Specifically, physically reversible computation is adiabatic, where switching states is both time-symmetric and results in no net entropy increase. This doesn’t necessarily violate the second law of thermodynamics as it would at first seem, but how one could physically implement it is unknown.
Yes, unless a way can be found to overcome the expanding force, at least locally, long enough to preserve information into the ultimate poorly understood conditions. One idea that has been proposed is to create a pocket spacetime and separate it from the parent spacetime, a strange and improbable notion, but one allowed by general relativity. Another method I’ve not heard before, but which seems at least as plausible to me, is to find a way to tunnel into one of the subsequent Big Bangs. This might actually get easier as the Doppler shifted wavelengths have a greater positional uncertainty and might more readily facilitate quantum tunneling than at earlier periods in the universe’s history. There is also some reason to suspect the uncertainty in the topology of spacetime might become much greater as space tears itself apart.
It must, in essence, find a way to tunnel across or otherwise escape the loss of information.
I am not a physicist (no, @japhroaig, settle down, we all know that) but I have a hard time wrapping my head around some kind of future civilization if we can call it that simulating us. At least not in any way that would make meaningful sense to us.
In a billion years life will be profoundly different. Why as an agent a billion, trillion, quadrillion years from now have any desire to simulate… This? To answer my own question in a way could be Our emergent problem solving capabilities may prove useful, since we think differently than our designers.
But I still feel that is weak. I guess I’m a Blind Watchmaker, everything is the same everywhere sorta dude. And if we can’t detect higher order branes, or brane intersection, or measure tightly looped dimensions, I have a hard time believing we are gonna find cracks in the simulation we may be living in.
There is another possibility. Turn the tables. Early life in the base reality universe might have been nothing like us, and we’re just some pervert’s idea of a sick joke.
It is most assuredly a long shot. Which is why they pay me to do more promising research instead of whiling away my career on this. Now if I could get some of that Musk money…
Whichever bot is controlling me as an NPC is racking up a very interesting score. Not implying it’s gonna win, but if it writes a book it should have a VIRGOBLACKHOLETIMES best sellers entry.
Interesting analysis – I’ve not seen it explained before.
I wonder if that 1% is correct. I see a lot of talk about simulating minds, and it’s fun to read about in sf, but I wonder if the estimates are really correct. So often a neuron is described as something like, for example, a sum of inputs providing an output, where the cell itself is a kind of simplified black box. I’ve always wondered if it can really be simplified from its molecular activity. Seems to me the only way to “simulate” a single neuron is to use a computational engine of some sort that’s at least as complex as the cell looked at from a molecular level. And the simplest way to do that is to use the cell itself.
Something I don’t understand - people think we’re living in a simulation but we’re somehow not wholly a product of the simulation? Who is the “we” that could escape? Like the Sims themselves (the ones in the PC game of the same name) wouldn’t the “best” we could do at escaping the simulation be crashing the program and annihilating ourselves? Do they really think we can crack the pc case and crawl out onto the Player’s desk?
In short, do some people posit that we exist in a simulation yet still somehow have souls?
There are other versions, but they all boil down to a statistical analysis.
This sort of depends on what of a neuron is essential to its functioning as part of a mind, and what is merely the plumbing of how it performs that function. So far there’s not much evidence that a more simply designed weighted analog switch can’t duplicate its function, but there are various theories that a neuron does things we don’t understand but which are somehow essential to consciousness.
Another far more speculative possibility is that, if we are in a simulation, the neuron might be a byzantine piece of needlessly complicated machinery that makes a good show but is just as much illusion as the rest of the perceived world.
I just realized that the way I’ve been talking in this thread, people might get the mistaken impression that I’m a proponent of the simulation argument. I am not. I don’t wake up in the morning thinking the cake is a lie. At best, I think we don’t really understand the distinction between reality and simulation, and it’s always possible we missed some crucial point that throws the whole argument in the rubbish bin. I merely can’t refute it, so I remain open to the possibility. But if I had to place a bet, it would not be us being in a simulation as we understand the concept. The roulette analogy I brought up earlier only works if we know the rules of the game. But we’re n00bs in a big universe with a helluva learning curve.
we are newbs in a universe that is weird. we have math that works quite well, models that work quite well, observations that work quite well… but they have terse dinner conversations with each other. so obviously something is going on. and the big surprise is whether we can even figure out what that some thing is
(i feel like the universe is basically a smaller version of a Trump accounting issue, to be blunt)
When I met Elvis, he was working at Dunkin Donuts in Boston.
Of course, I was in an altered state at the time, so it could have just been a random Indian guy with a pompadour. It would explain why Elvis was Indian, at least.
Your explanation relies on a few rather gigantic assumptions. 1. That Hawking radiation is an actual effect in the real world, and will continue in the stelliferous epoch. Considering we have yet to unite Quantum Theory and Gravity, this is not even closely confirmed by any means. 1b. This is also reliant on total Universal expansion, rather than just in our neighbourhood, and closely related to Dark Energy, which is still anybody’s guess.
2. That there will be civilizations in the ‘black hole evaporation epoch’. 2b. That those civilizations will be capable of harnessing black holes.
3. That it makes sense for future civilizations to run simulations of aeons prior instead of basic survival, simply because it’s more efficient.
This is the only bit that has any meat on its bones.
Kinda circular, almost. The search for a simulation is the search for a creator.
Absolutely true, but we run the danger of veering off into Sci-Fi, and muddying the waters of actual knowledge to those that perhaps don’t follow so closely, therefore enabling all sorts of new-age quantum quackery.
Vigilance is hard to maintain when such large, and talented public figures such as Musk throw crap into the mix.
If there are simulators, then they stand outside our natural world, and are indeed supernatural, in any sense of the word.
Also Stephen hawking’s proclamation that E.T. would eviscerate us if he found us, so we should stop broadcasting our whereabouts.
Unhelpful idiocy from such great giants is not productive.
