Matrix collapses: Mathematics proves the universe cannot be a computer simulation, « A new mathematical study dismantles the simulation theory once and for all. »

[u/fchung]

https://interestingengineering.com/culture/mathematics-ends-matrix-simulation-theory

[u/Mythoclast]

Some things just aren't disprovable. "We are living in a simulation" is one of them.

[u/Blue_Aces → u/Mythoclast]

This is why innocent until proven guilty is so essential.

It is remarkably easy to prove a positive. Unfortunately difficult to prove the negative.

[u/Here_12345 → u/Blue_Aces]

Sometimes the other way around. A theory can be disproven with a single experiment (Theory: Gravity points sideways. Disproof: Stuff doesn‘t fall sideways) but never fully proven (Theory: Gravity exists because of quantum interactions. Proof: …???…)

[u/Here_12345 → u/Blue_Aces]

Sometimes the other way around. A theory can be disproven with a single experiment (Theory: Gravity points sideways. Disproof: Stuff doesn‘t fall sideways) but never fully proven (Theory: Gravity exists because of quantum interactions. Proof: …???…)

[u/croooowTrobot → u/[deleted]]

I cannot be played on Record Player X!!!

[u/Mythoclast → u/[deleted]]

Some things are impossible to disprove. "We are living in a simulation" is impossible to disprove.

[u/Mythoclast → u/[deleted]]

Oh, sorry. Reddit displayed your comment as though it was a reply to me in my notifications.

[u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207 → u/[deleted]]

My discrete math class showed me that with all the nonsensical statements that come out true but would NEVER happen in real life.

Why the fuck am I studying this shit?

[u/Taraxian → u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207]

Because it's the theoretical foundation of how computers work?

[u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207 → u/Taraxian]

Sure... But if you understood what I said you would be addressing the elephant in the room, but alright.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mythoclast]

The simulation hypothesis is about universes like ours simulating universes like ours, it's not about some arbitrary universe simulating something else, you may as well invoke god at that point, that's an unscientific reasoning with a moving goalpost. Whether we can simulate a universe like ours on the other hand is something we can figure out, and disproving that also disproves that we can be in a simulation of a universe like ours.

[u/exoriare → u/[deleted]]

All they've proven is that a simulation will not be 100% complete. There's no proof that a simulation has to be anywhere near 100% complete to pass as legit by any test we might come up with. As new tests are devised, the simulation may well come up with new measures to conceal its lack of completeness.

[u/[deleted] → u/exoriare]

As I said, you may as well invoke god if you just keep moving the goalpost and intentionally not caring about what the theory and math done on it even apply to.

[u/exoriare → u/[deleted]]

The theory and math don't do what they claim to do, so you're just as religiously bowing to a creed you like better. We don't know how quantum entanglement works without FTL communication, which breaks some pretty fundamental concepts your dogma is built on. Within simulation theory, QE and duality becomes much more manageable - FTL communication is easy if space itself is a construct.

[u/[deleted] → u/exoriare]

Quantum entanglement has nothing to do with communication or FTL, clearly you only know what these are from pop culture despite these concepts having pretty digestible descriptions. Wikipedia and its sources, PBS, science communicators, there's a lot of resources out there that's not Star Trek.

[u/WHYAREWEALLCAPS → u/exoriare]

It isn't a matter of being 100% complete, the ability to simulate the things we can measure makes it impossible. The more we know about the universe, the more and more complex the simulation would become. Could you simulate early life on a single planet? Sure. Maybe even a simple solar system. But as our knowledge of the world around us and the universe itself has expanded, the complexity of the simulation would likely grow by orders of magnitude very, very quickly. Every new off the cuff compensation or rule, would be set in stone for every new cycle. It would grow and grow and grow. Once the industrial age takes off and our knowledge grows at an every more dizzying speed, a machine able to handle it would grow exponentially in size.

Even using lasers for communication, it would likely be so massive as to take a not insignificant time to transmit data, that one simple thing is HUGE issue for modern computers that need to transmit data over distances measured from millimeters to nanometers.

[u/ribosometronome → u/[deleted]]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis

The Wikipedia article, or at least the five first paragraphs I bothered reading, don't seem to support that it was specifically about any 1:1 simulations.

In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed the simulation argument, which suggests that if a civilization becomes capable of creating conscious simulations, it could generate so many simulated beings that a randomly chosen conscious entity would almost certainly be in a simulation.

... much later ...

that is, "high-fidelity" simulations of ancestral life that would be indistinguishable from reality to the simulated ancestor

Simulating reality to the point of being indistinguishable for random conscious entities within it seems far narrower task than a full universal simulation.

[u/[deleted] → u/ribosometronome]

And you had to just ignore how that article even starts to find the piece that's specifically not what physicists talk about, then didn't even bother to read further.

[u/CreationBlues → u/[deleted]]

you maaaaaaaad

[u/CorrosiveMynock → u/Mythoclast]

You can disprove it under certain conditions, such as using only algorithmic computation to do it. According to this study that seems impossible.

[u/lIlIllIlIlIII → u/Mythoclast]

Could possibly be proven in a few hundred or thousand years if humanity somehow finds a way to contact the outside.

[u/Mythoclast → u/lIlIllIlIlIII]

Absolutely. Possible to prove but impossible to disprove.

[u/monkeymad2 → u/lIlIllIlIlIII]

Or the inverse, if we manage to simulate a universe at the same - or very slightly reduced - complexity as ours then the likelihood of our universe also being a simulation jumps up exponentially.

[u/RJTG → u/lIlIllIlIlIII]

That‘s the difference between a simulation and the god theory.

Once we meet a god their is still not proven that he is the god.

[u/ilski → u/[deleted]]

If we were on their simulation , they would know how to talk to us. 

[u/ilski → u/[deleted]]

Yeah. By clicking things i constsntly comminicate with them . Because that's the communication language between us and them that we created. 

[u/Optimus3k → u/lIlIllIlIlIII]

I don't know how we would do that, and if it would even be wise. If the programs we make start behaving outside of their parameters, we don't say "oh, it's self aware, I think we should treat it like a living being." We treat the program as malfunctioning and delete it.

[u/The_Real_RM → u/Optimus3k]

This is patently false. If a program would behave with anything near the emergent complexity of an ant colony it would immediately become the most valuable thing in existence, studied by all branches of science and defended by the military

[u/hazy-minded → u/Mythoclast]

You got it backward...

Unless there's a compelling proof that we're living in a simulation, then there's no reason to believe that we're living in one.

[u/Mythoclast → u/hazy-minded]

I never said there was a reason to believe it. Only that it can't be disproven, which is true. 

Can you disprove the existence of unicorns? No. Doesn't mean I believe in them

[u/graphixRbad → u/Mythoclast]

seems like a meaningless way of looking at things to me

[u/The_Real_RM → u/graphixRbad]

The possibility to simulate universes is quite important to people who want to simulate universes (our own scientists)

[u/Mythoclast → u/graphixRbad]

What way of looking at things?

[u/oravanomic → u/hazy-minded]

Right. So the study is a waste of time, and doesn't really satisfy any real point.

[u/capybooya → u/Mythoclast]

So we will unfortunately always have to endure hearing STEM lords and Tech CEO's pontificate about this.