# Physicists find we’re not living in a computer simulation



## isfpisfp (Sep 10, 2017)

this more or less proves God is real


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

if we were in fact part of a computer program wouldn't the findings of said program be designed to show we were not the product of a computer program? their conclusions were moot

of course if above statement is true than that would prove 2 things
1-NT's are iPhones and Mac laptops
2-non NT's are windows 



sent from my Mac pro book with touch bar using phuck you I got a iPhone 8 plus


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## Daiz (Jan 4, 2017)

These people seem really smart yet their logic is so obviously bad, I feel like we must be missing something.


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## SilentScream (Mar 31, 2011)

That entire finding hinges on how we as humans construct computers which in and of itself could be an entirely flawed premise.


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

if in fact we are living in a computer
yet we created computers
how would this explain our history before computers
does not compute
error, error
0101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010
self destruct mode has been activated


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## Fredward (Sep 21, 2013)

Aww. :sad:


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## g_w (Apr 16, 2013)

ae1905 said:


> cosmosmagazine.com *
> 
> Physicists find we’re not living in a computer simulation*
> [HR][/HR]
> ...


So is there any reason the aliens would be required to use quantum Monte Carlo to simulate the quantum Hall effect?


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## g_w (Apr 16, 2013)

Vinniebob said:


> if in fact we are living in a computer
> yet we created computers
> how would this explain our history before computers
> does not compute
> ...


Now we know what causes the Blue Screen of Death.



























...it's turtles all the way down.


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## La Li Lu Le Lo (Aug 15, 2011)

Then how do you explain how some people know all the cheat codes?


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## Grey Wolf (Sep 9, 2017)

Vinniebob said:


> :laughing::laughing:
> 
> your tax dollars hard at work
> if only these ''scientists'' would put half that effort into curing disease
> ...


Yeah, we're how many decades overdue for a cure for cancer?

Nevertheless, I admit to being intrigued by their findings.


@isfpisfp How does it prove that God is real? Even if the world were a computer simulation it was created someway. I'll admit it's nice for scientists to remind themselves that they don't know everything and likely never will.


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## ae1905 (Jun 7, 2014)

Tropes said:


> I don't think that is really able to penetrate through the near-theological level of immunity of the simulation hypothesis. You are making assumptions about their level of mathematical understanding - that they don't have better models with which to undercut complexity - assumptions about how their computation would work - that it doesn't use some form of quantum computing - and that our own simulation would be an accurate representation of the laws that govern their universe rather than some abstract artist joke - as far as we know our universe could be as accurate of a representation of theirs as Pacman is of ours, "all the matter in our universe" could be absolutely nothing for them, arguably it has to be if you are going to run enough simulations for the probability principle behind the simulation hypothesis to take hold.
> 
> Now if you excuse me...
> 
> * *





Jawz said:


> That entire finding hinges on how we as humans construct computers which in and of itself could be an entirely flawed premise.





g_w said:


> So is there any reason the aliens would be required to use quantum Monte Carlo to simulate the quantum Hall effect?


the cosmos magazine overstated the findings of the paper which were more modest

nevertheless, if I may be allowed to speculate, imagine we were to simulate another universe like our own where quantum hall effects exist...this paper tells us it would be impossible given the state of our technology...in fact, I suspect it would be impossible for us to _ever _simulate something as complex as our universe since the technology itself would have to be _more _complex than any worlds we simulate...and that isn't possible

an alien simulating our universe faces the same dilemma...his world would have to be _many orders of magnitude_ more complex than ours if he is going to simulate it, just as our computers must be many orders of magnitude more complex than the worlds we simulate, for example, in computer games...is that possible?...think of how vast and complex our universe is...a machine that can store all the information in the universe must be made of a comparable number physical bits or building blocks...if the beings who built this machine bear the same relationship to it that we do to our own inventions, these beings must be of a comparable size (within two or three orders of magnitude)...in other words, these beings must be made of almost as much stuff as exists in our universe!...they must be unimaginably huuuuuuuge and complex!...so huge they probably can't exist to begin with for the same kinds of reasons limits exist on how big living beings on earth can grow--eg, scaling laws like mass (volume) scaling faster than the strength of materials (cross-sectional _areas _of structures, like legs and tree trunks, that support the masses), etc

of course, I may be completely wrong, but I highly doubt we are living in a simulation for the simple reason our universe is just too complex to be simulated by any _physical _being, even ones in another universe


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## shazam (Oct 18, 2015)

Then how come I can still run up the wall like Morpheus... hmm??

:happy:


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## Red Panda (Aug 18, 2010)

This is a relief, I'm not even kidding.


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## Panorama (Jul 19, 2017)

The computer exists.


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## isfpisfp (Sep 10, 2017)

Grey Wolf said:


> Yeah, we're how many decades overdue for a cure for cancer?
> 
> Nevertheless, I admit to being intrigued by their findings.
> 
> ...


I'm just trolling. Yes maybe a poet will come up with a poem that proves God is real and everyone will think irrationally and everyone pretends they're ISFP on the internet


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## Tropes (Jul 7, 2016)

ae1905 said:


> the cosmos magazine overstated the findings of the paper which were more modest
> 
> nevertheless, if I may be allowed to speculate, imagine we were to simulate another universe like our own where quantum hall effects exist...this paper tells us it would be impossible given the state of our technology...in fact, I suspect it would be impossible for us to _ever _simulate something as complex as our universe since the technology itself would have to be _more _complex than any worlds we simulate...and that isn't possible
> 
> ...


Eh, I wouldn't bet my existence on the strength of that argument. Our own medium's complexity seems to go sideways rather fast, in that the existence of stabilizing factors midway (quarks) that reduce complexity mean we can use complexity bellow the stabilization point to simulate orders magnitudes of higher complexity above it, and we see this in quantum computing - we can use a self contained computational problem (Minimal starting data but many iterations) to solve problems with a much higher level of complexity. Likewise, with the unholy shortcut that is the center of mass, we can simulate quite a bit of planetary mechanics and physics and model accurate predictions without knowing the complexity of the matter inside of it. Now, this isn't "real counter argument" in the sense of disputing complexity - because in reality our medium is the quantum phenomena - but it means that all they need is a smaller medium for computation for which quantum phenomena would be an abstraction of if they are trying to simulate their own universe, and that in itself is a big if, because if they aren't there's almost nothing of substance we can say - the fact that the complexity required is unimaginable to us is in itself a characteristic of our adaptation to our own medium, we're like fish in a bowl arguing that oceans are impossible because that would require an unrealistic amount of water.


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## ae1905 (Jun 7, 2014)

Tropes said:


> Eh, I wouldn't bet my existence on the strength of that argument. Our own medium's complexity seems to go sideways rather fast, in that the existence of stabilizing factors midway (quarks) that reduce complexity mean we can use complexity bellow the stabilization point to simulate orders magnitudes of higher complexity above it, and we see this in quantum computing - we can use a self contained computational problem (Minimal starting data but many iterations) to solve problems with a much higher level of complexity.


no...the quantum computer _itself _is _many orders of magnitude_ more complex than any computation it might make...just a simple count of the molecules in the computer is inordinately larger than the number of particles being computed



> Likewise, with the unholy shortcut that is the center of mass, we can simulate quite a bit of planetary mechanics and physics and model accurate predictions without knowing the complexity of the matter inside of it.


yes, when we are only interested in the bulk motion of astronomical bodies we can ignore details of its composition...but when we are interested in the composition, we can't ignore those details...obviously, the alleged aliens simulating our universe didn't ignore those details because we can observe them anywhere we point our instruments...our universe appears to be "simulated" down to the _finest _details on the _largest_ scales...it really appears to be that complex



> Now, this isn't "real counter argument" in the sense of disputing complexity - because in reality our medium is the quantum phenomena - but it means that all they need is a smaller medium for computation for which quantum phenomena would be an abstraction of if they are trying to simulate their own universe, and that in itself is a big if, because if they aren't there's almost nothing of substance we can say - the fact that the complexity required is unimaginable to us is in itself a characteristic of our adaptation to our own medium, we're like fish in a bowl arguing that oceans are impossible because that would require an unrealistic amount of water.


even a "smaller medium" must be more complex than our universe, so their computer and they themselves must run into the same scaling problems we do

think about this...to exist, their world must also have small-scale forces that bind energy into particles and bind particles together to make bulk matter...life there must also emerge from these basic building blocks and be relatively small and consist of relatively few particles...how is it possible, then, that life could evolve to a stage where a single living being is made up of as many particles as there are in our universe?!...that is an evolution that is unimaginable to us...intelligent life here evolved on a scale many orders of magnitude smaller than the universe...life in our universe is limited by the forces of nature, such as gravity, and could never evolve to anything like the size of the universe!...how then did these beings evolve to the size of our universe when they started the same way we did as a few tiny particles?


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## ae1905 (Jun 7, 2014)

^ @*Tropes* 

let's put some numbers on this to make the magnitude of the problem self-evident

there are an estimated 10^89 particles in the observable universe...that's a 1 with 89 zeros after it

there are an estimated 10^28 atoms in a human body

the universe, therefore, has about 10^61 times more particles than a human body....that's a 1 with 61 zeros after it!

a billion is 10^9, or 1,000,000,000

a trillion is 10^12, or 1,000,000,000,000

10^61 is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

10^61 is an unimaginably large number


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## VinnieBob (Mar 24, 2014)

if the universe is expanding at a exponential rate
than the computer program must also be expanding at a exponential rate
once the program is fully developed would it not crash?
erasing all A.I. 

seriously, these physicists need to do a couple 8 balls, drink some whisky and get laid


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## Tropes (Jul 7, 2016)

@*ae1905*

Again, the moment you are making an argument of scale, you are making an appeal for the lack of imagination of fish in a bowl to imagine an ocean.... it's not a sustainable argument.

You can push this down, "the finest details" in the simulated universe might as well be The Universe Sim relatively to the finest details of their universe and the elements they use for computation, you can push this up, the complexity of the simulation can be nothing compared to the actual universe, or you can push it sideways - the laws that govern the universe can have nothing to do with the laws that govern the simulation. Either way, any argument of scale breaks down in the face of inherently unknowable scale, and this is without going into "the simulation works in mysterious ways" (like finer details only getting calculated when we observe them - much like we do in our own simulations). 

The argument you might be able to make, is to argue that simulation theory isn't a good theory - that it's a low probability explanation - much the same way theological beliefs can't be disproven but can be shown to be horrible theories that shape themselves to be immune to truth and thus bad indicators of it.

That can't be done in an argument of material scale, but of a probabilistic scale, which also directly counters the argument for the simulation universe in the first place. Adapting an argument I often use against theism to the simulation, out of the all the possible cases in which the universe is a virtual space, only a very small fraction of those would actually be built in such a way that the virtual nature of the space is unknowable. That is, out of all the 99.99999% of simulations in which there are obvious indicators, possible even a giant sign in the sky of every planet translating to all languages saying "WELCOME TO SIMULATION alpha17.3, HAVE A NICE STAY, KITTY VIDS TO THE LEFT, PORN TO THE RIGHT", what are the chances that we'd be in one where there are none? While if we live we are in one of the universes that isn't simulated, absolutely none of those are likely to have any indication that it is simulated, just like our own universe doesn't.


edit: Another direction you can go about it, is asking whether it even makes sense to compare magnitudes of infinites in the first place, or whether we are over extending our mathematical intuition to where it doesn't apply: If there are infinite universes in each of which a near infinite number of simulated universes might be running, does the statement really compute?
A = infinite * infinite
B = infinite 
A > B ?
Is scaling magnitudes of infinite a reasonable understanding of the concept, or are we merely comparing two variables that are equally infinite?


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