so why isn't the experiment and quantum mechanics just another part of simulation?
harry On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Terry Blanton <hohlr...@gmail.com> wrote: > Interesting article: > > http://www.vice.com/read/whoa-dude-are-we-inside-a-computer-right-now-0000329-v19n9 > > excerpt: > > "The other interesting thing is that the natural world behaves exactly > the same way as the environment of Grand Theft Auto IV. In the game, > you can explore Liberty City seamlessly in phenomenal detail. I made a > calculation of how big that city is, and it turns out it’s a million > times larger than my PlayStation 3. You see exactly what you need to > see of Liberty City when you need to see it, abbreviating the entire > game universe into the console. The universe behaves in the exact same > way. In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a definite state > unless they’re being observed. Many theorists have spent a lot of time > trying to figure out how you explain this. One explanation is that > we’re living within a simulation, seeing what we need to see when we > need to see it." > > <end> > > Not that others have not considered this. For example, in this review > by John Walker of Susskind's "The Cosmic Landscape": > > http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/reading_list/indices/book_487.html > > <excerpt> > > "Suppose this is the case: we're inside a simulation designed by a > freckle-faced superkid for extra credit in her fifth grade science > class. Is this something we could discover, or must it, like so many > aspects of Theory 2, be forever hidden from our scientific > investigation? Surprisingly, this variety of Theory 1 is quite > amenable to experiment: neither revelation nor faith is required. What > would we expect to see if we inhabited a simulation? Well, there would > probably be a discrete time step and granularity in position fixed by > the time and position resolution of the simulation—check, and check: > the Planck time and distance appear to behave this way in our > universe. There would probably be an absolute speed limit to constrain > the extent we could directly explore and impose a locality constraint > on propagating updates throughout the simulation—check: speed of > light. There would be a limit on the extent of the universe we could > observe—check: the Hubble radius is an absolute horizon we cannot > penetrate, and the last scattering surface of the cosmic background > radiation limits electromagnetic observation to a still smaller > radius. There would be a limit on the accuracy of physical > measurements due to the finite precision of the computation in the > simulation—check: Heisenberg uncertainty principle—and, as in games, > randomness would be used as a fudge when precision limits were > hit—check: quantum mechanics." > > <end> > > I just hope it's not running a Windoz OS! > > T >
