Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it obvious for most that for an advanced enough simulation, it is impossible to prove that you are in a simulation from inside the simulation? Even if we find proof that our current model of reality is wrong, it would only mean we need to search for another model of reality, we can't just say "but out theory doesn't actually match the reality because the reality is actually a simulation that computes approximations for some cases".

Imagine if Einstein thought something (let's say for the sake of argument that he had access to some real close-to-speed-of-light experiments): "classical mechanics, isn't wrong, but predictions for close-to-the-speed-of-light experiments don't match the reality because we live in a simulation and the resource constraints forced by the computations needed for the simulation computer to do for such cases make it distort things through heuristic approximations ...and because we live in a simulation I can further pursue my other line of work, the genetic theory of Leprechauns and Fairies...".

Now I actually believe the plausability of the simulation theory, unfalsifiable as it may be, and all, but I think such simulations wouldn't be run for "fun" alone: if we're in a simulation, we're either (a) "babies" in nursery that probably involve multiple existences in multiple simulations until we are "prepared" for the "top-level reality" or (b) we and our universes are a very advanced form of... future "bitcoin miners" :| (I sincerely hope for either (a) or the plain ol "reality is real" theory, but one can never now...)

What if we're in a simulation built by crappy programmers in an extremely advanced society?

Even advanced societies will have crappy programmers.

(c) We are unintended by-products of whatever is being simulated.

yeah, and I consider this part of (b): maybe our universe itself (or the meta-universe containing it or something) is some kind of "useful software" in a simulation VM (what I mean by "bitcoin miner" :)), and we are just some by-products of its running.

I read (b) to suggest that we are are intimately important part of this simulation. The simulation starters wouldn't consider us a threat to the integrity of their simulation as we are part of that simulation.

However, if we were unintended by-products, the simulation starters could turn on us - especially if we start interfering in the global state of the simulation. There is an interesting Asimov story along these lines where top scientists would be mysteriously killed in order to prevent humans developing force field tech. The protagonist compared humans to bacteria growing in a petri dish. In order to stop the bacteria spreading out you surround the bacteria with penicillin. The simulation starters did something analogous to humans.

I think you meant incidental, rather than unintended

Or emergent.

Think of the Deist philosophy of the 18th century: that of God as a "clockmaker," who wound up the universe and then left it to tick. Whatever outcomes emerged were not necessarily the results of his actions or intentions; they were the effects of his original cause. It was a quirky and relatively short-lived philosophy, especially in the Western cannon. But it's eerily applicable here.

If this is all a computer simulation, it's possible the creator(s) of the simulation programmed only the fundamental physics and set up the Big Bang, allowing everything else to unfold and develop as it has.

In effect, this wouldn't be very different (to us) from a non-simultated reality. Hell, it's possible that we're in a simulation that people in the "real" universe set up as a scientific study, to model their own universe's birth and evolution.

Got me thinking whether an application can detect if its running on a virtualized OS.

Found this : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/154163/detect-virtualized...

Whether something like this exists for our virtualized environment, we have to find out.

The point with any "blue pill / red pill" technology/experiment is that you can design it because you have "outside knowledge", you are outside the VM and know how the VM and the physical processor works. The knowledge required to detect of something is running as a simulation comes from outside the simulation. Even if by "miracle" you were to get this "outside knowledge", you wouldn't know whether it is real knowledge or something spitting a random result. You'd need to be "outside" to know that what you thought it was "spooky outside knowledge" actually was. Even in Matrix, the red pill is made via knowledge from outside The Matrix :) Think, how would Neo know if the outside the matrix experience weren't just an "acid trip"? He wouldn't, were it not for the "bending the laws of physics" phenomena that could be experienced by others too, but they were only possible because The Matrix was programmed to allow them in special circumstances, but you could still classify them as "science so advanced you can't distinguish it from magic" if you as a movie viewer didn't have the "outside knowledge".

Historically speaking "outside knowledge" is what we call as religion.

I think the experiment as designed could show you that you are inside a simulation, but would make it hard to show you were real.

Think about time-lapse photography and simulated photons. As we get better at doing time-lapse photography (more FPS), we might see movement along the predicted course become step-wise (rather than a smooth function). Barring some weird physical phenomena, this could show we were inside a simulation.

But it's also possible that the simulation's FPS is far higher than what we can ever measure. That doesn't make it any less a simulation, but we also can't assume it's reality.

Such a result would show that we're in a simulation built with technology and scientific understanding not entirely different from our own -- that whoever modeled us modeled us after themselves.

But the lack of such a finding wouldn't necessarily disprove a simulation. It's possible we're in a very simplified model of the real universe, and that the simulators --whoever or whatever they are -- inhabit a universe of very different physics and phenomena. Broadly and metaphorically speaking, we're trying to probe for the glass walls at the edge of the fish tank. But what if it's not a fish tank?

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