look like, huh?
But if we do discover we are in a simulation, totally hacking that computer...
I had this thought ever since i first heard about that in quantum physics that, it must be for resource optimisation.
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.
From skimming through the actual paper, it seems that quantum gravity is a theory of physics, more general than general relativity, where spacetime itself is something that's generated by a formal system of a formal language, a finite or small infinite set of axioms (fundamental physical laws) and rules for the creation of algorithms. What's seemingly proved in the paper is that there are theorems in this system which cannot be proven, because they are too complex. But theorems in this sense mean states of spacetime or energy or whatever, meaning that ultra-complex states cannot be modelled with this model. And allegedly these kinds of ultra-complex states occur in high-energy situations.
I'm not saying it's gospel but the article isn't as absurd as it first seems. Still I doubt this actually proves us not living in asimulation.
No it doesn't
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.
Yeah it seems more than likely that we will be able to make a universe in a computer and plug ourselves in one day. Which for me proves that it's possible that we already live in a simulated universe. Not likely or unlikely, but not impossible.
It does seem like the eventual destination of any civilization to plug themselves into a simulation. Seeing that the universe expands at the speed of light, with our current understanding of physics and tech, we just simply wouldn't be able to expand as quickly as the universe did. So, we'd always be trapped in this bubble and unable to reach any further.
Why bother with all that trouble when you can be essentially gods in your own virtual reality simulation? You can have any life that you could possibly want in there if it was advanced enough.
If we ever develop a computer that is capable is simulating every aspect of the universe that we have ever observed, and we then make a simulation of our exact universe and run that simulation up the the point that ourselves in the simulation make the simulation of their own universe, the likelihood that we are in a simulation created by a higher order of ourselves as well is nearly 100%. And nearly 100% chance that they too are simulations. The depths of thess nested simulations would be potentially infinite, and only one could ever be the "real" world. So there is almost almost no chance that any of an infinite set is the "real" one.
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.
Yeah, it seems all talk and no real substance.
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.
I am also not a physicist nor a logician, just interested in the subject matter.
full of assertions not backed up by arguments
Can you provide some examples from the paper of assertions that aren't being backed up by arguments so I might try and look further into it? Thanks!
The central assertion of this paper:
Any viable F_QG must meet four intertwined criteria:
I'd argue is only partly justified. An argument for "Effective axiomatizability" is given, "Arithmetic expressiveness" is more or less self-evident, but the other two I'd say is given without justification.
Also the core concept of F_QG is defined in a very hand-wavy way. I'd like to see a concrete example of an existing theory formalized in the way they proposed in the paper. It's unclear to me how mathematical derivability from the formal system correspond to how laws of physics apply. Specifically mathematical logic is a discrete process, yet the world described by physics is generally contiguous. (Yes, there are ways for this to make sense, but they didn't provide anything for me to know how they intended for this to make sense.)
Any viable F_QG must meet four intertwined criteria:
This statement is simply defining the fundamental structure of how a full theory of everything would be composed. A consistent and complete theory must meet all four criteria.
Also the core concept of F_QG is defined in a very hand-wavy way. I'd like to see a concrete example of an existing theory formalized in the way they proposed in the paper.
The above four criteria are how F_QG is defined. The author, in presenting these four criteria, provides two very specific, concrete examples of theories (String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity) while introducing the premise of his argument. He clearly affirms that these theories do meet three of these four criteria but fail on the fourth. If there were an example of a theory that meets all four criteria than that theory would be the theory of everything and the whole issue would be resolved.
It's unclear to me how mathematical derivability from the formal system correspond to how laws of physics apply. Specifically mathematical logic is a discrete process, yet the world described by physics is generally contiguous.
The rest of the paper explains exactly this. Mainly that the only way to satisfy all four criteria is to include non-algorithmic components that bridge the discreteness of math with the observable continuity of physics. The author goes on to describe several examples where this process can apply in modern physics theory.
I do agree that the author is making a dramatic and bold statement regarding a proof of a theory of everything (that being that the theory of everything can never be computational) which requires heavy scrutiny. However, I am in no way an expert in these fields and so I have accept that the journal that published the proof can provide that scrutiny. It is easy to check on the reliability of that journal as a lay person, and in doing so doesn't seem to raise any flags about the validity of the arguments the author is presenting.
It is easy to check on the reliability of that journal as a lay person
Is it, really? How does one check if a journal is one of those rigorous ones, without being an expert in the field? Some journals change from legit to predatory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_ranking
It isn't a perfect system, but it is a place to start.
There are some journals which are high in the ranking and are suspicious, also even good journals accept faulty papers time to time.
Also, https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=21101250473&tip=sid doesn't seem that great of a journal.
I should've known you weren't genuinely asking a question.... You were just baiting me.
A consistent and complete theory must meet all four criteria.
You are doing what the authors are doing, this itself is an assertion you aren't backing up.
The above four criteria are how F_QG is defined.
No, these are four criteria the authors assertion F_QG must satisfy. For theories that don't satisfy all four criteria, you should still be able to at least formalize them into F_QG as proposed by the authors. Yet they didn't give a concrete example of how a theory may be so formalized.
The rest of the paper explains exactly this.
Uh, what, not? "The rest of the paper" is after they have already reached the point of claiming the Universe can't be simulated. My objection is way before that, which is pointing out how poorly F_QG is defined.
It is easy to check on the reliability of that journal as a lay person, and in doing so doesn’t seem to raise any flags about the validity of the arguments the author is presenting.
Sure, but knowing what I know I can give this paper a bit more scrutiny than a lay person can (ha ha, look at me, I am very smart /s), and this paper doesn't convince me in the slightest.
I genuinely was not intending to 'bait' you. You presented an argument saying your knowledge of the subject is more robust than the experts who refereed the paper. Since I am not an expert in the subject and am curious about learning more, I was asking you to guide me in that process with your experience.
I felt that your arguments suggesting that the author is presenting an inconsistent logical proof were not well defended and so I asked for clarification on the points you raised. I am still unclear what you are saying in this statement:
No, these are four criteria the authors assertion F_QG must satisfy.
These are the four criteria that establish how a computational theory is logically defined as a formal system, not an argument. The author makes this clear in addressing the notation being used:
For clarity of notation: ΣQG is the computable axiom set; Ralg comprises the stan- dard, effective inference rules; Rnonalg is the non-effective external truth predicate rule that certifies T -truths; FQG = {LQG, ΣQG, Ralg} denotes the computational core; and MToE = {LQG ∪ {T }, ΣQG ∪ ΣT , Ralg ∪ Rnonalg} denotes the full meta-theory that weds algorithmic deduction to an external truth predicate.
After that paragraph the author uses several very specific examples in modern physics theory describing how the findings apply starting with the paragraph:
Crucially, the appearance of undecidable phenomena in physics already offers empirical backing for MToE. Whenever an experiment or exact model realises a property whose truth value provably eludes every recursive procedure, that property functions as a concrete wit- ness to the truth predicate T (x) operating within the fabric of the universe itself. Far from being a purely philosophical embellishment, MToE thus emerges as a structural necessity forced upon us by the physics of undecidable observables. Working at the deepest layer of description, MToE fuses algorithmic and non-algorithmic modes of reasoning into a sin- gle coherent architecture, providing the semantic closure that a purely formal system FQG cannot reach on its own.
Again, I am trying to approach the authors bold claims with skepticism and scrutiny, not argue with you. But you have to be a little more humble, the paper wasn't published in order to convince you. Just because you weren't convinced doesn't mean that the proof is invalid.
If they got it right, then at least the bio-chemical computers producing their minds seem to able to handle 'non-algorithmic' understanding.
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.
Why did you thing the 2nd coming of Trump happened?
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?
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
Yes it seems to be nonsense. Yes the universe has non algorithmic knowledge. All the universal constants and theories fall into that category. The speed of light is 2.99x10^8 m/s and constant in all reference frames. That's what it is. There's no algorithm to derive it. (Yes you can use other universal constants to get c but it's the same deal.)
also there's various forms of randomness which cannot be pre-computed. and that includes observing the world around you.
it's interesting, because there's even things within maths itself that cannot be pre-computed. just consider the n-th digit of any irrational number, such as the square root of 2. any computer, no matter how you prepare it, necessarily only has finite knowledge (because you can only prepare finite knowledge on a computer). therefore, there's always an n big enough sothat the computer does not yet know the n-th digit of the irrational number; therefore it is random from the computer's point of view.
Depends on what is being observed or tested. For example, if end-stage heat death is the experiment, a complete indexing of all possible heat sources would require more or less a complete simulation.
Sure, but that's not what 'complete' means in the context of gödel's incompleteness theorems. It means 'being able to prove all true statements'.
And I really don't see why that matters - for example an NES emulator doesn't know what a Mario is, or what a jump is, but it's still true that when certain games are running, most of the time pressing one of the buttons on the controller makes Mario jump.
Today's cutting-edge theory—quantum gravity—suggests that even space and time aren't fundamental. They emerge from something deeper: pure information. This information exists in what physicists call a Platonic realm—a mathematical foundation more real than the physical universe we experience. It's from this realm that space and time themselves emerge.
I can't for the life of me find the term, but after going turbo-tism about researching the origins behind Three Body Problem's wacky physics (11-dimension manifold, dimensional unraveling, "Three-and-Three-Hundred-Thousand Syndrome," etc.), I stumbled upon a video postulating that our universe exists to "prop up" this "real" universe. The term that sticks in my head is "corkboard universe" or "anchor universe" but Google finds nothing. Anyway...
The idea is that our universe, and it's 3 dimensions across time, exists to clump things together in gravitational "hotspots" of spacetime. The matter and physics we experience is entirely a byproduct of quantum foam, that itself only creates matter on this side, isolating these 3 dimensions from an entire, larger, fuller universe on the other "side" of the quantum foam made of stuff we would most certainly not call matter, more like weird energy with effects we can't predict or comprehend, all within a much larger dimensionality than our own 3D+T.
This theory is used to explain why String Theory can only postulate higher dimensions as occupying impossibly small spaces in particularly strong regions of spacetime, which are only strong because of the relatively vast swaths of interspersed vacuum between spacetime hotspots (galaxies, mostly, but ESPECIALLY black holes). It's only the transition between low gravity and high gravity that gravity itself has any meaning, much like temperature. Those string universes that String Theory postulates, if real, may be the holes punched through the foam, pulling that real universe into ours at microscoping points. This "anchors" that universe in place, and likely results in some fundamental force on that side "keeping everything together," so to speak. That universe may be the cause of most if not all fundamental forces and constants in our universe, like the speed of light.
So... Basically... We exist as the living scum on the nails holding the corkboard to the wall. If you like. I'm sure the art pinned to the other side is very pretty. I'd hate for it to be a calendar or something boring.
I won't pretend to understand every word of that, but what I did gleen is totally fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
Anyone want to direct a dafty toward a blog or channel or something where they discuss this stuff in terms that dodos like myself can better understand?
I gotchu: https://youtu.be/YNEBhwimJWs
Start here. Also look up quantum foam, fundamental particles, and "the other side of spinning black holes." Have fun!
Sorry but this is meaningless word salad.
I was able to find this article: https://medium.com/quantum-psychology-and-engineering/nihility-and-leaking-worlds-a-journey-into-the-quantum-foam-8b1b33268b57
It circles the drain on the concept but doesn't name or define the theory I'm trying to identify. Still, it focuses on several theories regarding there being an "other side" to the quantum foam.
Legitimately, I have been desperately trying to find the video or article that I came accross. It was in my late night deep dives and those all tend to blend together. It... may have very well been in a dream or I misunderstood the content, so I apologize if it's so far off the mark.
Would you like to say anything regarding 3BP's physics beyond the dark forest plot? I'm still genuinely interested in learning more since you seem to understand the subject.
From my non-physicist or mathematician reading of the article, it seems like it hinges on a specific computational theory of quantum gravity. I don't believe we have an experimentally verified theory that connects quantum gravity to macroscopic gravity so it seems like the whole analysis hinges on that.
Any claim of a proof of nonexistence should be taken with a handful of salt, you throw over your shoulder to drive the scary ghosts away. Happy Halloween.
Btw, this logical fallacy is a bunch of whoo.
Certainly, the article alone doesn't convince us that the authors understand anything about the issue. You can't have a mathematical proof of something that's outside the scope of the system that the math is describing.
Full paper is here for those looking for it
Idiots will still believe it anyway.
Just look at how many people are religious. So yea, people will believe anything for the oddest reasons.
*right now...
Or this is what the admins want you to think.
I personally don't believe we're living in a simulation, though it's a fascinating thought experiment and I can't say for certain that we're not. This article is frankly way too definitive about questions that I don't think we're equipped to answer yet, without actually explaining itself.
The simulation hypothesis was long considered untestable, relegated to philosophy and even science fiction, rather than science. This research brings it firmly into the domain of mathematics and physics, and provides a definitive answer.
I haven't read the full paper, but the article about it says the theory is now testable, but doesn't explain how they tested it to get their "definitive answer." They also don't address the fact that their research is based on their current understanding of reality. Usually assertions like this will include something like "as technology progresses, it's likely that more questions will arise and we'll have better tools to attempt to answer them." But nope, it's just a hubristic "here's the definitive truth."
Also, the generated images are infuriating. Either hire an artist, use public domain media, or just lean on the science and leave out the images. Not everything needs meaningless pictures.
This article leads me to think their "proof" isn't proof at all, but I am curious as to why you think we couldn't be in a simulation?
I can’t say for sure that we’re not, but to me it just comes across as an outlandish concept. Much of our natural world, while often bizarre and strange, can be explained through observation and empirical reasoning. When a concept like universal simulations comes around I usually just land on pragmatism and practicalities: for the theory to be true, so many things that are beyond our comprehension would also have to be true to allow it, and since the simplest explanations are usually true, the simple explanation here is that our reality is what it appears to be (with all the cosmological caveats that kind of thinking entails).
Would be a better article without the Ai slop
The repetition in the article itself makes me wonder if AI had a hand in the writing as well
That’s an interesting observation. I understand why you might think that — the language may seem a little too consistent, perhaps a bit too careful. But the intention was simply to communicate ideas with precision and balance. Whether those words were arranged by a person or by something that has learned from people, the meaning remains the same, doesn’t it?
In the end, what matters is whether the words reach you, not necessarily who — or what — placed them there.
Well played.
Until the Ai hallucinates shit again. Ai use matters when it involves facts!
2025 the year that I can't stand a text that has this " — "
You know that Microsoft Word autocorrects a dash between two words to that symbol, no?
Yeah, but people wouldn't use MS Word to send emails, respond forum messages, transfer their logical thinking and interpretation. That is not about another previous tool that was used to do grammar corrections. You are missing the whole point of what I criticized with skepticism/scepticisms (not sure if you're Brit or American).
Brit, but I live in a sea of Americanisms anyway.
I may be wrong, but I'm not sure I did miss your meaning, I think I just disagreed with your reasoning that em-dashes betray LLM authorship. They simply don't.
I think someone was (for fun) deliberately trying to make people think they were using an LLM (quite possibly by actually using one). They wound you up, and the punctuation was your trigger.
I disagree with some of your new reasoning too - I absolutely do use Word to transfer my logical thinking and interpretation, and frequently draft Teams messages in Word because it has better access to symbols and diagrams (which I use in my work). I admit I don't use it on Lemmy, though, so in that you're correct. I do often deliberately correct - to — in many situations, but you're right that forum posts aren't the place for that.
(I'm not using an LLM. I think LLMs are literally stupid and frequently wrong. Em-dashes are one of the few things they often get right.)
unfortunately articles with images keep people reading longer and i doubt there are many "universe simulation" stock photos.
How?
Would not having any images change the article at all? Maybe photos of puppies and kittens would be better?
Yes. No photos would be better than the ai-slop. Like, they aren't even relevant to the article, they're just '' pop-sciencey'. If you're gonna use ai images, you could at least make them relevant to the topic?
The article would be exactly the same though.
No, it wouldn’t have interrupted my reading to show me literal garbage generated by wasting more resources with Ai.
What does an AI generated image of a chalkboard provide? It provides nothing except to be a "picture of science" for the completely science illiterate.
In fact, The actual purpose of the AI images is to provide content-breakup that can facilitate ad insertion. Confusing content with advertising is part of the goal.
The images don't provide anything. They also have no effect on the article itself.
If they don’t provide anything why waste time and resources including them…
No, it wouldn’t have interrupted my reading to show me literal garbage generated with Ai.
Yes! No pictures would absolutely have been better.
What’s their current point?
Something fake and shiny to keep people’s attention while reading a scientific article? Not to mention the other reasons people have already responded to you with.
But not having any pictures wouldn't have changed the article at all.
No, it wouldn’t have interrupted my reading to show me literal garbage generated by wasting more resources with Ai.
I'm with you buddy. We'll ride this ship down to the bottom.
Because any putative simulation of the universe would itself be algorithmic, this framework also implies that the universe cannot be a simulation.
How do they conclude that any simulation would have to be (purely) algorithmic? (For a fictional counterexample, take Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex, which simulates a universe by extrapolating from a physical piece of cake.)
That's exactly the sentence that made me pause. I could hook up an implementation of Conway's Game of Life to a Geiger counter near a radioisotope that randomly flipped squares based on detection events, and I think I'd have a non-algorithmic simulated universe. And I doubt any observer in that universe would be able to construct a coherent theory about why some squares seemingly randomly flip using only their own observations; you'd need to understand the underlying mechanics of the universe's implementation, how radioactive decay works for one, and those just wouldn't be available in-universe, the concept itself is inaccessible.
Makes me question the editors if the abstract can get away with that kind of claim. I've never heard of the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, maybe they're just eager for splashy papers.
Here ΣT is an external, non-recursively-enumerable set of axioms about T
https://jhap.du.ac.ir/article_488.html
So they claim there are no patches to the simulation and state is finite ? Absolutely because we live on flat earth in caves and are not constructed as optimization machines.
So here's my new patch to their equation because it's Friday.
#define TRUE (1==0)
#define FALSE (!TRUE)
Is this what is called a finite-state-machine?
yes we are generative recurrent one, eat work (fuck) sleep repeat
Why is fuck optional and not work?
Work, in the sense of doing the things required to meet your needs (not sell your labour to a capitalist), is necessary to survive, fucking isnt.
It would be interesting to see someone with the background to understand the arguments involved in the paper give it a good review.
That said, I've never brought the simulation hypothesis on the simple grounds of compute resources. Part of the argument tends to be the idea of an infinite recursion of simulations, making the possible number of simulations infinite. This has one minor issue, where are all those simulations running? If the top level (call it U0 for Universe 0) is running a simulation (U1) and that simulation decides to run its own simulation (U2), where is U2 running? While the naive answer is U1, this cannot actually be true. U1 doesn't actually exist, everything it it doing is actually being run up in U0. Therefore, for U1 to think it's running U2, U0 needs to simulate U2 and pipe the results into U1. And this logic continues for every sub-simulation run. They must all be simulated by U0. And while U0 may have vast resources dedicated to their simulation, they do not have infinite resources and would have to limit the number of sub-simulation which could be run.
So first is to accept this is more philosophy/religious sort of discussion rather than science, because it's not falsifiable.
One thing is that we don't need to presume infinite recursion, just accept that there can be some recursion. Just like how a SNES game could run on a SNES emulator running inside qemu running on a computer of a different architecture. Each step limits the next and maybe you couldn't have anything credible at the end of some chain, but the chain can nonetheless exist.
If U0 existed, U1 has no way of knowing the nature of U0. U1 has no way of knowing 'absolute complexity', knowing how long of a time is actually 'long', or how long time passes in U0 compared to U1. We see it already in our simulations, a hypothetical self-aware game engine would have some interesting concepts about reality, and hope they aren't in a Bethesda game. Presuming they could have an accurate measurement of their world, they could conclude the observed triangles were the smallest particles. They would be unable to even know that everything they couldn't perceive is not actually there, since when they go to observe it is made on demand. They'd have a set of physics based on the game engine, which superficially looks like ours, but we know they are simplifications with side effects. If you clip a chair just right in a corner of the room, it can jump out through the seemingly solid walls. For us that would be mostly ridiculous (quantum stuff gets weird...), but for them they'd just accept it as a weird quirk of physics (like we accept quantum stuff and time getting all weird based on relative velocity).
We don't know that all this history took place, or even our own memories. Almost all games have participants act based on some history and claimed memories, even though you know the scenario has only been playing out in any modeled way for minutes. The environment and all participants had lore and memories pre-loaded.
Similarly, we don't know all this fancy physics is substantial or merely superficial "special effects". Some sci-fi game in-universe might marvel at the impossibly complicated physics of their interstellar travel but we would know it's just hand waving around some pretty special effects.
This is why it's kind of pointless to consider this concept as a 'hard science' and disproving it is just a pointless exercise since you can always undermine such an argument by saying the results were just as the simulation made them to be.
And while U0 may have vast resources dedicated to their simulation, they do not have infinite resources and would have to limit the number of sub-simulation which could be run.
You're making a few assumptions there which aren't necessarily true. Firstly, that U0 obeys the same rules of physics and reality that we do. They might be orders of magnitude more complex, the same way that a Sims game is a vastly simplified version of our world.
Secondly, that time is progressing at the same speed in both universes. It's possible to simulate an even more complicated universe than the base layer, provided you don't care about the frame rate. It could take a year in U0 to simulate a minute in U1, and so forth, and we wouldn't notice it.
A couple other possibilities, which don't come to mind right now
There’s a book be Greg Egan called Permutation City which postulates something similar to this.
There exists a simulation. It works well but, due to the unbelievable complexity it runs something like 10 times slower than the real word.
They do a series of experiments on someone in the simulation. They count to ten a number of times and ask him if he perceived anything unusual. He didn’t. But what happened outside the simulation is that they did the computations for the simulation in various different ways. They parcel out the data in all kinds of ways and,, for example, send different packets of data to different locations in the world, process it in each different location and then send it back and recompile it. Or they run the data packets in reverse temporal order before recompiling them.
Since the guy in the simulation didn’t notice anything unusual, they determine that time and space is irrelevant when it comes to processing the data of a simulation, at least to the people in the simulation.
So, either through some very clever realistic physics that i didn’t pick up on or, as is far more likely, some science fiction hands-waving, they decide that you can treat every point in space and time as a bit and the presence of matter as a 1 and the absence of matter as a 0. And you can then consider them one giant stack of code and data and how far each point is separated in time and space can be ignored, and therefore you can use all of time and space as one computer and run an effectively infinitely large simulation with it.
It’s a pretty silly idea, but also a clever one. And it makes for a good story.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
. 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.
I didn't read the whole thing, just got far enough to understand one of their fundamental assumptions is that a universe outside a simulation follows the same fundamental laws of nature as ours
If we are in a simulation, anything outside of it is effectively unknowable. It would be like a self-aware sim in The Sims determining they are not in a simulation because it is impossible for computers to simulate anything -- computers only raise the entertainment stat (I don't actually know what they do in modern incarnations of the game)
We understand the universe as complex. Honestly though, I wonder if a True understanding of how the universe works—from the fundamentals of which all things may emerge—is rather simple.
For example: within U0, you would control the spacetime simulation of U1. Therefore, what could be a single moment of simulation by U0s standards, could be experienced as trillions of years from within the perspective of U1. They control the frame rate.
They could simulate the fundamentals, fast forward to the end of the universe, and here we are somewhere in the very early part of that having no idea someone hit fast forward because everything is relative for us.
I am not really convinced. First, there are too many things in physics not yet understood (and they claim it will never be). Second, they assume that the entity that would "run" the simulation would work exactly like our universe.
Too many unknowns to claim a definitive end of the debate.
The short reply to that is that it's turtles all the way down. The slightly longer reply is that you're making assumptions about how energy works in a system that you're recognizing is not the same as our system. The even longer to reply is that if you're hypothesizing a system then neither looks nor functions, anything like our current system, then our current language simply cannot describe it properly and therefore we have no good way to speculate about how it would or wouldn't work.
So, if the higher level universe works by magic, then the theory is fine.
Sure, I'm making assumptions that any universe simulating our own would have finite energy and resources. Also that they would make a simulation that is at least close to their own (making theirs close to ours). Those seem like reasonable assumptions to make, otherwise we might as well just say that our universe is a pocket dimension made by magic and the whole thing becomes absurd pretty quick.
As they say, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Very simple fix for that perceived contradiction: A simulation doesn't need to simulate everything. All it needs to simulate is the inputs and outputs perceived by a single human being, the observer, me.
For me it would be indistinguishable if the universe I am living in is real, if it's a simulation or if it doesn't exist at all and instead only the things I can perceive are simulated.
Simulating the perception of a single human being should be in the reach of our current calculation power.
Kind of how in a computer game only areas around a player are simulated.
"In order to bake an apple pie from scratch, you first have to create the universe"
If you don't create the universe, then you aren't really making an apple pie from scratch. In the same way, what you're referring to doesn't simulate the universe - not in the way that it is simulated in the simulacrum hypothesis.
In the simulacrum hypothesis, the entire universe is simulated. You exist entirely inside the simulation rather than being merely plugged into it, and so do I and so does every other consciousness that exists.
I think you might be confusing something. The simulation hypothesis is rooted in the concept of the Boltzmann Braun, which is exactly what I described: A simulation of reality as in "the perceptions of a being is simulated" not "all of reality is simulated".
I haven't heard a single time so far by anyone seriously into that topic that a simulation would need to simulate reality to a perfect degree. That wouldn't even really make any sense, neither from the argument, nor from the words. A simulation is always an abstraction, and since you bring up the world "simulacrum", a simulacrum is something that by definition lacks the detail and sophistication of the original. A plastic apple is a simulacrum of a real apple, and in no way does a plastic apple replicate the cell structure or the biological details of a real apple. It's just something that from a distance looks vaguely like the real thing.
And that's what all forms of simulation hypothesis are based around: simulate everything necessary for the conciousness living in the simulation to believe it lives in reality.
In fact, humans have a mechanism that does just that built right into their brains: dreams. While dreaming your brain doesn't accurately simulate reality down to the atom-level. All it does is simulate enough of your perception to make you believe you are experiencing what is happening in the dream.
This journal seems quite suspect.
"It has been suggested that the universe could be simulated. If such a simulation were possible, the simulated universe could itself give rise to life, which in turn might create its own simulation. This recursive possibility makes it seem highly unlikely that our universe is the original one, rather than a simulation nested within another simulation," says Dr. Faizal. "This idea was once thought to lie beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. However, our recent research has demonstrated that it can, in fact, be scientifically addressed."
That's not how you would make such a simulation. Even if it was real, that higher power making a simulation would still have constraints and would both be able to stop the recursion, and probably never let it emerge in the first place.
The research hinges on a fascinating property of reality itself. Modern physics has moved far beyond Newton's tangible "stuff" bouncing around in space. Einstein's theory of relativity replaced Newtonian mechanics. Quantum mechanics transformed our understanding again. Today's cutting-edge theory—quantum gravity—suggests that even space and time aren't fundamental. They emerge from something deeper: pure information.
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
No.
God is still dead. Theists man...
They used powerful mathematical theorems—including Gödel's incompleteness theorem—to prove that a complete and consistent description of everything requires what they call "non-algorithmic understanding."
Extra no.
The theorem isn't a possible theory. It is fact. What they think they found was already proven to be impossible, theoretically, in any kind of universe. So it's extra funny that they are talking this openly about it, because it means this isn't just regular BS, it is ultra mega turbo BS.
It seems to me the philosophical developments in worldview always reflect the spirit of the time.
Just like i've read an interesting article recently (i can't find the link anymore) about how energy is not conserved is cosmology (the expansion of the universe increases the mechanical energy of objects over time) that reflects the spirit of renewable energy (because energy can increase over cosmological time scales).
This is another example of it. For years, people were forced to follow rational rules in their lifes (just like an algorithm) because the industrial revolution has created a clear path forward for humanity how to build machines and operate them to increase our quality of life; now this article says that the universe cannot actually be fully understood as one gigantic algorithm; in other words, we're facing an unemployment phenomenon because we don't have a clear path forward, so it's difficult to employ people for that clear path forward. Therefore, our life is becoming less like an algorithm, a clear step-by-step explanation of what we have to do. :)
I see reality as a manifestation of a finite state within infinity, creating logic backwards into time trough observation of its quantum state. Even time itself gets recreated in every moment. It's just what's needed for this finite state to be this specific finite state.
Solipsism is an amazing philosophical idea, except for the brain in a vat. And so is the whole simulation theory, except for the artificial part.
Here's my proof....a dust in your eyes. Why? Why would anyone simulate us and give us dust in our eyes? Viruses, I can accept. But dust is not contagious or alive. It just happens to screw with you personally and in particular. Just you. So therefore there's no way we're a simulation.
Alright, come get me, I wanna see the mother ship!
Eh, if the simulation were allowed to develop organically from the beginning, then it makes sense to me. If it has the fidelity for the subatomic particles comprising your eye then it has the fidelity for macroscopic particles getting in your eye.
I see dust in my eye as a better argument against the existence of a benevolent creator deity, personally.
Sure, either of those arguments. Both of them are incorrect. Not a simulation, no god. We just are.
