And here I was waiting to get unplugged, or maybe finding a Nokia phone that received a call.

  • survirtual@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    This paper is shit.

    https://jhap.du.ac.ir/article_488_8e072972f66d1fb748b47244c4813c86.pdf

    They proved absolutely nothing.

    For instance, they treat physics as a formal axiomatic system, which is fine for a human model of the physical world, but not for the physical world itself.

    You can’t say something is “unprovable” and make a logical leap to saying it is “physically undecidable.” Gödel-incompleteness produces unprovable sentences inside a formal system, it doesn’t imply that physical observables correspond to those sentences.

    I could go on but the paper is 12 short pages of non-sequiturs and logical leaps, with references to invoke formality, it’s a joke that an article like this is being passed around and taken as reality.

    • SaraTonin@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I mean, simulation theory is kind of a joke itself. It’s a fun thought experiment, but ultimately it’s just solipsism repackaged.

      In reality there’s no more evidence for it than there is for you being a butterfly dreaming it’s a man. And it seems to me that the only reason people take it at all seriously in the modern age is because Elon Musk said he believed it back when he had a good enough PR team that people thought he was worth listening to.

      • survirtual@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Simulation theory is actually an inevitability. Look up ancestor simulators for a brief on why.

        Eventually when civilization reaches a certain computationally threshold it will be possible to simulate an entire planet. The inputs and outputs within the computational space will be known with some minor infinite unknowns that are trivial to compensate for given a higher infinite.

        Either we are already in one or we will inevitably create one in the future.

        • SaraTonin@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          There’s a few wild leaps in logic, here.

          Firstly, we know of life evolving once. Just one planet. In the entire universe. We can postulate that with such a vast universe (and possibly multiverse) that it’s probable that other life exists elsewhere, but we don’t know that. It could be a unique event or an incredibly rare event. We can’t say, because 1 is way too small a sample size to extrapolate from.

          But you’re not even extrapolating from 1 datapoint. You’re extrapolating from something that you think might be true at some point in the future.

          • survirtual@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            I am skipping steps because this topic demands thought, research, and exploration, but ultimately the conclusion is, in my view, inevitable.

            We are already building advanced simulators. Video games grow in realism and complexity. With realtime generative AI, these games will become increasingly indistinguishable to a mind. There are already countless humans simultaneously building the thing.

            And actually, the lack of evidence of extra-terrestrial life is support of the idea. Once a civilization grows large enough, they may simply build Dyson sphere scale computation devices, Matrioshka brains. Made efficient, they would emit little to no EM radiation and appear as dark gravitational anomalies. With that device, what reason would beings have to endanger themselves in the universe?

            But I agree, the hard evidence isn’t there. So I propose human society band together and build interstellar ships to search for the evidence.

            • SaraTonin@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              None of what you’ve said ameliorates the faulty logic I highlighted. You have instead just added more assumptions.

              • survirtual@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                The logic is not faulty, it is predicated upon conditional statements. It is actually a synthesis of Bostrom’s trilemma, Zuse/Fredkin digital ontology, Dyson/Fermi cosmological reasoning, and extrapolation from current computational capabilities.

                The “holes” are epistemic, not logical.

                • SaraTonin@lemmy.world
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                  5 days ago

                  Okay, if you prefer to frame the flaws in your reasoning like that, then I’m happy to do so. That doesn’t make the conclusion less flawed. The conversation isn’t about the hows and whyfores of formal logic, it’s about whether the conclusion is likely to be true.

      • kromem@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Have you bothered looking for evidence?

        What makes you so sure that there’s no evidence for it?

        For example, a common trope we see in the simulated worlds we create are Easter eggs. Are you sure nothing like that exists in our own universe?

        • SaraTonin@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          If we’re in a simulation then we’d have no idea what’s outside that simulation, so we’d have no idea what an easter egg would look like.

          But it’s not my job to find evidence to prove other people’s claims. It’s their job to provide evidence for those claims. That’s true regardless of whether the claim is that we live in a simulation, that we’re ruled over by a benevolent omnipotent god, or whether there’s a teapot orbiting between Mars and the sun.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      You don’t even need to reject the applicability of Gödel, because there’s no proof that our universe doesn’t include a bunch of undecidable things tucked away in the margins. Jupiter could be filled with complete nonsense for all we know.

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    6 days ago

    “Robot, parse this statement, ‘this sentence is false’.” The robot explodes because it cannot understand a logical contradiction.

    I swear, that’s what this argument sounds like to me. Also, I’m genuinely confused why people don’t think that, if we can simulate randomness with computers in our world with pseudo random number generators, why a higher reality wouldn’t be able to simulate what we view as true randomness with a pseudo random number generator or some other device we cannot even begin to comprehend.

    Either this paper is bullshit or they’re talking about some sort of very specific thing that all these articles are blowing out of proportion.

    I don’t believe we are in a simulation but I don’t believe this paper disproves it. Just like I don’t believe in god but I don’t believe the question “can god make a rock so big he can’t pick it up?” disproves god.

    • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      When we dream we often believe it to be reality, despite that in retrospect we can identify clear contradictions with logic in those dreams.

      A Matrix-like simulation doesn’t have to be perfect. We are a bunch of dumb-dumbs who will suspend disbelief quite easily and dismiss those who claim to see a different truth as crazy.

  • Wilco@lemmy.zip
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    6 days ago

    This is exactly the kind of disinformation the simulation would send out to trick us.

  • mhague@lemmy.world
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    7 days 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. By constructing a “silly” argument about how we can’t possibly be in a matrix, they’re revealing just how much we’re still missing.

  • kalkulat@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Oh those mathers. At least scientists are humble enough to recognize that theorums about the physical world can’t be proven.

    • UniversalBasicJustice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 days ago

      So really The Matrix should have taken place in a two dimensional world.

      Alternatively, I would also accept renaming the trilogy to The Array, The Matrix, and The Tensor.

  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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    6 days ago

    I will prove that we’re not in a simulation:

    If we’re in a simulation then whoever is operating it would not want us to know if we’re in a simulation or not.

    Anyone trying to check if we’re in a simulation or not would be stopped by the operator.

    I wasn’t stopped by an operator hence there is no operator and we’re not in a simulation.

    Q.E.D.

    • Ginny [they/she]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 days ago

      Um, why? As a general rule, the point of running a simulation is to find out what happens under some circumstances where you don’t know what happens. If you’re imposing conditions like that, then you aren’t so much running a simulation as you are running some kind of procedural generation.

      • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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        6 days ago

        I’m kidding but since we’re just playing I would say:

        Let’s imagine you want to know who will win the next election. You create detailed simulation of the entire population and run it until the voting day to see how they will vote. If the simulated population realized they are in a simulation the will obviously start behaving in a different way then the real population thus making your simulation useless.

        So I would say unless the goal of the simulation is to see how fast will it realize it’s just a simulation you would try to avoid them finding out.

        Then again, checking if people will realize they are in a simulation is a valid reason to simulate them so it’s possible we’re in a simulation that is supposed to find out it’s a simulation…

  • confuser@lemmy.zip
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    7 days 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
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      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
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        7 days 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.

        This is only possible because we have bodily systems for producing experiences.

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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          7 days ago

          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.

          I think to adopt that argument you have to be operating on some preconceived assumptions.

          Dreams are “real”, in the sense that they are propagated by measurable physical phenomena. Just because some people can experience an amount of choice in their dreams, does not mean they are interacting with “reality”.

          This is only possible because we have bodily systems for producing experiences

          Again… Experiences needs to be defined. There are a lot of theories about how we engage with the world around us in both a physical and metaphysical way.

          • confuser@lemmy.zip
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            7 days ago

            Dreaming is perception unconstrained by sensory input

            Reality is dreaming constrained by sensory input

            • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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              6 days ago

              Dreaming is perception unconstrained by sensory input

              That’s not really true… Dreaming is a cognitive function that is still limited by how we engage with our surroundings normally. Congeniality Blind people do not see in their dreams, and deaf people do not hear.

              Reality is dreaming constrained by sensory input

              Imo that is a bit of a narcissistic way to view reality. Reality is shared, and not defined by an individual person’s sensory input. There are natural laws that persist even if there is no way for a person to perceive them.

              • confuser@lemmy.zip
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                6 days ago

                People blind at birth dream of perceiving hearing unconstrained by sensory input so yes it is true still even for people blind from birth. I have a friend who is this case actually.

                There is nothing narcissistic about it because it only proves that we are individuals with individual experience, something that everyone has been aware of for a long time, we still all operate on the substrate that is outside of our body with its brain and sensory organs.

                • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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                  6 days ago

                  People blind at birth dream of perceiving hearing unconstrained by sensory input so yes it is true still even for people blind from birth. I have a friend who is this case actually.

                  Right, but your original claim was that it was unconstrained by sensory input. The fact that they lack the ability to dream up sensory information they have no previous sensory input for is proof this claim is not true.

                  My point is that you are making an unfounded delineation between sensory input and the brain. That the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system should be viewed as a whole system reliant on each other, rather than a computer with sensory attachments.

                  There is nothing narcissistic about it because it only proves that we are individuals with individual experience, something that everyone has been aware of for a long time, we still all operate on the substrate that is outside of our body with its brain and sensory organs.

                  People having “individual experience” does not preclude people having shared experiences, and shared experiences do not preclude individuality. Your claim is only supported by an underdeveloped preconceived notion of perception and it’s effects on cognition.

                  What you are arguing is similar to Solipsism, which basically boils down to “I can only prove to myself that I process consciousness, and everyone else’s experiences are just subjective observations”. Which means if all observations are subjective in nature, then a person can only really prove that they themselves posses “real” consciousness.

                  Now that might not have been your original point, but it is the natural conclusion of the argument. And others have thought it out and argued against it for a long time. It’s known as the The Problem With Other Minds.