in case today's string theory thread isn't entertaining enough material for tonight's psychonauting, try this on for size: mutliple groups of scientists this year have decided it's now possible to test an Oxford scientist's theory from 2003 that we are living in somebody's "Matrix"-like computer simulation, and that we could even attempt to communicate with them.
Coffee, tea, or acacia?

..thanks pau..now that's entertaining!
now, what if they are actually being simulated in someone else's programme as they simulate us..?

WOW!!

i remember reading the simulation argument, but i would have never imagined a way to be able to test the theory...

this is just too cool.

I know kung-fu.

it's all lies.

hahaha benzyme

i love the first comment,

Begs the question;
Does god use Windows, Mac or Linux??

Reminds me of a movie, The Thirteenth Floor

obviously open-source.
its difficult to determine anything beyond that, its probably not C-based programming language, unless dennis ritchie was there beforehand - unless dennis ritchie was god incarnate to teach us what we need to know to simulate our own universe (thus adding one more layer to the fractal).

Thanks for sharing that.. But it's funny that the Matrix always gets mentioned in news like these. These simulation theories are not really suggesting it's a Matrix-like simulation at all, as a Matrix-like simulation would be a very high-level simulation where we would have similar bodies directly connected to this ego. The actual simulation theory is more like being able to program the initial conditions of a big bang and then pressing "start". The matrix-style "jacked in" theory is very cyberpunkish and cool and all but far more improbable than the actual big bang -simulation theory.

If this really is a simulation like that, then the fractal nature of that intrigues me so much.. Because essentially if the "original" reality could reach a state of technology where they could simulate a universe, then the simulated universe would have to be able to do the same thing eventually. Just from that assumption follows that there would then already be an infinitely deep fractal of simulations where the concept of an "original" reality ceases to mean anything. Just because we haven't started our own little simulation yet, doesn't mean that it hasn't already happened from the perspective of the layer above us, as obviously the concept of a time wouldn't be shared between the layers.

And another funny thing is that some people are scared that it's true, but it wouldn't really change anything, if this really is just a simulation layer then it would feel exactly like THIS wouldn't it? There's no point in being somehow disappointed that none of this is real, because as you can see, it's just as real as it needs to be. Realness is an attribute of subjectivity, and there is no "real realness". Enjoy whatever vague amount of realness you happen to be blessed with, as it's all still better than nothing.

That's just my take on it though, as a simulated dude..

would this implicate consciousness could be a product of a computer program? (if we are conscious and we are a product of a computated simulation).
or is the possibility of the existence of consciousness originating from outside of this simulation(a virtual reality of sorts) still open?




its particularly interesting to me because as a child i had all these intuitive beliefs, and the universe being a virtual-reality video game of sorts was one of them. its kinda funny as i returned to my childhood intuitive beliefs(they were squashed by christianity, then returned to me when i resumed thinking for myself. only then they were based off intuition rather than logic) which were surprisingly logical in retrospect.

maybe i am a broken computer who dwells on computing things as he once did... but i normally never think about these beliefs until i come across them again (this time being a perfect example - i didn't even think about it until after considering this for some time).

Yup.

If that is so, the question about whether androids dream of electric sheep or flesh sheep would be irrelevant, because flesh and electric equal the same. The only difference is whether we are aware of that equality or not.

We could find out that the speed of light reflects the limit speed of the processor running the physical simulation, but then what about consciousness? are altered states a hack, or implicit in the original software? Fun stuff, but I cannot see how it would have any applications other than moving the interrogation mark one step higher.

Lie group E8?

This was a great read thx for linking it Pau. Ive found the simulation theory fascinating since I heard it. I use even think about it slightly less advanced as a kid.

Cant wait to hear what the results are.

I remeber reading that some evidense for this theory was that when you magnify things down to as much as possible things begin to pixalate. Super kooky stuff.

This is cool, but I wouldn't call it a test, at least not a reliable one. How do we know that computers, software, and even numbers/mathematics work the same way in a higher reality as they do in ours? I gather that they are simply doing a simulation in which spacetime is discretized, but then why would that necessitate reality's being a simulation? I guess discretization would be necessary for certain simulations, but it wouldn't be necessary for an analytic solution to the problem a simulation would be designed to solve. Reality as we know it could be a mental simulation in the mind of a transcendental being. Who knows?

It's interesting how these types of ideas keep coming up. Another interesting one is "Computer Code Discovered In Superstring Equations"