20% chance we're living in a simulation - Oxford prof

[seemslikeadream]

Hey dada, the red wine made me a bit manic yesterday. sorry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXt56MB-3vc

[tazmic]

"If all this ends with the human race leaving no more trace of itself in the universe than a system of electronic patterns, why should that trouble us? For that is exactly what we are now!"

Yet we are not 'merely' a system of electronic patterns. We are a system of electronic patterns that can grow.

I wasn't at all interested in whether he was correct....

(Can you taste the context when you chew things up?)

[dada]

"If all this ends with the human race leaving no more trace of itself in the universe than a system of electronic patterns, why should that trouble us? For that is exactly what we are now!"

Yet we are not 'merely' a system of electronic patterns. We are a system of electronic patterns that can grow.

I wasn't at all interested in whether he was correct....

Yeah, neither was I. I just thought it was a good jumping off point.

Being somewhat familiar with Alan's riffs, I think that I probably wasn't saying anything he wouldn't have said himself, there, anyway. As I was typing it, I felt like it was a very Alan Wattsish thing to say.


"(Can you taste the context when you chew things up?)"

No. When I chew things up, I can smell the context.

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KUAN » Thu Sep 15, 2016 2:47 pm wrote:
Hey dada, the red wine made me a bit manic yesterday. sorry


Well, I was grumpy when I responded. So let's call it even. Here's a peace offering

[tron]

i like that dada, its like we are becoming conscious waking up slowly.

[dada]

i like that dada, its like we are becoming conscious waking up slowly.

Yeah, that's kind of how I see it. If I could expand on it, I'd say it's like consciousness becoming conscious that it isn't becoming anything, slowly waking up to already being awake. If that makes any sense.

[dada]

A few other ways of looking at 'living in a simulation.'

Lefebvre argued that ‘‘alienation is spreading and becoming so powerful that it obliterates all trace or consciousness of alienation.’’

He's writing in terms of the commodification of our time, our relations.

Has alienation spread and become so powerful, that even all consciousness of it has been obliterated? For some people I know, for sure. At that point, I guess we could say that they are fully living in a simulation. Or maybe better to say they're 'living' in a simulation.

And what about the rest of us? Nah, we're not that alienated. We're really living. Right?

---

Constellations are groupings of bright stars. When observing the night sky, it helps to notice the patterns. We all know they're not actually lion, bull, scales and bears. And they're not really groupings, the light years that the stars in a constellation can be separated by are many many.

Yet some people take that shit really seriously. They feel that the constellations each have their own energies. Even if you don't buy into astrology, the idea of signs and constellations is almost taken for granted, it becomes an unconscious thing to look at the stars in these particular arrangements. Try to look at the stars and make your own constellations. Not so easy at first.

The constellations are a model that we map onto the stars. To the extent that we internalize the map, it becomes a simulation. This idea can be understood best by taking the extreme case, those who give the map its own reality. Astrologers are living in the simulation.

The constellation map can be a useful tool, it's sort of a 'mental technology.' I think there are other mental technologies that can be taken for granted, causing us to unconsciously 'fall' into living in simulations.

Jung's archetypes are a useful way of looking at the different aspects of human personality. Forgetting they're a map, we might find ourselves fitting our personalities into the archetypes. If we let the archetypes colonize the unconscious, we can end up conforming to the map, living in the 'archetype simulation.'

Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces presents a good map, but a map nonetheless. Anyone who has read it knows how easy it is to slip into 'living in the hero simulation.'

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a useful map, yet how many people think it's really how it is. A whole lot. You might even be living in the 'hierarchy of needs simulation' right now.

Do you really have to have other needs met before you have a 'peak experience,' though? (I'm not going to argue with you either way. But I know how it works for me.)

Really the hierarchy of needs pyramid isn't a strict structure, even Maslow says its more of a network, or a web. The pyramid is a basic guideline. But even if it were 'Maslow's network of needs,' it's still a map, a mental technology.

[JackRiddler]

That is brilliant dada. (Completely serious statement.) All perception is sorted into maps that then become masters. No perception is even seen except through a map whether recognized or not. This is also sometimes called paradigm. It's important to try to see it, and to see that it could be other. Some try to claim the map and play the guide within it or the human master of it, sometimes only deluding themselves more than others. Most just fall right into their own map without seeing it. None of this argues for the plausibility of the Bostrom game, of course, and if you look at him (the tendency of thinking he represents more than the person, whom I don't know) rather than the claim, it provides a more plausible understanding of something than the model he wants to argue for (or "20%" argue for, with assigning of a probability being the hilarious part). He's seeking / willing / needing / hoping for a degree of control over a resistant reality. (Also going for the "mind-blowing" scenario as an attention-grabber.)

[tron]

i think we might actually be dead. we are only living because of spirit or the resurrection or something.

[norton ash]

i think we might actually be dead. we are only living because of spirit or the resurrection or something.

The comfort of the samurai is that we are already dead. It's also a massively popular plot device-- and source of fan speculation-- these days, especially in wrapping up TV series and movies whose plotlines jump the suspension-of-disbelief shark. We're all dead/this is all a dream/we're in purgatory. Or the demiurge is just having its way with us.

Ecclesiastes 9:5
For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.

[Burnt Hill]

i think we might actually be dead. we are only living because of spirit or the resurrection or something.

I think we might actually be living. We are only dead because of the lack of spirit or the resurrection or something.

[tron]

i think we might actually be dead. we are only living because of spirit or the resurrection or something.

I think we might actually be living. We are only dead because of the lack of spirit or the resurrection or something.

nice

[tazmic]

It has occurred to me that my constant surprise and annoyance with the idea that reality has to perform calculations in order to do something, shock over many of the places it comes from, and inability to understand what appears to me as surely an educational travesty, may be hiding worthwhile thoughts....

So, whilst I stand by my claim that 'God may or may not play dice but he sure as shit doesn't use a calculator', I have to admit, that if we found evidence that the universe worked in a way that suggested it was having to calculate, given my claim, this would then amount to supporting evidence for a simulation hypothesis (which doesn't mean Bostrom's, which is pants).

One terribly good example of God using a calculator is here. Quote "With some straightforward logic, one theorist has shown that macroscopic quantum objects cannot exist if P≠NP, which suddenly explains one of the greatest mysteries in physics"

Now, ignoring the pathologies of theoretical physicists, if he could somehow relate the computational complexity of solving Schrödinger equations with some informational resource limitation of collapsing wave functions across the multiverse, given, you know, the activities of the light speed cops, garnished perhaps, with a bit of Planck, I'd be getting excited. Very. Especially considering that would make what I said meaningful... That would show computational complexity acting as a time constraint on how fast the future can know itself* due to structural limitations, rather than as a theoretical imposition. Which would be cool. But it would distract from this post. Let's assume that's not going to happen.

Can we find computational complexity acting as a time constraint without a structural explanation? A computationally bound world would be a computed one. A computed one would be a simulated one. And the gnostics would prevail.

In the meantime......thinking about the limits of structural limitations, how about observing digitization artefacts?

For starters: The Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin limit.
​

First, some background. The problem with all simulations is that the laws of physics, which appear continuous, have to be superimposed onto a discrete three dimensional lattice which advances in steps of time.

The question that Beane and co ask is whether the lattice spacing imposes any kind of limitation on the physical processes we see in the universe. They examine, in particular, high energy processes, which probe smaller regions of space as they get more energetic

What they find is interesting. They say that the lattice spacing imposes a fundamental limit on the energy that particles can have. That’s because nothing can exist that is smaller than the lattice itself.

So if our cosmos is merely a simulation, there ought to be a cut off in the spectrum of high energy particles.

It turns out there is exactly this kind of cut off in the energy of cosmic ray particles.

[...]

But Beane and co calculate that the lattice spacing imposes some additional features on the spectrum. “The most striking feature…is that the angular distribution of the highest energy components would exhibit cubic symmetry in the rest frame of the lattice, deviating significantly from isotropy,” they say.

In other words, the cosmic rays would travel preferentially along the axes of the lattice, so we wouldn’t see them equally in all directions.

That’s a measurement we could do now with current technology. Finding the effect would be equivalent to being able to to ‘see’ the orientation of lattice on which our universe is simulated.

Out with our anisotropy detectors! Just don't cross the streams.

(* thanks kippers&custard).

[edited to make sense]

[JackRiddler]

It has occurred to me that my constant surprise and annoyance with the idea that reality has to perform calculations in order to do something, shock over many of the places it comes from, and inability to understand what appears to me as surely an educational travesty, may be hiding worthwhile thoughts....

Yeah. Wasn't there a really well-done critique of the so prevalent view of matter/energy with information/data above somewhere? I think this is the highest / most abstract / ultimate confusion of map with reality. Just because you're describing it you're not knowing it.

[tazmic]

Yeah. Wasn't there a really well-done critique of the so prevalent view of matter/energy with information/data above somewhere? I think this is the highest / most abstract / ultimate confusion of map with reality. Just because you're describing it you're not knowing it.

I thought you might be thinking of We Are Not Living in a 'Video Game Simulation', which at least has

Wouldn't it, I mean, be a remarkable coincidence to find ourselves alive at just the moment where technology finally shows itself to be adequate to reveal to us the true nature of reality? And how are we supposed to interpret the equally certain claims of people in other times and places, who believed that reality in fact reflected some device or artifice of central importance to their own culture (e.g., horologia, mirrors, puppets, tjurungas...)? Are we really to believe that it was not the light-and-shadow theatres of the ancients or the hydraulic automata of the early moderns that revealed the true nature of things, but that instead humanity would have to await the eventual advent of... Pong?

but perhaps not.

(Don't you hate it when you reread your post to discover that, horror of horrors, it doesn't actually make sense, to hurry to correct it into some semblance of sanity, only then to discover that someone has already quoted you!! Argh... well, at least I got away with it this time.)

[tazmic]

The Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin limit.
​

First, some background. The problem with all simulations is that the laws of physics, which appear continuous, have to be superimposed onto a discrete three dimensional lattice which advances in steps of time.

[...]

But Beane and co calculate that the lattice spacing imposes some additional features on the spectrum. “The most striking feature…is that the angular distribution of the highest energy components would exhibit cubic symmetry in the rest frame of the lattice, deviating significantly from isotropy,” they say.

In other words, the cosmic rays would travel preferentially along the axes of the lattice, so we wouldn’t see them equally in all directions.

That’s a measurement we could do now with current technology. Finding the effect would be equivalent to being able to to ‘see’ the orientation of lattice on which our universe is simulated.

Actually, I think this would just show the universe to be discrete. There's nothing to say they must be digitization artefacts, just structural ones.

Now, if they could find rounding errors....