Physics Study uncovers evidence of holographic universe, scientists say
- Thread starter cannot
- Start date
- Tagged users None
bontshow
Brownlow Medallist
Comparatively easy. Like drawing a house versus building a house
For "humans". An infinite being can build a house within seconds. If he wants to create an illusion he can do so, without a computer.
The problem is that the theory is (1) untestable and (2) unlike some other untestable theories (Many Worlds, for example) it doesn't even give a provisional framework for solving other theoretical problems. It's just a science-fictiony speculation. It does have some amusing aspects, though. As i pointed out, if we are a simulation, then it's reasonable to believe those running the simulation are also simulations, and those running the higher-order simulation are simulations, and so on -- simulations all the way up, just like turtles all the way down.
- Banned
- #105
Dude, that is the sim theory. That's why it's a lock...
Whereas multiverse can be taken down by logic.
Do my logic test and I'll show you.
Whereas multiverse can be taken down by logic.
Do my logic test and I'll show you.
Probabliy the same odds that were are living in a world run by elves ands fairies and evil wizards ie Trump, or that our entire existance is a just someones bad dream or we are living in a gobdule of giant alien butt crack swea and so on and so on. This is what happens when you watch the Matrix 2000 times. This is a science board, not a religious board, my logic can differ to your logic. You are not giving me any empirical evidence to consider this theory. All i hear is speculation.
This is Cartesianism gone mad. Ever since Descartes wondered if his consciousness and sensations which gave him knowledge of the external world were created by a demon and comforted himself with the thought that a good God would not deceive him, Western rationalism and science have been haunted by the thought that perhaps we are fundamentally deceived. The modern equivalent of this, prior to the Matrix-like notion of the computer simulation, was the 'brain in a vat'; how do we know we are not just disembodied cortexes sitting a jar somewhere being fed the appropriate stimuli? Well, we don't. But there's absolutely no good reason to think that we are. As the late Christopher Hitchens remarked, what can be asserted without evidence can be denied without evidence. Bertrand Russell once observed that there was no way to disprove, at least with the naked eye, that the planet is not now being orbited by a giant chocolate teapot, but there's no good reason to think that it is. The irony is that this hypothesis, insofar as it is totally unprovable, is also utterly unscientific and fails the famous Popperian falsifiability test. For something to count as scientifically true, you must be able to say what would would show that you were wrong. It is bizarre that these scientists have so little grasp of the conditions of their own discipline.
Anyone who has a basic understanding of science will see the point i am making. This belongs to the mystery board, not science board.
When someone says i am not wrong with a billion to one odds, it means he is not a scientist, he is a philosopher. Objective truth doesnt exist in science as potential falsifiability will stop it from becoming the truth.
Anyone who has a basic understanding of science will see the point i am making. This belongs to the mystery board, not science board.
When someone says i am not wrong with a billion to one odds, it means he is not a scientist, he is a philosopher. Objective truth doesnt exist in science as potential falsifiability will stop it from becoming the truth.
Last edited:
bontshow
Brownlow Medallist
I was referring more to Elon Musk's prediction that we will be able to create a simulated universe ourselves
Not unless you can demonstrate the hardware and energy requires to hold such level of data and with efficiency for billions of years. I might be possible, 2,000 years from now, but this is pure speculation
bontshow
Brownlow Medallist
The issue is the desire to fill the gaps for the questions that our scientific library of knowledge is unable to answer. From Gods of lightning to poisonous tomatoes and superstitions, humans have always come up with ways to try and explain the unexplainable
Science can't tell us what the future will be like, so people look to things like the rate of change to predict it
bontshow
Brownlow Medallist
You're extrapolating beyond the point I was trying to make. For us, it's easier to draw a house than build one. For us, it's easier to simulate a universe than build one. Maybe that's comparing running 100 metres in 2 seconds with running it in 0.2 seconds - both we are not even close to and can see no feasible path to achieve - but that's all I was trying to say
Agree, but this could be anything. Maybe its a very advanced civilisation simulating us? why does it have to be god? maybe they are being simulated by someone as well. Its impossible to know a simulation being within a simulation? ultimately, the idea that we can be right in the sense of actually getting "behind" experience, to "the truth", is problematic. The world-as-it-is isn't "made from" descriptions, after all (even though "the world" as a concept is exactly that). Rather, it is made from experiencing - including the experience of thinking about experiencing.
bbut all experiences are at the same "level", and we cannot ever explain the fact or nature of experiencing itself. The thought of our experience being a simulation is itself an experience, within and of the mind, and any such talk of an "outside" to experience is essentially... pointless.
How is believing we are the software creation of superior beings different from believing in God?
And are the superior beings simply the software creation of even more superior beings? And are they simply the software creation of even more superior beings?............an endless loop, hence its pointless
For us yes, for god no. Remember we are talking about infinite being here. Are you saying we are being simulated by another advanced civilisation?
The logic itself is quite bizarre and misrepresents the historical reality. The Greeks worked out a system of "epicycles" which approximated the motion of the planets and so on quite well; the epicycles themselves were developed under the assumption that the heavenly bodies, including the sun, moved around the earth. The model made good predictions, but the heliocentric model is less complex and works better. The heliocentric model itself has its limitations and for calculation of motion within our solar system it is the barycentric model which is generally used. The phrase "when they dropped the assumption, everything else became much simpler to understand" is pure nonsense - just who is it who dropped that assumption (of the geocentric system)? In modern science a geocentric system is perfectly valid - it is a matter of a choice of the frame of reference. Calculations may be simpler with a heliocentric frame of reference, but a geocentric reference is by no means invalid.
"That we might be in a simulation is, Terrile argues, a simpler explanation for our existence than the idea that we are the first generation to rise up from primordial ooze and evolve into molecules, biology and eventually intelligence and self-awareness. "
That's nothing but a god argument. Everything is so much simpler if we just say "god did it", eh? No need for that stinking Science and that difficult Math if we all accept goddidit. The unwarranted assumption of a Cosmic Intelligence only makes things more complicated - what is this Cosmic Intelligence and its characteristics? Where is the evidence for this creature - how do we detect it? Oh, who needs evidence when we have faith?
We also lose faith in science and evolution then! so science is hogwash and we didn't evolve. All the fossils we have uncovered and genetic and geological evidence we have uncovered is also a lie. Cause someone just "created" us by switching their computer on. Dinosaurs which existed 65 million years ago didn;t exist and the extinction event didn't happen. If we are a simulation, why not just create all of us at once? then why bother with the slow terrible and imperfect process of evolution? This goes against the present understanding of science. I will stick to science, atleast for now.
Last edited:
- Aug 21, 2016
- 15,733
- 24,884
- AFL Club
- Geelong
- Other Teams
- Oldham
What if there was an 'ultimate reality'. Its nature and origin we can't begin to know unless we are in it (and maybe not even then). Then from that original universe arose intelligent life who created many simulated universes. And, as you say, the inhabitants of those simulated worlds could create other simulated universes ad infinitum. Any creators of simulated worlds could exist outside the physical reality of the simulation, so could be classed as God relative to those in it. But these creators ie 'secondary' Gods would need to ultimately exist within the physics of the ultimate universe - as opposed to 'the' God we commonly discuss as being outside any laws of the universe.
We are talking simulations not emulations. Very complex, but they are less complex, and require less energy than the ultimate reality from which they are sourced. And because simulations necessarily take shortcuts it may be possible to detect signs of our being in a simulation.
And of course this does nothing to resolve a more simplistic view of the universe without simulations. If there was a big bang, where did it come from?
An alternative theory is the Big Bounce as proposed by scientists such as Martin Bojowald and Peter Lynds. Bojowald claims that some properties of the universe that collapsed to form our own can be determined - a quantum bridge. Could a super intelligent and powerful entity create the conditions that sets up fine tuning after the big bounce? Or does the existing fine tuning remain - leading to another universe that evolves towards consciousness?
I disagree with this. Your computer must have more capacity than you are simulating. Think of a computer game, run your computer at 70% capacity for a day and see what happens to your CPU. Heck run it at 50% and see what happens with overheating. How can a computer need less energy than the output? are you saying that it can create energy? cause that is not possible unless you can demonstrate this.
And who's to say the 'post-humans' that put us in this simulation aren't in a simulation of another higher creator and so on and so on?
There are so many interesting possibilities that run from this, but time....
Here's one, though.
If this is a simulation, fine. Let's say that you're trying to gain an understanding of your ancestry. That might be possible (although there would be so many different routes that the model could go down that I'm not sure that it would prove anything, really) but it raises a fundamental issue. Through history (and to now) we have been barbaric, cruel, monsters. This simulation includes consciousness. With consciousness comes rights.
Even we primitive, barbaric, cruel, monsters have concepts of human rights, animal welfare, etc. Can we not assume, or at least argue, that our descendants would have at least as great a concern as us for the health, freedom and well being of conscious creatures?
How then could they countenance a simulation that contains so much suffering? Look at the state of the world, suffering is the only real truth, when 1% of the world owns about 80% of the worlds wealth. Then what do these sadistic bastards get with a simulation of suffering?
Surely with such advanced scientific capability we should be hopeful - confident even - that ethics and morality would have advanced also? In which case could one really imagine that it would be permissible to put billions of individual conscious entities (even as simulations they have to be considered entities - or persons - because they have consciousness) through such suffering as would be necessary?
Only nature can be so cruel. No one else would get it past the Ethics Committee. Therefore, this can't be a simulation.
- Aug 21, 2016
- 15,733
- 24,884
- AFL Club
- Geelong
- Other Teams
- Oldham
The simulation needs to run on less energy than the source for it to be sustainable. Problems of overheating on CPUs playing games are early 21st century issues.
To run such a simulation for 14 billion years without crashing? are you saying the computer is perfect? no finite things/being/matter can be perfect or last that long
- Aug 21, 2016
- 15,733
- 24,884
- AFL Club
- Geelong
- Other Teams
- Oldham
These are all subjective moral opinions. We only need to go back within a few centuries for alternative moralities that are very different to the ones you have espoused. How can you demonstrate that your morality is superior (more advanced), and not just different, to other views? Science offers nothing at all towards morality.
- Aug 21, 2016
- 15,733
- 24,884
- AFL Club
- Geelong
- Other Teams
- Oldham
The 14 billions years may be an illusion. The simulation may have only been running since I was born. Or appeared to be. I don't remember that.
Well i am going by present scientific evidence. If you say everything is fake and illusion then this board is not a place to talk about it.
Science does through evolution. Empathy can be explained, as its found in animals as well. But we as human beings are cruelest of all as we have the power to destroy the world within minutes and we are heading towards extinction actually.
While morality is subjective, suffering is not. 40% of the people in the world are surviving for less than $2 a day. 150,000 infants die every day. Its easy for rich people to say its a simulation sitting in their ivory tower, not so much for those who are suffering.
bontshow
Brownlow Medallist
It doesn't really go against Science. Simulation theory isn't in the realm of Flat Earth or Fake Moon Landing, which go against Science and suggest a conspiracy to hide the truth. It's a theory with many unanswered questions and limited justification to fill a hole. Just like Flat Earth was before Science discovered the Earth was round
How so? we evolved for over 4 billion years. It suggests the house was built brick by brick, not photoshopped.
- Aug 21, 2016
- 15,733
- 24,884
- AFL Club
- Geelong
- Other Teams
- Oldham
Evolution has nothing to say about morality and does not care about suffering. There are millions of evolved creatures who die horrible deaths every day. There are also countless species who no longer exist because of evolution.
Science likes to have a crack at the morality problem but lacks the tools. Having said that, advances in science have reduced human suffering immeasurably.
bontshow
Brownlow Medallist
The Big Bang Theory is far from complete. Only recently did we discover that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate, when we previously thought the opposite to be the case. It may still be the leading theory for the origins of the universe, but as in other areas of Science, any theory that is not completely proven can have competing ideas
Besides that, Simulation Theory doesn't change anything about our world - be it evolution, the Big Bang or otherwise - it merely suggests that all of it was initiated by a creator of the universe
The alternative to Simulation Theory is not creationism that suggests we didn't evolve from apes, it's that the universe just appeared by itself. Both theories face the same issue of eventually getting back to a starting point where a creator, or physical matter, just happened to be there
