Day_N_Night
18th February 2009, 07:32 AM
To me, this section seems more fitting for this subject, but if any of the moderators see this subject as more belonging in the Weird Science Section then go head and move it but to me it seems like this section will generate more interesting Discussion
For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.
If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true
The philosopher Nick Bostrom investigated the possibility that we may be living in a simulation.[1] A simplified version of his argument proceeds as such:
i. It is possible that a civilization could create a computer simulation which contains individuals with artificial intelligence.
ii. Such a civilization would likely run many?say billions?of these simulations (just for fun; for research, etc.)
iii. A simulated individual inside the simulation wouldn?t necessarily know that it?s inside a simulation?it?s just going about its daily business in what it considers to be the "real world."
Then the ultimate question is?if one accepts that theses 1, 2, and 3 are at least possible? which of the following is more likely?
a. We are the one civilization which develops AI simulations and happens not to be in one itself? Or,
b. We are one of the many (billions) of simulations that has run? (Remember point iii.)
In greater detail, his argument attempts to prove the trichotomy, that:
either
intelligent races will never reach a level of technology where they can run simulations of reality so detailed they can be mistaken for reality (or this is impossible in principle); or
races who do reach such a level do not tend to run such simulations; or
we are almost certainly living in such a simulation.
Bostrom's argument uses the premise that given sufficiently advanced technology, it is possible to simulate entire inhabited planets or even larger habitats or even entire universes as quantum simulations in time/space pockets, including all the people on them, on a computer, and that simulated people can be fully conscious, and are as much persons as non-simulated people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality#Occam.27s_razor
http://www.biota.org/reality/bostrom.pdf
What does Rorta think about this?
For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.
If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true
The philosopher Nick Bostrom investigated the possibility that we may be living in a simulation.[1] A simplified version of his argument proceeds as such:
i. It is possible that a civilization could create a computer simulation which contains individuals with artificial intelligence.
ii. Such a civilization would likely run many?say billions?of these simulations (just for fun; for research, etc.)
iii. A simulated individual inside the simulation wouldn?t necessarily know that it?s inside a simulation?it?s just going about its daily business in what it considers to be the "real world."
Then the ultimate question is?if one accepts that theses 1, 2, and 3 are at least possible? which of the following is more likely?
a. We are the one civilization which develops AI simulations and happens not to be in one itself? Or,
b. We are one of the many (billions) of simulations that has run? (Remember point iii.)
In greater detail, his argument attempts to prove the trichotomy, that:
either
intelligent races will never reach a level of technology where they can run simulations of reality so detailed they can be mistaken for reality (or this is impossible in principle); or
races who do reach such a level do not tend to run such simulations; or
we are almost certainly living in such a simulation.
Bostrom's argument uses the premise that given sufficiently advanced technology, it is possible to simulate entire inhabited planets or even larger habitats or even entire universes as quantum simulations in time/space pockets, including all the people on them, on a computer, and that simulated people can be fully conscious, and are as much persons as non-simulated people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality#Occam.27s_razor
http://www.biota.org/reality/bostrom.pdf
What does Rorta think about this?