Timeline for Can we know anything about the "outside", if we are in a simulation?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
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| May 31, 2022 at 19:06 | comment | added | Dcleve | @user4894 -- I have not "made up" the conditions that Paul Davies used in "The Hand of God". I spelled out the assumptions Davies used. A widely published PhD mathematical physicist is a much more valid reference than Wikipedia, which is not valid in any context, much less in PhilSE. You appear to prefer a different definition of "computable" than Davies. As the question is whether one can test for whether we are in, and features of if we are, a simulation, your preferred definition NOT being useful for doing such a test makes yours a much less useful definition for this question. | |
| May 31, 2022 at 18:51 | comment | added | user4894 | Infinite calculation time is not part of what it means to be computable. You're just making up your own terms now. Did you read (and understand) the Wiki page on computable numbers? | |
| May 31, 2022 at 18:49 | comment | added | Dcleve | @user4894 -- It is explicitly calculable in analog terms, and with infinite calculation time, digitally. The infinite aspect of digital calculation I believe presents an obstacle to our universe being a simulation, as infinite computation time tends to prohibit the implementation of a simulation. Trimming off calculations to use non-infinite approximations introduces logic explosions into any simulation. | |
| May 31, 2022 at 17:39 | comment | added | user4894 | @Dcleve You need to review what a computable real number is, as defined by Turing in 1936. My remark is correct. Pi is a computable real number. It's a bad argument to claim that the existence of pi shows the world is not computable, since pi is computable. Start here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number | |
| May 31, 2022 at 14:42 | comment | added | Dcleve | @user4894 -- if two terms which are not equal (B=/=A) are set equal in a computation (B=A) then that computation is now at risk of a logic explosion. This can lead to computational errors, or a computation crashing. Approximations work well enough that this characteristic of computational approximating rarely leads to computational catastrophe, but the potential is always there. | |
| May 31, 2022 at 9:01 | comment | added | Dcleve | @user4894 An nth decimal digit approximation of of pi is just an approximation to pi, and in formal logic terms is therefore NOT pi. | |
| May 31, 2022 at 6:29 | comment | added | user4894 | Argument about pi is not a good argument because pi is computable. There's a finite-length algorithm that, given n, will halt after a finite number of steps, giving the n-th decimal digit of pi. That is, pi encodes only a finite amount of information. After all nobody complains that 1/3 = .333... requires an infinite amount of information to express. All you need is the high school long division algorithm. A better argument is the noncomputable numbers; but there's a good (constructive) argument that they don't exist; namely, that they're not computable! | |
| Mar 21, 2020 at 20:10 | comment | added | Dcleve | Note as an aside, the "simulation" assumption presupposes that consciousness == algorithms, IE the functional version of Identity theory. I think we have more than enough examples of non-conscious functional implementations in our world to know that functional Identity Theory is utterly false. I did not address this problem with the question in my reply, as you pretty clearly are just using "simulation" to try to think your way to bigger questions. | |
| Mar 21, 2020 at 14:15 | comment | added | christo183 | SETI (and, in general, signals intelligence?) is an interesting avenue. | |
| Mar 12, 2020 at 2:38 | history | answered | Dcleve | CC BY-SA 4.0 |