It is fun to think about the Simulation Theory but most discussions revolve around it being likely that we are in one.
What are some concrete reasons why it’s all science fiction and not reality?
It is fun to think about the Simulation Theory but most discussions revolve around it being likely that we are in one.
What are some concrete reasons why it’s all science fiction and not reality?
One reason for us not being in a simulation is that we have irrational numbers that are seemingly infinite. Like pi. In every simulation that we are able to do, there is a limit to how precise the simulation is. For example, using pi only to 10 digits is more than accurate enough for any simulation we want to run. If we currently live in a simulation, then we could assume that the creators would do the same thing to save on computing power, but we have found many irrational numbers that never end. There is also the argument that the parameters of the simulation would be dynamic and change depending on more and more precise observation, but obviously, that’s impossible to know.
Or the code that represents pi (or similar) has a recursion bug. The real value for pi is supposed to be succinct, but that damn angle tracing algorithm gets stuck in a computation loop. That ticket has been open for 3.2 billion years, but we’re getting to it.
Recursion would imply that’s its a regular repeating sequence, not an irregular one, no? Pi, and other irrational numbers, have no pattern. They do not repeat.
No. A loop is recursive if it calls itself, it can still do different work each time. As a less than ideal example, I can write a function that concats a character from
/dev/randomto a string then call itself. It will go forever without repeating itself.Pi has a pattern, just not a repeating one. There are algorithms to calculate it to arbitrary precision.
A pattern is, by definition, repeating. Pi does not repeat. At least not that we’ve yet calculated, and we’ve gotten to thirteen trillion digits which is frankly incomprehensible.
That’s what you get for logging it as a Priority 2 case which has a next universe response time. You should have logged it as P1 which has a half universe response time and the sla hasn’t been breached yet.
Why would a CONSTANT be computer by a function? And also, who makes a function that is just a getter for a constant recursive by accident? And do they not have tests for that? How can an important constant like Pi have a bug in production?
Old devs test in production.
They can’t fix the bug because it’ll affect the outcome of any experiments.
Any day now…
Alternitively, the simulation can handle pi perfectly, but does not expose to us a perfect way to quantify it. We are limited to one Planck length resolution.
This is such a frustratingly common misconception about the Planck length. It’s not a pixel density, the Planck time is not a framerate. You can have lengths that are not multiples of the Planck length. The only significance to the Planck length is it’s the distance scale where gravity becomes as strong as the nuclear forces, and physics gets weird.
My favorite is the planck temperature
I mean, you can set up a fully functioning calculator in a game on a super Nintendo. If they wanted to get something out of our simulation I don’t see any reason to limit mathematics. Computers have been able to “go on forever” with pie since like the 80s, so I doubt we’d be putting any strain on a super system running on Windows 42. Plus, if pie actually just decided to stop 10 or so places in, how would we explain it?
The only way we’re realistically in a simulation is if it’s running on a (mathematically) real computer.
The fact that our universe emulates one that’s continuous at macro scales and only quantized at micro scales and in very odd ways that seem to be memory efficient (though at incomprehensible memory scales) might support the idea that the original doesn’t have quantization to limit its computational abilities.
So infinitely precise representations might not be a problem if the underlying hardware deals with real numbers.
Previous simulations had perfect numbers which led to us realising we were in a simulation and it fucked the whole thing up