Physicists find we’re not living in a computer simulation

[Aragorn]

The sci-fi trope might now be put to rest after scientists find the suggestion that
reality is computer generated is in principle impossible, writes Andrew Masterson.

Source: Cosmos

Just in case it’s been weighing on your mind, you can relax now. A team of theoretical physicists from Oxford University in the UK has shown that life and reality cannot be merely simulations generated by a massive extraterrestrial computer.

The finding – an unexpectedly definite one – arose from the discovery of a novel link between gravitational anomalies and computational complexity.

In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhi show that constructing a computer simulation of a particular quantum phenomenon that occurs in metals is impossible – not just practically, but in principle.

The pair initially set out to see whether it was possible to use a technique known as quantum Monte Carlo to study the quantum Hall effect – a phenomenon in physical systems that exhibit strong magnetic fields and very low temperatures, and manifests as an energy current that runs across the temperature gradient. The phenomenon indicates an anomaly in the underlying space-time geometry.

Quantum Monte Carlo methods use random sampling to analyse many-body quantum problems where the equations involved cannot be solved directly.

Ringel and Kovrizhi showed that attempts to use quantum Monte Carlo to model systems exhibiting anomalies, such as the quantum Hall effect, will always become unworkable.

They discovered that the complexity of the simulation increased exponentially with the number of particles being simulated.

If the complexity grew linearly with the number of particles being simulated, then doubling the number of partices would mean doubling the computing power required. If, however, the complexity grows on an exponential scale – where the amount of computing power has to double every time a single particle is added – then the task quickly becomes impossible.

The researchers calculated that just storing information about a couple of hundred electrons would require a computer memory that would physically require more atoms than exist in the universe.

The researchers note that there are a number of other known quantum interactions for which predictive algorithms have not yet been found. They suggest that for some of these they may in fact never be found.

And given the physically impossible amount of computer grunt needed to store information for just one member of this subset, fears that we might be unknowingly living in some vast version of The Matrix can now be put to rest.

Source: Cosmos

[Emil El Zapato]

you hit that one on the noggin' ... Quantum computing is not the answer apparently. Mainstream science is often way too quick to make conclusions. It claims now categorically that some things are unsolvable? Again, hearkening back to the BIG question, is there a beginning and an end. I dunno, that seems subject to the anthropomophic quirk in all of us. I don't even buy the Higgs Boson (Until I see it).

[enjoy being]

I am so relieved. ;-p

Now all they need to do is work their way through the terminator trilogy, Toystory 1 and 2, and finally solve the Back to the Future debate, and then they will finally be able to retire knowing their lifetime contribution to furthering the understanding of physics has been invaluable to the future of the human race.

[araucaria]

[CENTER][B][SIZE=3]The researchers calculated that just storing information about a couple of hundred electrons would require a computer memory that would physically require more atoms than exist in the universe.

So what’s the deal with the DIA etc. collecting data on millions of citizens, any one of whom can muster a couple of hundred electrons off the tip of a fingernail? We should be very relaxed. On the other hand, they do a huge amount of harm misusing personal data, don’t they?

The pessimistic reply might be to say that quantum computing is hardly the last word in computing. It is after all something that the new kid on the block, the earthling, has worked out, which makes it the best thing since Microsoft Windows, itself the best thing since sliced bread...

We are endlessly stuck in analogy, trying to understand something beyond our ken in terms of what we do understand. The Sun was once a huge ball of fire, then more recently a nuclear furnace... One thing we do know for sure is that Sun is way more than anything human technology can come up with. Twenty years ago, everyone had a fax machine. We saw what happened to them. Maybe the multiverse theory is based on the idea that our universe and others are merely glorified fax messages from another dimension, all slightly different because the phone utility needs to upgrade its network.

There is an optimistic reply too, but for once, I’m not seeing it.

[Aragorn]

The pessimistic reply might be to say that quantum computing is hardly the last word in computing. It is after all something that the new kid on the block, the earthling, has worked out, which makes it the best thing since Microsoft Windows, itself the best thing since sliced bread...

If you think Microsoft Windows is the best thing since sliced bread, then, boy, are you in a lot of trouble.

[Dumpster Diver]

I'll think about buying it when confirmed by several other computer simulation Grognards.

...right now, I find it the simplest explanation for all this crap.

[araucaria]

If you think Microsoft Windows is the best thing since sliced bread, then, boy, are you in a lot of trouble.

Exactly. Windows is the best thing since sliced bread, which ranks bottom in its own category. Any bread is better than sliced bread. It is a culinary disaster.

[enjoy being]

No inorganic matrix? Check.
Now how about the organic "matrix"?
To me it sounds like a bit of too and fro from the shoulder dwelling archetypes.
Or I mean to say, that phenomenon where the mind control parasite makes the host think that good is bad and bad is good.
Or when the paranoid delusionist thinks that THEY are the one with the problems.
The organic matrix on Earth in which all living things are stuck in their nature, seemingly without free will. Then humans, seemingly broken free into "no-mans-land". A matrix which we may well not be stuck in. Or is this us in our natural state? Are we a departure, a culmination, or an escaped member of nature?

[Emil El Zapato]

Interesting questions Nothing, but I would with confidence exclude the possibility of culmination.

[Dreamtimer]

The researchers calculated that just storing information about a couple of hundred electrons would require a computer memory that would physically require more atoms than exist in the universe.

If this universe is a simulation, then the computer running it is not in the universe. A computer program can't observe the computer.

(what am I missing?)

[Emil El Zapato]

If this universe is a simulation, then the computer running it is not in the universe. A computer program can't observe the computer.

(what am I missing?)

Interesting question it seems. Is that the transition point where AI becomes self-aware? I think software programs are designed with the intent to monitor the computer (hardware, a.k.a BIOS). In my opinion as you have pointed out, the caveat in the study is that it doesn't address the question of the 'memory' and its quantitative or qualitative nature. If we use the theoretical construct of the 'Akashic record' we then have an analogous memory that doesn't care about the number of atoms in the universe because it isn't bound by such a constraint. At least as far as I know...

[Emil El Zapato]

I've been reading again as my beloved TV is missing in action (in another city)...

As the story goes:

The holographic Universe directed by a controlling force is a complete misnomer. What science predicts is that our universe sprang into being as a projection of 'information' from a 4-dimensional Black hole. The analogy is that 3-d black holes have a 2-dimensional layer of quantum data that is representative of all the things that have been chewed up in the black hole and this applies to the most mundane of physical objects. For example, if Aragorn was to throw his wallet into a black hole, it would be reduced to quantum particles that actually are 'reflected' out as a projection onto the 2-d layer of quanta. In theory, with this quantum information a reconstruction of his wallet could be reproduced into its original 3-d form. Not only that, 2-d creatures could exist on the quanum layer and be spending his money as we speak. Incidentally, that possibility is my addition to current theory...I always gotta do that...

So the story goes that a black hole existing in a 4-d (4 physical dimensions) spat out (projected in holographic fashion) a 3-d quantum layer of information which it had digested and it became known as our Universe. And then we wonder why things suck so bad. As Frank Zappa would say, 'ain't this boogie a mess'.

[Aragorn]

For example, if Aragorn was to throw his wallet into a black hole, it would be reduced to quantum particles that actually are 'reflected' out as a projection onto the 2-d layer of quanta.

No, no, you've got that all wrong. My wallet is a black hole. Anything I put in there seems to disappear, although I see some lower-dimensional reflections of what it used to contain in several corporations and government institutions around me.

And yes, those government institutions do indeed harbor life. They are indeed very two-dimensional, and I refer to them as either "bureaucrats" or "politicians", depending on how stupid they are.

[Emil El Zapato]

lol ...

[DMt.]

Of course we're not living in a computer simulation [although in some sense we might as well be] - it's a bootstrap fallacy.

I sometimes feel like we might be living in a collective nightmare, though, especially when I have dreams of being lost in big cities.

I think it was James Joyce who remarked, or rather had one of his characters remark,

"History...is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."