Scientists believe they have come close to solving the 'Matrix' theory | Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science...
Oct 27, 2012
from
Son of Groucho,
Friar Will,
Stephen Mack,
Victor Ganata,
WoH: Professor MOTHRA,
Micah,
imabonehead,
rønin,
Digital Health Space,
kate simmons,
Joe,
Adriano,
Koleksiyoner Ali,
Iván Abrego,
samet,
junrxu,
Ori,
Gökhan Yu,
Berci Mesko, MD,
؛ patrick,
Derrick,
and
Shevonne
liked this
"The question of whether we live in a real world or a simulated one has plagued philosophers for centuries - but now scientists believe they finally have found a way to test the theory. Professor Silas Beane, a theoretical physicist at the University of Bonn in Germany said that his group of scientists have developed a way to test the 'simulation hypothesis'. (...)
But now more than two thousand years since Plato suggested that our senses only give us a poor reflection of objective reality, experts believe they have cracked the riddle. (...) The test would see scientists using mathetical models known as the lattice QCD approach in an attempt to recreate - on a theoretical level - a simulated reality.
To identify what these constraints would be, scientists would have to build their own simulation of the universe. (...)
Lattice QCD is a complex approach that that looks at how particles known as quarks and gluons relate in three dimensions."
- Amira
"Professor Bean said: "We consider ourselves on some level universe simulators because we calculate the interactions of particles by basically replacing space and time by a grid and putting it in a box."
"In doing that we face lots of problems for instance the box and the grid size breaks Einstein's special theory of relativity so we know how to fix this in order to get physical predictions that are meaningful."
"We thought that if we make the assumption that the so-called simulators face some of the same problems that we do in terms of finite resources and so on then, if they are doing a simulation and even though their box size of course is enormous and the grid size can be very small, as long as the resources are finite then the box size will be finite, the grid size will be finite." :-)
- Amira
Best thing I read all day!!!!
- Shevonne
but remember those scientists are arguing about this issue using their own brains. no matter how correct the arguments sound, they may not be able to explain beyond a certain level simply because that there might be more unobserved parameters involved in the equation that we think they are negligible but in fact they are not. there was a time that every argument about the earth being flat made perfect sense to the brightest scientists and philosophers of that time...
- ؛ patrick
I'm rather skeptical about the simulation thing, but I'm curious, which scientists and philosophers argued that the earth was flat?
- Amit Patel
I wonder where the stuff the simulation is simulating is at.
- Eivind
And what/whom is running the simulations?
- That's So CAJ!
@Eivind, I'm not sure but usually they use grid computing. It could be running on many many computers. Here is another example: http://www.internetnews.com/ent-new...
- ؛ patrick
Oh, I'm not asking what it's running on. I'm asking what it's simulating :)
- Eivind
the link that I sent you explains that people like me and you downloaded the software and installed it on their computers and became a part of a large grid computer, so it doesn't really have a single place. I thought that was your question :)
- ؛ patrick
Silas Beane discusses evidence of pixelation in terms of lattice spacing via Quantum Chromodynamics, "Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation" (2012) http://goo.gl/Gpo1f -- assuming the classical limit of a quantum computer, the lattice spacing should be non-zero if we are in a simulation, and orders of magnitude finer than Planck scale. (Think of a believable discretization of the Feynman-Kac path integral :-)
- Adriano