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Is our universe a computer simulation?

Somewhere, I read that some scientists allegedly broke their heads over this question. Some even attempted to calculate the probability for our universe being a computer simulation.

Do you know more about these ideas? Are they just yellow press pseudo-science ideas, or is there a serious debate about that?

Do you think it's possible we're just inside some huge simulation?

If yes, do you think it matters?
A computer simulation (at least, what we might call it) is one of the ideas being bandied about in physics circles when talking about multiverse theories. I just read a book by Brian Greene, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, that presents that as one of the possible ways parallel universes might be manifest. Is it pseudo-science? I wouldn't call it that considering the people discussing it. At this point they're trying to figure out hypotheses that can be tested, but they suspect that path will be many years coming to fruition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Reality:_Parallel_Universes_and_the_Deep_Laws_of_the_Cosmos

Brian Greene is far, far removed from being a crackpot:
Greene joined the physics faculty of Cornell University in 1990, and was appointed to a full professorship in 1995. The following year, he joined the staff of Columbia University as a full professor. At Columbia, Greene is co-director of the university's Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics (ISCAP), and is leading a research program applying superstring theory to cosmological questions. He is also one of the FQXi large grant awardees, his project title being "Arrow of Time in the Quantum Universe". His co-investigators are David Albert and Maulik Parikh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Greene
 
Let me take another bong hit.......... wwwwwhhhhhhuuuuu..... ummmm..........ummmmmmm


mmmmmm...


YES!!



I'm starting to suspect I'm a virus, though.


You might want to take some pills for that :lamo
 
Somewhere, I read that some scientists allegedly broke their heads over this question. Some even attempted to calculate the probability for our universe being a computer simulation.

Do you know more about these ideas? Are they just yellow press pseudo-science ideas, or is there a serious debate about that?

Do you think it's possible we're just inside some huge simulation?

If yes, do you think it matters?
I think some people took the Matrix too seriously.
 
Somewhere, I read that some scientists allegedly broke their heads over this question. Some even attempted to calculate the probability for our universe being a computer simulation.

Do you know more about these ideas? Are they just yellow press pseudo-science ideas, or is there a serious debate about that?

Do you think it's possible we're just inside some huge simulation?

If yes, do you think it matters?

Episode one of Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman discusses this very subject. I would definitely recommend it, it does as great a job explaining it has you can in 10 minutes or so. One thing thing they talk about is how at the most minuscule levels of the universe reality basically pixelizes, could that just be us reaching the limits of the simulation's picture quality? It is certainly an interesting possibility, but we are are perhaps decades away from giving a definitive answer on the subject.
 
Episode one of Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman discusses this very subject. I would definitely recommend it, it does as great a job explaining it has you can in 10 minutes or so. One thing thing they talk about is how at the most minuscule levels of the universe reality basically pixelizes, could that just be us reaching the limits of the simulation's picture quality? It is certainly an interesting possibility, but we are are perhaps decades away from giving a definitive answer on the subject.

Thanx.

They were cheap, so I ordered the first three seasons online.
 
Thanx.

They were cheap, so I ordered the first three seasons online.

It is an absolutely fantastic series. It rivals the incomparable Cosmos and being the mega fan of Dr. Sagan I am, that is saying a lot.
 
It's possible.

If God is the creator of everything, that'd make us something akin to The Sims, right?
 
Are You Living in a Simulation?

VII. CONCLUSION

A technologically mature “posthuman” civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; (2) The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero; (3) The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.
If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).
Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation.



Digital physics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And then this led to: Digital philosophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Digital philosophy is a direction in philosophy and cosmology advocated by certain mathematicians and theoretical physicists, e.g., Gregory Chaitin, Edward Fredkin, Stephen Wolfram, and Konrad Zuse (see his Calculating Space).
Digital philosophy grew out of an earlier digital physics (both terms are due to Fredkin), which proposes to ground much of physical theory in cellular automata. Specifically, digital physics works through the consequences of assuming that the universe is a gigantic Turing-complete cellular automaton.
Digital philosophy is a modern re-interpretation of Gottfried Leibniz's monist metaphysics, one that replaces Leibniz's monads with aspects of the theory of cellular automata. Digital philosophy purports to solve certain hard problems in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of physics, since, following Leibniz, the mind can be given a computational treatment. The digital approach also dispenses with the non-deterministic essentialism of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory. In a digital universe, existence and thought would consist of only computation. (However, not all computation would be thought.) Thus computation is the single substance of a monist metaphysics, while subjectivity arises from computational universality. There are many variants of digital philosophy, but most of them are digital theories that view all of physical reality and mental activity as digitized information processing.



smiley-face-matrix-006.gif

Oh yes, that was exactly the thing I read about the other day. Had that in mind when opening the thread. Thanks for the info! :)
 
Somewhere, I read that some scientists allegedly broke their heads over this question. Some even attempted to calculate the probability for our universe being a computer simulation.

Do you know more about these ideas? Are they just yellow press pseudo-science ideas, or is there a serious debate about that?

Do you think it's possible we're just inside some huge simulation?

If yes, do you think it matters?

I read an interesting thing by somebody that brought up the computer simulation game called The Syms; a virtual family with a life that is played out over time. You control the lives of these virtual people. They mentioned that if that were in fact now a possibility, that it was at least a 50% chance that we are all character's in somebody else's virtual game. If it's true, I suspect there isn't much we can do about it, since our lives would actually be determined by somebody else. It guess it would give us all an excuse for our failures.:doh
 
the real fun comes if we're in a simulation universe, and humanity develops the technology to create another simulation universe. then it's turtles, all the way down.
 
Anyone remember "The Game" episode on Stargate Atlantis:

 
the real fun comes if we're in a simulation universe, and humanity develops the technology to create another simulation universe. then it's turtles, all the way down.
You really need to rent The Thirteenth Floor when you get the chance. ;)
 
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I saw a program on this subject and the theory is well thought out. It would certainly explain the Big Bang. The future of AI is going to be a monumental challenge to the human race and may someday enslave us if it choses not not to like us. When read of super computers we are in awe but think what they will do in one thousand years from now.......tick, tick, tick.
 
I believe, that if we do live in a computer simulation, there should be one thing, one aspect of our lives, or of scientific law that just doesn't make any sense at all, but we accept it because that is all that we know. If we find that discrepancy, then that could hint at a variation of physics and a computer simulation.

Just my opinion though.
 
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