2017-10-13 08:18:35

Okay this is just a fun topic not sure if it belongs hear but hear it goes. If we are living in a computer simulation wouldn't we notice it through programming. For example I have a soda on my desk right now I think the code would look something like this.
inport objects
def soda.spill ()
if:
spill = 1
print "The soda is sitting on the desk."
if:
spill =2
print "A hand reaches out for the soda and takes it with a firm grip"
if:
spill = 3
print "A hand reaches out for the soda but hits the can sending the soda all over the desk."
wile loop()

I think I didn't do that right but if we are living in a computer simulation then how would you program the soda event. Because I only see 3 options in that but that soda can could have thousands of lines of code in that single action. I hope I'm making sence. If we were to build are own simulation how would we go about it. What would we use for weather patterns, population, and other information. I really hope I'm making sence I was half asleep when I thought of this.

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2017-10-13 09:54:25

If we are living in a simulation it wouldn't be in any way affected by how we code.  It would also almost certainly be a simulation built upon a set of simple rules where complex patterns play out as a result of emergence.  Imagine something like Conway's Game of Life, where instead of producing gliders and repeaters, you wind up with stars, planets, plants, and us.

The only way I'd believe our simulation was specifically planned out, would be if our creators/designers are in a reality that dwarfs ours in complexity.  If PacMan were sentient, he would gaze out at his universe (the various levels of the game) and be convinced that nothing could design anything that vast or complex.  From his tiny perspective, it would seem impossible, yet to us it is quite simple.

I've also heard arguments trying to explain the immense computing power it would require to run our simulated universe, and how that seems to argue against it.  I've watched multiple YouTube videos were people used redstone circuitry to build working computers inside of Minecraft.  The processor and memory took up so much space that you would have to run full speed for ages in order to go from one side to another.  Because the computer built within Minecraft works the same way "real" computers work, it is theoretically possible for someone to build Minecraft inside of Minecraft.  It would run millions or billions of times slower than its parent Minecraft, but with infinite time the inner Minecraft would be exactly the same.

If the characters inside of Minecraft were suddenly sentient, I'm sure they would look at this amazing massive computer they'd built and theorize that they could recreate their universe as a simulation.  To actually create Minecraft using redstone circuitry it could (and I'm totally guessing here) require So Much space that it would be millions of square miles.  The citizens of Minecraft would almost certainly calculate out that size and decide that making such a simulation is impossible due to the required processing power, and would then conclude that they themselves cannot possibly be living in a simulation.  Their mistake is assuming their simulation matches the reality that is simulating them, and PacMan's mistake is assuming his designers are of the same complexity he is.

Either approach is very possible, but one thing I do not believe is that the creators of our simulation would be humans living in a world like what We see.

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2017-10-13 14:56:51

In the old Infocom game, "A Mind Forever Voyaging", your character is itself a computer simulation living in a computer simulated world, but until he was told the truth of his existence, he was completely unaware.

I believe that if we are computer simulations in a simulated world, while things we do might have some effect on the simulated world, we would still be completely unaware that reality is just a simulation. So I don't even bother to dwell on it.

2017-11-16 20:12:45

I saw this topic and I was just like wait! What? Okay then?
If indeed the matrix were described in a language such as c++, although heavily object oriented, it would be an absolute wire of inheritence. On the top would be living and nonliving objects. Living would then branch into plants, bacteria, the classes of species. Nonliving would have a few global handles, such as weather, environment, surface, water, etc. Everything would be based via some kind of coordinate mechanism, probably relative but not exactly cartesian. The system would also have to have a loop that goes through every living object inside it, checks their coordinates, examines their environment, looks through every object to see what's around them, and makes it's choices about things, and then sends that to some sort of neural transmitter. In our world of computing power, that is quite litterally impossible. AI exists, but not at that scale. We're not deep enough into neural research to be able to decode every single thing the brain can send and receive and exactly what they do, there's a fuckload of irrelivent signals to most of it but they still play a role. The internal body shtuff. And then you've got just the massive size of the equipment required. It for fucking sure wouldn't be in binary. If it ever were to exist, it would be a massive quantum computing setup, probably somewhere between the human brain and a computer of today. That'd be the optimum system, work as fast as a computer with the complexity of a human brain and the massive ability for multitasking. And then they'd also have subspace transmitions, otherwise there would be latency in reality and that doesn't do good things!

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An anomaly in the matrix. An error in existence. A being who cannot get inside the goddamn box! A.K.A. Me.

2017-11-16 21:02:44

@4, oh, no, we can't have a computer setup like that for the matrix. o, you need a full-on quantum computer.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
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