That’s assuming the simulator is in the same universe as the one it’s attempting to simulate, which is indeed paradoxical.
At this point the question is far too open-ended and plain silly to try and give an actual answer to.
Existance is a fact… Doesn’t matter if we are all in a simulation. That simulation needs to be controlled somehow, which implies existance. And a simulator implies someone built the simulation, which means life. Life is a fact, I have no idea what you are talking about Drenius…
@BurntPizza: It cannot have any final answer, how could it, but it is stil an interesting topic to discuss.
I didn’t say it’s too difficult to get the answer, merely a answer. Of course we can’t know the answer.
Indeed, it is interesting. But silly nonetheless.
@opiop: No. Not existence in sense of ‘is alive’ - forget that. If I die, I am no longer alive, but still existing, at least my body is.
If ‘somebody’ built the ‘simulation’ this ‘person’ hast to ‘exist’ - but what [***] is ‘existence’?
EDIT: Sorry for so many ‘’ - but they are necessary here.
That’s questionable. Do you really exist when you are dead? Your body exists, sure, but are you still there? Its your soul that exists and your mind that makes you who you are. If you die, do you truly still exist?
Could you please try to forget everything you know about the world around you before you try to understand how it works? This will take forever else.
Dude, c’mon.
Gettin impatient, sorry.
You have somewhere you need to be and want the answer before then?
You’re not making sense here.
That was just offensive Drenius. Do you know how the universe works? No? Then don’t tell me I don’t either.
Thinking about it some more…
Some of the most powerful computer systems are simulating the weather on earth with a pretty good degree of (short-term) accuracy. As CPUs get ever more powerful, it’s reasonable to assume that models (rather than a simulations) will be made of the universe. That could get interesting! In the same way that our weather models showed the el nino current to be highly significant to our climate, maybe universe models will show us things we never guessed at? Wormholes maybe?
You are right, of course. However thats not a paradox just something beyond our grasp.
Our universe is the only amount of reality we know, there might be more, that universe is expanding “into” existence a room of existence if you will.
why that room is there or how is a question but not a paradox.
the universe could also turn non existing space, negative reality if you will into positive while expanding, during that process
point is yeah, we dont know but I dont see the paradox. A paradox implies that assumption A and B are both right but cancel each other out. like the drake equation
I mean our definitions of reality and existence are getting kinda muddy because we are wandering into philosophy since we are not that far in science.
@opiop: You are right. You dont seem to have got what I mean, but probably because I explained it bad. Let it rest in peace please.
@SimonH: Nice to see somebody back on topic. (Edit: Cero too.)
Let’s assume that we had a simulated universe running on a computer. A fully deterministic universe without any quantum randomness.
We have an initial state S and a function f that transforms the current state into a future state. f contains therefore the complete laws of physics of that universe.
That means any event that ever happens is fully determined by S and f alone and completely independant of the computer.
One question here is - what happens when intelligent beings evolve in that simulation? They would not be able to determine if they are simulated or not.
Again - anything that happens depends on S and f alone. So they couldn’t possibly build an instrument that measures anything that isn’t derived from S or f like for example the computer or the outside world.
The paradoxical thing about this is - Even if they somehow came to the believe that they are simulated, they wouldn’t be able to tell whether the simulation is running or not, or whether it ever run at all. Because that information is not contained in either S or f.
It is certainly a very deep question.
Currently, for us to create semi-accurate simulations, we have to understand all the parts of the object we are simulating. Since we do not actually understand all the parts of the universe, I’d say that currently making a simulation is just plain impossible. So, currently, I believe it is impossible for human beings to create a valid simulation of the universe. (Maybe parts of the universe, but not as a whole.)
If we expand this question to the future…
Understanding of the universe and all its parts will completely remove the need for a simulation. If we knew how to create our own planets, our own stars, etc. Chances are we would just choose a section of the universe and create a real-life simulation on it. There would be no need to recreate it on binary when we can just use the universe as our playing ground.
Honestly, I believe the human race will cease to exist by the time this is figured out. Computers, no matter how advanced they are, have a weakness that they can only be represented in a series of numerical bytes. Recreating something like the universe on a machine with limitations only limits what you’ll be able to create.
As far as we know, the universe is still expanding. Even if we dedicated all our current computing power to this, it probably still wouldn’t be enough :P…
Without getting too philosophical:
I believe yes, theoretically it could be. If you consider that the universe and everything within it is the result of interaction between particles (of some description) and forces, then yes it could be modelled. Providing that you know the initial state, and precisely how everything interacts.
Practically, no it couldn’t. We don’t have the computational power, nor complete enough understanding of the ‘system’ to do it.
Getting very philosophical:
Don’t you find this very, very interesting? This leads me towards the belief that choice is an illusion, and that whatever has happened in the past was always going to happen, given the current values of ‘S’ and ‘f’ of the universe in which we currently exist. Not in a ‘predetermined fate’ kind of way (although I guess it is related), but in a ‘we have multiple choices, but we were always going to make the choice that we made’ kind of way.
I once saw it explained with a snooker analogy in some strange popular science video. If you could set up a snooker game so that the balls are in the exact same position at the start of the game, the environmental conditions are the exact same, and you break with the exact same application of force, then the balls will move the exact same way each and every time. I.e. the outcome is the same, given the exact same initial state and influences. Could this not then be extended to the universe? If you could ‘reset’ the universe to time = 0, give it the exact same state as our current universe, then let it run its course again, there is no reason to suspect that the outcome would be any different to now. I.e. I’d still be sitting here and writing this post, you would be sitting here reading it, I would’ve had the same thing for lunch, so on and so forth.
…interesting stuff…
Some people seem to assume you have to simulate the universe in realtime, before it is considered a true simulation.
Let’s assume we have a universe consisting of 2614 bodies.
Now we create a simulator that can handle 1 body-interaction per second. It would take 21227 seconds to advance to the next state, so it would take roughly 21271 seconds to simulate 1 second. Now we set the initial state to be our current universe. Although it will take eons to simulate one tick (a planck time), any ‘human’ (an arbitrary group of particles in our simulation), would live out their life exactly the same as how they would in our universe.
Given limited (not unlimited!) computing power and endless time, where the simulator would run outside of our universe, it is trivial to simulate a universe, and there is no reason to exclude the possibility that our universe is such a extraordinarily slow running simulation.
My response was for can “we” simulate our universe. Is our universe a simulation? Possible. The earth might be flat (infinitely more probable) or we might live in “The Matrix”.