And here I was waiting to get unplugged, or maybe finding a Nokia phone that received a call.
we are a speck of excrement on the buttplug of reality during a gay porno film.
Mathematics disproves Matrix theory, says reality isn’t simulation
Submitted 1 day ago by RegularJoe@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/mathematics-ends-matrix-simulation-theory
Comments
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
kalkulat@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Oh those mathers. At least scientists are humble enough to recognize that theorums about the physical world can’t be proven.
CMDR_Horn@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Exactly what the simulation would say
srasmus@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
I can’t explain how much I hate simulation theory. As a thought experiment? Fine. It’s interesting to think of the universe in the context of code and logic. But as a driving philosophy of reality? Pointless.
Most proponents of simulation theory will say it’s impossible to prove the universe is a simulation, because we exist inside it. Then who cares? There obviously must exist a non-simulated universe for the mega computer we’re all running on to inhabit, so it’s a pointless step along finding the true nature if reality. It’s stoner solipsism for guys that buy nfts. It’s the “it was all a dream” ending of philosophy.
derek@infosec.pub 11 hours ago
Yes but, also, no.
You already seem familiar but, ror the uninitiated playing along at home, Wikipedia’s entry for Simulation Theory is a pretty easy read. Quoting their synopsis of Bostrom’s conjecture:
- either such simulations are not created because of technological limitations or self-destruction;
- advanced civilizations choose not to create them;
- if advanced civilizations do create them, the number of simulations would far exceed base reality and we would therefore almost certainly be living in one.
it’s certainly an interesting thought. I agree it shouldn’t inform our ethics or disposition toward our lived experiences. That doesn’t mean there’s zero value in trying to find out though. Even if the only positive yield is that we develop better testing methods which still come up empty: that’s still progress worth having. If it nets some additional benefit then so much the better.
I’d argue that satisfying curiosity is, in itself, and worthy pursuit so long as no harm is done.
That all still sets aside the more interesting question though. If such simulations are possible then are they something we’re comfortable creating? If not, and we find one has been built, what should we do? Turn it off? Leave it alone? “Save” those created inside of it?
These aren’t vapid questions. They strike at the heart of many important unresolved quandries. Are the simulated minds somehow less real than unsimulated ones? Does that question’s answer necessarily impact those mind’s right to agency, dignity, or self-determination?
The closer we get to being able to play god on a whim the more pressing I find such questions. That’s not because I wring my hands and labor anxiously at truth or certainty for lack of better idols. It’s because, whatever this is, we’re all in it together and our choices today have an outsized impact on the choices others will have tomorrow. Developing a clearer view of what this is, and what we’re capable of doing in it, affords future minds better opportunity to arrive at reasonable conclusions and decide how to live well.
inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Simulation theory is the long way around to creationism for atheists.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
Creationism usually implies the creator put a lot of thought, care, and love into the creation. Knowing what I do of software development, fucking lol.
prime_number_314159@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
The universe can’t be a simulation, the framerate is way too good.
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
I keep seeing supersampling artifacts when I squirt my eyes
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
That’s just what they fucking want you to think.
mhague@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
“If we assume X theorem is true, Y theorem is true, and lemma Z is true, then …”
This is actually about our models and seeing their incompleteness in a new light, right? I don’t think starting from arbitrary axioms and then trying to build reality was about proving qualities about reality. Or am I wrong? Just seems like they’re using “simulated reality” as a way to talk about our models for reality.
bryndos@fedia.io 1 day ago
I thought the rebuttal to this was covered in 'The Thirteenth Floor'.
They don't have to simulate the entire universe, and it doesn't have to be consistent. Just the parts that the PCs are looking at.I'm not even going to mention what tricks they can do with the rewind button.
Anyways this paper was likely written by an NPC.
tal@lemmy.today 1 day ago
I mean, it’s a bunch of technical gobledygook from different fields in an Iranian journal dealing with holography claiming extraordinary results.
henfredemars@infosec.pub 1 day ago
Dr. Faizal says the same limitation applies to physics. “We have demonstrated that it is impossible to describe all aspects of physical reality using a computational theory of quantum gravity,” he explains.
“Therefore, no physically complete and consistent theory of everything can be derived from computation alone.”
Your argument is bad and you should feel bad.
Impossible to describe does not mean that it’s not computable, and impossible is an incredibly strong criterion that sounds quite inaccurate to me.
This seems like a huge leap to conclude that just because some aspects of our understanding seem like we wouldn’t be able to fully describe them somehow means that the universe can’t be simulated.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
What bothers me most is that they equate a model with reality.
Quantum gravity theory is our current working model that we use to describe our observations. It’s not reality itself, and no scientist worth their money would claim that it is, because if it was, physics would be solved and it isn’t.
That’s how science works: We have observations, we build models to describe them, then we have more observations that don’t fit the old models, so we build newer models that also describe the new observations. Since we aren’t omnicient, there’s always something we can’t observe (yet) and what we can’t observe we also can’t describe.
“Therefore, no physically complete and consistent theory of everything can be derived from computation alone.”
This, in fact, would fit quite well to an imperfect simulation that doesn’t perfectly follow all the rules we made up when observing.
magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 20 hours ago
We simulate weather systems all the time, even though the systems are fundamentally chaotic and it’s impossible to forecast accurately.
Weather simulations are approximations. It’s not an exact replication of the universe.
Valmond@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
But who sait it must be a perfect match?
I mean they can argue that we can’t simulate correctly the universe (just check kaos theory) but that doesn’t mean we cant simulate a universe. Even a universe that looks feels like ours.
henfredemars@infosec.pub 15 hours ago
Can the universe not also approximate? Why must it be an exact result whenever a rule is applied?
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 18 hours ago
We simulate weather systems all the time, even though the systems are fundamentally chaotic and it’s impossible to forecast accurately.
The amount of computer power used to run those simulations is immense, and even then, the predictive capacity of those models starts degrading rapidly around 7 to 10 days ahead. There’s some amazing science that goes into those models, but the results are hard-won. And what we know about more energetic systems (say, the magnetohydrodynamics of the sun) is far less comprehensive.
And be careful with that “fundamentally chaotic” assertion: there are degrees of how chaotic a system is, and some aspects of a system can be more deterministic than others.
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 16 hours ago
Lol, because these guys imagine the outer universe in which ours is built has the same rules and limitations. Also because they can’t wrap their minds around our universe’s rules doesn’t mean they make no sense to higher beings. Life in conway’s game would equally produce the same wrong statement
lung@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is such a boring take, I wonder how anyone gets funding or publication making a statement as useless as “see godels incompleteness theorem that proves that there’s more truth than what mathematics can prove, therefore reality is not a simulation”. Yes, we know, you don’t need a PhD to know the major theorem that took down the entire school of logical positivism. The fundamental philosophical error here is assuming that all forms of simulation are computational or mathematical. Counterexample: your dreams are a form of simulation (probably). So I can literally disprove this take in my sleep
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 1 day ago
The fundamental philosophical error here is assuming that all forms of simulation are computational or mathematical.
Uh... that's literally what a simulation is.
Counterexample: your dreams are a form of simulation (probably). So I can literally disprove this take in my sleep
But dreams aren't simulating reality as we observe it; they just kinda do their own thing. Your brain isn't consistently simulating quantum mechanics (or, hell, even simple things like clocks) while you're dreaming so this is a moot point.
lung@lemmy.world 1 day ago
People who are lucid dreaming simulate a full reality that’s nearly indistinguishable from the one they find themselves in during waking time. If your brain can’t tell the difference during this time, how can you be sure you’re not dreaming right now reading this?
The scope of what a simulation is has always been limited by the technology we know. It is only a failing of imagination and knowledge to assume that algorithmic computation is the only valid form of simulation in the future, these have existed for barely 100 years, but even Plato’s cave was talking about the larger philosophical problem
magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 20 hours ago
Counterexample: your dreams are a form of simulation (probably). So I can literally disprove this take in my sleep
Dreams are an approximation of reality at best. It’s not a perfect simulation.
sonofearth@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
The uptime is too good to be a simulation. It has an uptime of like 14 billions years! AWS has a lot of catching up to do. /s
roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
From our perspective, sure. But we wouldn’t know if it was stopped and started running again, or if it was reverted to a previous state.
athairmor@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Or, if malware was inserted in, say, 1933 or 2016.
Bazoogle@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I just had déjà vu
Geodad@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
It’s possible that the universe could be simulated by an advanced people with vastly superior technology.
Hard sophistry has no answer and no bearing on our lives, so it’s best to not give it another thought.
arendjr@programming.dev 9 hours ago
It’s possible yes, but the nice thing is that we know we are not merely talking about “advanced people here with vastly superior technology” here. The proof implies that technology within our own universe would never be able to simulate our own universe, no matter how advanced or superior.
So if our universe is a “simulation” at least it wouldn’t be an algorithmic one that fits our understanding. Indeed we still cannot rule out that our universe exists within another, but such a universe would need a higher order reality with truths that are fundamentally beyond our understanding. Sure, you could call it a “simulation” still, but if it doesn’t fit our understanding of a simulation it might as well be called “God” or “spirituality”, because the truth is, we wouldn’t understand a thing of it, and we might as well acknowledge that.
jj4211@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
But that sounds like disproving a scenario no one claimed to be the case: that everything we perceive is as substantial as we think it is and can be simulated at full scale in real time by our own universe.
Part of the whole reason people think of simulation theory as worth bothering to contemplate is because they find quantum physics and relativity to be unsatisyingly “weird”. They like to think of how things break down at relativistic velocities and quantum scale as the sorts of ways a simulation would be limited if we tried, so they like to imagine a higher order universe that doesn’t have those pesky “weird” behaviors and we are only stuck with those due to simulation limits within this hypothetical higher order universe.
Nothing about it is practical, but a lot of these science themed “why” exercises aren’t themselves practical or sciency.
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
Does it feel very solipsistic around here or am I the only one?
witty_username@feddit.nl 21 hours ago
I was under the impression that something along these lines was already accepted from the perspective of information theory. I.e. a machine that could simulate the universe must at least be composed of as much information as the universe itself. Given the vastness and complexity of the universe, this would make it rather unlikely that the universe is simulated. Unless you want to view the universe itself as a machine that calculates it’s own progression. But that is a bit of a semantic point.
Disclaimer: this is not my area of expertise and I probably got some terms or concepts wrong. I am basing this off of ‘The information’ by James Gleick
lemmeLurk@lemmy.zip 20 hours ago
But you wouldn’t have to simulate the whole universe, only one brain. There is no way for you to know, if everything your brain experiences is caused by it actually happening, or just the neutrons being triggered in that way from outside.
girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
Solipsism is definitely one way to look at it.
victorz@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I mean, maybe the machine is five-dimensional and has no problem containing all the information of a three-dimensional universe? I don’t know, yadda yadda talking out of my ass.
Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 11 hours ago
I highly suggest to listen to this podcast with Damien P. Williams and Paris Marx:
“No, we don’t live in a f—ing simulation”
mistermodal@lemmy.ml 20 hours ago
Layers upon layers of academic circlejerk to create useless intellectual products with a veneer of relevancy. Talk to americans & they’re all enamored with this shit, these days there is always an over-credentialed huckster attached. You simply cannot reason with these people or any other kind of crypto eugenicist AI boosters. They’re conniving little freaks
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
This is akin to cavemen concluding there’s no way an mri scanner could be possible.
xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 1 day ago
Very interesting, although I’m going to withhold judgment pending some serious peer review.
KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This doesn’t really address the idea that our simulation is a simplified version of the “real” universe though does it?
magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 20 hours ago
They argue that the universe isn’t mathematically computable. It’s not about physical computers.
We know there’s a class of ”uncomputable problems” for which there’s no algorithm (most well known is halting problem). If the universe rely on any of these uncomputable problems, then no computer - no matter how advanced it is - can simulate the universe. Something else other than pure computation is needed.
However, their argument rely on that ”quantum gravity” is what makes the universe uncomputable. I’m not sure how valid this statement is.
KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Going to circle back around on uncomputible in “our” version of reality. I mean it’s kind of lazy in its way but it seems like the possibility that the “real” universe is a fundamentally different kind of place throws out most if not all methods for “proving” it’s not. I’m not even a fan of the matrix theory but still, to acknowledge it.
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
When someone claims something isn’t computable, it is instantantly sus, especially from math nerds and not compsci nerds. Imagine the universe is indeed uncomputable, but each measurement is. The number of measurements you’d need to sim (at various scales/resolutions) is vastly smaller than the universe as a whole. This is morally equivalent to occlusion pruning in 3D games. If you aren’t looking at it, it isn’t being rendered.
CeffTheCeph@kbin.earth 18 hours ago
However, their argument rely on that ”quantum gravity” is what makes the universe uncomputable. I’m not sure how valid this statement is.
Here is the assumption the authors use that brings quantum gravity into the proof:
As we do not have a fully consistent theory of quantum gravity, several different axiomatic
systems have been proposed to model quantum gravity [26–32]. In all these programs, it
is assumed a candidate theory of quantum gravity is encoded as a computational formal
system
F_QG = {L_QG, ΣQG, R_alg} .I interpret their assumption to mean that describing quantum gravity in this way is how it would be defined as a formal computational system. This is the approach that all of the other leading theories (String Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity) have taken, which have failed to provide a fully consistent and complete description of gravity. I think the proof is saying that non-computational components can be incorporated into a fully consistent and complete formal system and so taking a non-computational approach to quantum gravity would then incorporate gravity into the formal system thereby completing the theory of everything.
Does that make sense? I am not a logician by any extent and I have no idea how robust this proof really is. I do think the bold claims the authors are making deserve heavy scrutiny, but I am not the one to provide that scrutiny.
polle@feddit.org 15 hours ago
Lol. They forgot that thermodynamics existed? If they remembered they were already done before they started.
confuser@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
The simulation idea doesn’t work only because people apply it incorrectly. Our brains do in fact create our experiences with no contact to the world outside our bodies, its our sensory organs that give data to the brain to create our perception of experiencing things.
We are all partly made of simulators, but knowing this changes nothing for each of us since we can start associating ourselves with a larger force of nature that happens when we group ourselves together for changes we want to see in the world.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 9 hours ago
Our brains do in fact create our experiences with no contact to the world outside our bodies, its our sensory organs that give data to the brain to create our perception of experiencing things.
Ehhh… The claim that there’s a clear delineation between the central and peripheral nervous system is generally just a byproduct of how we teach anatomy. The more we understand about cognitive science and anatomy in general, the further we get away from the old understanding of the cns when it was treated almost like a computer that runs a machine.
I think it kinda depends on how you define an experience, but you’re kinda edging into an old debate known as the mind body problem in cognitive science and philosophy.
confuser@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
None of that suggests this can’t be the case though.
What I’m saying is that for example, dreams are not real, and yet they can and often are indistinguishable from reality, many even have dreams where they are aware they are dreaming and can control them the same way we can control what we do while awake.
HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I can’t help but notice everyone going through psychosis saying reality is a simulation also says “and all evidence is starting to point to it”.
Yet, they never ever discuss any of this “evidence” or related “research”.
sundray@lemmus.org 1 day ago
Isn’t it a waste of time to disprove the “Matrix Theory” (a piece of metaphysical, navel-gazing, freshman dormitory claptrap with absolutely no bearing on the pursuit of scientific knowledge or technical innovation or philosophical insight) in the first place? I look forward to the next paper, proving that there also aren’t any fairies at the bottom of the garden.
CeffTheCeph@kbin.earth 19 hours ago
Disproving the 'matrix theory' is just the catchy headline to garner clicks. The results of the research are beyond just the matrix. For example, this proof means that non-algorithmic determinism isn't something that represents a lack of deeper theoretical understanding. There are theories that consciousness is non-algorithmic. In that case, this proof means that AGI is also impossible.
sundray@lemmus.org 18 hours ago
You’re summary is certainly more interesting than the article; I look forward to having time to read the paper, now!
masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Honestly I haven’t seen a single article written by someone who actually understands the mathematics involved so I call a huge amount of HORSeSHIT on your headline.
CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
That’s what the matrix wants you to think/s
NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If you have not already done so watch the animated series Pantheon (2022). Worth the watch and goes deep into simulation and concesiones.
Nima@leminal.space 15 hours ago
dude yes! I recommend this series all the time.
RedWheelbarrow@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What about a simulation inside a simulation…!!!
CrystalRainwater@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 hour ago
Inside a turtle’s dream theory still not disproven