I didn't really answer the OP....which was "Realty as a computer simulation". I personally don't see ANY difference between something "real" and something else that is "simulated on a computer"....and I don't see how any educated person in 2012 really can.

So you accept the existence of the real line only (as I do) to the extent that it can be simulated or approximated on a computer?

If humans are around long enough for the technology to exist, we will with 100% certainty be able to create/reproduce reality within a simulation and have it function as a fully immersive experience.

The need for the experience of a fully immersive environment will be driven by the porn and gaming industries, primarily.

We only experience/construct the world using input from 5 channels(senses). If each of those senses is fed a congruous and continuous stream of data that matches the visuals being presented to the user, then there is no way out.

There is no way of even knowing that there is an out. All senses have been hijacked and the brain is simply producing a reality based on the incoming data through the senses.

Even if the simulated reality is a cruder version of the one we are presently living in, it won't matter. If the user(human) is engaged with and within the simulation continuously and long enough, the brain will adjust to the data and soon enough the reality it is engaging with will not seem "limited" or lacking. It will seem complete and cogent, providing the program has been written without any bugs or errors that will "alert" the user that something is "off".

How anyone can think otherwise is beyond me.

You cannot faithfully simulate nature without being nature. All simulations eventually will fail a particle physics type experiment you can in principle perform wherever you like and then the vail will fall. Because it will appear that although everything else seems to be cool and convincing for the senses, the refined quantum mechanics of it all will betray it unless its all so faithfully executed that its nature itself or a completely exhaustive version of it that comes close to being as intense as the real thing but not quite yet good enough to at least meet our current level of physics details across all accessible "spacetime".

Take that to mean the simulation may be able to simulate cells or neurons and therefore even human behavior but not higher energy type reactions past a certain crude elementary point that is sufficient for the functions of the cell. (ie to simulate a galaxy structure formation it may not be necessary to know QCD, see what i mean, same for biology, so unless you started probing quark behavior you wouldn't know its a fake, although still some possible macroscopic consequence of a refined structure may be able to survive as hint before you even went to the real detailed probing eg that world doesnt have high energy rays etc which eventually have also consequences for biological systems). So the simulation seems to replicate biological behavior but not exactly right after all in some subtle issues.

That said of course all this requires to know the "real"world. If you never knew the real world then what you experience as logical entity in that system (if its complexity is rich enough to develop you) is the real world for you and you will probably be unable to spot its a fake unless as i suggested in earlier post you can eventually, due to the fact your simulation is pretty close to the real thing in many regards, prove able to develop a theory of everything that kind of fits your crude version of world and then predicts also other things that ought to happen and which you do not observe in this simulation. But they fail to be observed as predicted in such a way that it is obvious that it is a fake because it matches the perfect version of theory so close in everything else, that you can spot the imperfection and then based on the difference vs the ideal version, extrapolate and notice consistent imperfections elsewhere too, verifying that the system is a limited version of a real nature up to a cut off kind of level of accuracy that the simulation doesnt go past (doesnt concern itself). As a result you conclude that the world is not perfect enough and the failure in fact starts being predictable itself.

Of course this all assumes there is a theory of everything and that nature is what it is due to self consistency and the parameters may be indeed not precisely predictable but their relationships highly predictable and as a result the world emerges as unavoidable in order to be a solution moreover the freedom in some parameters. So now your simulation is good enough to give you a crude version of the real thing but not faithful enough to match the perfect theory which you now logically own/understand as ideal extension of your world of current observations but cannot see further perfectly vindicated in your "reality" past a certain level of refinement. Also the connection fails in such a predictable eventually manner that it becomes obvious you are not the real thing.

Notice however that all this may be possible only if of course such theory of everything exists and if the simulation is deep enough to begin with to reproduce the human type advanced intelligence for the entities it creates as complexity products of the simulation over time and which (beings) then are capable of creating math and experimenting etc. Basically you need a very close enough simulation of the real thing that replicates the type of brain we have not entirely perfectly but perfect enough at the effective end result to be able to reproduce our math and partial science. Those entities eventually understand their world and develop theories about it and after advanced math and experimentation and guesswork arrive at the theory of everything because their brains were able to allow them to arrive there logically form the partial faithfulness of the experiments they were doing. And then the theory fails exactly as a limited imperfect simulation would. These being are intelligent enough now to recognize that this failure is unacceptable logically unless their "reality" is not the true reality and essentially imperfect due to the starting limitations of the simulation.

This is the only way out of it i can imagine. However notice this wont happen unless the simulation is very faithful up to a point say past our own experiments but not dramatically far more (assuming we are close to a theory of everything within 100 years etc) a deep enough point that will help them arrive at the theory of everything which works for all possible real universes. And so then equipped with that theory they notice it fails in their own. However again as stated unless such original faithfulness is present to at least match our current logical development they will be unable to use such argument (of a theory of everything failing in their world in predictable ways).

Basically if you create a world that is significantly or even a little bit different than ours (in ways that we, knowing the real thing, would be instantly able to detect) then in such world a theory of everything cannot likely be reproduced by the beings of that world. The entities there evolve into interesting intelligence nevertheless and perform experimentation but their world is significantly different and they never develop the breakthrough needed because their reality is so vastly different past a certain point critical for such breakthrough. They simply recognize patterns if their intelligence is significant but it ends there they have very little to no hope to recognize they are a simulation and they simply feel thats all there is and its real to them but impossible to lead to a theory of everything. They end up never recognizing problems within their own world.


Ps: As an example of a not faithful simulation take a computer program that you teach to play Backgammon based on its errors. Eventually it finds out how to play perfect game and defeat almost everyone. That entity you have created understands backgammon well now but this is its world and it ends there, it cannot for example based on BG imagine chess or quantum electrodynamics or biology. Its world is such a restricted version of the real thing that the "theory of everything" is not only impossible but even other simpler aspects of the real world are completely missing in that entity's reality that is composed only of that game's structure/laws of play and some probability theory.

^ loved reading that

Our digital observation is encompassed by analogue infinity, things move away faster than we will ever be able to zoom in. Reality- observation-consciousness- It is just pattern emergence. In between each distinction of light there is a black. We only know distinctions, we can create a universe based upon these distinctions, but we can't assume there aren't an infinite or any amount of unseen distinctions because 'they do not exist'

The impossible scenario of a simulation, which can create an exponentially more powerful simulation which creates another, it would have to create that simulation- before it created it. Otherwise how can it possibly have a faster processing power than that which created it? Any simulation- our minds included- is lagging behind true reality. It would require some mystic, 'neo like' divinity to do so. We are not that, but this- like everything points towards pantheism.

Can you create a computer within a program? I've seen it done on minecraft. is there any potential to create computers within simulated worlds more powerful than the previous computer? You can't even create something- where you don't know it truly exists. And it is still a slave drive to the master drive. The 'slave drive' is illusion, there is only the master, a partition might think it is a separate drive but it is not.

Depends what you mean by more 'powerful'. Couldn't a vast simulation in principle run a much smaller more 'powerful' simulation?

You could have a relatively simple simulation of evolution where the beings that evolve from it are actually quite complex and powerful programs. They could even evolve the ability to change the operation of the original simulation program. That's what we did.

mmm that is confusing, by power I mean ability to run processes so I guess 'hertz'? By power it has to be in relation to time, how much it can do, how much movement is capable, within a value of 'time'

The smaller internal simulation would have to slow time down, yet both perspectives of time, or decisions/distinctions per X, run at the same speed, yet they don't. Paradox. Impossible.

That fks my head to think about... because my consciousness is 'slowing time'- my consciousness has a frame rate which is slower than light.

I genuinely hope masque de Z comments because I don't actually know what the **** I am talking about language wise.

that's not necessarily a problem in a smaller universe.

In the smaller simualation there would be fewer total instruction units per second executed but because there is far less to do in the smaller universe the average rate could be increased.

If its smaller by several orders of magnitude then why cant it run twice as fast

(and what would that mean in practice)

I feel similar but not sure it will help.

It's not possible. Both reality and simulation are made of the same basic stuff. That's why in the simulated universe you can't have physical laws that are different from the parent universe, you can't put a real light particle into the simulation and make it travel faster than light. What these simulation guys are doing is they reduce complexity by simply replacing the smallest units (in our universe it would be quarks or whatever) with symbols, that way they don't have to replicate the whole thing. This means that the simulated universe simply ends up being a calculation.

Either way we couldn't possibly be living in a simulated universe because we are conscious. Consciousness is the most immediate and obvious fact of existence. How do you get a calculation to be conscious? In a simulation you're just pushing around symbols, there is no possibility of consciousness. The only way you get consciousness into a simulation is from somewhere outside the simulation... then we end up with the 'Matrix' scenario.

'Running twice as fast'
This is the same as slowing time down right?

I mean if time and space are 'the same' then by reducing the volume of space then one is reducing the volume of time?

Regardless, in practice, creating the universe smaller or less complex than it is- is not simulating the universe. If the original universe had monomers of certain 'size' I suppose that smaller monomers in another universe would mean more accuracy. But it still does not avoid the universe being analogue. I'm just gonna quote and hope it is a better representation and I'm off on a huge tangent

Yeah that is exactly what I think- except I believe that god to be calculation and I believe god to be conscious. I believe everything to be conscious.

Does one consciousness operate faster than another? Yet time passes the same speed outside these consciousnesses. Are certain drugs which improve cognition and reaction times proof? If two people saw a ball drop are they dropping at the same speed in each awareness? What if one conciseness orbiting around a dropping ball faster than another?

You were talking about a simulation within a simulation and there's no real light in either. If there are 'real' laws of physics they would constrain both but the beings within the smaller simulation one might live within a world that is closer to reality than the inhabitants of the the bigger one do. Would that not make the simulated simulation more powerful than the simulation?

This just seems made up. It may be true it may not.

Last post,

1000
0100
0010
0001

On the simplest level this is what the universe looks like right? We have monomers, plankt, which is each square of the grid... and we have a photon 1 moving, by 1 plankt every planck sec as shown by the Y axis being a planck sec and the X axis being a planck length?

Is that right?

I don't get why we assign this plankt as a monomer, doesn't the universe operate without monomers, and monomers are somehow relative to our brains, and the 'snap shot' we attempt to use to see what something looks like in one given state of time? How can you take a snap shot, it would obviously be stretched out into a line, why can't something be inbetween monomers? Is there like no time space there or is that just what happens as a consequence of our brains and its math limited processing power of distinction?

Given we dont understand consciousness (not sure how pushing around symbols in a program, is much different than pushing around atoms in the brain), using it as proof that something is impossible is pretty grossly misguided imo.

In this context I would define 'powerful' as 'amount of necessary computational operations'. With each subsequent simulation occurs a dramatic loss of complexity. A smaller simulation can appear to be more complex, but only on the surface, in substance (number of computational operations) the smaller simulation is vastly less complex.

What are we doing when we simulate stuff? We represent with symbols the stuff out of which the real world is made, 1's and 0's, might aswell be ink on paper, or bricks, doesn't matter. Therefrom nothing will emerge that is emergent from real stuff. For example if you represent reality with digits then you will never be able to create space, weight, etc, you will have to borrow it from the real world. Why is this so? Because space and weight are properties dependent on the stuff out of which reality is made, and if you remove it then necessarily you will remove all that is emergent from it.

It's a function of the instruments we're using. Some instruments allow us to look deeper than others. We will never know with absolute certainty that we've found the smallest physical unit of reality. The best we can do is formulate a model so precise that it will predict precisely enough to prevent us to look deeper.

who says the space and weight you perceive is Real?

You don't know what Reality is, so you cant use it in an argument to prove what is and isnt possible. same with consciousness.

.

Your skepticism is based on the idea about some kind of ultimate absolute transcendent reality. It's completely irrelevant for this discussion, because the way the idea is set up it's not going to allow anything beyond vulgar worldplay.

In order to deal with the topic seriously you just need to pick something that you define as real and then understand how it relates to its imitation.

how is it irrelevant? You are arguing that its not possible to simulate reality because you cant create matter and space in a program. Who cares if you cant ACTUALLY create it, all you have to do is create the perception of it and it will be indistinguishable from the real thing.

My argument will be that to faithfully simulate 1 gr of matter you need 1 gr of identical matter at least lol! My question to you is how do you propose to simulate an electron faithfully? My point being i can simulate a gas of electrons for the purpose of learning a few things that are true for the real gas but i wont learn all of the things until i am extremely thorough and then i tend to become that electron gas in fact or establish a 1-1 correspondence with it to some other information keeping system (but what is that information without a theory of everything).

I believe Alobar is the only one making sense in this thread. He, or she, is the only only one who is seeing the obvious and asking the obvious questions.

Allow me to say that you need to understand nature in order to simulate it faithfully. So no absolutely no to have the illusion a faithful simulation is such a trivial thing. Like hell it is. This is why it takes nature itself.

How do you plan to simulate a collision of 2 electrons each at 10^12 GeV without having a clue of beyond standard model physics.