this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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133
The theory that we live in a simulation involves simulants running their own simulations; wouldn't that require impossibly more resources for the main sim? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The theory, which I probably misunderstand because I have a similar level of education to a macaque, states that because a simulated world would eventually develop to the point where it creates its own simulations, it's then just a matter of probability that we are in a simulation. That is, if there's one real world, and a zillion simulated ones, it's more likely that we're in a simulated world. That's probably an oversimplification, but it's the gist I got from listening to people talk about the theory.

But if the real world sets up a simulated world which more or less perfectly simulates itself, the processing required to create a mirror sim-within-a-sim would need at least twice that much power/resources, no? How could the infinitely recursive simulations even begin to be set up unless more and more hardware is constantly being added by the real meat people to its initial simulation? It would be like that cartoon (or was it a silent movie?) of a guy laying down train track struts while sitting on the cowcatcher of a moving train. Except in this case the train would be moving at close to the speed of light.

Doesn't this fact alone disprove the entire hypothesis? If I set up a 1:1 simulation of our universe, then just sit back and watch, any attempts by my simulant people to create something that would exhaust all of my hardware would just... not work? Blue screen? Crash the system? Crunching the numbers of a 1:1 sim within a 1:1 sim would not be physically possible for a processor that can just about handle the first simulation. The simulation's own simulated processors would still need to have their processing done by Meat World, you're essentially just passing the CPU-buck backwards like it's a rugby ball until it lands in the lap of the real world.

And this is just if the simulated people create ONE simulation. If 10 people in that one world decide to set up similar simulations simultaneously, the hardware for the entire sim reality would be toast overnight.

What am I not getting about this?

Cheers!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

okay?

"influenced by" doesn't tell us anything about the concrete rules of the simulating universe

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

No, the point remains though that the rules of their universe would be connected to the rules of ours. The simulation designer would not be creative enough to design a universe that didn't fall somewhere on the spectrum of having a complete inversion of the rules of their universe or having an exact copy of the rules of their universe.

The design of ours is constrained by the context which the designer is starting from, because there are natural limits to what would be conceivable even to the denizen of a universe completely different from our own in its make.

We can't infer the rules directly from this information, but we can draw conclusions about what they wouldn't be.

Like determining the inputs of a function by reversing operations and using the outputs of the original as the inputs for that...only a lot less exact because universal rules aren't (always) numbers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Why do you think that an entity or set of entities capable of simulating the entirety of our existence would have their creativity capped in a way that’s meaningful to us?

We can't infer the rules directly from this information, but we can draw conclusions about what they wouldn't be.

Can you give an example of a rule for a containing reality that you think we could rule out?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

The simulation designer would not be creative enough

now you're making assumptions about how the creators of our simulation think, when we also know nothing about them

why would you assume they think in the same way we do? why would you assume what they do would even be considered "thinking" by us at all?

fall somewhere on the spectrum of having a complete inversion of the rules of their universe or having an exact copy of the rules of their universe

  • you think the creator of the simulation is capable of specifying each rule of our universe, but not just inverting all of them?
  • "somewhere on the spectrum" includes positions closer to a complete inversion than not, so even if you take this as given - which you probably shouldn't - you still can't make claims with any certainty

there are natural limits to what would be conceivable

firstly, i don't think that holds true under the laws of our universe

secondly, why would it hold true under the laws of theirs?