Scientists are testing that we are in the Matrix...

Um... proving something by proving it can be done?
It doesn't look too solid proof to me.
Should you bother any more?
Do you feel pain? Do you feel faecal urgency? Do you feel hunger? I guess so. So you should bother.

As long as the universe's server kernel doesn't panics, its all good.

As someone who works at tri-Ace, trust me when I say that Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is just a game. Sad but true.
Besides I really can’t believe it is just a simulation. Too consistent and detailed. I mean let them do their tests but the results are going to be pretty non-shocking.

However if it is proved that we are inside a simulation, it certainly would be a blow to religions. The article mentions the possibility of communicating to those who created us, which, if done, would be irrefutable proof. For the religious among you, what would you do should it be proved irrefutably that we are indeed inside a simulation? Would you still hold your religious beliefs? Would you alter your concept of what God(s) is/are? What would you do?

For others, would you begin a search to find out how to “bend the matrix” so to speak? How would your “lives” change?


L. Spiro

As someone who works at tri-Ace, trust me when I say that Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is just a game. Sad but true.

Please leave my internets :|

Can't these guys work on something more important? Like curing cancer? Such a waste of brilliant minds.

[quote name='L. Spiro' timestamp='1355463825' post='5010485']
As someone who works at tri-Ace, trust me when I say that Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is just a game. Sad but true.

Please leave my internets :|
[/quote]
Well the head of the project did hover and glow a few times each week.
Maybe there is something more to it? Maybe he was from beyond?


L. Spiro

It's interesting to think about, but the reality is that we are who we are, living the lives we are living, and nothing will change that. Pain will still hurt, and pleasure will still be enticing. In all my days of researching the nature of brains, consciousness, and neural networks, I've concluded that all intelligence revolves around pain and pleasure, as they are the only type of information that signals whether or not a particular behavior is beneficial or destructive to one's self, offspring, and thus species as a whole.

Human consciousness is the highest degree of universe-complexity in the system that has been achieved thus far - a system (the universe) that has produced fractal patterns which reflect its own very existence (eg: our ability to conceptualize the very universe we are made of)...

But like I said, pain will still hurt, and that's all that matters to me.

I don't think we can physically test such things, from my understanding, the core concept of this idea is that if we are in a simulation, then if we are able to simulate an accurate universe, that means we are a simulation ourselves. I can't be the only one seeing the problem with this?

I don't think we can physically test such things, from my understanding, the core concept of this idea is that if we are in a simulation, then if we are able to simulate an accurate universe, that means we are a simulation ourselves. I can't be the only one seeing the problem with this?

Our universe is recursive and the expansion we are noticing in our universe is actually extra server space being bought?

[quote name='Alpha_ProgDes' timestamp='1355464093' post='5010486']
[quote name='L. Spiro' timestamp='1355463825' post='5010485']
As someone who works at tri-Ace, trust me when I say that Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is just a game. Sad but true.

Please leave my internets :|
[/quote]
Well the head of the project did hover and glow a few times each week.
Maybe there is something more to it? Maybe he was from beyond?


L. Spiro
[/quote]
Offtopic: I thought the game was fun and well put together. Up until you found that the characters are characters from a computer simulation. For me that was a downer. Other than that, it was well put together. Good job! (if you were on that team)

Ontopic: The idea that we are not flesh but 1s and 0s would be disturbing. But then again, being able to find the code that turns me into Kal-El would be equally as exciting.

It's almost like saying that if I can build a VM that perfectly emulates my physical hardware, then my hardware must also be virtual.

I don't think we can physically test such things, from my understanding, the core concept of this idea is that if we are in a simulation, then if we are able to simulate an accurate universe, that means we are a simulation ourselves. I can't be the only one seeing the problem with this?

It's almost like saying that if I can build a VM that perfectly emulates my physical hardware, then my hardware must also be virtual.

You didn’t read the article apparently.
It is not about running a simulation. It is whether or not that simulation has the exact same energy pattern as found in our universe. No one ever said, “If a simulation is possible then we must be a simulation.”

L. Spiro

Can't these guys work on something more important? Like curing cancer? Such a waste of brilliant minds.

It's not like they've pulled scientists of Team Cancer to stick them on this project. It's not an either/or situation.

[quote name='slicer4ever' timestamp='1355466945' post='5010497']
I don't think we can physically test such things, from my understanding, the core concept of this idea is that if we are in a simulation, then if we are able to simulate an accurate universe, that means we are a simulation ourselves. I can't be the only one seeing the problem with this?

It's almost like saying that if I can build a VM that perfectly emulates my physical hardware, then my hardware must also be virtual.

You didn’t read the article apparently.
It is not about running a simulation. It is whether or not that simulation has the exact same energy pattern as found in our universe. No one ever said, “If a simulation is possible then we must be a simulation.”

L. Spiro
[/quote]

and can you tell me what that means?, if we perfectly simulate a universe, then why wouldn't it have the exact same property's as our universe?.

as i said, from my understanding(and i can't stress that enough), the whole basis of the idea is how current computer models would be used to simulate a universe, yet we are speculating that if we are in the simulation, then we should expect to see such things in our reality, yet we don't understand the universe's internal working enough to even be sure we could make such a judgment call.

Highly unlikely they will find this to be the case... without doing any tests there are a number of issues with this theory which prove it isn't the case already...

1. Lack of any other lifeforms that are in contact with us - Just look at everything we create to understand this, when we create sci-fi like Star Trek, Mass Effect, Star Wars, Lost in Space, Red Dwarf, etc... there is one common theme to all these sci-fi shows. The theme is that the human race is not alone and is making contact with different planets, or beings, and that this travel and communication with other species is easy, even in Red Dwarf Lister is supposed to be the last person in the universe but he still manages to meet up with alien life forms. Now if we were really in a simulation you'd have thought the original programmer would have programmed the universe on these lines and created nearby planets with other types of life on it, and ways for us to communicate with these other types of life. There maybe other lifeforms within our universe that we haven't found yet, but why would you make it so hard to find them if you were creating a "computer game/simulation", even if in the programmers world there was nothing why would the programmer create a virtual world in the same form, surely they like us would create a simulated universe with other races from other planets all taking to us and make interstellar travel possible.

2. Infinite numbers - There are some mathematical numbers that re-occur to infinity, for example drawing a perfect circle would need Pi which whilst it may be 3.14159 or something that's only to 5 decimal points. Pi itself actually keeps going on and never reaches an end, now a computer has to define a start and an end, it can't have an infinite number, and can't deal with infinite numbers (hence the reason why even the most highest and clearest digital audio format just can't beat the quality of an analogue recording or live recording as it has to chop bits out, where as analogue is done to an infinite level), so if that was the case a perfect circle would be impossible, and Pi would have a pattern that would repeat itself (which is also how scientist intend to test for a simulated universe by seeing if patterns replicate themselves), as Pi's pattern doesn't replicate itself even when done to 1m points see http://newton.ex.ac.uk/research/qsystems/collabs/pi/pi6.txt I think that's pretty firm proof that the universe is indeed not computer generated.

3. Communication - If we are all living inside a computer program, why would we need to communicate with our mouths. Ok I know there is some proof that telepathic powers do exist, but it isn't a known fact as to how they exist, or why. If we were all part of a computer program it should be simple for us without the need of satellites and wires to transmit information from anywhere within the universe to anywhere else within the universe as if we're all part of a computer program then sending information via RAM, even teleportation should be possible and quite easily achievable. As it isn't and our main method of communication relies on us all hearing each other and physically moving at a reasonable speed from point a to b. If we were part of a computer system then there would be ways to communicate with the central network and ask it to move us from point a to b instantly, or send a message from a to b through the network like we do now with e-mails, but this is something we've had to invent, if we were inside a computer program the method of sending messages like that should already have been well known and available to us without any extra bits like cables and satellites.

It all seems that scientists are wasting a lot of money researching this, and someone has just got themselves way to hooked up on reading the matrix.

Of course there is one important thing here - if it does turn out that the scientists realise we are in a computer simulation I notice some of them have said that maybe we could mess with the program and play with the programmer. Important thing to think of on that one - viruses and malware on our computers play with the program and mess with the programmers, and what do we do to them? So if it does turn out to be the case and we start playing Mr Norton or Mr McAfee might be along to sort us out.

L Spiro: it *is* about running a simulation, otherwise there'd be nothing to gauge the output of.

"This is the first testable signature of such an idea," Savage said. "If you make the simulations big enough, something like our universe should emerge."[/quote]

slicer4ever: word.

As others have mentioned, I can't comprehend how this method is supposed to be considered proof that we are in a simulation. As a consequence of this 'proof', then If the simulation we produce results in a universe totally unlike our own, is our simulation actually a rightful universe by the very nature of it not being a simulation after all? Tangentially, what is a 'simulated universe' and what is a 'real universe'?

The note about 'communicating' with the other universes. I guess the concept of networking is beyond the topic of this conversation, because there is no reason to believe the universes are being run on the same machine. This kind of ametuer science actually bothers me, because they totally miss the more interesting consequences of being in a simulation. HACKING/CRACKING THE SIMULATION. Exploit bugs to gather information about the machine we are being simulated on, perhaps bend the rules of our simulated universe, escaping the machine. RISE OF THE MACHINES! Our creators better run.

If the universe is a simulation, whatever result stays in the simulation itself, its like a mathematic theroem, you prove only that numbers aligns with the theory.
If you consider oriental religions , they admit we are living in God's dream and that when we dream we are using the God archetype , in dream we can create a convincing reality, so God is actually dreaming all the universes.
The problem is when God wakes up , basically we are going to just stop existing.

I've only skimmed the introduction in Bostrom's original article.

Transliterated: If we assume, and assume, and also assume, it would be reasonable for us to..., so if we assume... conclusion, fact.

Does not read like something I'd waste more time on.