GOOD NEWS! World won't end in 2012

[charmando]

"I am saying computers will never be able to simulate all reality as we know it, your life, my life, the whole entire ****ing world, in such a way that the artificial reality would be seamlessly indistinguishable from our reality."

Unless it is already our reality.

"You are vastly underestimating the complexity of our world, or a tree for that matter, and disregarding the most important factor at play in our universe: RANDOM. CHANCE. As much as you would like to believe otherwise, woodpeckers and other organisms and natural phenomena (avalanches, storms, earthquakes, cell division, etc ad nauseum) do not behave according to algorythms. Computer simulations do, and that is precisely why they cannot accurately replicate the natural world."

or there are algorithms so abundant and complex that they resemble randomness. or they are random like a game of internet roulette.

edit: there's no way to know either way indefinitely.

[charmando]

ay roo. you seem to be correct on computers generating true random numbers. "Not all randomness is pseudo, however, says Ward. There are ways that machines can generate truly random numbers. And the importance of true randomness is not to be underestimated, he adds. “If you go to an online poker site, for example, and you know the algorithm and seed, you can write a program that will predict the cards that are going to be dealt.” Truly random numbers make such reverse engineering impossible, he adds. There are devices that generate numbers that claim to be truly random. They rely on unpredictable processes like thermal or atmospheric noise rather than human-defined patterns. The results might still be slightly biased towards higher numbers or even numbers, but they’re not generated by a deterministic algorithm."

so they are relying on environmental randomness, but still this is only a representation of the "reality" we've been put into and the computers we have access to.

[Roo]

shit I'm not even talking about random numbers, but I suppose that's a good place to start. I'm talking about the exact path, down to every footstep, that a cheetah will take over the course of its entire life. or an ant. or you. how many times an english-speaker will say the word "juice" in a lifetime. how many individual rock fragments will result from a volcanic eruption. and what shape each and every one of them will take.

[sgreger1]

shit I'm not even talking about random numbers, but I suppose that's a good place to start. I'm talking about the exact path, down to every footstep, that a cheetah will take over the course of its entire life. or an ant. or you. how many times an english-speaker will say the word "juice" in a lifetime. how many individual rock fragments will result from a volcanic eruption. and what shape each and every one of them will take.

Okay I think I see where we are looking at it from different angles. You are saying these creators could not create a 100% exact simulation of their reality because true randomness comes into play and evolution is not linear, hence even if we restarted our universe now it would probably grow into into something different than what we have currently since randomness would not create the same thing twice. That is fine and I agree. But if, as part of a science project, scientists of the future were trying to figure out the algorhythms behind nature and started up the simulation, it could very well create the world we see today. It would not be a recreation of their world at all, but it would be a proof of concept in regards to the fact that they had indeed created a whole new universe that flourished based on the initial algorhythms or "laws of nature" that they started the universe with.


The exact path the cheetah walked down would be different, how many times someone says the word "juice" may be different etc, but in a simulation like this you have still created a universe who's behaviors can be studied. See while not an exact match, they could start something from the seed and let it grow, and what grows could very likely be a universe like what we see today.

The point is that something dictates all of the factors you are mentioning, how the lion moves, how energy and matter interact, how heat and pressure work etc. Basic rules are given at the start of the simulation and the universe plays according to those rules until something is created. There is nothing saying that it could have created a world like ours. In a slightly different setup there may be no lions, but rather ligers. In that reality though, that would be the norm and it's inhabitants would not be aware that it shold have been lions. Only the creators would know that.

You are vastly underestimating the complexity of our world, or a tree for that matter, and disregarding the most important factor at play in our universe: RANDOM. CHANCE.

You are vastly underestimating science and technology. Today we can model how an atom's constituents work in unison to form the basis of all matter, mostly all done via simulations rather than direct observations, and someday we will be able to model many more complex things like the effects of C02 on the environment, etc etc etc. As processing power increases, our ability to make better and more accurate models of things we observe will increase. Considering computers will be infinitely faster in the future, we may even one day model what happened during the big bang with a great level of accuracy. The next step after that? Maybe we will take all that we have learned from modeling the previous things and use it to seed our own universe completely via simulation, and see how it grows. I.e. if we make this simulation that has the same starting rules as our universe did (gravity, thermo dynamics, other quantum mechanics etc), and let it grow, what would we find? Is this not reanable that scientists would do this if they had the computing power to do so? I sure would. And the thing is that sentience and consciouseness is an emergent phenomena that arrises out of having lots of things processing in your brain at once. At a certain level of complexity, something becomes sentient. There is little doubt even in todays world that we will some day be able to make robots with processors that do so many calculations in parallel that they may themselves become self aware and sentient. That's because there is no magical soul from god that makes us "aware" of ourselves, it's just something that happens in a system of a certain level of complexity.

Therefore, if the simulation was at any point able to reach that level of complexity, than it's inhabitants could be described as sentient. They could be just like you and me.

Handling the randomness issue is difficult, but less things are random than you would imagine. Really we just need a random seed number to start the algorhythm with, and even today we can actual get random number from nature (the only true way of getting a truly random number) and can just use that as the seed for the equation. It's not outside the realm of possibility at all.

And even if they made a mistake in their simulation and things were off by a little, so what? You would lever know. They would know their model isn't perfect, but to you looking out at the sky you say "Well seems like everything is working just fine".


Anyways, I am defending a ficticious argument here anyways so I should probbaly stop. I just don't like the notion being put forth that computers will never be able to make accurate modens of natural processes (even on a large scale). It is more likely aliens will come obduct Roo this afternoon than it is for computer to not have this type of processing power in the future. And knowhing humans, if they can do it, they will do it, FOR SCIENCE! So except that if anyone has gotten to that point, at any point of time in any universe or planet, it is already being done most likely.

[sgreger1]

Come on dude!!! I am in no way saying that computer models will never be able to mimic natural processes, or never be able model the human brain... I mean if that is what you're taking from my posts we really need to just stop. I am saying computers will never be able to simulate all reality as we know it, your life, my life, the whole entire ****ing world, in such a way that the artificial reality would be seamlessly indistinguishable from our reality. Is that really hard to understand? Our life as we know it, our planet as we experience it, will never be perfectly recreated or represented by a computer. Sure, computers may be able to simulate planet earth, or the human body. but not to the degree that your life now and everything you experience could ever be simulated so true to nature and the human experience that the future you would not even know it.

I can't even believe you are trying to compare this scenario with ****ing weather models, or digital models of the human brain... I think you are just trying to aggravate me lol. LIFE will never be simulated by computers with such accuracy and complexity so as to render the simulation indistinguishable from REALITY. This is a very simple opinion. If you don't understand my stance on it now, and you think I am so shortsighted that I don't think we will be able to mimic natural processes with computers, then **** it. There is no more I can say.

And when the 70's turned into the 80's, I was 14 months old.

LIFE will never be simulated by computers with such accuracy and complexity so as to render the simulation indistinguishable from REALITY.


BUT YOU DON'T KNOW THAT. If they did pull it off you... (wait for it...) WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO DISTINGUISH IT FROM REALITY.

Look at the observer paradox or Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - an unobserved region of space is indeterminate until observed - maybe th simulating computer is not simulating it until it needs to, right?

See you are trying to draw some distinction between modeling the weather and modeling the universe, but they are both the same things. One just requires more processing power and more knowledge of the universe, which future humans would probably posess.



This would be a great idea once AI gets a little more advanced. Make a sandbox style video game and place a virtual AI character in it. Then just watch what it does, how it interacts with the other characters, what it does to the land, how it survives etc. Change the starting rules (gravity, food requirements to survive) etc and see where it goes. Does it start a war for resources? Does it die quietly in the woods? Does it write Shakespear? That could be our whole universe if someone had a big enough computer to pull it off. Such computers are theorized to be possible, given enough time.

[truthwolf1]

For conspiracy nuts only and back to the pineal gland which is the power source of everything.

There is no ending but you get the overall idea that 2012 is a time of transormation once again for humanity.