Uncovering a Simulation

It is a touch OTT Einstein, hero of mine as he is, was very wrong when it came to quantum theory. But there is no need to worry - the Moon is there, and not simply on the whim of an onlooker. The realm we inhabit at our length scales is a classical domain, caused by the near-infinite number of interactions between the constituent components. The Copenhagen Interpretation is irrelevant to this, and to me is merely an observed approximation that occurs when a quantum domain interacts with a classical domain. Admittedly, take our world, isolate it from all external interactions, and it will behave quantum mechanically to an external observer... and then the moon could well disappear

Well, it seems like you've never met a sentence you couldn't misunderstand, and since that seems likely to continue I'll try to provide as little additional fodder as possible.The topic of this thread, your thread, by the way, is that the evidence points toward the universe actually being "part of a simulation." Care to describe any of this evidence?--Percy

This is just an empty assertion, there is no eveidence or proof behind your statement. You should have said - IMHO and your response would have made sense. If we are of the same opinion, what difference does it make? I do think the moon is there when we are not observing it. How did you prove me wrong? Where is your argument? You are basically saying - "prove QM wrong". How nice of you to think that i have the capabilities to do it at home or in the office. I think QM theory incomplete in as much as its observations are not part of our macro world. There is no clear cohesive explanation for that yet. The simulation argument stems from the CI as much as it works on our macro level(many explanations, and experiments, none really convincing). And if my opinion is the same as that of Niels Bohr or Einstein in the quotes i put forward, that means you consider their arguments incohesive. What arguments did you provide that those quoted scientists were wrong? You are just asserting they are, but where is the evidence? There is such a great controversy about QM that you comparing its building blocks to a building just shows that you haven't got a clue about QM. What contriversy is there in building construction? Evidence, links? Oh you just want to assert. Take deep breaths all you want. The above paragraph just shows that you have never heard about the God's dice argument between Einstein and Bohr, an argument that lasted 30 years. God does seem to play dice and it was proven in an experiment in the 70's. That's my argument, read up on it - it's the EPR paradox. Why do you think that your computer being completely black and completely white at the same time is not fucked up? That you are dead and alive at any moment in time? How is that not fucked up? That what i write is fucked up and not fucked up at the same time? Where is your argument that this is logical? How about some common sense? Personal experience? HAHA, that was a joke right? You are aware that that personal experience is shared by no less than 6.65 billion people and probably 1 bln species of animal. Personal? LOL, wouldn't you say private or discrete?Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

I, for one, would be very interested in seeing this evidence.In anticipation...

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

...what?What relavence did your post have, Agobot? How did your Einstein quote have anything whatsoever to do with our reality being a simulation? I don't see any relavence at all. Perhaps you could illuminate us? ...I never said the moon was not there when we don't observe it. I simply pointed out that quoting Einstein in teh absence of any actual argument is meaningless. I can't refute your argument if you don't even post one. What does this have to do with reality being a simulation? You're the one who explicitly stated that you believe that QM is "incomplete." You surely must have some reason, right? Or is it just personal incredulity? Because that's utterly meaningless. So far as I understand it (and I'm certainly no physicist), we wouldn't expect to directly observe quantum mechanics at our scale. We can't see those interactions, any more than we can directly observe the structure of galactis clusters unaided. It doesn't make either QM or astronomy wrong to note that they aren't necessary to accurately model the classical world we exist in. QM just gives a higher level of resolution, to use an analogy, and reveales a more subtle and complex part of teh picture that we don't see on our own. Well, thanks for still not explaining your argument. You think the Universe may actually be a simulation because of some unnamed "explanations" and experiments that you don't find very convincing? It would very much help if you would describe the experiments and explanations that lead you to think that the universe may actually be a simulation. I didn't say that any argument is wrong, Agobot, becasue no argument has been presented. I said that your posts are incohesive because they consist of a string of quotes from physicists with nothing that connects them to the topic of this thread. I have absolutely no idea what your actual position is or what your reasoning behind it is because you haven't stated it yet outside of the OP's assertion that "there is evidence that the Unvierse is a simulation." My replies have primarily consisted of requests for you to describe exactly what evidence supports that assertion, and your responses have included Einstein quotes that have nothing to do with the Universe as a simulation.I'm not arguing against any position becasue you haven't presented a position compelte enough to argue for or against it. I'm asking you to post a complete thought. Describe why you think the Unvierse is a simulation. Explain how all of those physicist quotes tie into your argument. I'm frankly tired of playing Indiana Jones with your point - I shouldn't have to look for it, you should simply and comprehensibly state it. You aren't tesla, but you're starting to bear a stronger and stronger resemblance to his "nothing exists outside of existence" posts. Please start making sense so that I can reply properly! ...controversy in building construction?This just doesn't make any sense at all, Agobot. I cannot understand your reply. Please rephrase.Perhaps you could also explain the "controversy in QM" and how it applies to your assertion that the Universe is a simulation?My point was that gaining a better understanding of the overall reality of the Universe, whether that's understanding that matter and energy and dimensions are the result of fluctuations int eh quantum field, or understanding that molecules are comprised of atoms, or that a building is made of bricks, doesn't change the objective reality we observe around us. Again, my desk is still solid. I'm still typing on a keyboard. The keyboard may actually be a specific series of distortions in the quantum field that behave as quarks and gluons which combine into subatomic particles which form atoms which form molecules which are arranged in a human-designed fashion at a still larger scale to function as a computer interface device, but the end result is still a keyboard. Understanding that every aspect of our reality is affected by our perspective as temporal entities at a specific scale soesn't mean that our reality is somehow an illusion - it's jsut an incomplete picture. As I said before.Do you agree or disagree with that? Do you believe that the keyboard in front of you doesn't exist because at the most basic scale we are aware of it's simply a nearly infinitely complex series of quantum interactions? I have heard of that argument, Agobot. But most typically when I see the "God doesn't play dice" quote from Einstein brought up, it's by a Creationist trying to show Einstein believed in God. You didn't provide any surrounding statements of your own to tie the quote into your point. I had no context to go on.But given the convoluted nature of this thread, I'd rather not look to my own sources to determine your argument, and besides, that violates the forum rules. Please state, in your own words, what your argument is. I assume it will ahve something to do with the Unvierse as a simulation as that's the topic of the thread, but I'm not going to ask anyone other than you to state your argument. So you have a problem with the uncertainty principle. I might be starting to understand some of your argument, though not why it makes you think the Universe might be a simulation.
What specifically is your problem with the uncertainty principle? Simply that it's counterintuitive to entities that exist in the classical realm like us? I certainly agree that the uncertainty principle and things like Schrodinger's Cat make my head hurt to think about for too long, but then, that's because I live at the classical scale and my experiences are built around that level of detail. Perhaps if I could have directly experienced the reality of teh uncertainty principle as an actual aspect of my life it would be less counterintuitive, but, well, them's the breaks. Personal experience is personal. As in, it's only ever experienced by an individual. If those experiences are verified outside of the individual, we'd call them objective observations. Your statement that "My reality > a bullshit scientific interpretation" implied that you would count your own personal experience above the conclusion of a body of multiple scientists after analyzing a set of objective data and testing their model against reality. In other words, if you hallucinated that you saw, say, a flying spaghetti monster, you would count that hallucination above the objective analysis of local camera footage and independant observer interviews that say no such monster was present. When you accept your own personal experiences as less fallable than everyone elses, and especially as less fallable than the conclusions of the scientific method which is designed compeltely to eliminate personal bias and illusory interpretations by objectively verifying all data, you're stepping dangerously close to crazy-land.But then, given your inability to make sense and your overly-defensive insistence on taking every post adversarially rather than comprehending a simply request for a better explanation of your point, perhaps you're not just dangerously close any longer. If you see tesla there in your visit to looney-world, please tell him that we don't miss him, but I do hope you return to the land of making sense soon.

And so do I. The moon is not made of perfectly isolated subatomic particles, so it interacts with itself and its environment. You understand how decoherence might be worth considering? To qutoe a recent physicist, Brian Greene:

quote:

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"Decoherence forces much of the weirdness of quantum physics to 'leak' from large objects since, bit by bit, the quantum weirdness is carried away by the innumerable impinging particles from the environment."

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But it isn't. But you aren't. Decoherence, decoherence, decoherence.There may be some interesting arguments you could care to bring up against decoherence, but ignoring it doesn't seem to be a good strategy.

Point me to a paper that says that decoherence is a done deal. Or that it solves the "observation/measurement" problem. It'd be appreaciated if you could point me to a site that states that the physics community has accepted decoherence as the definitive reason for the measurement/oserver problem.
This theory simply tries to disprove the observer's role in determining the state of the universe. QM tells us something peculiar about the nature of our reality and that we have a distinct role in defining the world around us. Get used to it, it's a fact. What is not clear is what is an observer. Since the observer does not exist as an observer at the quantum level, how does it influence the quantum world(making the moon appear when we are observing it)? But experiments in QM shows that you are wrong. You cannot avoid the observer's role because it's well defined and proven beyond doubt. There are many theories trying to explain why this is so, but none is successful so far. Just another controvery in the life of QM.

Pick something - a mobile phone. Have a look at it - it exists physically. Put it under a scanning tunneling microscope and have a look - you'd see individual atoms. Zoom in and it disappears. There is no more phone, no building blocks of matter. Move the phone around under the miscroscope, there is still nothing to be seen. Now pull it off the microscope and it's still there, but if you return it under the microscope - there is no phone. If you put yourself under the same microscope you'll see there is no "you", you don't exist. What exists is the perception your mind creates. A perception i am almost sure is created by a simulation - i.e. there is nothing physical in a simulation, just a perception of "physicalness" that fades away under closer examination.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

There may be some interesting arguments you could care to bring up against decoherence, but ignoring it doesn't seem to be a good strategy. Point me to a paper that says that what you said is a done deal. So why essentially assert that we are observers in your moon example? There are many other potential observers such as the planet earth and, well, everything else that interacts with the subatomic particles in the moon: Including other subatomic particles in the moon.

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Observing the Progressive Decoherence of the “Meter” in a Quantum Measurement
Decoherence and the transition from quantum to classicalEdited by Modulous, : added some papers about decoherence

No, it does not, despite the many who say and write otherwise. Ask someone who works or has worked with quantum theory (Son Goku and myself, for example) and we will tell you something very different. Again, this is wrong. Science magazines may well say this, but they are wrong. Scientists who are not properly aquainted with quantum theory may say this, and they are wrong. Decoherence is a fact. A complete theory of decoherence is not fully established, because there are some technicalities - and as ever, there are philosophical ambiguities. But the vast majority of us have accepted decoherence as the definitive reason for the measurement/observer problem - modulo the above ambiguities.Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

The double slit experiment that proved the wave-particle collapse:Wave—particle duality - WikipediaDouble-slit experiment - Wikipedia

Thanks for taking the time to correct me. Could you tell me how is the observer's role solved? What makes it possible? Many worlds interpretation?
Could you accept two worlds, one in which there is a Moon, and one in which there is no Moon and you living in one of them? Does it make more sense than we(observers) causing the wave particles collapse in the object "Moon"?Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

Neither of those two articles is a paper which says that the concept that 'we have a distinct role in defining the world around us' is a done deal.

Non sequitur. "Oddness" in reality does not imply that the universer is a simulation. In fact, in siumlations we do create, we tend to target the simulation around the scale of what's being simulated. Space shuttle simulators, for example, use classical Newtonian mechanics and gravity, not quantum mechanics, because the classical equasions are more than accurate enough for the scale of the simulation. Similarly, the simulator does not model individual molecules or atoms or subatomic particles, as they are irrelevant to the simulation.If we're talking about a computer simulation, adding that extra detail costs significant computing resources in terms of computational power and memory. When there's no real reason to add that detail because the simulation is targeted at a scale where quantum mechanics is not required to accurately model existence, it simply doesn't make a lot of sense to add it in.You seem to believe that if the Universe does not behave intuitively at every scale, this must be evidence ogf a simulation. That's not the case. The uncertainty principle no more supports the notion that the Universe is a simulation than it supports the idea that the universe is all a dream, or that the Unvierse simply exists, or that it was created by a deity. It's simply not relevant to any of those questions.This, of course, is even without addressing your misunderstanding of uncertainty. I'll leave that to cavediver, but as it is, even if your conceptual model of the implications of quantum mechanics were dead-on, I still haven't seen you provide evidence to support the idea that the Universe is a simulation.

By done deal I meant "fact" and whether that fact is resolved by Many Worlds interpretation or superimposing the role of the observer is irrelevant.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.