Hi Steve,

Take a look back, I recognize that we had a nice and very informative discussion (due to your expertise?). So please do not hesitate to give comment when I come up with new topic.

I always want to learn from you all.

Thanks,

Dieu

a month later

Darius,

I read you text on the link. Very long and learned. The essential is that we contribute to and transform our sensory experience. We are in the way. Once we know that, we can move directly to the metaphysics.

Once we know that we aim for a metaphysical clean slate.

1) Maths are effective

2) root of maths is logic

3) perception is mathematical transform (experience reflect logic of substance)

4) so, underlying reality works by logic.

5) a logic based underlying reality needs one substance, one cause and one rule of logic. That is all that is needed for the universe to emerge...

Marcel,

p.s. Guess what the substance is...

6 days later

Interesting hypothesis. A few consequences in my opinion are

1. The Universe is digital not analog.

2. There is discreteness on the smallest scales.

3. A Simulated Universe cannot be infinite in extent. That is, the 'computer screen' must have a size, even if still increasing.

What will the most economical pixels for such a universe/

What will be the binary states, representable by the digits 0 and 1 in such a universe?

John, more later as time running out...

"Let's start with the assumption that you don't really exist in a really real reality. Instead, you are virtual reality..."

1. If you can have real reality, why would one prefer virtual reality. If you can watch a live match, why would you prefer watching on TV?

2. Programming requires intelligence. Intelligence can come from H, C, O, N atoms that are not intelligent. They form DNA, spermatozoa, baby, adult, etc. So intelligence can appear from what is not intelligent and intelligence can grow. Therefore intelligence can be created by chance or design from what is not intelligent. So simulated universe may not have been programmed right from the beginning

More later... time out

Akinbo

Some of the more promised...

Certainly, this is an interesting hypothesis. Even, if it is not correct, it must lead to a greater understanding of what is correct about reality. So John, I will be interrogating this hypothesis from time to time and my preferred method is by reductio ad absurdum type arguments, including formulation of paradoxes. I have made two interrogations in last post. Here is more...

Even though you might play various simulation or video games, you in turn are being played, or at least programmed, by persons or things unknown.

3. Now, if we play simulation or video games, and are in turn being programmed, it is a possibility that our programmer is in turn being programmed, and the programmer of our programmer is in turn being programmed, and the programmer of the programmer of our programmer is in turn being programmed, ad infinitum. Where can this end?

4. In last post, I suggested that intelligence (natural or artificial) which is required for programming can be acquired from what is not intelligent by chance or by design. If this be the case, can the universe acquire the intelligence for its own programming without the necessity for a Supreme Programmer?

5. On a computer screen, although I am not a software expert, I see that when a red box moves against a white background, the pixels depicting the red box change to white as an equivalent number and shape of white background pixels in the direction of motion, change to red. Can this be done in a real universe when a red box moves? Is it a different red box at each succeeding instant of motion or the same red box?

An interest of mine, if not my major interest is how 'motion' can be programmed or simulated by the universe itself or by a Supreme programmer? I will like your thoughts on this, and from others who view 'motion' as a digital phenomenon.

6. As one went down to finer and finer resolutions, pixels would appear like the dots on a newspaper or TV screen at extreme magnification. I guess that's the quantum foam level.

An enduring argument, is whether the 'pixels' of geometry can be zero sized. If so, can extreme magnification turn them to dots?

The hypothesis would have been a fitting contribution to one of the past FQXi essays.

Regards,

Akinbo

Akinbo,

Thanks for the feedback. Just a few quick thoughts on some of your comments. Firstly, it's not a matter of preferring virtual reality over real reality, that just happens to be the way the cards were dealt, just like the characters in our video games have no say in how their cards were dealt. If you could somehow ask them if they viewed themselves and their landscape as really real or virtually real, I'm sure they would say they had the quality of real reality. And what does it ultimately matter if we are bits and bytes instead of quarks and electrons. Death and taxes are still on the agenda! Speaking of death, the one potential benefit in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe is that there's a technological ways and means to an afterlife. Terminate John's life subroutine software programme; begin John's afterlife subroutine software program.

Of course programming a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe requires an intelligence. That intelligence precedes the simulation. Intelligence appears to be one of many emergent properties that can arise out of simpler constructs - like CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen).

It is possible that we are a simulation and that we in turn create simulations and maybe our simulated characters could in turn be programmed to create simulations. Ultimately however, all of these simulations within simulations within simulations reside in a really real cosmos, the nature of which could be drastically different than our simulated one in terms of what their laws, principles and relations of physics might be. The cosmos of our video games is not always a reflection of the cosmos we inhabit. It's sort of akin to how cosmologists postulate a Multiverse each with differing physics in order to explain the fine-tuning of our Universe.

As to motion in the simulation, I suspect that is achieved in the same sort of way as motion is simulated in our scientific simulations, our training simulations, and of course in our entertainment simulations. I don't see a problem here but I'm not a computer/software programmer.

IMHO nothing of substance, including a pixel, can be zero sized - a zero dimensional point. That's just an abstract mental concept. You can't actually construct anything with zero volume, one great difficulty I have with the concept of a singularity - infinite density in zero volume. I'll eventually be addressing that can of worms, probably in the cosmology area.

This is not just a fanciful topic without utility. As pointed out, "...the simulation hypothesis comes in very handy in resolving conflicts between theory and observation". I agree.

But I will utter a loud Hmmmm to the post: "Firstly, it's not a matter of preferring virtual reality over real reality, that just happens to be the way the cards were dealt, just like the characters in our video games have no say in how their cards were dealt. If you could somehow ask them if they viewed themselves and their landscape as really real or virtually real, I'm sure they would say they had the quality of real reality..."

I say Hmmm because I wonder if characters in our video games are also wondering like you are wondering whether they are simulations.

Does a Supreme Programmer include in his program that his design should wonder whether they are simulations? I don't think so because it does not benefit the programmer nor the simulated to wonder whether if that were the case or not. It is also of know evolutionary value to so wonder (if Darwin's theory is covered in the simulated universe story).

Are you using a pseudonym?

Akinbo

(I had to remove quotation marks from certain places as they did not display properly in the output). I have a problem with anything arising accidentally out of probability of it happening. Even the word probability represents a very nebulous concept.

It means that you might observe a phenomenon a certain number of times if you succeeded in replicating that exact circumstance 100 times. It really refers to no scientific theory, but, rather, to a statistical theory. You will observe something a number of times out of 100 (or even 10,000) if you were to be able to replicate the exact conditions over and over again.

Anything based on this is not a theory. It is merely an observation of facts, and then expressing the outcome in percentage terms. It has no predictive value, because predicting something (like the weather), is not really is scientific prediction. It merely tells you whether you ought to bother to bring an umbrella or not. Which is why our weather channel tells us we will get rain, and then there is none. NO predictive value.

Anything based on probability is not science. Just as predicting the weather is not science. Science is perfect (within margins of error).

Probability is not a principle. It is merely a summary of observations. Quantum Theory (Mechanics) is not really a theory. It does not explain and derive its conclusions from first principles. It only reports (after the fact) on the likelihood of certain events occurring.

If there were no causality (and perfect predictability), then you could not get a perfect half-life of (radioactive) particles. That very fact is ipso facto proof that there is a governing principle that decides when and which particles will disintegrate (releasing corresponding electromagnetic energy).

Now I do not actually believe in causality in its ordinary understanding, but that is another discussion not encumbering any of the above. It is a different principle, not in any way dependent on any uncertainty in the universe.

The universe knows what it is doing at all times, and does not need our feeble brains to tell it how to behave (so forget anthropomorphism and any other nonsense like multiverses and the like). I am not even convinced about expansion, but since I do not have any scientific evidence for nor against it, I will let that go for now.

The answer is staring us in the face, but we need another Einstein (and it will not be me; in fact, I guarantee it). But I will be able to tell who it is once I see what (s)he says.

[And, btw, the idea of (quantized) gravitons is laughable; gravity acts at infinite distances, far faster than any gravitons could muster.]

I will only answer responses that make sense to me. I may be wrong in everything, but I have to divide my time so it makes sense to me.

    This is a continuation of the previous post.

    I do not think I made a big enough deal of the fact that if something behaves in a regular way, then it is following a rule (whether physical or virtual). If things were totally accidental, (as purported in quantum mechanics) and probabilistic, then it could happen that instead of a half-life (of radioactive decay) all particles in that sample could all disintegrate all at once (some of the time). But they do not. They follow, reliably, the ratio of half-life in their decay. To believe that this outcome is accidental would require a belief that without any rules a purely accidental and probabilistic decay of unstable particles just happens to have the serendipitous frequency that coincides with its putative half-life. That is tantamount to magic, in the absence of causal principles that dictate which particles decay, and the frequency with which this occurs.

    Somehow, without any guiding principles, half the particles know to decay at a given time. If it were uncaused, it would not be a precise half-life. It would be a random number. You simply cannot get a precise and repeatable answer out of a random probabilistic event. Probabilistically, you cannot have a consistent half-life of decaying particles.

    If you disagree with this, then our disagreement goes into philosophy that I am not willing to discuss in this forum (mostly because almost everyone is not qualified). Repeatable answers require an underlying principle. How would a random generator (experiment) produce statistically consistent results? The probability of that could be lower than winning the lottery (by far), and even then, it would not be repeatable. Randomness does not produce consistent and repeated results. There is no randomness in the universe. Not even the NSA can produce truly random numbers, and that new Beijing-Shanghai fiber optic line dependent on quantum keys will be hacked before it even gets going (at least at its nodes, if not in the middle). For that matter, Quantum Computing has about as much hope of succeeding as the second coming of Christ. Actually, the second coming of Christ has a much better chance.

    Need I repeat the dictum? Everything that is expressible in numbers is solvable in numbers (by definition). I will not discuss this principle with anybody (not even the NSA). And do not tell me about Mandelbrot or Chaitin. They were brilliant, but they cannot overcome the axioms. (Totally as an aside, Mandelbrot means almond-bread. It must have been an advance in bakery technology to have thought of that.)

    I could tell you a lot of things, but you would not believe them.

    I actually would not mind at all if we existed in a simulated reality. Presumably there would be some rules and logic and we could discover how the machine works by experiment and observation. Then we could predict action better than we could otherwise and that would help us survive in this virtual world.

    In other words, we would be in exactly the same universe with exactly the same axioms; matter, time, and action...oh and there would be a quantum gravity to complement the quantum theory that describes charge action so nicely.

    The difficulty that I have with imagining a simulated reality is that it seems mainly to be a belief about the nature of reality. In other words, there can be not way to test the concept and just like any old supernatural agent, simulation explains everything by explaining everything as a simulation.

    In other words, just like stringy and multiversey or other supernatural agencies, simulation is just an interpretation of reality that does not really help predict action any better than the tools of QM and GR.

    I go with the universe that we have. There is no answer to the question why the universe is the way that it is...we simply accept what mother nature and father time have provided us.

    "A reality 'created' by Mother Nature would be way more comprehensible than our reality appears to be, and ditto, wouldn't contain anomalies and contradictions."

    All we can do is try to make sense out of what we have to predict action better and try to stay out of as many rabbit holes as we can. You can spend a lifetime and people have pondering the whys of a universe that simply is.

    Kjetil,

    You suggested recursive fractals are a level below QM. Dirac's twinned 4 stacked spinors actually extend 16 floors further down so that's not strictly true! Indeed where QED merges to QCD (quarks and gluons) the latter seems to be termed 'non-abelian' by particle physicists (effectively recursive) where QED is saved from infinity only by 'renormalisation' (added by hand to stop the recursion).

    I've actually now shown (in a joint paper) that a 'quasi' classical model of reality, including QM, can emerge consistent with QED/QCD. If you have anything of a grasp of the weird peculiarities suggested by QM but aren't convinced then you should find this new paper removes them, (but retaining the spherical co-ordinate mathematics);

    Quasi-classical Entanglement, Superposition and Bell Inequalities.

    However it's probably a little too early and shocking to be published in a major PRJ quite yet!

    Best wishes

    Ultimately what kind of Universe we have and we inhabit has nothing to do with what we believe or what we want. As you noted, the Universe is the way the Universe is, be it natural, supernatural or simulated. To me at least, as I noted elsewhere, it doesn't really matter whether or not I'm quarks and electrons or bits and bytes, at least in the here and now. There might be implications further on down the track with respect to an afterlife, but again, that's something I have no control over and thus I refuse to lose any sleep over the issue.

    My point is exactly that...the type of universe that we inhabit has everything to do with belief. We must simply believe in the universe the way that it is.

    "Ultimately what kind of Universe we have and we inhabit has nothing to do with what we believe or what we want. As you noted, the Universe is the way the Universe is, be it natural, supernatural or simulated."

    The characteristics of the universe we can find out about; matter, time, and action. That matter, time, and action exist are simply untestable beliefs. If you believe that there is a supernatural agent in charge of a simulation, that is an untestable belief just as if there were some other supernatural agent in charge. Goodness knows we have a long history of such agents...

    The real question is whether such a belief helps to predict action better than without that belief. Supernatural agency does not help predict action of simple objects, but such agents can help predict human action. If I know in which supernatural agent you believe, that helps me to predict your actions. For example, on Sunday, you will likely be gaming on the internet and since I believe in matter time, I will likely be working on matter time.

    Belief has nothing to do with the nature of reality. I may believe that the Earth is flat - it looks flat - but that does not make it so. I may believe that the Sun goes around the Earth - the Sun rises and the Sun sets - but that does not make it so. I may believe I can flap my arms and fly because I did just that in my dreams - but that does not make it so. I believe, when faced with a choice between a natural, a supernatural and a simulated reality that the simulation hypothesis best fits the facts, but I'm rational enough to know that my belief does not of necessity make it so.

    Look...you have found a clever way to attribute, to believe, that the nature of the universe, the lonely nothing of empty space, lies in a simulation by a supernatural agent, a gamer of some sort. Somehow the word belief does not describe this as a belief for you. So be it. It seems like a belief to me since there is no way to disprove or falisfy it as you have amply shown in much repetitive discourse.

    Plus, it does not appear useful for any predictions of action. Supernatural agents beyond the simple three have been around a very long time and are still being used to explain the nothing of empty space, like multiverses and string theory and supersymmetry...somehow you believe that your supernatural agent is better explains nothing than everyone else's agent. That does seem like a belief to me.

    I believe in the universe as the way it is; matter, time, and action, and so these are my supernatural agents. That is also just my belief, my way to explain the nothing of empty time, but I find this belief an excellent starting point for making all kinds of useful predictions of action. I do not find it useful to suppose further supernatural agents beyond these simple three, but that is just my belief.

    Greetings again! Firstly I have no idea why several of my posts here have been credited to "anonymous" after I have logged in. Something is screwy somewhere, so I'll make double sure and sign my name at the bottom. Okay, that administrative detail out of the way...

    I must make it crystal clear, as I have in my various posts about the concept of a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, that the agent behind this virtual landscape, be it a he, she, it or even them, what name I've chosen for lack of anything better is to call this entity just a Supreme Programmer, is NOT, repeat NOT, a supernatural agent. If we (life, the Universe and everything) have been created by a set of various software programmes, then the creator IMHO is a mortal, fallible, flesh-and-blood entity who can, will, and has make mistakes in creating our virtual landscape, thus accounting for all of the anomalies that the Universe seems to throw at us. In fact the existence of anomalies is one of those predictions that arise from the simulation hypothesis.

    Further, I've never made any claim to the contrary that the simulation hypothesis is one of my beliefs in an overall belief system or philosophy or world-view. I have never claimed that I know for absolute certain that the simulation hypothesis is the correct one over other alternatives.

    So, you believe in the Universe the way it is, or the way it appears to you based on observation, and that is well and proper that you should do so. I also believe in the Universe the way it is, or the way it appears to me based on observation. And that is also well and proper. The fact that your belief and my belief are not the same is, well, what science is all about, trying to pin down various belief systems into one universal that (nearly) everyone can agree on.

    John Prytz