--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu wrote:
I would be worried if the simulation was running on Windows.
Me (As me): That got a chuckle! is Friday the 'blue screen
of death'?
On 12/18/2012 04:39 AM, Share Long wrote:
Very cool, thanks. Giving credit to Numb3rs that I was able to follow really
abstract stuff. As for the last line in the article: how the heck does he
know for sure that he's not staying up all night worrying about it?! ha ha
________________________________
From: turquoiseb
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2012 4:58 AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] The universe is a computer simulation run by our
descendants
Living in a simulated world: UW scientists explore the theory
University of Washington physicists have come
up with one way to test whether our universe is a giant computer
simulation being run by our descendants.
By Katherine Long
Seattle Times higher education reporter
It is entirely plausible, says University of Washington physics
professor Martin Savage, that our universe and everything in it is one
huge computer simulation being run by our descendants.
You, me, this newspaper, the room you're sitting in â" everything we
think of as reality is actually being generated by vast, powerful
supercomputers of the future.
If that sounds mind-blowing, Savage and his colleagues think they've come up
with a way to test whether it's true.
Their paper, "Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation," has
kindled a lively international discussion about the simulation
argument, which was first put forth in 2003 by University of Oxford
philosophy professor Nick Bostrom.
A UW News posting explaining Savage's paper has gotten more than
100,000 page views in a week, and ignited theories about the nature of
reality and consciousness, the limits on computer networks and musings
about what our future selves might be like.
Savage has been interviewed by U.S. News & World Report, The
Australian and journalists in Finland, and his colleague and co-author,
University of New Hampshire professor Silas Beane, has been interviewed
by the BBC. UW physics graduate student Zohreh Davoudi also contributed
to the paper.
"It's sort of caught fire," Savage said.
Bostrom, the Oxford professor, first proposed the idea that we live
in a computer simulation in 2003. In a 2006 article, he said there was
probably no way to know for certain if it is true.
Savage â" who describes his "day job" as doing numerical simulations
of lattice quantum chromodynamics â" said a chance discussion among
colleagues sparked the idea that there was a way to test the truth of
Bostrom's theory.
And although it might deviate from the work he usually does, it was a worthy
question because "there are lots of things about our universe we don't fully
understand," Savage said. "This is certainly a different
scenario for how our universe works â" but nonetheless, it's quite
plausible."
In the paper, the physicists propose looking for a "signature," or
pattern, in our universe that also occurs in current small-scale
computer simulations. One such pattern might be a limitation in the
energy of cosmic rays.
Because this theory is starting to test the limits of this reporter's
scientific knowledge, we are going to rely on the words of UW News
science writer Vince Stricherz, who translated the 14-page paper into
laymen's terms:
"There are signatures of resource constraints in present-day
simulations that are likely to exist as well in simulations in the
distant future, including the imprint of an underlying lattice if one is used
to model the space-time continuum," Stricherz wrote.
If our world is a computer simulation, "the highest-energy cosmic
rays would not travel along the edges of the lattice in the model but
would travel diagonally, and they would not interact equally in all
directions as they otherwise would be expected to do."
Got that?
In other words, even supercomputers capable of creating a simulation
of the universe would be hobbled by finite resources, and one way we
might be able to detect those limits is to look for cosmic rays that
don't travel the way they would be expected to travel.
Savage and his team are theorists, not experimentalists. They're not
planning to perform such a test, although other physicists have said
they're interested in doing so.
And such a test wouldn't absolutely prove we live in a computer simulation
â" just that it is possible.
"It would just be a beginning," Savage said. "It would be curious. It would
stimulate further work."
As of late last week, the UW News article had sparked a wide-ranging online
discussion, with more than 100 responses.
Among them:
"It seems unlikely that someone who could do this would be using the
same programming techniques that we are currently thinking about. So
doing this test might prove we are a sim (simulation) of dim-witted
aliens but could not disprove that we are sims of ones slightly smarter
than ourselves."
But â" "IF we are in a simulation, then the world outside this
simulated world is quite possibly COMPLETELY different from the world in it.
We may very well be triple-headed, 7-legged cockroach-like
creatures that decided to run a homo-sapiens simulation for the fun of
it."
"You folks take yourselves way too seriously," another wrote. "This is proof
we never should have legalized marijuana."
Savage believes that at some point in the future, if mankind doesn't
self-destruct along the way, "we'll try to do simulations of our
history. We'll create something that looks like our own universe."
The paper concludes on this note: "There always remains the possibility for
the simulated to discover the simulators."
If life is a simulation, though, it doesn't bother Savage.
"I don't stay up at night worrying about it," he said, laughing.
