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from the that's-what-we-want-you-to-think dept.
Physicists have "confirmed" that we "aren't" "living" in a computer "simulation":
Scientists have discovered that it's impossible to model the physics of our universe on even the biggest computer.
What that means is that we're probably not living in a computer simulation.
Theoretical physicists Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhin from the University of Oxford and the Hebrew University in Israel applied Monte Carlo simulations (computations used to generate probabilities) to quantum objects moving through various dimensions and found that classical systems cannot create the mathematics necessary to describe quantum systems. They showed this by proving that classical physics can't erase the sign problem, a particular quirk of quantum Monte Carlo simulations of gravitational anomalies (like warped spacetime, except in this case the researchers used an analogue from condensed matter physics).
Therefore, according to Ringel and Kovrizhin, classical computers most certainly aren't controlling our universe.
Which type of computers are we being simulated on?
Also at Newsweek.
Quantized gravitational responses, the sign problem, and quantum complexity (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1701758) (DX)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:34AM (32 children)
This has about as much practical application as the debate over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. If you want to go with the Reality is a Computer theory, there's nothing stopping you from pretending it's a magical super computer that's really, really, really fast.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by linuxrocks123 on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:38AM (25 children)
I think that it is an interesting thought experiment; and, to theologians, I can see why they might find whether a finite or infinite number of angels can dance on the head of a pin interesting as well.
However, an important part of this result, which appears to have been left out of the summary, is that they appear only to have proven that a classical computer could not model the universe in less than exponential time. If reality is a computer simulation of some kind, we presumably wouldn't be able to tell how quickly it's running from inside it :)
It's still an interesting contribution.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @03:13AM (16 children)
Either that or it doesn't work because there is no grand unified theory yet.
I'm with GP. I don't get WTF is up with this "universe is a simulation!" crap. Let's say for the sake of argument that, fine, it is a fucking computer simulation.
So. What.
Seriously? So what? How does that help? Are these jokers all thinking that once they determine that the universe is a simulation, they're all going to become Neo and magically self-substantiate from the Matrix, just by uttering the magic words "it's a simulation!"?
There. I just said "It's a simulation!" I said it really loud, too. I still do not have access to magic.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:09AM (10 children)
the reason people want to know if its a simulation or not is mostly about religion.
no religion (that I'm aware of) has ever proposed such a thing.
if we 'find out' that we really are in a simulation, there goes the whole 'god idea'.
there goes, also, the whole idea of natural laws. you could create simulations that have lots of random exceptions in them. there could be NO rules, just a lot of instances of 'if this, do that'.
for me, I think its 2 choices: either we are in a simulation (and there is someone who is not exactly a Good Person running it), or there simply is no concept of justice and Right/Wrong; its all random, good people get punished like bad ones; and bad ones get rewards like good ones sometimes do. all random, no one running anything, no afterlife, no 'suffer now to get a big reward later'. none of that. just no on in charge at all.
I find the question very interesting; but I can't understand how we could ever know.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:24AM
The religious can simply quibble about what "simulation" means, or what a "computer" means.
It's dumb people with intellectual/science pretension that keep on harping on bullshit like this. And the phds with no chops to do any real research, churning out garbage papers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by rylyeh on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:43AM
Huh? The universe of human experience in every religion is a planned, created, executed at will 'Simulation'. Constructed. Made.
A mechanical universe is the only other answer, so, I agree this is about religion is a philosophical sense - but the simulation freaks are closer to the side of religion whether that is apparent or not.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arslan on Thursday October 05 2017, @05:30AM
Umm... why does the whole 'god idea' have to go away if we do prove it is a simulation.
It could just mean that whoever created that simulation is god (are the gods). It could mean a different religion or a change in how one interprets their religion - of course in some conservative ones their head explodes. Maybe the scientologists will tweak their narrative to have Xenu fit the owner of the simulator.
From a scientific point of view it is interesting as it could mean we're not a random by-product of the environment or we could still be random in that the simulation creator(s) never really planned for us but the broader universe simulation - and at this point we might not have been noticed given the relative size of the universe to us, maybe if we start destroying a few galaxies maybe we can get some attention or not if we think that kind of attention isn't necessarily healthy.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mykl on Thursday October 05 2017, @05:33AM (4 children)
Couldn't God just be a programmer?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @05:53AM
Or more likely, a brogrammer.
(Score: 4, Funny) by linuxrocks123 on Thursday October 05 2017, @11:10AM (2 children)
"What if God was ... one of us?"
;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @07:46PM (1 child)
Just a slob like one of us?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @10:03PM
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin' to grope some tight asssssssss?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 05 2017, @08:48AM
> no religion (that I'm aware of) has ever proposed such a thing.
you did not read Genesis 1:1?
What atheism says the creator is a mere mechanical (even if operating with quantum randomness) machine or not present at all, religions says it is aware and loving/judging/dominating, masons and sects say the architect is some kind of butler at your service.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @01:56PM
I disagree. If anything it would prove the existence of God. The theory of simulated universe is probably the thing that has brought me back to faith personally.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Thursday October 05 2017, @06:06AM (1 child)
If we live in a simulation, odds are it isn't perfectly emulating every particle. It is likely to be approximating things to cut costs. Understand the system, find flaws. Might not be able to break out to the outside but perhaps can hack it? It would mean there are the official laws of physics and the actual ones, only operating where "the system" isn't paying proper attention to detail. Magic?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 05 2017, @05:54PM
> odds are it isn't perfectly emulating every particle
Heisenberg's principle is just the symptom of a neat simulation optimization trick: perceptibly lossless compression, with the noise set at the Planck level.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @06:11AM (2 children)
It would expand our universe, as there would/should? be something outside the simulation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:43PM (1 child)
Ok, I state again. I'm conceding the point. The universe is a simulation! It's a simulation!!!
So, how do I find out what's "outside" the simulation now that I have established beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's a simulation?
How do we know that what's "outside" the simulation even resembles this simulated reality? We just expect it to be similar from the perspective of sheer human arrogance and chauvinism.
So we can talk to the User somehow, even if we can't go shake her hand. What profound philosophical insights do you suppose the User will give that will bring us world peace and prosperity?
Ok, so I'm talking to the User now. She's ok. I've got her convinced that we can solve this world hunger thing if she just nudge things ever so. So now she's wielding power over our reality, something she hadn't done before. In the book series Malazan Book of the Fallen, there are many, many times a new god wields their power (or sometimes an elder god with renewed interest in the world exercises power for the first time in thousands of years), and everything gets fucked up, especially for the god.
Well, the User doesn't live in here, since her reality is incomprehensibly different from ours (quite a bit of non-Euclidean geometry and all that), so if it does go fucked up, she can just roll back to last night's backup. But then she'll know not to listen to me this time around, and we're right back where we fucking started!
(Yeah, I know, me and my big mouth, going and talking to eldritch beings that exist beyond the veil of reality.)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:46PM
Oh, and I also forgot to tell you that the User told me that she's starting to think that she's in a simulation!!! What the fuck do we do now?!
I'll give a hint. This thought experiment does not conclude the same way that Thirteenth Floor did, where you break through to the realest reality and retire on a beach with a beautiful wife and 2.5 kids that you stole from the being in realest reality that was foolish enough to dive down to this level of simulations within simulations!
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday October 05 2017, @03:25AM
In 'the Matrix' the story as I recall it was an alternate history earth that only splits quite late - using "normal" existing computer systems. That specific scenario was always far-fetched to put it very politely, but yeah, if you needed any more evidence against it, then this would work.
Except for the fact that if it's true, then this study is clearly just more disinformation.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:09AM (2 children)
You can build redstone computers in Minecraft. Can you run Minecraft on one? Perhaps the parent universe has finer grained detail than ours permitting far more powerful computers.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:24AM (1 child)
"The Ricks Must Be Crazy" just popped into my head--the battery with a universe in it with a battery with a universe in it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7L6SSxIvms [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday October 05 2017, @07:05PM
Happy Ricksgiving bitch!!!
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday October 05 2017, @09:50AM (2 children)
And the notion of 'classical computing' is related to the physical laws of our universe, so (without reading the paper) this result just tells us that either we're not simulated, we're simulated on a quantum computer, or we're simulated on a computer that has different laws of physics to ours. Within our universe, simulations always have at least some simplifications of physics to make the simulation more efficient. Quantum mechanics may just be the simulation artefacts from quantising various continuous functions.
This isn't the first time physics has been down this rabbit hole. When black holes were first discovered, it became clear that close to the singularity you'd have no information coming in from outside and the laws of physics could be radically different. Various people hypothesised that you might have potentially unbounded layers of nesting of universes, with each one appearing as a small bubble akin to a black hole in the others. Much the same logic applies here as to simulations: if simulations or universe nesting are possible, then there is one top-level universe and an infinite number of those (recursively) contained within it, so the probability of ours being the top-level universe is vanishingly small.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:00PM (1 child)
Yes, a classical computer in an extra-dimensional universe would have a CPU laid out in "flat" 3 dimensions, or heck say 8 dimensions. Who would think that exponentially complex things cannot be solved in linear time in that universe?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Thursday October 05 2017, @03:11PM
You'd get a polynimial speedup from parallelism at the most. For exponential, you'd need a universe with hyperbolic geometry and at least two dimensions.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 05 2017, @05:59PM
> they appear only to have proven that a classical computer could not model the universe in less than exponential time.
> If reality is a computer simulation of some kind, we presumably wouldn't be able to tell how quickly it's running from inside it :)
Exactly. Someone is forgetting to contextualize"time" before jumping to the title's conclusion.
What's the problem with the exponent of a finite -if huge- set, it you have infinite time?
(Score: 3, Funny) by LVDOVICVS on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:39AM (2 children)
But not only is it fast, it's also goes without saying that it's not running Windows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:43AM (1 child)
I don't know about that. There seems to be a lot of BSODs lately, N.K. being the biggest BSOD of them all.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 05 2017, @05:46PM
> N.K. being the biggest BSOD of them all.
Let me see [wikipedia.org]
The Norwegian Krone is a pretty stable currency backed by smartest investment policies of any oil state.
Spirit Airlines isn't doing terrible compared to the others' scandals.
North Korea is just yet another nuclear-armed weird nation with fundamental flaws headed by an attention-seeking megalomaniac.
Yes, the Nagorno-Karabakh situation is very scary, and could lead to a significant war. Not sure I'd call that a BSOD yet...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:45AM
Or that God exists!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 05 2017, @07:31AM
I just skimmed through the actual scientific article, and it doesn't speak at all about our universe possibly being simulated by whatever type of computer. Just about the ability to simulate local parts of our universe on computers. While not explicitly stated, it seems obvious that they mean computers that exist or could be built here on Earth.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday October 05 2017, @05:48PM
1. Useful and interesting science does not need to be practically applicable. You are thinking of engineering.
2. This is an interesting and useful step in addressing questions about the nature of our universe. It helps define the bounds of what to do next, where to look. That alone makes it useful science.
3. Speed of the computer really has nothing to do with it. You missed the point of the entire scientific discussion of simulating our universe and the implications drawn from that possibility.