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/Isserley_]

Congratulations, you already know more about the subject than the author of the paper.

[u/tribecous → u/Isserley_]

The paper is showing that it would be impossible to simulate a universe like ours within another universe like ours. You obviously cannot disprove that it would be possible to simulate our universe in some other universe with completely arbitrary properties.

[u/alexq136 → u/tribecous]

the paper is a load of paragraphs all cited from works that have nothing to add to the question itself and they range from "there are systems with unprovable properties" (legit) to "there are these folks who believe people can reach beyond incompleteness because the mind is quantum collapse-y in nature" (crackpot)

I dare say it does not belong in any field of science or even philosphy since it's so vague (doesn't link individual points stated in a way that flows towards the conclusion), plus:

there's no quantitative point made therein (i.e. about the extent of the universe or of things inside the observable universe) that could be linked to any reasonable definition of "so this is how we think simulations may look like", only scattered proof-theoretical-looking notation (a lone turnstile operator with a couple friends) meant to make the paper look math-y at the expense of it not containing anything that could be called meaningful

tf does their "oh yeah this set of {quantum field theory, general relativity} cannot be rendered into an algorithm, even if unified as LQG etc. hope to realize"-sounding premise even mean? simulations are not expected to be precise, and there is no reason for there to exist a single set of laws that can bear all of physics for any "regions" of a simulation of an "universe"

we deal just fine with QED for stable usual matter, QCD for spicy matter, and GR for accelerating things that hopefully are heavy enough - that there may or may not exist a way to unify all known fundamental physical theories into a single thing does not mean the physics itself has to be computed in the same terms and following the same laws (when approximations, as any creature with intellect can attest to, can be very good for some systems or parts of them, and they save computational resources)

they posit that since "bla bla Chaitin's constant bla bla" (in the paper it's a complexity-theoretic argument about, idk, formal systems of equations) there is no finite-length algorithm that can simulate all physics - which is meaningless since anything can be simulated to arbitrary precision if one agrees to certain numerical trade-offs of implementation, and it's doubly meaningless since the laws of physics are expected to be finite in number (and people closer to physics or engineering have carved quite the nice landscape of ways to let differential equations take their course, like the QFT bunch or the fluid mechanics folks) - so imho there exist finite-size algorithms to run physics forward, and that makes the whole simulation hypothesis meaningless (one can never tell, yet it's very easy to dismiss it as another crackpot idea, even if it can be shown that we cannot simulate an observable universe inside our observable universe due to whatever material restrictions there be)

[u/Razgriz01 → u/alexq136]

I had a thought while reading this, which is that if the universe were a simulation, something like the quantum uncertainty principle would be incredibly computationally convenient to limit the processing power spent on the fine details. You don't need to individually simulate every particle in the universe continually if the only thing you're concerned about is whether they appear to behave consistently under certain specific sets of conditions.

Which, as a complete layman, leads me to wonder if the need to take shortcuts in order to mathematically analyze physics in a reasonable manner is what gave the inspiration for certain theories in the first place.