Talk:Simulated reality hypothesis/Archive 3

message: Some of these don't seem like they should be put here, after all what do FF7/10 have to do with "simulated reality"? I don't see how it relates to the definition of simulated reality as described in the article. Perhaps someone would like to elaborate, otherwise some things are gonna get scrapped. WikiSlasher 06:39, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually don't answer that I haven't finished either game. --WikiSlasher 02:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simulated reality in fiction - in video games 

message: I remember a PBS show from the 1980's that mentioned a philosopher who believed we are in a simulated reality and that we wake up after the game is over.
Then when is the game over? Scorpionman 18:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: PBS show and others had stories in the mid 80's  about 'simulated reality'

message: It seems the writers of this article, or at least some of the sections, are assuming that these "simulations" are in fact sensory simulations performed on real people rather than true simulations which don't exist in physical reality.  I read a little stuff on Bostrom's website, and I think what he had in mind was a true mathematical simulation.
For instance, we determine the equations governing the firing of neurons in the brain (we've already done some work on this, see the Hodgkin-Huxley Equations).  We design a computer simulation of a brain consisting of billions of neurons (let's assume we have all the memory we need) organized like a human brain, and simulate their firings.  Theoretically, this computer simulation should produce the same results as actual human thought.  It could therefore be argued that this simulation, run on an ordinary electronic digital computer processor, is in fact conscious.  No actual human hooked up to anything.  I think something like this should be explained in the article so readers are not making the "Matrix assumption" of an actual human having sensory input fed into his brain, which I think is a completely unnecessary assumption.
Also, I think in light of this, the point made my Neurodivergent in the section "It's not necessary for the simulation to occur" above has not been properly addressed, in that his detractors have missed the point.  He is simply extending the argument I just made to say the same simulation (which resulted in consciousness) could be done with pencil and paper, and speculating on what that might mean.
Mbarbier 02:49, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep yep.  I addressed this in the article's new first topic, "Types of Simulation", which describes the three main categories of simulation (of which the Matrix is the "videogame" variety).Txinviolet 22:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Right, how did we come to that conclusion? Why would the advanced society let us think that? Wouldn't they not want us to know? Scorpionman 18:27, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Matrix assumption 

message: I think the piece is improving as we include other thinkers who laid the groundwork. As much as I enjoy reading Nick's materials the early pioneers are not modern philosophers. It's good that someone has written a thought experiment, but it seems like some of the editors are treating Bostrom like he was the father of the simulation argument -- which he was not.
I would like to see this become less of an advertisement for his articles and more an overview of how we got to this point. And I'm happy to see that some of you have taken the time to research the topic and include the groundbreaking work of early thinkers.
Watching The Matrix and then writing a paper is not nearly as impressive as coming to that conclusion all on your own. Without any technology to point you in that direction, which is precisely what the early philosophers were able to do.
:Right, how did we come to that conclusion? Why would the advanced society let us think that? Wouldn't they not want us to know? Scorpionman 18:27, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bostrom 

message: “The mathematical workload that must be surmounted to generate a reality as rich and complex as say, for example ours, is huge.”
I don’t know if the computational workload is as insurmountable as it seems. After all, the entire world you perceive (100% of it) is a simulation and not the real thing. Your brain doesn’t hear or see anything. Instead, electrical signals are sent to the neurons which then translate the data and construct an artificial representation.
Information is edited out. And that’s why we don’t see ultraviolet light and microwaves.
---------------
At best the article is confused here. It clearly states that our brains filter out UV and microwave information. This is nonsense -- our eyes aren't sensitive to those frequencies and so there's no information to filter. See the article on Cone Cells if you're confused about this.
- SteveH
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:I am not confused. I will try to amend the article1Z 18:08, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: RESPONSE TO NEW ADDITION SUGGESTION

message: I realize I'm a little late to the debate on the computational power required to simulate the universe. I find the debate amusing since a single brain in our reality is capable of simulating the world that some are debating is too computationally intensive to mimic.
A single brain does it. It's not a futuristic computer making use of quantum mechanics or femtotechnology. It's one brain running fairly slow, through massivelly parallel, neurons.
Perhaps because we don't relish the idea of this being a simulation we spend time trying to talk ourselves out of being able to simualate the universe. And to be honest this isn't a full "universe" simulation since all of us are still on or near the planet Earth.
: I think the brain's simulation of the universe leaves a fair bit to be desired over the real thing, especially if you are talking about dreams.  By most observations, the universe's scope and level of consistency far outstrip the brain's capabilities.  -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 05:29, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the leader of the advanced society you're all talking about. I just would like to tell you that you have indeed been living in a simulation, and nothing you see is real. BTW, what exactly fuels a computer simulation anyway? Electrons and photons. Since we don't know that those exist, then they can't fuel a simulation, therefore a simulation can't exist! Scorpionman 18:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Computational power req'd to simulate universe

message: I agree with you Fennec, but we're always limited by our brain's capabilities. No matter how much information may or may not be there -- I can only experience up to the limit of my brain. In fact, all of the potential information that is purportedly there must also be condensed into my brain's reality limits.
Which means that we can fake it. I don't know for a fact that subatomic particles exists since I can never actually see them. I just see a machine that gives me a read out that verifies their existence, but always at my brains limit.
And that is why it's not that difficult to mimic our reality from a computational standpoint. We just fake everything beneath the perception level of our eyes and ears, so when you look into a microscope your eyes see molecules, etc. And when the new machine is created that is supposed to measure quarks it does its job and I only see a printout.
When you look there we render it. When you're not looking there is nothing there. The observer effect that is discussed in this article is a great mechanism to achieve this goal and conserve processesing power.
The basic idea is that we're never creating anything smaller than what can be observed by our natural senses. If this world is using such a system then we're just buying into the fiction that these super tiny items exist in the simulated sense (i.e., being rendered to that level of detail). However, they could still obey whatever rules of physics are being employed even if they're not being rendered down to that level of specificity. -Lord Volton
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:This is the leader of the advanced society you're all talking about. I just would like to tell you that you have indeed been living in a simulation, and nothing you see is real. BTW, what exactly fuels a computer simulation anyway? Electrons and photons. Since we don't know that those exist, then they can't fuel a simulation, therefore a simulation can't exist! Scorpionman 18:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: response to Fennec

message: Your reaction is understandable. And the simulation argument is a theory.
If you spend some time analyzing this world from the perspective of a simulation programmer you may come to a different conclusion. Of course the first simulations would be fantasy based where you're the knight in shining armour. That is exactly how things work in the simulated worlds we create in the gaming industry right now.
I'm sure in a universe of simulated worlds fantasy simulations are very popular, assuming simulated worlds exist. But after being simulated as the knight, pro basketball player, and rich billionaire millions of times it would get old.
And then we'd start to create open ended simulations where the characters are given more freedom. After all, how much fun is poker if you can read the opposing players cards? That's not much of a challenge.
This world is a challenging world by comparison, and therefore the people who would come to such a world would no doubt have worn out the early, no-brainer simulations where everything goes their way and they live out a fantasy.
Alternatively, this could be a historical simulation based on actual events. And if that is the case then there would be a need to simulate both the good and the bad. That doesn't mean that the bad things are happening to sentient beings, since the people who die or suffer an inordinate amount could be non-player characters -- but we cannot tell the difference since we assume everyone is real.
On a more practical level there are examples in our world. We play football for fun and a lot of pain can result: broken legs, torn ligaments, and even death. But that doesn't stop us from playing simply because there is the potential for negative and often painful results. The same is true in other sports: boxing, hockey, etc.
There are a lot of possibilities to explain suffering and sorrow and our motivations to live in worlds where there is death and tragedy. Others have mentioned that if we're immortal then there would probably be no topic more fascinating than living a finite existence.
-Lord Volton, III, of House Florian.
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:Yeah, I guess so. That's not really evidence though. Scorpionman 04:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: response to Proof

message: I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but the material on Mormonism seems like a sneaky way to insert the Mormon plan of salvation. I'm wondering if it should be reworded to be more general and less a promotion of the Mormon view in particular, since hundreds if not thousands of religious groups could lay a similar claim and make the section 1,000 pages long.
I have no problem with religious parallels, but this one seems to be a veiled attempt to promote the LDS church. Perhaps more to the point, the Mormon church DOES NOT believe this world is a simulation.
:It should be deleted. It's just not relevant. And the article is too long.1Z 02:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: religious parallels

message: I have a few comments on this section, the first being that it seems a little technical. If there is a way to simplify the concepts so that those who are not science majors can understand the underlying principles that would make it a lot more accessible. The other question I have is whether an uncomputable problem is a critical issue.
:Of course it is. If our reality is uncomputable, it is not being computer-simulated.
Assuming there is something in the 'true' reality that is uncomputable that doesn't mean we cannot approximate. 
:It doesn't mean we can't build simulations within our reality. But that is not the Simulation Hypothesis; the SH is that our reality is simulated. It is a fact,not a hypothesis, that we can build simulations in our reality.
In the simulated environments we create today we're not even coming close to computing the real thing. The trucks, houses, and streets are not the computational equivalent of what we see in our world.
And how would I know if the chair I am sitting on is a computational equivalent of a spatially real chair if this were a simulation?
:By looking for uncomputable physics in it. However, that only answers the question in the negative.
I don't think it really eliminates the simulation hypothesis. It only states that a spatially equivalent simulation could not be created if designers were interested in creating a spatially equivalent environment 
:The SH is the claim that we are in a simulation
-- which may not be the case here since none of us exist in subatomic space or are capable of seeing atoms interact with our naked eyes -- we take it on faith that all of the things that are supposed to be happening at the atomic level and below are in fact happening when we're not watching.
And even when we are watching we don't see that atoms we just see a visual representation and take it on faith that the visual representation being viewed in the macro world means they exist spatially in the micro world. That is a far cry from proving they actually exist spatially. 
:Even if hypercomputational physics is "in the eye of the beholder", it is still hypercomputation! 1Z 19:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Computability of Physics

message: The computability of physics is an interesting topic, no doubt about it. But there still needs to be a smooth connection as to why it's relevant to the simulation hypothesis. It reads like someone has done an awful lot of research on this topic and knows it inside and out. And that is fantastic, but it seems like it's being forced into the simulation hypothesis. 
Maybe if there were a short 1 paragraph overview of how this could be relevant to the simulation hypothesis 
:There is:
"A closely related claim to the Simulation Hypothesis is the claim that the universe actually is a computer, or at least that physics is computable. If the "physics is computable" claim, in particular, can be shown to be false, a class of simulation arguments, those involving virtual people and conventional computers, is decisively refuted. However, these arguments do not have the power to prove the simulation hypothesis."
: I could point out that there is a great deal of vague, waffly material in the article. I am not going to cut this section before "the Mormon plan of salvation" goes! The importance of thissection is that it makes really rigorous arguments (the only other section that does gets close to doing so is the one one Bostrom) Everything else in the article amount to "maybe". 1Z 12:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  My issue is that it's trying to cover way too much ground and may be confusing to readers trying to make the connection to SR. I agree with you that it should be a separate page with perhaps a brief synopsis and link on the SR page. You've done this successfully before and I thought it turned out nicely. That will allow you to go into greater detail and flesh out a lot of the issues other editors have brought up. Lordvolton 20:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You still haven't explained your reluctance to shorten the page in any other way.1Z 22:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I fail to see how our ability, or lack thereof, to compute our own reality within our own reality has any impact on the simulated reality theory. After all, I can't run World of Warcraft (to use a well known example) within WoW, but that doesn't mean that WoW isn't a simulation. If the reality "above" ours is even one level more complex (If, hypothetically, our "smallest part" is the atom, and the "smallest part" of the reality simulating ours is the string) things can be simulated within it that cannot be simulated within our own universe because the inhabitants of the reality above ours can build more complex computers that may follow laws of physics that are fundamentally different from ours. If, for example, the speed of light is much faster in the reality above ours the inhabitants of this reality could build computers that would appear to be prescient to us. (As long as they were interacting directly with our simulation, that is.)  (68.189.173.185 01:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Computability of Physics, cont'd.

message: The article is still slightly to long. His Lordship permitting, I will separate out the fictional stuff, because:
# It is particularly likely to grow.
# It think it is attracting vandals to the page (along with the spam)
# It will make the remaining material seem more serious.1Z 02:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good... I think the new version is looking pretty nice. We might want to consider building an alternate page to cover some of the other material you had -- if one doesn't already exist. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lordvolton (talk • contribs) 22:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I'll check it out. On that note, I pasted your computationalism overview onto the computationalism page. You may want to add some more material to the computationalism page since your overview was quite a bit more thorough than the single sentence that was there previously. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lordvolton (talk • contribs) 04:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shortening the article --seprating fiction 

message: I have pulled out a number of irrelevant objections form this section. There is a difference between criticising something and just missing the point.
"This refutation is, however, itself refuted by the realization that a simulation of reality of sufficient sophistication as to be indistinguishable to human senses from reality would not need to calculate "real physics." It would merely require the simulation of physics sufficient to fool human senses and instruments".
This objection is written "as though" the Simulation Hypothesis is the hypothesis that it is possible
for us to build a simulation in our universe. It is not: as stated in the article, it is the hypothesis that we are already in a simulation. The physics of our universe contains far more than is necessary to fool human senses, so this objection is inapplicable.
"More directly, it can be refuted by the fact that a simulation of physics that falls far short of simulating "real physics" may well be impossible to predict computationally from within the system, while, in fact, being trivial to compute from without". 
This objection confuses theoretical computability with engineering issues. What a TM can compute is independent of the underlying physics.
"A small, random/pseudorandom element added to certain calculations would be simple to implement, but would make it almost if not completely impossible to predict physical phenomena accurately from within the simulation".
That is irrelevant to the computability issue as defined. 
"Furthermore, our knowledge of what constitutes "real physics" is derived solely from the observation of physical properties which by their very nature would be dictated by the system simulating them." 
if it is being simulated. But we can tell form inside a simulation what a TM can and can't do.
"Such a system may operate under physical laws that are radically different from those being simulated. For example, many video games simulate physics that are intentionally different from reality, either for ease of play or for dramatic effect".
Irrelevant. If the physics we see cannot be simulated by a TM it is not being simulated by a TM -- end of story.1Z 01:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Computability of physics 

message: This isn't too important, but i was curious as to how Metal Gear Soilid 3 made it into simulated realities, the game was placed in the 1960's away from such technology and there's an obscure (though slightly humorous) reference to virtual reality in Metal Gear Solid 2 4.154.65.183 21:55, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think anyone has actually gone through all of the games very carefully. We should probably do that. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lordvolton (talk • contribs) 23:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Small Question

message: I don't know where this article is going, but the ride is very interesting. For all whom have worked on this article, keep up the good work. Oicumayberight 23:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Positive feedback

message: This article seems to focus mosly on a simulated universe were humans and earth are the center of focus and are manipulated by the observers. Lets suppose this is in fact a simulated universe, and at that a very detailed one with each subatomic particle mapped out. If the simulation was set up and run without interference, things like humans, earth, the sun and such wouldent have been planned out, but rather have happend randomly. Consider someone splashing a bucket of paint against a wall. He diden't plan out each detail of the splatter, he simply gave the paint momentum and allowed physics to do the rest. If the simulation wored that way, the creators might not even have looked closely enough to see our small planet. Even things like how stars work might not have been predicted when the simulation was started. 
Then again, the creator might have made the universe 10 minutes ago carefully creating every detail, including fictional memories in our minds of living 10 minutes ago. Since this theory of a simulated universe has been around for more then 10 minutes, that would imply that the creator had the strange sense of humor to create a world containing people arguing about weather or not the universe was simulated! 
Another thing about the article is it assumes the universe is made up of differnt "objects" such as people or planets. The article seems to sugest that these objects can simply be dragged droped deleted and copied like the text on this page. If we again assume the simulation is detailed to the subatomic level, problems arise. If you are going to "delete" a person, do his clothes get deleted along with him? What about the air in his lungs or the pebbles stuck to the bottom of his shoes? Would hair clippings from his last haircut that are sitting in some garbage can get deleted? A nut and a bolt lying next to eachother are considerd seperate objects, but a car containing many seperate nuts and bolts is considerd a single object.
Yes a simulated universe could be only complicated enough to create an illusion of realism. And the simulation could be centerd around the human race. But the posibility that humans are the main focus dosen't deserve most of the attention. After all, this assumtion is mosly fuled by mankinds large ego and our difficulty comprehending the vastness of existance. I don't know if our reality is confined inside a simulation, but if it is I wouldn't assume planet earth is the main attraction.
Anyone know if theres a crackpot theory wiki?
--74.38.99.188 02:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They probably won't suit your purpose, but here and here are a pair of crackpot wikis.  And there's always the Uncyclopedia ... --Plumbago 09:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is some mention in the article of non-human explanations (i.e., aliens). I am not sure that it's biased against other explanations, but for the sake of brevity each possible explanation cannot be examined at great length. Lordvolton 02:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: About Reality