New information physics theory is evidence 'we're living in a simulation,' says author
- Reference: 1696941252
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/10/10/new_information_physics_theory_is/
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Nonetheless, in the developing field of information physics, one researcher claims to have found evidence that we are all living in our own rendition of The Matrix, minus the latex, bad acting, and dated cyberpunk references.
Melvin Vopson, associate professor of physics at the UK's Portsmouth University, has developed theory in the field of information physics and applied it to predict genetic mutations in organisms, including viruses, and help judge their potential consequences.
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The basis of the theory is analogous to the second law of thermodynamics, which includes the idea that the disorder within an isolated system will increase unless it is acted on by some external force or condition.
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In information physics – the idea that studying the information inherent in physical systems produces fruitful results – the trend goes the other way.
Dr Vopson, who spent some of his career at disk drive giant Seagate, has developed the second law of infodynamics, which says that the entropy – or disorder – within information stays the same or decreases over time. The idea has implications across a number of fields, he claims in [4]a paper published by the American Institute of Physics.
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In biology, the theory suggests that genetic mutations follow a pattern governed by information entropy, with implications in genetic research, evolutionary biology, genetic therapies, pharmacology, virology, and more. In atomic physics, the paper claims, electrons arrange themselves in a way that minimizes their information entropy, helping science to understand the stability of chemicals. Lastly, in cosmology, the second law of infodynamics can be used to support the idea of an expanding universe.
"The paper also provides an explanation for the prevalence of symmetry in the universe," said Dr Vopson in a prepared statement.
[6]We're not saying we're living in a simulation but someone's simulated the universe in a computer
[7]Absolutely smashing: Musk shows off Tesla's 'bulletproof' low-poly pickup, hilarity ensues
[8]Nvidia, Siemens tout 'industrial metaverse' to predict the future
[9]AI can now generate fake human bodies and faces, OpenAI to share a larger GPT-2 model, and more
"Symmetry principles play an important role with respect to the laws of nature, but until now there has been little explanation as to why that could be. My findings demonstrate that high symmetry corresponds to the lowest information entropy state, potentially explaining nature's inclination towards it."
But Dr Vopson takes another step, which is where it gets interesting, or far-fetched, depending on your perspective.
He said the fact that physical systems show a tendency towards declining disorder showed "excess information is removed" and "resembles the process of a computer deleting or compressing waste code to save storage space and optimize power consumption. And as a result supports the idea that we're living in a simulation."
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In 2003, Nick Bostrom, Oxford University professor and director of the Future of Humanity Institute, [11]published an argument [PDF] suggesting that the future of humanity lies in one of three scenarios: one, that humans will become extinct; two, a post-human civilization is extremely unlikely to run simulations; three, we are already living in a simulation created by a post-human society.
"We can estimate the amount of computing power available to mature civilization and we can also estimate how much it would take to simulate the human brain or, for that matter, 7 billion human brains. There would be many, many more simulated civilizations like ours, living in these ancestor simulations, than there would be original versions of us," he [12]told listeners of the BBC's Infinite Monkey Cage in 2017.
The counterargument is that computer scientists are still a long way off from being able to simulate a human brain, and even if they did, simulating thought is not the same as thinking. Equally, simulating consciousness is not the same as being conscious.
In 1999 – co-incidentally the year The Matrix was released – philosopher of mind [13]John Searle used a biological analogy : a computer can simulate digestion, but that doesn't mean it can eat pizza.
Now, who's hungry? ®
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2017/06/10/worlds_largest_virtual_universe/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2019/11/22/smashing_tesla_cybertruck/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/30/nvidia_siemens_omniverse/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/06/ai_round_up/
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[11] https://simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf
[12] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b08zb4d8
[13] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1999/04/08/i-married-a-computer/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
We're all NPCs in a satirical VR experience, set in an alternative timeline, where World President Harambe was shot and killed before the great breakthrough in human-gorilla communication of 2030
We are probably the simulation of some kind of nasty virus attacking an astral body. IN the end the astral body will just shrug us off, sneeze or fart, and we will be no more.
But what are we a simulation of ?
Some of the earliest video games have been god sims. We're just life, imitating art. Unlike Life, we haven't yet reached the boundaries, although black holes may just be memory leaks. And luckily whoever is playing us hasn't rage quit.. yet.
We're just life, imitating art.
If we're in a sim, aren't we art imitating art?
(I'd make a Conway joke at this point, but that's a pun too far...)
Bollox
“— and "resembles the process of a computer deleting or compressing waste code to save storage space and optimize power consumption. And as a result supports the idea that we're living in a simulation—“
Proof we are not, name one computer/OS where this actually happens????
In fact in every instance I can think of over the past 50 years its the exact opposite
Re: Bollox
I have noted the joke icon, but I would like to disagree.
There are two aspects imo:
The first is that we live in a world where the low cost of compute power means it's not economical to pay people to optimise code to a mirror shine. If a theoretical computer is able to efficiently self-optimise its own code to that mirror shine, then it would absolutely make sense for that to happen.
The second is that a simulation, while its running would have a static featureset, which does enable a position where you can optimise code to that mirror shine.
Over the past 50 years we've encountered feature bloat to a huge degree, enabled by conventions like Moore's law. If Moore's law were not true, then featuresets would have expanded considerably more slowly as compute power would remain expensive relative to developer time so paying for the code to be polished within an inch of its life would be worthwhile in processing-heavy tasks.
Re: Bollox
Stand by, the universe is being defragged.
(Actually, that explains a lot!)
This "law". What tests have been made of it? Let's get the essentials done before we start thinking of anything fancy.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
IMHO...
Yup, the universe appears to be some computer system (some sort of DB and code munged together) with built in auditing. Defo artificial though. It's not complicated, you just need a shit load of power and had/has 2 main flaws; the first of which was sorted by creating "our" dimensions and the second fix was creating matter to firm up "flabby expansion" issues. BTW, anti-matter is just slightly in the future which is why it's so hard to see it unless you give matter a good yank.
Anyway, you can tell I've got nothing to do of an evening.
I watched The Matrix the other night. There were things called telephone boxes in it and old cars which are cool. Old Nokias not so much.
If this is a simulation...
...I want my money back. The continuity is pathetic and the plotlines are ridiculous. About the only thing they got right was the rendering quality, though I do note that they're only really capable of doing half the planet at a time. It's night on the opposite side to where it's day as a cheap and lame attempt to reduce the bandwidth requirements.
Plus, there's a distinct lack of power ups, God mode, or the ability to disable clipping. But pain, cancer, and suffering are in plentiful supply.
Plus, we spend a third of the time "dormant", what the hell is with that?
Generally, therefore, this simulation is the lacklustre creation of sadistic bastards and I'm not impressed.
Re: If this is a simulation...
If you haven't already seen it, I can highly recommend the Tom Scott video on youtube: "Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers".
Re: If this is a simulation...
I went Outside once.
The graphics were great, but the storyline sucked.
Re: If this is a simulation...
There were constant brown outs in 2020-2021 and the lizard people who are in charge of the simulation had to make us all stay in our homes as rendering long distances and interactions between simulants takes a lot of energy.
Information is not knowledge...
Knowledge is not wisdom...
Wisdom is not truth...
F.Zappa
Critical Questions
[1] Who manages the updates?
[2] When is the EoL?
Re: Critical Questions
[1] God
[2] He announced that there will be one, but deliberately did not say when. Always be ready for shutdown and post-execution analysis.
how much it would take to simulate the human brain or, for that matter, 7 billion human brains
well, can you prove to ME there ARE 7+ billion human brains out there, rather than a simulation that there are 7 billion human brains out there?
Re: how much it would take to simulate the human brain or, for that matter, 7 billion human brains
[1]https://www.census.gov/popclock/world states that the current world population is a bit over eight billion, with some other sites going to 8.1 billion. So we have about eight billion humans, only 7 billion of whom have (real or simulated) brains... well, that does sometimes seem about right.
[1] https://www.census.gov/popclock/world
Another excuse to do as little as possible about climate change
Odd argument
Organised complexity (& thus supposedly defying entropy rules) is a natural consequence of a living organism (otherwise it would never get to become a complex organism).
Organisms don't live in an isolated system, there are various energy inputs (e.g. looks at shining sun which is good for producers.. and producers and/or other consumers, make an energy input for consumers)
.. and. of course, over the long term an organism dies and its complexity decreases and its entropy changes considerably!
Plenty of cases where increased organisation comes naturally e.g have a jar with oil and water (obv the 2 separate out into layers). add molecules with a hydrophillic "head" and a hydrophobic "tail", you will, after a while for the molecules to diffuse, get the molecules "organised" with their hydrophillic "head" in the water layer, and the hydrophobic "tails" in the oil layer .. and, if we just had a jar of water we would get molecules clumping such that heads "outside" (in the water) and tails inside (away from the water, potentially excluding it) *
If he takes his flawed arguments to ridiculous extremes then life would never have happened so the simulator creators would never exist.
* Yes, this ultra simple example is deliberately chosen because its these type of basic molecular properties that help things like cell membranes exist (and are useful in organism complexity )
It only needs enough power to simulate one human brain, me.
The rest is just a figment of my simulated imagination.
simulating consciousness is not the same as being conscious
...until we prove that we are simulated, then we change our minds and actually it is!
All Hail
I for one would like to to be the first to welcome our Simulator Overlords!
8.1 Billion people and they ALL have brains, but many don't use what they have to a greater or lesser extent.
It must be bugged.
The first rule of writing an AI simulation: Simulated beings must not develop the suspicion that they're simulated.
Meh
Go too far down the quantum mechanics rabbit hole and everything starts to look to be part an emergent self-organising system|simulation - no need for any deities, alien system admins or heavenly deployment pipelines
Problem of evil?
If our universe is a simulation, there's an awful lot of simulated suffering (which feels plenty real enough to the simulated inhabitants). Would a post-human society capable of creating a simulated universe be as unethical as to allow all this suffering?
I found the issue!
Humans are pattern matching animals. It's a useful tool but one of the costs it imposes is that we tend to reach for the tools we're comfortable with. If you are a mechanic, everything starts looking like a small block V8 or coil over suspension. If you are a plumber, the world and everything in it are really just a series of tubes and valves. If you're a habitual computer toucher, like the good doctor this article is about, everything starts to look like a program. Do Planck time and Planck length look like clock cycles and pixels to me? Do highly ordered biological systems look like optimizations and iterations on previous releases? Yes, but I have spent too much time on the computer and it has ruined my brain.
Computers: Not even once.
But what are we a simulation of ?