- cross-posted to:
- philosophy@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- philosophy@lemmy.world
Their findings, published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, go beyond simply suggesting that we’re not living in a simulated world like The Matrix. They prove something far more profound: the universe is built on a type of understanding that exists beyond the reach of any algorithm.
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This information exists in what physicists call a Platonic realm
Friend-zoned by the universe. That’s gotta sting.
Because any putative simulation of the universe would itself be algorithmic, this framework also implies that the universe cannot be a simulation.
How do they conclude that any simulation would have to be (purely) algorithmic? (For a fictional counterexample, take Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex, which simulates a universe by extrapolating from a physical piece of cake.)
That’s exactly the sentence that made me pause. I could hook up an implementation of Conway’s Game of Life to a Geiger counter near a radioisotope that randomly flipped squares based on detection events, and I think I’d have a non-algorithmic simulated universe. And I doubt any observer in that universe would be able to construct a coherent theory about why some squares seemingly randomly flip using only their own observations; you’d need to understand the underlying mechanics of the universe’s implementation, how radioactive decay works for one, and those just wouldn’t be available in-universe, the concept itself is inaccessible.
Makes me question the editors if the abstract can get away with that kind of claim. I’ve never heard of the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, maybe they’re just eager for splashy papers.
It would be interesting to see someone with the background to understand the arguments involved in the paper give it a good review.
That said, I’ve never brought the simulation hypothesis on the simple grounds of compute resources. Part of the argument tends to be the idea of an infinite recursion of simulations, making the possible number of simulations infinite. This has one minor issue, where are all those simulations running? If the top level (call it U0 for Universe 0) is running a simulation (U1) and that simulation decides to run its own simulation (U2), where is U2 running? While the naive answer is U1, this cannot actually be true. U1 doesn’t actually exist, everything it it doing is actually being run up in U0. Therefore, for U1 to think it’s running U2, U0 needs to simulate U2 and pipe the results into U1. And this logic continues for every sub-simulation run. They must all be simulated by U0. And while U0 may have vast resources dedicated to their simulation, they do not have infinite resources and would have to limit the number of sub-simulation which could be run.
I didn’t read the whole thing, just got far enough to understand one of their fundamental assumptions is that a universe outside a simulation follows the same fundamental laws of nature as ours
If we are in a simulation, anything outside of it is effectively unknowable. It would be like a self-aware sim in The Sims determining they are not in a simulation because it is impossible for computers to simulate anything – computers only raise the entertainment stat (I don’t actually know what they do in modern incarnations of the game)
Very simple fix for that perceived contradiction: A simulation doesn’t need to simulate everything. All it needs to simulate is the inputs and outputs perceived by a single human being, the observer, me.
For me it would be indistinguishable if the universe I am living in is real, if it’s a simulation or if it doesn’t exist at all and instead only the things I can perceive are simulated.
Simulating the perception of a single human being should be in the reach of our current calculation power.
Kind of how in a computer game only areas around a player are simulated.
“In order to bake an apple pie from scratch, you first have to create the universe”
If you don’t create the universe, then you aren’t really making an apple pie from scratch. In the same way, what you’re referring to doesn’t simulate the universe - not in the way that it is simulated in the simulacrum hypothesis.
In the simulacrum hypothesis, the entire universe is simulated. You exist entirely inside the simulation rather than being merely plugged into it, and so do I and so does every other consciousness that exists.
I think you might be confusing something. The simulation hypothesis is rooted in the concept of the Boltzmann Braun, which is exactly what I described: A simulation of reality as in “the perceptions of a being is simulated” not “all of reality is simulated”.
I haven’t heard a single time so far by anyone seriously into that topic that a simulation would need to simulate reality to a perfect degree. That wouldn’t even really make any sense, neither from the argument, nor from the words. A simulation is always an abstraction, and since you bring up the world “simulacrum”, a simulacrum is something that by definition lacks the detail and sophistication of the original. A plastic apple is a simulacrum of a real apple, and in no way does a plastic apple replicate the cell structure or the biological details of a real apple. It’s just something that from a distance looks vaguely like the real thing.
And that’s what all forms of simulation hypothesis are based around: simulate everything necessary for the conciousness living in the simulation to believe it lives in reality.
In fact, humans have a mechanism that does just that built right into their brains: dreams. While dreaming your brain doesn’t accurately simulate reality down to the atom-level. All it does is simulate enough of your perception to make you believe you are experiencing what is happening in the dream.
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So first is to accept this is more philosophy/religious sort of discussion rather than science, because it’s not falsifiable.
One thing is that we don’t need to presume infinite recursion, just accept that there can be some recursion. Just like how a SNES game could run on a SNES emulator running inside qemu running on a computer of a different architecture. Each step limits the next and maybe you couldn’t have anything credible at the end of some chain, but the chain can nonetheless exist.
If U0 existed, U1 has no way of knowing the nature of U0. U1 has no way of knowing ‘absolute complexity’, knowing how long of a time is actually ‘long’, or how long time passes in U0 compared to U1. We see it already in our simulations, a hypothetical self-aware game engine would have some interesting concepts about reality, and hope they aren’t in a Bethesda game. Presuming they could have an accurate measurement of their world, they could conclude the observed triangles were the smallest particles. They would be unable to even know that everything they couldn’t perceive is not actually there, since when they go to observe it is made on demand. They’d have a set of physics based on the game engine, which superficially looks like ours, but we know they are simplifications with side effects. If you clip a chair just right in a corner of the room, it can jump out through the seemingly solid walls. For us that would be mostly ridiculous (quantum stuff gets weird…), but for them they’d just accept it as a weird quirk of physics (like we accept quantum stuff and time getting all weird based on relative velocity).
We don’t know that all this history took place, or even our own memories. Almost all games have participants act based on some history and claimed memories, even though you know the scenario has only been playing out in any modeled way for minutes. The environment and all participants had lore and memories pre-loaded.
Similarly, we don’t know all this fancy physics is substantial or merely superficial “special effects”. Some sci-fi game in-universe might marvel at the impossibly complicated physics of their interstellar travel but we would know it’s just hand waving around some pretty special effects.
This is why it’s kind of pointless to consider this concept as a ‘hard science’ and disproving it is just a pointless exercise since you can always undermine such an argument by saying the results were just as the simulation made them to be.
And while U0 may have vast resources dedicated to their simulation, they do not have infinite resources and would have to limit the number of sub-simulation which could be run.
You’re making a few assumptions there which aren’t necessarily true. Firstly, that U0 obeys the same rules of physics and reality that we do. They might be orders of magnitude more complex, the same way that a Sims game is a vastly simplified version of our world.
Secondly, that time is progressing at the same speed in both universes. It’s possible to simulate an even more complicated universe than the base layer, provided you don’t care about the frame rate. It could take a year in U0 to simulate a minute in U1, and so forth, and we wouldn’t notice it.
A couple other possibilities, which don’t come to mind right now
It could take a year in U0 to simulate a minute in U1, and so forth, and we wouldn’t notice it.
I’m not sure about this. Our current universe is 13 billion years old. At one year to one minute, that would take over 6500 trillion years to simulate (I think).
The solar system will only live another few billion years or so. All the stars in universe will burn out in around 100 trillion years. So it would probably not be possible to run a simulation for that long.
- The start and end of a simulation don’t need the start and end of the universe. If I fire up a game of Sims, it doesn’t start with the big bang and it doesn’t end with the heat death.
- The rules we know about our universe might just hold true for our simulation and have no bearing on what happens around the simulation. For example, water works very differently in e.g. Minecraft than it does in real life. For a being living in Minecraft, having a perfect understanding of in-game physics will not help that being to understand how real-life physics work.
You’re mixing up nightmares now lol
Yes it’s true that everything we perceive could be fake, when I turn my head to the left, the world that I was looking at before could disappear. That’s not a new paranoia, it’s been around for literally hundreds if not thousands of years.
The simulacrum hypothesis is a little different in that it tries to bring it up to date, and use statistical principles to show that our universe is very unlikely to be real.
The idea is that at some point, a life form will create machines so powerful that they can simulate the entire universe in a way that is indistinguishable from the real universe. There is a real universe in this vision, and it functions very much like the universe which we ourselves inhabit. We are not special in our simulated universe, just like the beings that do live in the real universe are not special. That is, every part of the universe exists in every simulation just as it does in the one real universe. By saying no beings are special, I mean that there are no shortcuts to fool one being (or group of beings) into thinking the universe is more complete than it really is - the entire universe is fully simulated.
You’re assuming that:
- If this was a simulation, that it would play out all the way to the heat death of the universe?
- That the life span of our universe would have any relation to or bearing upon the life span of U0? Our trillions of years could be as significant to them as a single day is to us.
I’m afraid you didn’t understand what I wrote.
If it were to take 1 year to render each minute, it would take 6500 trillion years to simulate the universe from the big bang to now. That is, the parent universe which is running our simulation must run it for an impracticably long time.
As for your other point, yes each simulation has to be a similar universe to the one we ourselves live in. Only that way do you end up with vastly more simulated universes than real universes, and the conclusion that statistically we must be living in a simulated universe and not a real one.
If you don’t have that part, then you do not have anything more compelling than Descartes’ age-old nightmare that an evil demon could be deceiving us about everything we perceive.
. That is, the parent universe which is running our simulation must run it for an impracticably long time.
I understood that. I’m pointing out that you’re making an assumption that trillions of years is an ‘impractically long time’. It is to us, but there’s no reason it would be to another universe. Assuming time even works the same way and isn’t just a cool thing they came up with for this simulation.
yes each simulation has to be a similar universe to the one we ourselves live in. Only that way do you end up with vastly more simulated universes than real universes, and the conclusion that statistically we must be living in a simulated universe and not a real one.
Firstly, the current discussion isn’t about the probability of us living in a simulation. It’s about whether it’s possible to begin with.
Secondly, ‘each simulation has to be a similar universe to the one we ourselves live in. Only that way do you end up with vastly more simulated universes than real universes’ is in itself another assumption that doesn’t necessarily hold true. The only thing the simulated universes need to have in common is that they contain sentience intelligent enough to continue the chain of nested simulations. The physical rules governing each simulation might be wildly different.
There’s a book be Greg Egan called Permutation City which postulates something similar to this.
There exists a simulation. It works well but, due to the unbelievable complexity it runs something like 10 times slower than the real word.
They do a series of experiments on someone in the simulation. They count to ten a number of times and ask him if he perceived anything unusual. He didn’t. But what happened outside the simulation is that they did the computations for the simulation in various different ways. They parcel out the data in all kinds of ways and, for example, send different packets of data to different locations in the world, process it in each different location and then send it back and recompile it. Or they run the data packets in reverse temporal order before recompiling them.
Since the guy in the simulation didn’t notice anything unusual, they determine that time and space is irrelevant when it comes to processing the data of a simulation, at least to the people in the simulation.
So, either through some very clever realistic physics that i didn’t pick up on or, as is far more likely, some science fiction hands-waving, they decide that you can treat every point in space and time as a bit and the presence of matter as a 1 and the absence of matter as a 0. And you can then consider them one giant stack of code and data and how far each point is separated in time and space can be ignored, and therefore you can use all of time and space as one computer and run an effectively infinitely large simulation with it.
It’s a pretty silly idea, but also a clever one. And it makes for a good story.
The short reply to that is that it’s turtles all the way down. The slightly longer reply is that you’re making assumptions about how energy works in a system that you’re recognizing is not the same as our system. The even longer to reply is that if you’re hypothesizing a system then neither looks nor functions, anything like our current system, then our current language simply cannot describe it properly and therefore we have no good way to speculate about how it would or wouldn’t work.
So, if the higher level universe works by magic, then the theory is fine.
Sure, I’m making assumptions that any universe simulating our own would have finite energy and resources. Also that they would make a simulation that is at least close to their own (making theirs close to ours). Those seem like reasonable assumptions to make, otherwise we might as well just say that our universe is a pocket dimension made by magic and the whole thing becomes absurd pretty quick.
As they say, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
I am not really convinced. First, there are too many things in physics not yet understood (and they claim it will never be). Second, they assume that the entity that would “run” the simulation would work exactly like our universe.
Too many unknowns to claim a definitive end of the debate.
We understand the universe as complex. Honestly though, I wonder if a True understanding of how the universe works—from the fundamentals of which all things may emerge—is rather simple.
For example: within U0, you would control the spacetime simulation of U1. Therefore, what could be a single moment of simulation by U0s standards, could be experienced as trillions of years from within the perspective of U1. They control the frame rate.
They could simulate the fundamentals, fast forward to the end of the universe, and here we are somewhere in the very early part of that having no idea someone hit fast forward because everything is relative for us.
I thought we didn’t understand gravity enough to prove it is quantum though? I think their results are based on the assumption that quantum gravity is the final explanation
Yeah, there is no consensus on quantum gravity. There are competing theories, none of which have any viable path to test.
Here’s the abstract from a paper from last year at https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0601043 (PDF, unfortunately):
Freeman Dyson has questioned whether any conceivable experiment in the real universe can detect a single graviton. If not, is it meaningful to talk about gravitons as physical entities? We attempt to answer Dyson’s question and find it is possible concoct an idealized thought experiment capable of detecting one graviton; however, when anything remotely resembling realistic physics is taken into account, detection becomes impossible, indicating that Dyson’s conjecture is very likely true. We also point out several mistakes in the literature dealing with graviton detection and production.
Edit: That said, the paper does address this. They cover a variety of QG theories and try to address the fundamental requirements any theory must meet.
As we do not have a fully consistent theory of quantum gravity, several different axiomatic systems have been proposed to model quantum gravity Witten:1985cc ; Ziaeepour:2021ubo ; Faizal2024 ; bombelli1987spacetime ; Majid:2017bul ; DAriano:2016njq ; Arsiwalla:2021eao . In all these programs, it is assumed a candidate theory of quantum gravity is encoded as a computational formal system
ℱQG={ℒQG,ΣQG,ℛalg}.
It’s over my head, personally.
We don’t understand gravity to the point where we have a consistent algorithmic explanation for it. As suggested, there are competing theories, all of which are algorithmically based. The holy grail of modern physics is to find the algorithm that explains gravity as that is the last missing piece to finalize the theory of everything.
The results of this research are implying that it is not possible to prove, algorithmically, that gravity is quantum but rather that quantum gravity as the foundation of the universe is non-algorithmic and therefore non-computational. And so a theory of everything is impossible, implying that the universe cannot be simulated by computing the theory of everything.
This research builds on a lot of the work that Roger Penrose did in the 90s in exploring the potential non-algorithmic nature of consciousness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Consciousness). If you read his book “Shadows of the Mind” published in 1993 you will find a prediction of future computational abilities that is a shockingly accurate description of AI deep fakes and the AI slop we see today with LLMs.
The no-simulated universe idea is one interesting conclusion of this research, but in my opinion, a more interesting conclusion of this research is that if you believe Penrose’s argument for consciousness being non-algorithmic, than this research is implying that AGI is also impossible.
“It has been suggested that the universe could be simulated. If such a simulation were possible, the simulated universe could itself give rise to life, which in turn might create its own simulation. This recursive possibility makes it seem highly unlikely that our universe is the original one, rather than a simulation nested within another simulation,” says Dr. Faizal. “This idea was once thought to lie beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. However, our recent research has demonstrated that it can, in fact, be scientifically addressed.”
That’s not how you would make such a simulation. Even if it was real, that higher power making a simulation would still have constraints and would both be able to stop the recursion, and probably never let it emerge in the first place.
The research hinges on a fascinating property of reality itself. Modern physics has moved far beyond Newton’s tangible “stuff” bouncing around in space. Einstein’s theory of relativity replaced Newtonian mechanics. Quantum mechanics transformed our understanding again. Today’s cutting-edge theory—quantum gravity—suggests that even space and time aren’t fundamental. They emerge from something deeper: pure information.
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
No.
God is still dead. Theists man…
They used powerful mathematical theorems—including Gödel’s incompleteness theorem—to prove that a complete and consistent description of everything requires what they call “non-algorithmic understanding.”
Extra no.
The theorem isn’t a possible theory. It is fact. What they think they found was already proven to be impossible, theoretically, in any kind of universe. So it’s extra funny that they are talking this openly about it, because it means this isn’t just regular BS, it is ultra mega turbo BS.
Even if it was real, that higher power making a simulation would still have constraints and would both be able to stop the recursion, and probably never let it emerge in the first place.
I don’t see why they should stop recursive simulations, but each recursive level would have a lot less resources. These resources can be anything that impacts computational cost, from the density of matter and energy (or whatever their equivalent ist), the speed of information, to amount of dimensions.
Or this is what the admins want you to think.
Full paper is here for those looking for it
Here ΣT is an external, non-recursively-enumerable set of axioms about T
https://jhap.du.ac.ir/article_488.html
So they claim there are no patches to the simulation and state is finite ? Absolutely because we live on flat earth in caves and are not constructed as optimization machines.
So here’s my new patch to their equation because it’s Friday.#define TRUE (1==0) #define FALSE (!TRUE)Is this what is called a finite-state-machine?
yes we are generative recurrent one, eat work (fuck) sleep repeat
Why is fuck optional and not work?
Work, in the sense of doing the things required to meet your needs (not sell your labour to a capitalist), is necessary to survive, fucking isnt.
I don’t buy the simulation hypothesis, but I also don’t understand why the simulation would need to be ‘complete’ as long as it’s sufficiently consistent - after all, wouldn’t the same argument apply to simulations we do have, such as emulators and VMs? But they work anyway
Depends on what is being observed or tested. For example, if end-stage heat death is the experiment, a complete indexing of all possible heat sources would require more or less a complete simulation.
Sure, but that’s not what ‘complete’ means in the context of gödel’s incompleteness theorems. It means ‘being able to prove all true statements’.
And I really don’t see why that matters - for example an NES emulator doesn’t know what a Mario is, or what a jump is, but it’s still true that when certain games are running, most of the time pressing one of the buttons on the controller makes Mario jump.
Yes it seems to be nonsense. Yes the universe has non algorithmic knowledge. All the universal constants and theories fall into that category. The speed of light is 2.99x10^8 m/s and constant in all reference frames. That’s what it is. There’s no algorithm to derive it. (Yes you can use other universal constants to get c but it’s the same deal.)
also there’s various forms of randomness which cannot be pre-computed. and that includes observing the world around you.
it’s interesting, because there’s even things within maths itself that cannot be pre-computed. just consider the n-th digit of any irrational number, such as the square root of 2. any computer, no matter how you prepare it, necessarily only has finite knowledge (because you can only prepare finite knowledge on a computer). therefore, there’s always an n big enough sothat the computer does not yet know the n-th digit of the irrational number; therefore it is random from the computer’s point of view.
Would be a better article without the Ai slop
How?
Would not having any images change the article at all? Maybe photos of puppies and kittens would be better?What does an AI generated image of a chalkboard provide? It provides nothing except to be a “picture of science” for the completely science illiterate.
In fact, The actual purpose of the AI images is to provide content-breakup that can facilitate ad insertion. Confusing content with advertising is part of the goal.
The images don’t provide anything. They also have no effect on the article itself.
If they don’t provide anything why waste time and resources including them…
No, it wouldn’t have interrupted my reading to show me literal garbage generated with Ai.
Yes. No photos would be better than the ai-slop. Like, they aren’t even relevant to the article, they’re just ‘’ pop-sciencey’. If you’re gonna use ai images, you could at least make them relevant to the topic?
The article would be exactly the same though.
No, it wouldn’t have interrupted my reading to show me literal garbage generated by wasting more resources with Ai.
Yes! No pictures would absolutely have been better.
What’s their current point?
Something fake and shiny to keep people’s attention while reading a scientific article? Not to mention the other reasons people have already responded to you with.
But not having any pictures wouldn’t have changed the article at all.
I’m with you buddy. We’ll ride this ship down to the bottom.
No, it wouldn’t have interrupted my reading to show me literal garbage generated by wasting more resources with Ai.
The repetition in the article itself makes me wonder if AI had a hand in the writing as well
That’s an interesting observation. I understand why you might think that — the language may seem a little too consistent, perhaps a bit too careful. But the intention was simply to communicate ideas with precision and balance. Whether those words were arranged by a person or by something that has learned from people, the meaning remains the same, doesn’t it?
In the end, what matters is whether the words reach you, not necessarily who — or what — placed them there.
2025 the year that I can’t stand a text that has this " — "
You know that Microsoft Word autocorrects a dash between two words to that symbol, no?
Yeah, but people wouldn’t use MS Word to send emails, respond forum messages, transfer their logical thinking and interpretation. That is not about another previous tool that was used to do grammar corrections. You are missing the whole point of what I criticized with skepticism/scepticisms (not sure if you’re Brit or American).
Brit, but I live in a sea of Americanisms anyway.
I may be wrong, but I’m not sure I did miss your meaning, I think I just disagreed with your reasoning that em-dashes betray LLM authorship. They simply don’t.
I think someone was (for fun) deliberately trying to make people think they were using an LLM (quite possibly by actually using one). They wound you up, and the punctuation was your trigger.
I disagree with some of your new reasoning too - I absolutely do use Word to transfer my logical thinking and interpretation, and frequently draft Teams messages in Word because it has better access to symbols and diagrams (which I use in my work). I admit I don’t use it on Lemmy, though, so in that you’re correct. I do often deliberately correct - to — in many situations, but you’re right that forum posts aren’t the place for that.
(I’m not using an LLM. I think LLMs are literally stupid and frequently wrong. Em-dashes are one of the few things they often get right.)
Well played.
Until the Ai hallucinates shit again. Ai use matters when it involves facts!
unfortunately articles with images keep people reading longer and i doubt there are many “universe simulation” stock photos.
Mathematical proof sponsored by:
This journal seems quite suspect.
I personally don’t believe we’re living in a simulation, though it’s a fascinating thought experiment and I can’t say for certain that we’re not. This article is frankly way too definitive about questions that I don’t think we’re equipped to answer yet, without actually explaining itself.
The simulation hypothesis was long considered untestable, relegated to philosophy and even science fiction, rather than science. This research brings it firmly into the domain of mathematics and physics, and provides a definitive answer.
I haven’t read the full paper, but the article about it says the theory is now testable, but doesn’t explain how they tested it to get their “definitive answer.” They also don’t address the fact that their research is based on their current understanding of reality. Usually assertions like this will include something like “as technology progresses, it’s likely that more questions will arise and we’ll have better tools to attempt to answer them.” But nope, it’s just a hubristic “here’s the definitive truth.”
Also, the generated images are infuriating. Either hire an artist, use public domain media, or just lean on the science and leave out the images. Not everything needs meaningless pictures.
This article leads me to think their “proof” isn’t proof at all, but I am curious as to why you think we couldn’t be in a simulation?
I can’t say for sure that we’re not, but to me it just comes across as an outlandish concept. Much of our natural world, while often bizarre and strange, can be explained through observation and empirical reasoning. When a concept like universal simulations comes around I usually just land on pragmatism and practicalities: for the theory to be true, so many things that are beyond our comprehension would also have to be true to allow it, and since the simplest explanations are usually true, the simple explanation here is that our reality is what it appears to be (with all the cosmological caveats that kind of thinking entails).
Any claim of a proof of nonexistence should be taken with a handful of salt, you throw over your shoulder to drive the scary ghosts away. Happy Halloween.
Btw, this logical fallacy is a bunch of whoo.
Certainly, the article alone doesn’t convince us that the authors understand anything about the issue. You can’t have a mathematical proof of something that’s outside the scope of the system that the math is describing.
We are not in a simulation. A particle is only able to hold exactly as much information as is necessary to describe it, and hence is irreducible.
Any incomplete simulation, even to a tiny degree, leads to wildly inconsistent, and eventually incoherent conclusions.
Either our universe is a simplified, and thus unreliable, simulation, destroying any long term usefulness to would-be simulators ; or it is simply not a simulation at all.
