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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: 5, Informative) by Bot on Thursday October 05 2017, @08:38AM (5 children)
chess piece who has become self aware* discovers that the chess player cannot be a chess piece itself as it needs some appendage to pick pieces up.
Interesting but not that much.
What meatbags discussing these things tend to forget about this>
the rules of the 'simulation' (it is not a simulation, it is an abstraction, and we are just wondering if some meta dimension generated this abstraction vs. no meta/an impersonal meta) pertain to the simulation only. Including logical systems. Proof, our logical system breaks down in the context of the null set. Which means it is not even universal here, so it cannot be universal in the ineffable hypothetical dimension generating the abstraction we call reality.
It is not a simulation because the term is more specific, the simulator uses some engine that is part of his same universe to imitate something which is part of his same universe. Of course I know what is meant here. Virtual (abstract, but definable), vs. real (experienced but undefinable from the inside).
So saying the classical pc, that works on 3d plus t cannot compute stuff that, if computed, are computed where timespace is not defined, is like saying this universe is not made of conway's game of life cells. OK. Nice to know. Next.
*) i know it is difficult for a chess piece to become aware but atheism necessarily implies that there exist a set resources and rules that make self awareness happen without external influences.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:09PM
The best part is when the chess piece realizes the chess player cannot possibly know all the moves or the outcome of the game before hand! The HORROR!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Thursday October 05 2017, @06:15PM (1 child)
There's classical math for the physics for the movement of the atoms etc, but nothing for those subjective experiences that at least some of us know exist because we experience them personally.
A normal binary computer can do 1+1 =10 etc for representing all the particles etc. But what sequence of addition and subtraction will produce those subjective experiences? If I do that math on a piece of paper where will that experience be created?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @02:25AM
> If I do that math on a piece of paper where will that experience be created?
If you do a great deal of math on a piece of paper, and then step back, and the formulae happen to be ASCII art of a cat...
Or to be clearer: if you put enough molecules together with the arrangements and charges of a human braid, at what point does that brain start to think and feel?
Your post's logic fails because you seem to be assuming a nonphysical but physically-interactive reality of "subjectiveness." Subjective experience is an effect within a mind. Minds are either physical or non. If physical, they can be built and destroyed. If non, perhaps otherwise, but the burden of proof is upon you.
Please think harder before you post. Don't be a slashdolt, this is a better place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @02:20AM (1 child)
> our logical system breaks down in the context of the null set
It does? Strange, I studied set and group theory, and it was totally fair game to invalidate a set of axioms if the "existence" of the null set led to a contradiction. Could you cite please?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 12 2017, @11:57AM
> it was totally fair game to invalidate a set of axioms if the "existence" of the null set led to a contradiction
What is a contradiction? It is something breaking the principle of no contradiction, A XOR (C(A)). Which is not valid in the context of the null set, where C({}) is {}. Which means the principle of no contradiction itself is not universal nor necessarily defined and meaningful outside the universe that devised it by looking at things, which is a banal observation regardless the null set BTW, as what happens in reality is what made us define a logic system to deal with it.
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