[Closed] Probability of living inside a simulation

This is basically just another way of believing in a god, no?

And not the particularly enlightened type, the idea of creationism is fairly indistinguishable from a simulation?

Our God could be a 9 year old kid from an advanced civilisation (or his/her Mam who might switch us off when she wants to do the hoovering)

So the point of simulation is to experiment, the most useful things in my simulations is the fast forward and reset buttons. At times the detail is pointless and adds no value but slows down the results. As a simulation it's very poorly designed.

If 'they' are reading this then can you rewind me by 3 years please, thanks

*waits*

If 'they' are reading this then can you rewind me by 3 years please, thanks

If 'they' are reading this then can you rewind me by 3 years please, thanks

*waits*

that's the trouble with life "undo is grayed out" 🙂

So the point of simulation is to experiment, the most useful things in my simulations is the fast forward and reset buttons. At times the detail is pointless and adds no value but slows down the results. As a simulation it's very poorly designed.

The speed of our simulation would only be observable by the people who set it up, no? We'd still experience it at the same speed.

My point being if anything it would have to be the sort of self indulgent simulation that has far too much detail.

So your saying, that given the ability to do so, our narcissism wouldn't cause us to try recreate our ancestors/evolution in a simulation for the lolz/because we could - for some kind of nerd version of big brother?

Sat at my desk I can simulate a lot, today was a hospital, last week was moving patients from on to another, the there was the cheese store 🙂 in all of those we skipped and skimmed the unimportant to get to the issues.

that given the ability to do so, our narcissism wouldn't cause us to try recreate our ancestors/evolution in a simulation

I get your point, I mean why simulate humans if you're looking at something else? Wasted resources. I guess it depends on how cheap that kind of computing power was at the time - you could use it as a sandbox to test a lot of scientific, social, evolutionary theories without someone going "NOT ACCURATE ENUFFFFF". A tool like that would be the final word in being able to predict the likelihood of just about any future event. Plus, it would just be cool wouldn't it?

But, I don't personally think that it can be done anyway.

Someone ring Prof Cox.

On a slightly related topic, this Rick and Morty show was hilarious - if any fellow nerds on here still haven't heard of it.

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with these guys...

[img] [/img]

This is basically just another way of believing in a god, no

Pretty much. At the scale of the universe you may as well believe in a God as as the laws of physics, it essentially amounts to the same thing

That's just silly.

The laws of physics are descriptives of observable parameters.

A god is an allegedley self-autonomous infinitely powerful invisible being that controls everything. As well as being non-existant, of course.

You might as well say that the rules of grammar and Shakespeare are the same thing.

Consider for a moment, that if there WERE a simulation being run, it may not be originated by humans seeking to simulate their own existence.

If you're thinking on this level, it's just as plausible that the universe is one big digital petri dish, humans are just one product of a chaos experiment run via a simulation. There may be other digital petri dishes running along side. Humans are just an evolving product in one of those experiments.

Not saying...but...what if? What IF? Mind blown yet?

So 'those' who are running us as an experiment, how did they come in to existence? etc etc

So 'those' who are running us as an experiment, how did they come in to existence? etc etc

Think they were conceived in the woods behind the nationwide in Swindon.

Actually...I haven't got a scooby tbh... one step at a time, eh?

😆

Watch that video above, it could be self petting, but leaves a chicken & egg scenario. E.g. the theory is that our brain is ar capacity & maxima; size, so the only way to add intelligence is to build it artificially, therefore Simulate a better version of ourselves, which in turn, etc...

[img] [/img]

Not saying...but...what if? What IF? Mind blown yet?

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with these guys...

Them and the golgafrinchians.

One of the most intriguing theories I've heard is that our Universe is a projection from the singularity of a black hole; based on a the premise that information at it's most basic level is never destroyed and therefore anything that gets sucked into a black hole is regurgitated out the other side.

That's just silly.

sort of, but considering that we have no way of currently measuring what 95% of the observable universe actually is made from...saying "it's god" as about as good as every other theory currently knocking about.

😆

That's not a theory. It's just the equivalent of saying "wibble".

if it's a simulation it's a bloody shit one in my case.

and some other food for thought..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_event_simulation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_simulation

Big differences and heaps of overlap, life would probably be best discrete which as I said earlier allows you to skip the bits that don't matter. Continuous would be a masive overhead for no real benifit in a lot of areas, you can go hybrid on it and do a bit of both.

The key question is what sits on top of the board in any of my simulation training courses is What Is the Question.
If it's a purly self indulgent simulation for the hell of it then are you just grasping for god by another name?

mikewsmith - Member

So the point of simulation is to experiment, the most useful things in my simulations is the fast forward and reset buttons. At times the detail is pointless and adds no value but slows down the results. As a simulation it's very poorly designed.

For all we know the sim is in fast forward right now, it's just that we perceive it at steady speed. Or was reset yesterday and we were preloaded with the quicksave data so we don't know. (except for my mate Andrew, who always takes longer to load than everyone else)

OK, current simulation and it's limits...
To run a simulation you need to run the events in order, we still don't run more than single core for the computing, the biggest thing to be invented in the space is the ability to run the overhead involved in multicoring the synchronisation between the event lists of events means it's still more efficient to run single core. The overhead in running a world level simulation at full detail ends up with the situation where the people asking the question are dead by the time you get the answers. Given that you need to run 10's to 1000's of scenarios to make anything of your simulation that's a lot of planet sized computers.
The reason we can fast forward to something useful is by skipping a lot of detail out. That's the sort of day to day shit that doesn't really matter in the long run but amuses us on day to day.

[quote=racefaceec90 ]if it's a simulation it's a bloody shit one in my case.

if there is a god, he's an asshole.

The key question is what sits on top of the board in any of my simulation training courses is What Is the Question.

Perhaps the question is [i]"How long will it take this simulated planet to develop sentient life capable of figuring out that it is is in a simulation?"[/i]

Perhaps the question is "How long will it take this simulated planet to develop sentient life capable of figuring out that it is is in a simulation?"

If the universe is infinite then there are probably more simulated realities than real ones. So odds are you are living in a simulated one.

Wondering why this would be the case probably misses the point given that:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic"
and
"The universe is not only stranger then we suppose but stranger than we can suppose"

Also in an infinite universe there will be an identical copy of this thread being read and contributed to by an identical copy of the individuals involved in it. It will be a very large but finite distance away in the infinite universe.

Fun thread though!

and as part of it want to simulate a world in full detail fix this one
https://www.comsol.com/blogs/havent-cpu-clock-speeds-increased-last-years/

Then if you're running in sequence then it's a long time to work it out, how many parameters are you changing? What are your variables?

Could just be a once through simulation, it doesn't have to be an experiment with variables. You could simulate the fluid dynamics of a bike frame in a velodrome, one speed, one air density, one frame, one answer. So if the question has a single answer (how long would it take life on earth to figure out it was in a simulation) then there's no variable, just a question. Or you could ask the question what is the time dependency of life on earth figuring out it's a simulation correlated against the atomic weight of hydrogen in each world.

And 'time' is relative, the process simulation on my PC reaches a steady state in minutes, in reality if I started up the plant and left it at that it would take weeks to settle down if it didn't blow up first. Given sufficient processing power you could do the entire universes existence in a blink of an eye.

Here's another question, if the brain and everything else is just a load of chemical and physical reactions, then you could simulate it down to brownian motion (and beyond), and life would cease to be free will, you could figure out exactly what was going to happen.

But if it's a simulation, that isn't that detailed, with your brain represented by questions and answers, do you actually have more free will in the simulation?

OK (this may be a bit of my specialist subject)
Single computational stuff like that is something you can do with multi core as it's not dependant on sequential events.
Time is relative - as I said above the overhead of spreading processing load and event management is doing the maths the resynchronize the events to continue a decent sim is massive, the breakthrough to speed this up is as posted above it's now down to the atomic sizes etc. we currently can't make electrons smaller.

Here's another question, if the brain and everything else is just a load of chemical and physical reactions, then you could simulate it down to brownian motion (and beyond), and life would cease to be free will, you could figure out exactly what was going to happen.

Quantum physics says no.

Once you get down to the atoms that make up the brain and the interaction and exchange of their particles the non-deterministic nature of quantum physics takes over.

Most research that I've seen seems to suggest that quantum physics doesn't have any significant impact, if any, on neurons.

Read a short story once about how we worked out we were in an Alien's simulation but managed to hack onto their system. Then they used a biological 3d printer to create an army and took over the real world.

Don't underestimate the humans.

Could be that YOU are the only subject in this simulation, and the rest of us are just part of the system...

So, I assume the illuminati are in on this and doing the will of our lizard overlords who are running "the simulation"?

Could the simulation itself be powering the simulation? Like if you built a machine to adapt to its environment and be self sufficient. Like a chain reaction from a few base materials? Isn't the whole periodic table essentially made from the most basic of element hydrogen?

I think it's a little naive to think that we could build a single computer (no matter how vast) that could generate a simulation as complex as what we experience especially when we don't know what the universes small componant parts are nor what the majority of the universe is actually made of (dark matter & dark energy).

I love quantum mechanics, it's like when Einstein worked out how the universe works, the human race unlocked level 2. Where the rules are totally different and not logical, if there is a god he/she/it has a sense of humour.