Science Discovers the Meaning Of Life

there goes that 'Boil That Dust Speck' Paradox shot to hell!

Kind of like the chicken and the egg. How did our descendants get there in the first place with out a computer simulation to get them there?

Alternate universes are those simulation our descendants don't make it!

All the simulations that didn't work out were running under MicroOmnisoft WinHosed.

Press Esc to exit.

Older computers had a Return.

The movie 'Tron' comes to mind, so what is it, life immitate art or the other way around?.

I keep pressing 'Esc' but I'm still here!

Interesting it is or perhaps should I say entertaining?, but from there to have the minimum chance to be true, I seriously doubt it, read this: The supercomputers performing lattice quantum chromodynamics calculations essentially divide space-time into a four-dimensional grid.

How would calculations, no matter how accurate they are, create physical entities ?.

Math is just a tool, an exercise of thought that we created to explain and predict reality, and doesn't matter how small is the scale you take it to; if you want a physical model of your calculations, you'll have to actually build it from matter.

Five (the ammount) would still be there, even if we didn't invent Five (the number).

You assume reality is real. Consider what you perceive as all that is necessary to be real. In a sense, when you look away from the Moon is it still there? If no eyes are upon the Moon it certainly does not need to physically be there. The idea that reality is simply a collapsed probability wave already has proven substance in the world of quantum physics.

What that boils down to is that we need only simulate what we perceive. In 30 - 40 years time we will easily be able to assemble computers that can compute (real time) the combined thinking brains of not only every person alive on this planet, but every person that has ever lived. We need only simulate what we perceive, nothing more. Everything else is nothing more than a set of mathematical probabilities that are instantiated only when consciousness turns its "eyes" toward it.

It is hard to distill what I am trying to say in a few paragraphs, but if you explore consciousness and the world of quantum physics you begin to see clues that may just indicate that all that you perceive as reality is nothing more than a manifestation of consciousness itself.

So, the old sales adage that "Reality is perception" may be more true than the author had ever imagined.

About consciousness, I don't know where to start, my own consciousness many times interleaves with my oniric processes, but even so, all my life I've been aware that I'm dreaming when I am (even if I don't like my dream). I'll read about quantum physics; but for now, I hope is equally valid for me to say that:

Reality is an aberrant and distorted perception of the things, caused by the lack of drugs.

I always enjoy your posts. :)

Awareness of your dream state is called lucid dreaming. If you work at it you can also alter your dreams. Sometimes I will do that, myself if I do not like where the dream is going.

Back to my point, although, given enough sensory stimulation you can theoretically induce a perception of whatever reality you choose. Which then asks the question of exactly how reliable are our senses?

The mind also does a lot of abstract filling in of details because we tend to perceive less than what we believe we are really aware of. This is why multiple people witnessing the same event can give different observations.

I am writing a sci-fi book on this very subject.

In about 30 to 40 years we will have the computing power to do just this. No doubt that we will run many. The interesting question becomes what the "inhabitants" of those sims will be? Will they technically be conscious?

Could we be a sim that is about to create a universe of sims. Just how far back up the chain might this go?

It is a relevant as asking how many angles can dance on the tip of a needle...

We haven't evolved that much since the dark age...

So it looks like our universe is a computer simulation, according to Washington University

I believe it said the hypothesis was testable, not necessarily true.

I think the idea that we live in a simulation is nuts. A simulation is a mathematical model, with arrays of numbers representing physical quantities and mathematical computations generating more numbers. This is a mathematical simulation in its raw form. With computer graphics (more computations) we can generate a picture that looks real, as an aid to understanding what the model is representing. Unfortunately, this leads some to confuse the model with reality. It's just numbers in a computer memory.

You wrote, "Unfortunately, this leads some to confuse the model with reality."

Exactly the point! Reality is simply perception of consciousness.

We believe that we need a physical world for consciousness to hang its hat, so to speak, but why is that supposedly true? The physical world may be nothing more than a manifestation of our consciousness. It appears as real as any vivid dream.

Even if you take consciousness out of the equation and simplify one's existence to the electrical function of the brain, you have nothing more than a thinking being operating within a biological computer. In time it will be possible to mimic that same biological response via a "computer". All the computer needs to do then is provide that same I/O data that our brains receive to mimic perfectly the concept of an external world and that entity's perception of it.

There are two ways to simulate a universe. One is to quantify every atom and its sub-particles in the universe, their vectors, and their positions. The brute force method, if you will.

However, is all that necessary? The old saying a tree falling in the woods with no ears to hear it makes no sound may be a good analysis for an alternative. That is, simply simulate only the things that are consciously observed at any one instance in time. The rest are simply abstract mathematical probabilities.

Surprisingly, that is just how the world of quantum physics appears to work. Only when a particle is consciously observed does it posses the attributes of physical reality. The unobserved particle behaves like a mathematical probability. There have been many experiments that seem to uphold this observation.

In the end, a simulated model may be equally as valid as reality if its fidelity is indistinguishable from what you call reality. They may, in fact, be the same thing.

So the end of the world will come when somewone find the hidden console and push the STOP button?

Or is it that the simulation is scheduled to end 2012-12-21 ?

Weither this "reality" is a simulation or not, it is all we have. We should take care of it...

No they have trip over the plug many times. They just restart the program and it continues where it left off.

I thought it started over, like "Groundhog Day", until it gets right....

Darn FLASH memory... It was better when everything was in RAM...

A little power glitch and we start all over again. "Re-boot"

They have fixed the bugs and recompiled. When it's time to reboot, the lights will go out and that will be it. Nice to have known you all...

Actually, the first sign of danger will be:

Go on. Double dare....

Finally a logical explanation of why Quantum Mechanics doesn't make sense -- its just a software bug! Or it's at the limit of the reality simulation. Maybe relativity is just a kludge so they don't have to simulate velocities higher than c. So science stops making sense when we reach the limits of the reality simulator module.

I guess I can only speculate because all I have is the computer model of reality behind my eyeballs that has been programmed over these years by inputs from my senses. Or maybe it's just a program module which has been fed data generated by a reality simulation module.

I don't know if I believe any of this stuff, but when you think about it, the world we perceive about us (life, intelligence) is itself pretty unlikely.

It would seem to me that quantum physics itself may indicate the existence of the second type of simulation you describe.... Hmmmm. In the words of my favorite Vulcan - Fascinating!

"It's just numbers in a computer memory."

It's not even that. It's electrical charges which have no meaning whatsoever save for that which we ascribe to them.

Shades of Bishop Berkeley....

See also Ed Fredkin's "digital physics" as described in Robert Wright's Three Scientists and Their Gods.

We are a simulation. The mice want to know the ultimate question. They already know that the answer is 42.

Just get out more--and learn to think outside the vat....

I'm with ozzb on this one - if we're a computer sim, how would we have descendents to create the supposed sim in the first place - utter noodles.

Sorry but I can't even take Rene Descartes seriously.

Don't worry. Descartes doesn't think about it anymore.

lifes about dieing young so you make a good looking corpse

And here is some inspiration for attaining that goal!

so not the world world will end but the simulation will end on the twenty-first because of memory overflow?

What if we are God and just daydreaming?

What if we're a nothing more than a dream and about to wake up on December 21st.

That would suck because I have not finished my shopping yet.

Yes, but think of the bills you won't have to pay. Put all those pressies on your credit card with the promise of paying it off on the 22nd. Speaking of which, I bought my ex a 2013 Mayan Calendar for Christmas. It's blank.

We only pay cash.

I predict on Saturday, December 22nd, there will be a stunning announcement that there was a miscalculation between the correlation of Gregorian calendar and the Mayan calendar and the official end of the Mayan calendar will not happen for another 8 years.

Frankly, I'm waiting for the theorist or what ever you may call them to declare that Nostredame had predicted it............ after the fact.

And at the end of the eight-year period archaeologists will finally decipher the Mayan glyph for 'perpetual'.

I love a topic like this because no matter what cockamamie theory someone comes up with, all you can do is shrug your shoulders and say,"could be".

However, I bet trolls will argue....

No they won't.

Yes we will!

Oh, I'm sorry, just one moment. Is this a five-minute argument or the full half hour?

An Argument, This is Abuse, if you want an Argument, thats down the hall third door on the left.

Reality is in the mind. Everything else is just an illusion that comes in via various input sensors.

Ask this guy:

Maybe we are all living in the one computer that did not fail on the Y2K.

... or the one that did.