• IvyisAngy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    4 hours ago

    The easiest way to solve this existential question is to ask another.

    “If true, what about my life actually changes?”

    The answer is of course. Nothing. Your form of existence hardly matters, whether made from atoms and DNA or Hard Data, you are real and your thoughts and feelings matter. All that changes is that you are distantly aware that the universe is powered artificially.

    • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      4 hours ago

      Yes. My thoughts and feelings matter. But if it’s simulated with a few shortcuts, your thoughts and feelings might not exist.

      Maybe all other humans are only about as well-simulated as current LLMs.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    edit-2
    4 hours ago

    If the universe we live in is a simulation, the universe that simulation exist in, must be infinitely millions of times more complex than the one we live in, to be able to have the necessary storage and computational power to simulate our universe.
    Is that really a likely scenario?

    Don’t answer that, because obviously the chances are fifty fifty, it either is or it isn’t. /s

    • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      5 hours ago

      A simulated universe would probably have some hard caps introduced to reduce computational needs, like some minimum temperature things can reach or max velocity.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        3 hours ago

        Also, you’d need a limit, like a minimum distance, so errors don’t creep in. People would have to be crazy to believe something like that exists.

      • scratchee@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        edit-2
        4 hours ago

        Or a limited number of dimensions. Our 11 dimensional overlords probably wonder if we even count as life, or perhaps we’re just entertaining automata running as a screensaver.

        • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          ·
          4 hours ago

          You know that thing on video games that stuff is only rendered when the player is looking at it? A simulated universe could probably save a lot of energy by implementing something like that, like particles behaving like waves until observed.

    • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      4 hours ago

      The programmers of that simulation could be cheating a bit. For example, they could approximate the movement of particles by using wave fields, and only if the particles are observed, would it actually simulate individual particles.

      It would cause some weird effects that shouldn’t be there. For example a light spot in the middle of circular shadows. But most players don’t want 100% perfection. They want to be able to run the game on their device.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 hours ago

        To simulate a single base particle would require millions of atom equivalents.
        In our universe, to simulate 1 atom, requires millions of atoms.
        So to simulate our universe perfectly, would require a universe more than a million times more complex, and even then everything in that universe would be used only to simulate our universe.

    • Lena@gregtech.eu
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      5 hours ago

      In this hypothetical scenario, we can’t possibly know what this external universe looks like. It could be entirely different from ours in terms of physics, so we may well be living in a simulation. I personally don’t care because it doesn’t affect me at all.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        4 hours ago

        we can’t possibly know what this external universe looks like.

        I 100% agree, except what we can know, is that it must be infinitely more complex then this. It’s a necessity of math and logic.
        But what it looks like or what the laws are, we cannot know. Only that it’s more complex.

        Apart from that, I agree that no matter if this is a simulation or not, it remains our reality that we continuously try to better understand.

        • Lena@gregtech.eu
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          4 hours ago

          it must be infinitely more complex then this.

          Probably not infinitely, just very very very very very very very very much more complex.

          So yeah, nothing is outside the realm of possibility for the external universe.

        • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          4 hours ago

          It doesn’t necessarily have to be more complex, if it is infinite.

          Just like there are exactly as many rational numbers between 0 and 1 as there are in total. The same works for real numbers.

          We don’t know if our universe is infinite. There is reason to believe that spacetime might be discrete. And we don’t know if the universe is infinite, or if the observable universe is all there is, and we just happen to be approximately in the middle of it.

          But if the universe is dense, and if the technology was advanced enough, simulating an equally complex should be possible.

  • eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    4 hours ago

    I believe that we do not live in a simulation because despite a great deal deal of effort nobody has found either a gold glitch or a momentum glitch.

  • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    3 hours ago

    What if the simulation isn’t cyber-digital, but rather, exactly what everything that we know is?

    Like what if the boobs in real life and the computers we’ve made ARE the simulation of a higher way of life?

    What if we’re just a fuckall speck of nothing-just-for-fun for some timet tavelling, universe-creating-on-a-whim entity?