Is the universe real!

[Sriram]

Hi everyone,

Here is a BBC article about our universe being a simulated universe. Some scientists are serious about this.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160901-we-might-live-in-a-computer-program-but-it-may-not-matter

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Are you real? What about me?

These used to be questions that only philosophers worried about. Scientists just got on with figuring out how the world is, and why. But some of the current best guesses about how the world is seem to leave the question hanging over science too.

Several physicists, cosmologists and technologists are now happy to entertain the idea that we are all living inside a gigantic computer simulation, experiencing a Matrix-style virtual world that we mistakenly think is real.

Our instincts rebel, of course. It all feels too real to be a simulation.

The idea that we live in a simulation has some high-profile advocates.

There is nothing in principle that rules out the possibility of manufacturing a universe in an artificial Big Bang, filled with real matter and energy, says Guth

However, there is a second scenario. It is this one that has garnered all the attention, because it seems to undermine our very concept of reality.

Musk and other like-minded folk are suggesting that we are entirely simulated beings. We could be nothing more than strings of information manipulated in some gigantic computer, like the characters in a video game.

Even our brains are simulated, and are responding to simulated sensory inputs.

"The Universe can be regarded as a giant quantum computer," says Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If one looks at the 'guts' of the Universe – the structure of matter at its smallest scale – then those guts consist of nothing more than [quantum] bits undergoing local, digital operations."

This gets to the nub of the matter. If reality is just information, then we are no more or less "real" if we are in a simulation or not. In either case, information is all we can be.

Does it make a difference if that information were programmed by nature or by super-intelligent creators?

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I like the idea of a VR world. It fits in with the idea of Maya (illusion).

Cheers.

Sriram   

[wigginhall]

It's arguable that the brain simulates stuff.  But it doesn't matter really, does it?   We can still get on with life. 

[Bramble]

I like the idea of a VR world. It fits in with the idea of Maya (illusion).

Reminds me of an old Zen story about an earnest monk who stubs his toe on a rock. There's blood everywhere and it hurts like anything. If the body's an illusion, he thinks, where's all this pain coming from? Returning to the monastery he meets his teacher who asks him what's wrong. 'The trouble is,' he replies, 'I can't be fooled.'

[wigginhall]

Reminds me of an old Zen story about an earnest monk who stubs his toe on a rock. There's blood everywhere and it hurts like anything. If the body's an illusion, he thinks, where's all this pain coming from? Returning to the monastery he meets his teacher who asks him what's wrong. 'The trouble is,' he replies, 'I can't be fooled.'

Very good.  Do you know the one about the monk trapped in the burning house, and his followers shout to him, 'what does it feel like?', expecting some super-transcendental sermon, and he shouts back, 'fucking hot'.   (Adapted).

[Udayana]

Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever

[Bramble]

Very good.  Do you know the one about the monk trapped in the burning house, and his followers shout to him, 'what does it feel like?', expecting some super-transcendental sermon, and he shouts back, 'fucking hot'.   (Adapted).

I didn't know that one but I like it. Nothing like Zen for bringing one back down to earth.

[wigginhall]

I didn't know that one but I like it. Nothing like Zen for bringing one back down to earth.

Well, I found both aspects in Zen, total ordinariness, and at times, total transcendence.   Of course, they are the same thing!  Rolls around laughing.

[Sriram]

The article is talking about something quite non intuitive and non conformist.....and here is everyone wanting to get back to their comfort zone and total ordinariness!!!   

[Sebastian Toe]

The article is talking about something quite non intuitive and non conformist.....and here is everyone wanting to get back to their comfort zone and total ordinariness!!!   

Is there something wrong with that?

[Bubbles]

Some scientists argue that there are already good reasons to think we are inside a simulation. One is the fact that our Universe looks designed.

Yes people have thought that for the last few thousand years and more, that's what religion says.

 

Isn't this a case of scientists coming up with the same answer, but with a twist?

[Bubbles]

The constants of nature, such as the strengths of the fundamental forces, have values that look fine-tuned to make life possible. Even small alterations would mean that atoms were no longer stable, or that stars could not form. Why this is so is one of the deepest mysteries in cosmology.
One possible answer invokes the "multiverse". Maybe there is a plethora of universes, all created in Big Bang-type events and all with different laws of physics. By chance, some of them would be fine-tuned for life – and if we were not in such a hospitable universe, we would not ask the fine-tuning question because we would not exist.

 

Different universes with different laws of physics? How does that work then?

Sounds like " once upon a time" where you cross into another universe where magic really exists..........

The Pagans have that though as " the veil is thin at certain times and places and fairies come through"

The wild hunt etc


The mind boggles!

[Bubbles]

Perhaps this has an otherworldly explanation then 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20140916-mystery-fairy-circles-defy-explanation

[Sriram]

They said at one time that there is no difference between science and magic...because all the things that people regarded as magical were invented by science & technology in recent centuries (guns, airplanes, TV, computers).

Essentially something remains magical only till we understand it....after that it is science. Anything can move from magic to art to science. Its an attitude thing.

Similarly, even other worlds that were considered as 'supernatural' can move into the realm of science. Once NDE's are understood fully, the other world will also be natural and only a part of normal life & death. Nothing supernatural or magical about it anymore.

The idea of the simulated world is only a metaphor for a world created by mental forces. A VR world is created by the mind....and it doesn't really exist. Similarly this world also seems real only as long as we remain immersed in it.  Many people who had NDE's have claimed that the other world was more 'real' than the physical world.

[Aruntraveller]

Sririam

I suspect you need to look up the definition of magic. Then rephrase your comments accordingly.

Some things may appear magical but they are not.

Things do not move from magic to science. They move from the unknown to the known.

[floo]

Sririam

I suspect you need to look up the definition of magic. Then rephrase your comments accordingly.

Some things may appear magical but they are not.

Things do not move from magic to science. They move from the unknown to the known.

In a world before science as we know it today, it was excusable to look for a magical explanation, but no longer.

[torridon]

The article is talking about something quite non intuitive and non conformist.....and here is everyone wanting to get back to their comfort zone and total ordinariness!!!   

We have been living with a flavour of this idea for thousands of years already - theism says that we live in a reality devised by a higher being; the difference being that theism has lots of ideas about the nature of the creator being.

[Nearly Sane]

To be fair to Sriram, I don't think he is suggesting that things actually move from being magic to natural, rather the perceptiin of them does. In that view you can call it magic or unknown, I don't see that it matters. At base Sriram takes a position that things can be investigated though I find he attributes causes to easily to his own biases.

[Nearly Sane]

We have been living with a flavour of this idea for thousands of years already - theism says that we live in a reality devised by a higher being; the difference being that theism has lots of ideas about the nature of the creator being.

just to note that the article and indeed Sriram's op makes that clear as well. That what we may perceive is not how things are is the generating issue behind reams of philosophy (some of which is even readable).

One issue that seems to appear here and indeed much of the idea of some form of 'creation' is whether any such thing could be seen to be not also created.  Can a thing-in-itself as I was discussing with Jack Knave elsewhere ever be sure that it knows it is a thing-in-itself.

As these things go, I found Leonard Susskind's idea that we are the hologrammatic representation of the information bleed from beyond the event horizon of a black hole more interesting as it covers the idea of information and moves beyond it.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It's arguable that the brain simulates stuff.  But it doesn't matter really, does it?   We can still get on with life.

Smacks of ''Don't trouble your pretty little heads'' or at worse ''get back to your hutches'' Wigginhall.

[torridon]

If you got into your tardis and went forward 5 seconds into the future, would anything exist when you got opened the door and looked out ?

Just something to think about .....