
Is the Universe a Simulation? - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/is-the-universe-a-simulation.html?action=click&contentCollection=Media&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article
======
platz
This seems like such faulty and backwards reasoning to me.

The experiment of detecting anomalies at the subatomic level is very
interesting and that work should continue.

But, why must we say such anomalies lead to "we are living in a simulation"?

This seems like a fallacy of logic from reasoning backwards from the effect to
the cause, with absolutely no connection between the two.

(Maybe people just want to hop on the "everything is a computer" bandwagon for
marketing/publicity; it is tiring. At it's worst, it makes future tech
assertions look kookish)

~~~
jamesaguilar
> But, why must we say such anomalies lead to "we are living in a simulation"?

That is not the main argument that we are living in a simulation. The main
argument is the following disjunction (from wikipedia). Either:

* human civilization is unlikely to reach a level of technological maturity capable of producing simulated realities, or

* a comparable civilization reaching this technological status will likely not produce a many simulated realities for any of a number of reasons, such as, diversion of computational processing power for other tasks, ethical considerations of holding entities captive in simulated realities, etc., or

* any entities with our general set of experiences are almost certainly living in a simulation.

Personally I think the biggest prima facie weakness in this argument is that
while we will probably reach a point where simulating a human mind is
feasible, and we will probably do so when that time comes, it may take a lot
of computational mass to simulate a person. Thus, any recursive simulations
would get smaller and smaller in terms of the number of thinking entities in
them.

~~~
mistercow
I would say it probably _doesn 't_ take a lot of computational mass to
simulate a person. We're each doing it right now with a glob of meat the size
of a grapefruit, and that's just what evolution was able to come up with.

So simulating a universe where minds are a low-level primitive, and everything
else is simulated lazily and using lots of shortcuts is reasonably plausible.

But that's not the kind of world we find ourselves in. Our minds appear to be
constructed of the same stuff as the rest of the world. If we're to accept the
simulation argument, then our definition of "simulated reality" must imply a
physics implementation that is high enough fidelity to support minds as _high
level_ structures - you have to actually be able to build compact working
brains in the simulation.

Alternatively, we'd have to suppose that a brain is actually just a very
convincing facade, usually sitting inert until someone observes it, at which
point it reflects the inner workings of the person's mind at whatever level of
detail is necessary to convince the observer that it is the mechanism behind
the mind.

Both of these seem far less plausible.

~~~
jamesaguilar
> But that's not the kind of world we find ourselves in. Our minds appear to
> be constructed of the same stuff as the rest of the world. If we're to
> accept the simulation argument, then our definition of "simulated reality"
> must imply a physics implementation that is high enough fidelity to support
> minds as high level structures - you have to actually be able to build
> compact working brains in the simulation.

Devils advocate, but there could simply be level-of-detail heuristics, where
the mind is explainable in terms of physics, but not implemented that way
(unless you look). Similarly, for people who take damage to their brains, the
model for that person's new brain could simply be derived during that
simulation step and substituted.

That's just a high level view of how a lazy simulation could still produce
minds that appear to by implemented using physics.

~~~
mistercow
That's what I was saying in the "Alternatively, ..." part.

But this does suggest an avenue of testing the simulation hypothesis that
might be more useful than looking at purely physical anomalies. The physics
engine might be simplified, but edge cases will likely be subtle and difficult
to distinguish from gaps in our theories of physics.

But if the simulation is using heuristics to gauge whether a brain is being
observed, and making it correlate to the mind primitive backing it as needed,
then we should eventually be able to construct scenarios where those
heuristics are wildly inaccurate. If we could, for example, trick the
simulation into presenting a completely inactive brain while its was
conscious, that would be informative.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Agreed although presumably our hypothetical simulators have sysadmins and
could simply ratchet up the fidelity around anyone who is looking.

~~~
mistercow
Yeah, there are a number of ways that it could be thwarted. Any civilization
that can achieve this kind of universe simulation would probably also have
solved general AI, so the "heuristics" we're trying to fool may in fact be an
intelligence far more clever than ourselves.

But evidence is never perfect.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Actually in a universe where time doesn't necessarily flow forward, evidence
could be perfect. They could just delete branches where the simulation is
discovered and revert back to the point where the bit leading to the discovery
was made. But I see what you are trying to say.

------
discostrings
I think Kant may have rendered this article's vector at the question pretty
meaningless over 200 years ago.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, he posits that space and time are the forms of
our intuition, and he claims that anything that comes to us does so through
these forms. That is to say, we do not know things as they are in themselves--
we only know them insofar as they have properties that can be reflected in a
form that can be processed by our intuition. We bring space and time with us,
as part of our structure, and mathematics is an examination of that structure.

So Kant would have it that mathematics is neither a Platonic form nor
something we have created-it's an exploration of our capabilities of
sensation. This seems to me like a much better explanation of why mathematics
are "universal" than the article's approach.

It also leaves open the question of whether we are "living in a computer
simulation" without suggesting that it's a simple matter (or even necessarily
possible) to see out from inside.

~~~
evanb
I think the supposition that space and time are forms of our intuition is
suspect, and is indeed undermined by relativity. The supposition that maybe
spacetime are the forms of our intuition also doesn't necessarily withstand
scrutiny, because there is at least one way of formulating quantum field
theories with no reference to spacetime at all (see, for example,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6403285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6403285)
).

~~~
discostrings
I don't think relativity or quantum field theory undermine the idea that space
and time are our forms of intuition. On the contrary, I feel it may be the
first framework that really created a sensible space for those phenomena.

Kant's approach holds that our /intuition/ is limited by space and time and
that "things in themselves" may in actuality be many different ways. We can
only receive and understand things insofar as they exist or can be manifest in
space/time. I think his theory very much leaves open that we can better grasp
the properties of things by studying the way they appear in space/time and
drawing inferences. His very point is that space and time do not exist in
themselves as far as we perceive them--they are merely the forms through which
we are capable of receiving anything. And thus I would say he created a
groundwork of thought that made room for relativity and quantum observations
well before they were conceived--in fact, I imagine Kant's groundwork was
important in our path to them.

[Edited for a slight bit more clarity]

[HN meta comment: it's really annoying that any given story that has a lot of
upvotes and that is seemingly appropriate for HN can be flagged from the front
page. Why spend time writing an insightful comment when any given story could
be sent from the top of the front page to the middle of page 3 by the
capricious action of a flagger or moderator, meaning no one will ever see the
comment? Such unpredictability really discourages quality participation and
encourages quick responses--why expend a lot of effort when the chance of
anyone reading your work could evaporate so quickly and arbitrarily?]

~~~
evanb
Space and time _are_ things themselves and _do_ exist independent of our
perception. As evidence: all the solutions to general relativity that have no
matter content but nonetheless are not flat, because the curvature of
spacetime itself has energy that gravitates (the Schwarzschild solution comes
to mind). Spacetime has its own real, physical, dynamics.

~~~
discostrings
Kant agrees that empirically, space and time are things themselves and exist
independent of our perception. In fact, for Kant, anything that can come to us
or be reasoned by us, and the relations of those things, must comply with
space, time, and, therefore, mathematics.

I wasn't trying to say that space, time, and mathematics do not exist
independent of our perception. Rather, I was refuting the idea that
mathematics is either a Platonic form or something we made up. The Kantian
idea is: anything we come into contact with or understand must come to us in a
way that conforms with mathematics, or else we wouldn't be able to experience
it. Therefore, everything we know complies with mathematics--it's not some
Platonic form outside us or our creation, but the very structure of our
understanding. There might be a superset of laws that things in themselves
comply with that we don't have access to. We are, however, limited to the
understanding we can achieve through space, time, and mathematics (which do
describe everything we can encounter).

My initial response wasn't terribly well written and was rambling, so I tried
to clean it up a bit. It started to address your point but veered off-topic.
There's also an important difference between perception and intuition that I
originally didn't express very well.

Getting back to what I was originally trying to say, I don't think the nature
of mathematics has much to do with whether or not we live in a computer
simulation. We could be bound to mathematics for any number of reasons that
are beyond our capability for understanding. What I was commenting on was the
article's introduction to the question. I suppose, though, that the article
itself admits the relation between the introduction and the topic may not be
strong ("But one fanciful possibility is that we live in a computer simulation
based on the laws of mathematics"). I just don't think "Mathematics applies to
everything we can experience, therefore we live in a computer" is a
particularly interesting approach.

I really appreciate your responses.

~~~
evanb
> I don't think the nature of mathematics has much to do with whether or not
> we live in a computer simulation.

Yes, I don't understand the logic behind this idea. If our universe is only
orderly because it is inside a simulation, what is the universe in which the
simulating computer like? Totally non-mathematical, and yet rich enough to
have computers in it? Seems farfetched.

------
lmg643
This reminds me of an article I read a year back, same topic:

[http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-big-
toe.html](http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-big-toe.html)

"The bottom line is, if we are in a simulation, there needs to be compressive
sampling because quantum effects between particles would otherwise require an
infinite amount of memory, so the meaning of the wave function is that it's
for data compression. [...] The fortuitous data compression implicit in wave
functions is merely another reason to suspect we are in a simulation. "

~~~
bencollier49
The Falkenberg blog just prompted me to write on the subject, because it
implies that if a creator exists, they are not omnipotent.

[http://www.bencollier.info/content/physics-and-demiurge-
crea...](http://www.bencollier.info/content/physics-and-demiurge-creator-not-
omnipotent)

~~~
lostcolony
Seems like backward reasoning. It's fair to say "Hey, if the universe is a
resource constrained simulation, that would explain why wave-particle
duality!", but I don't see any logical requirement that "Because wave-particle
duality, it must be a resource constrained simulation (if it's a simulation)".

~~~
andrewflnr
Quite. The creator could just as easily choose such a physics for obscure
aesthetic reasons, or reasons for which we have no concept at all.
Furthermore, we have no way of knowing whether "resource constraints" are a
meaningful concept outside our little physical universe, either.

~~~
almosnow
"No one could be able to simukate our universe because we can't do it."

------
5362677_0010
That article is so much fluff, and doesn't really say much in the way of hard
science.

What he's referring to are Quantum Chromodynamics simulations, which in very
general terms were born out of a desire to simulate the sub-atomic interaction
of the nucleus of various elements, mapping nuclear reactions for weapons like
the hydrogen bomb, when live fire tests were banned by international treaties.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_QCD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_QCD)

    
    
      Numerical lattice Quantum Chromodynamic (QCD) calculations 
      using Monte Carlo methods can be extremely computationally 
      intensive, requiring the use of the largest available 
      supercomputers.
    

It's nice to contemplate the philosophical implications of being able to
simulate the stimulated emissions of high-energy gamma ray emissions with high
reliability and resolution inside a computer, but where's the meat of the
article? It's just eleven paragraphs of "what if?"

~~~
evanb
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847](http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847)

and see my top-level comment for more detail.

~~~
5362677_0010
If I'm the sentient result of an elaborate computer simulation, then you are
very obviously an apparatus of those who control the simulation.

If that's true, then please cut the shit, and knock on my front door right
now, and just come right out and tell me:

    
    
      5362677_0010? You're a computer simulation.

------
crystaln
We are living in a universe with natural laws and intelligence. Whether it's a
"simulation" is sort of a nonsensical question. Is an iPhone emulator a
simulation or an actual iPhone? What distinguishes those two other than our
definition of iPhone, which of course is subjective?

The question is similar to "is there a god?" That is, is there an intelligence
outside of our universe that consciously created this one.

Do wave function anonomolies indicate that our universe is the product of
intelligence, or do they just show us how little we understand about the
nature of existence?

Further, following the logic of the article, we most likely live in near
infinite nested simulated universes, since the same reasoning applies to our
gods, unless of course reason is an aspect of out universe in which case how
can we expect to reason about what is outside it?

These are interesting questions, but jumping to the conclusion that we are in
a simulation seems both premature and nonsensical to me.

~~~
logicallee
>Is an iPhone emulator a simulation or an actual iPhone?

That's a really good question, and I hope the next metaphysical conundrum I
encounter can be despatched with as easily.

The answer is that it is a simulation. Next!

~~~
crystaln
You're missing the point. What makes an iPhone more real than an emulator? Is
it that we consider an iPhone to be real and an emulator to be a simulator, is
it that one came first? An emulator is still real. One could emulate an
emulator - which of those then is real? Is the "real" iPhone not a simulator?
It's all a matter if semantics.

Even if we live in a universe created by an intelligence, we are not in a
simulator - we are in a universe created by an intelligence. If we are in a
simulator, what are we simulating? The real universe which is like this one?

~~~
logicallee
What makes the iPhone real in this case is that its chips are running the
code, whereas the simulator runs code that does not control actual chips, and
functions as though it did as emergent behavior. The calls in the code running
in the simulator don't actually touch the hardware they're coded to touch,
they are not subject to actual hardware behavior. That's all.

It's not a distinction without a difference. Javascript does not run on the
CPU, Firefox does. If you recreate Firefox in javascript (i.e. a whole slow
VM) then it is still a simulation of a computer running Firefox. The physical
computer is not actually executing the C++ instructions that Firefox is coded
with.

It is quite easy to see this level of abstraction difference.

The question is, am I existing in a physical sense with my atoms being 'the
metal' or are there some more fundamental laws that are used to 'interpret'
(at a higher level) the laws of our universe, without being bound by them, and
are only interpreting the movement of my atoms.

This is quite an easy question to understand and don't see why it poses such a
metaphysical conundrum to you.

If we are in a simulator, all that means is that there are more fundamental
rules that are being used to create our universe at a higher logical level as
an emergent property.

(The way a VM that is done in Javascript does:
[http://bellard.org/jslinux/](http://bellard.org/jslinux/)).

The question is, is our code running at the lowest level, or is some other
code running at the lowest level but simulating our laws as an emergent
property? (a la linux in javascript).

------
hansjorg
> we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved
> Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable
> consequences

So the argument seems to be that, if we were living in a simulation, and it
used physics we now know to be slightly inaccurate, we would be able to
measure that.

Maybe I'm missing something, but that's not very logical is it?

~~~
guspe
The article should have linked to the original Simulation Argument by Nick
Bostrom, since the physics part is just one of many possible tests to verify
the hypothesis. Here is Nick Bostron's argument: [http://www.simulation-
argument.com/](http://www.simulation-argument.com/)

~~~
hansjorg
What are the other tests? I've read Bostrom's argument, but wasn't aware that
he was proposing any specific tests.

------
pirateking
I sometimes picture the Universe as being some kind of a recursive knowledge
generation simulation eating memory as it learns, with (Known Universe <->
Subatomic Particles) being the current limitations. The One Electron[0] acts
as the program counter.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_electron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_electron)

~~~
slacka
It is interesting how counterintuitive quantum mechanics seems and yet many
aspects make perfect sense in the eyes of a programmer.

* The foundation of Quantum Mechanics is the idea of quanta. The data or physical quantities of a computer and our Universe can change only by discrete amounts like the bits of a computer. Distances, energy, and possibility time are quantized in our universe.

* The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle also implies Interactions don't 'count' unless they affect some other piece of the system. Is the Universe doing called 'lazy evaluation' here?

* In computer simulations, the criteria to achieve von Neumann stabilitiy is that no effect can propagate at a speed faster than the size step divided by the time step. Interactions in our universe are also limited by the speed of light.

* Holographic Principle does away with spatial locality, drastically reducing the number of possible states our Universe can have. None of this makes sense unless the Universe is trying to minimize resource usage.

* E=mc2 : mass and energy are two forms of the same thing. It a computer it's all bytes at it's simplest form.

------
evanb
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847](http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847)

This comment is a response to a bunch of the comments in this thread, but it
didn't make sense to scatter the information throughout the page.

The way lattice QCD [0] works requires a few approximations in order to fit
the problem into your computer. You

(1) simulate a universe with finite volume (state-of-the-art calculations have
boxes just a few times bigger than a nucleus in each direction),

(2) discretize the space into a bunch of points some lattice spacing apart
connected by links, and,

(3) possibly simulate at values of the quark masses that are not their
physical values (this helps make a a matrix you need to invert better-
conditioned).

Finally, you know what action[1] you want to simulate (that of QCD[2]) and you
construct a discretized action that accounts for all of the above
approximations that approaches the real action you want to simulate when you
take the limits volume --> infinity, lattice spacing --> 0, masses -->
physical values.

There are many different ways to build such a discretized action (and they go
by names like the Wilson action, the Domain Wall action, the Staggered action,
and others), but no discretized action is "perfect" in the sense that anything
you try to measure can have errors that depend on how different the volume you
actually measured is from the infinite-volume limit, how much having a finite
lattice spacing changes your answer, and how much unphysical masses matter.

We have theory that controls how measured quantities depend on these
parameters, and thus can understand, via extrapolation, how lattice artifacts
change the quantities we measure from the true continuum limit.

You can use this understanding to find out what the answer is in the limit of
there being no discretization at all (lattice spacing = 0) and then compare
measurements of our world to those predictions. If they match, then the world
doesn't really have a grid of points at its bottom, but if they don't match
you can find out how finely spaced the grid of spacetime is.

Unfortunately, any simulation you do will have error bars, and so in practice
all you can say is "the continuum world looks like this ± that", the practical
consequence being that you can only put an upper bound on how different the
lattice spacing of spacetime is from zero: "If the lattice spacing were bigger
than X then we would have conflict between the experimental observations we
made of the universe and the simulation. No such conflict is known, so the
lattice spacing is smaller than X."

Source: I am a postdoc doing lattice QCD, and I have met Martin and Zohreh.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_QCD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_QCD)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_(physics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_\(physics\))
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics)

~~~
lutusp
You're overlooking something basic and uncontroversial that may prevent such
an analysis from being deterministic. Gödel's incompleteness theorems say
that, for a sufficiently complex system, there are true statements that cannot
be proven from within that system, using the system's methods. This means
that, from a perspective within the universe, we may be constrained by the
incompleteness theorems from making any kind of conclusive determination as to
its true nature.

Gödel's incompleteness theorems have a wide reach. They prevent a solution to
the Turing Halting problem, and they placed a firm limit on projects such as
Russell and Whitehead's tendentiously named "Principia Marthematica"
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica)),
a very ambitious project that was fatally undermined by Gödel's work.

The incompleteness theorems need to be considered in the present question --
we're inside the "system" we're trying to analyze, consequently there are
questions we can't meaningfully resolve. I think the question about the
universe being a simulation meets this classic criterion for indeterminacy.

~~~
evanb
Also, Seth Lloyd turns the question [0] on its head and suggests that it's
silly to call the universe anything _but_ a computer, since it contains
systems that are Turing Complete. What is it computing? Its own history /
dynamics.

That said, it is different to ask if we're in a simulation vs. in a computer
---the word simulation makes one think of some programmer compiling some
source code and executing some program: it entails _agency_.

[0]
[http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/lloyd/](http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/lloyd/)

~~~
lotsofmangos
By that logic, my house is a computer as it contains many systems that are
Turing complete.

~~~
evanb
The logic should more precisely be: the dynamics of the universe, ie. the
things that physics allows, includes the operation of Turing machines, so that
the physical laws are at least Turing complete. Thus, the universe, from a
computational point of view, a computer.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
That's sort of like saying the universe is a table because its constituent
parts, laws, etc make tables possible. I guess it's interesting, not _very_
interesting, though.

~~~
evanb
There's somehow something deeper about computerness than there is about
tableness.

------
randomracker
It's probably better to resist the temptation to ascribe meaning to models.
The model is the meaning, nothing more or less. If we observe these artifacts,
it means that's a property of our universe. Really, we're completely locked
within that system and can't say that it means anything else.

But, I'd argue that if we can be a simulation, we're ignoring the qualia of
consciousness issue. So I'd say that if we can be a simulation, we can just be
one of those mathematical entities in Platonic space. The universe seems to be
written in math, perhaps all of _this_ is just what it's like to be one of
those Platonic ideals.

There's not much use in speculating in that which cannot be falsified.

------
drdeadringer
Part of me is becoming tired of "brain in a jar" lines of reasoning, because
there can be no other side of the discussion by default. If there is, I'm a
Citizen who would like to know more.

~~~
solipsism
What sides are you talking about? Either the line of reasoning (whichever
you're talking about) has flaws or it doesn't.

If you're trying to say "it leads nowhere", I sort of agree. But it only
"leads nowhere" once you get to the acceptance that truth is subjective.
Getting that far is worth it and can change the way a person thinks about many
other things.

~~~
drdeadringer
Yes, I'm trending toward "it leads nowhere". To me, it's like trying to prove
a negative: "prove you aren't a brain in a jar, receiving electrical//chemical
inputs instead of walking around in a body". Well, right down to it, I can't
just as much as you can't.

> So truth is subjective, knowing that is worth it, and getting that far is
> awesome.

Agreed.

------
ifPaheycad
Universe in layman terms.

Grandpa Tom, is playing "Mario" on his beautiful "iMac" presented by his
grandson for Christmas. He is just a regular grandpa who is in his 70s and is
really new to this computer world. After playing Mario for a while he starts
wondering how does a key on keyboard is making Mario Move. He starts putting
himself within Mario character and starts seeing things around him. What he
see is a world where he just have to "Run from dangers, get powers, survive
and save the queen". Mario is so much involved he doesn't even know that there
is something called as keyboard and a monitor outside his system. Mario thinks
he just have to move and perform certain actions to accomplish his goal. thats
all.

After playing so many hours of game, Suddenly mario starts thinking "am i
doing things on my own or am i being controlled ? how the hell i am going to
find out. the environment around me just extends in whichever direction i go.
but not if i die. so what is this sorcery !"

In this whole story, Mario is each one of us. The next obvious question is,
how do you know ? Neither does Mario. Some of these Marios went beyond the
simulated environment (non materialistically, because there is no matter which
runs this system, just like above cpu, interaction....) and figured out all
this. We can decide to "believe" or "find an answer ourselves".

Now a programmer knows an answer. I wrote this goddam Mario program, i did not
give him enough instructions (C/C++/whatever) to thik, so he will never know
what the hell is going on. But, given intelligence to think on his own, he
might be able to figure out things around his environment, but still he can't
see the CPU<->Memory<->GPU<->Display<->Keyboard interactions. He can, only if
.... ? . So, who are we , better than mario ? who can think on their own
right... ? what more do you want ?

Hope this helps.

------
simias
I don't quite understand how we propose to identify those anomalies when we
have nothing to compare them to. Maybe the weird behaviours we observe in
quantum physics for instance are the result of some optimisation/bug in the
simulation, but how would we prove that?

How would a video game character understand and then prove he's in a
simulation if the simulation itself didn't program them to do that?

It kind of reminds me of the people looking for life on other planets by
searching for worlds similar to ours. It's of course a reasonable approach but
in the end we have no idea if statistically speaking the presence of water or
a certain temperature or atmosphere gives higher probabilities for life to
emerge. We're just extrapolating from a sample of one.

~~~
evanb
We can simulate worlds with different parameters and compare them to our
(experimentally observed) world. See my top-level comment for more detail.

------
alasarmas
And, if so, can we run arbitrary programs on it?

~~~
thenmar
grep -r meaning

~~~
stillsut
>>> 42

~~~
huxley
"We apologise for the inconvenience"

------
huxley
Would a parent universe that didn't share mathematics as universal noumena be
capable of creating a simulation of a universe like ours?

------
modulus1
Mathematics is like a fractal, given some axioms it explodes into an infinite
set of true equations. No one has to observe math for it to exist. I think our
universe(s) could be the same way, given some natural laws, or equations,
everything we know is defined to take place. Why would there have to be
anything 'running' the simulation.

------
DenisM
Yes: [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2535](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/?id=2535)

------
FryHigh
Even if it is a simulation, as in the words of Rene Descartes, I think
therefore I am.

My interpretation of it is, I might be in the matrix but I exist somewhere. I
might be a butterfly in another dimension hooked up to the matrix like
simulation to be in a human body and experience earth. Anyhow I exist.

------
h43z
In my naivety i think it will be impossible to proof that we live in a
simulation. Even if we could simulate an universe we cannot say we live in
one. And if we find bugs in our current universe we cannot say if it is a bug
or our model is just wrong.

------
mindcrime
I don't know, but this whole discussion just prompted me to pop in _The
Matrix_ for another rewatch.

 _The orders were for your protection_

 _Ha ha. I think we can handle one little girl_

 _I sent two units, they 're bringin' her down now_

 _No, lieutenant, your men are already dead_

------
fredgrott
Okay short version..

Our physical world is complicated that any math system is incomplete as far as
modeling the real world..

Since we use math to understand the world..its simulation is somewhat a true
statement from our in precise mathematical model of it...

------
quarterwave
The Universe is a simulation, so what programming language/galactic cloud does
it run on? Haskell for typing and correctness, Erlang for 'just fail', Ruby
for POLA (God's, that is)...

~~~
FreeFull
Hacked together perl and lisp

------
barkingcat
a good enough simulation is indistinguishable from the real thing. So that
question doesn't actually parse for me.

~~~
barkingcat
Unless the question is to ask whether the universe is a poorly written
simulation with edge cases that differ from the real thing. In that case, the
question is very interesting.

~~~
jblow
The main objection is that the way edge cases would "differ from the real
thing" depends on what their "computers" are like which may not be anything
like our computers. In fact there is no reason to believe they are similar at
all.

~~~
solipsism
To take that point further, not only may their computers be nothing like our
computers, the whole point of the article is that our natural laws and the
basis of our mathematics is part of the simulation. That implies that the host
(to borrow virtualization jargon) world's computers may work according to
rules nothing like our own. Certainly you can't make statements like _quantum
effects between particles would otherwise require an infinite amount of
memory_. You can't make any statements about the host world, any more than we
can make statements about the nature of a god, if one existed.

------
seba_dos1
I started to read that article on a browser without NoScript installed. It
reminded me why I love it so much.

------
burritofanatic
It blows my mind that some very famous people submit comments here.

------
dsr_
The minimum evidence that we are in fact in a simulation would be observing a
violation of physics.

Until then, all is speculation.

~~~
gfodor
When someone posts something like this, do they honestly believe everyone else
having this debate, including serious physicists, are just stupid because they
can't see the brilliant insight they have posted?

~~~
lutusp
It's a typical post by someone whose knowledge of physics is limited to the
content of the Discovery Channel, whose physics scripts are worded in just
this way.

~~~
Helianthus
Oh, get over yourselves, both of you.

He's just starting a conversation, and while I wouldn't advocate handing out
participation ribbons, you're just trashing someone that had a thought and
expressed it--you and gfodor are buddying up to one another over how worthless
that thought is.

Spare us your revelry.

I'm as big a fan as a dirty flame war as anyone. I find complaints over HN's
critical culture to be tiring and self-defeating.

But if you're going to be negative, don't give each other high fives about it.

Edit: I suppose this is directed more at you, lutusp, because gfodor seems to
be posting criticism in earnest.

~~~
lutusp
I posted what I did so nontechnical readers wouldn't be misled. Would you
object if I similarly addressed someone who claimed that evolution must be
wrong because it's not in the Bible?

> ... you're just trashing someone that had a thought and expressed it ...

Indeed, that's what I did, but it was because of what was expressed, not the
fact of its expression.

Surely it has by now occurred to you that you're defending this person's right
to say whatever he chooses, while denying me the same right? Or did that
escape your attention?

> Oh, get over yourselves, both of you.

Under the circumstances, it's time for you to get over yourself. The OP's
post, and my reply, are perfectly symmetrical -- one demands the other.

~~~
Helianthus
Heh. Well, you've made it pretty easy for me.

>>Under the circumstances, it's time for you to get over yourself. The OP's
post, and my reply, are perfectly symmetrical -- one demands the other.

Perfect. Now for an actual rebuttal...

\---

>Surely it has by now occurred to you that you're defending this person's
right to say whatever he chooses, while denying me the same right?

I didn't say you shouldn't say anything, I'm saying you're an _asshole_ for
being proud of having said anything.

Your original response regarding what constitutes a violation of physics was
fine. Your response to gfodor was simple gloating.

~~~
lutusp
> I didn't say you shouldn't say anything, I'm saying you're an asshole for
> being proud of having said anything.

Congratulations on abandoning the moral high ground, rocket scientist. You
just demolished your own position.

How did you get to your present age without learning about the risk of fatal
self-reference?

~~~
Helianthus
I never said I was proud that I could tell your comment was self-aggrandizing.
I only said it was obvious.

~~~
lutusp
You've just demonstrated that you're a study in hypocrisy and have no grasp of
how you sound. Under the circumstances, what's my incentive to continue?

~~~
Helianthus
Why are you asking _me?_

Goodnight.

------
zw123456
Maybe we stuck in a strange loop?

~~~
radley
Or just a natural one.

