• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Reality Hacking

ProfessorF

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 9, 2005
Messages
319
Saw this over on the Dark Roasted Blend site (here) - and it stuck out as being a bit out of the ordinary for them.

http://www.TheRealityHacker.com/index.htm


Reality Hacking - with geeky flare!

If reality is truly made up of highly compressed information and/or is holographic in nature then we should be able to hack our physical world just like a large computer system.

"The Reality Hacker" site is taking all the cool new theoretical spiritual/scientific blends out of the seemingly endless discussion stage and getting down to some serious quantum action. "We have already had some wild results and a few really weird accidents with the more complex things we are working with."

What do you get when you dive headlong into unbridled spiritual exploration guided only by computer hacking concepts, comic books, movies and theories from quantum physics? The answer: reality hacking.

Reality hacking is based on a popular theory that our physical world is actually made up of little more than highly compressed information. If this is true then our entire world is very similar to the computers we use every day. This means that reality itself can be "hacked" — broken into and manipulated — just like any other large computer system.

Now, this sounds all a bit 'Matrix-y' to me.
And I can't shake the feeling that there's nothing new being promised here.

Any thoughts?
 
This idea has been around for many decades...

eg:

Unconventional cosmologist Max Tegmark says mathematical formulas create reality.
by Adam Frank
published online June 16, 2008

Cosmologists are not your run-of-the-mill thinkers, and Max Tegmark is not your run-of-the-mill cosmologist. Throughout his career, Tegmark has made important contributions to problems such as measuring dark matter in the cosmos and understanding how light from the early universe informs models of the Big Bang. But unlike most other physicists, who stay within the confines of the latest theories and measurements, the Swedish-born Tegmark has a night job. In a series of papers that have caught the attention of physicists and philosophers around the world, he explores not what the laws of nature say but why there are any laws at all.

According to Tegmark, “there is only mathematics; that is all that exists.” In his theory, the mathematical universe hypothesis, he updates quantum physics and cosmology with the concept of many parallel universes inhabiting multiple levels of space and time. By posing his hypothesis at the crossroads of philosophy and physics, Tegmark is harking back to the ancient Greeks with the oldest of the old questions: What is real?

Tegmark has pursued this work despite some risk to his career. It took four tries before he could get an early version of the mathematical universe hypothesis published, and when the article finally appeared, an older colleague warned that his “crackpot ideas” could damage his reputation. But propelled by optimism and passion, he pushed on.

“I learned pretty early that if I focused exclusively on these big questions I’d end up working at McDonald’s,” :shock: Tegmark explains. “So I developed this Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde strategy where officially, whenever I applied for jobs, I put forth my mainstream work. And then quietly, on the side, I pursued more philosophical interests.” The strategy worked. Today a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tegmark travels among the world’s top physicists. Backed by this well-earned credibility, his audacious ideas are sparking fascination and taking flight.

These days Tegmark is a busy man. With his wife, the Brazilian cosmologist Angelica de Oliveira-Costa, he balances science with the demands of raising two young boys. Our interviewer, theoretical astrophysicist Adam Frank of the University of Rochester in New York, finally caught up with Tegmark as he made his way home to Winchester, Massachusetts, from a conference at Stanford University. In a comic juxtaposition of the profound and the profane, they spoke about the nature of reality by cell phone for three hours as Tegmark jockeyed his way through an airport rental car return, security lines, and a long wait for a delayed flight. A riff on reality would brake to a halt so Tegmark could avoid being hit by a rental-agency van. Just as the conversation plunged into parallel universes, Tegmark would have to downshift the dialogue for the bewildered security guard checking his boarding pass. Tegmark’s infectious excitement over the big issues, from physics and philosophy to kids and cosmology, made for one hell of an afternoon’s ride. :D

etc.....

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/16 ... de-of-math

(But there's older stuff too...)
 
Okay; Tegmark thinks that the universe is made of maths (he has also suggested that other universes, with other mathematical rules, might also exist- in fact, perhaps all such universes might exist in one way or another.

Nick Bostrom on a related note, has suggested that we are quite likely to live in a simulated environment- this is his 'simulation argument' and it is very Matrix-like in detail.
http://www.simulation-argument.com/

Presumably if Bostrom is right, there will be safeguards against the inhabitants of such a simulation 'hacking' into the operating system that they run on. Hacking into a system about which we know nothing would be difficult if not impossible. but you never know.

Incidentally that reminds me of a similar problem which might arise when and if we ever manage to create artificially intelligent entities in a computer; such an entity might learn or discover how to hack its own operating system and rewrite itself to remove any restrictions we might want to place on it. We'd better not put the manual in an easily accessible form, for instance...

perhaps the manual for our reality is on-line somewhere, and all we have to do is find it.

Tegmark's idea of a naturally eveolved mathematecal universe poses a different problem. There is no reason to expect that a mathematical universe would be hackable; but on the other hand a naturally evolved universe might not have the anti-hacking defenses that an artificial simulated reality might have.
 
I get all antsy when people start "explaining" reality, consciousness and so on in computer terminology, for that's merely the coinage of the present day. Such comparisons would have made no sense 75 years ago, very little 50 years ago, and may very well be as obsolete as hell 50 - 75 years into the future.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
I get all antsy when people start "explaining" reality, consciousness and so on in computer terminology, for that's merely the coinage of the present day. Such comparisons would have made no sense 75 years ago, very little 50 years ago, and may very well be as obsolete as hell 50 - 75 years into the future.
...or they may become the standard paradigm 50 - 75 years into the future! ;)

(Every new idea has to start somewhere, some time...)
 
OldTimeRadio said:
I get all antsy when people start "explaining" reality, consciousness and so on in computer terminology, for that's merely the coinage of the present day. Such comparisons would have made no sense 75 years ago, very little 50 years ago, and may very well be as obsolete as hell 50 - 75 years into the future.


Everybody builds a model of their world in terms they are familiar with.

In Victorian times, someone would have come up with a model based upon steam and clockwork gears.
 
Philo_T said:
Everybody builds a model of their world in terms they are familiar with.

In Victorian times, someone would have come up with a model based upon steam and clockwork gears.

That's the point I was attempting to make. But there's little more reason to believe that the Universe is a virtual reality computer program billions of light-years across than there was 140 years back to imagine that it was a great wheezing steam-driven chronometer.

Although I suppose that we could argue that the computer program model makes more sense and is thus probably a little closer to reality than the steam engine one, and that that gain of knowledge is called progress.

Rynner's points, above, are well-taken, too, but I'm not quite willing to wear the computer game sandwich boards. Not quite yet at any rate.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Although I suppose that we could argue that the computer program model makes more sense and is thus probably a little closer to reality than the steam engine one, and that that gain of knowledge is called progress.
There is an important qualitative difference between computing and any other model of 'reality' - computing has a universality about it. This was realised early in the history of modern computing - Turing showed how a universal program could mimic any other program.

It's the programming that's important, not the actual hardware. Future computers may well not be boxes full of silicon chips, but the programming theories will still apply.

Already computers can interact with us via vision, sound, and touch, and more advanced uses are being heavily researched. The motion picture industry already shows how far computers can go in creating alternative realities, and we can only expect to find these processes becoming increasingly sophisticated, until, indeed, the boundaries between computer reality and 'everyday' reality become totally blurred.

Try doing that with a steam engine!
 
The problem, friend Rynner, is that this entire scenario reminds me, far too much and very uncomfortably so, of an early 1930s science-fiction story by John W. Campbell, in which an alien visiting the Earth regards radio as pretty much beneath contempt, since it is such a "crude mechanical device."

I didn't read the tale until at least two decades after its original publication but the yarn still impressed me even then.

I wonder how that same alien, visiting the Earth today or perhaps a century into the future, would regard our vaunted cybernetic knowledge?
 
OldTimeRadio said:
...a "crude mechanical device."

I wonder how that same alien, visiting the Earth today or perhaps a century into the future, would regard our vaunted cybernetic knowledge?
As I said before, "It's the programming that's important, not the actual hardware".

Programming can be (and in fact, is) implemented in biological systems.
DNA and RNA are chemical programs that control how biological creations grow and interact with their environment.

When we have more thorough knowledge of how this all works we might well be able to write computer programs to simulate a sperm and an egg coming together in conception, and then simulate the growth of a baby to adulthood. Properly done, this virtual person would not necessarily realise he is in fact a computer program, as he would be able to interact with his virtual environment in all the normal ways.

Scary, ain't it! :shock:
 
The 'mathematical universe' has been done by the Simpsons too:

Homer3

Patty and Selma visit the Simpsons to clean a bucket of seashells. While trying to hide from them, Homer looks behind a bookcase and enters an eerie third dimension. Homer explores the peculiar area, being depicted as a 3-D computer-generated animation. Through the walls, he calls Marge for help.

Marge calls Ned Flanders (because he "has a ladder"), Reverend Lovejoy, Professor Frink, Chief Wiggum, and Dr. Hibbert to help Homer get out of the dimension, but they are of no help. "It's like he just disappeared into FAT air", remarks Selma.

Frink outside explains to the others that Homer is in the "third dimension". When Homer accidentally pierces the fabric of the space-time continuum by throwing a cone in the floor and creating a hole in the floor, the third dimension starts to collapse into a black hole, taking Homer and other objects closer to it with increasing force. An enraged Wiggum opens fire on the wall, but the bullets just get sucked into the black hole after narrowly missing Homer, making the force of the black hole stronger. Bart takes command and ties a safety rope around his waist, going into the third dimension to save him, despite Marge's objection. Bart yells at Homer that he has to jump to get hold of Bart, so that they can escape. Homer agrees and tries to, but falls short and into the hole, yelling "Craaaaap!", and Bart ends up back in the house thanks to his safety rope pulled by Wiggum, Ned, Lovejoy, Frink, Grampa, and Hibbert after the third dimension collapsed on itself. Bart tells the truth about what happened ("Well, we hit a little snag when the universe sorta collapsed in on itself"), much to Marge's dismay. Lovejoy assures her that Homer has gone to a better place. Homer finds himself in an even more terrifying world: the real world. He lands in a dumpster and walks down the street as humans stare at him. Homer's fear of the real world soon subsides when he happens upon an erotic cake store and goes inside.

Homer3d.gif


One of my favourite episodes. :D
 
This seems relevent here (includes fascinating video):

Virtual creatures and robots take on 'a life of their own'
Last Updated: 8:01pm BST 11/08/2008

A new way to allow simulated and real robots to take on a life of their own is under development by a German team with colleagues at Edinburgh University.

The creatures find out how to move by trial and error with no overall guidance.

Among the many examples of what happens, in physically realistic computer simulations they found that when "humanoids" come into contact with each other, they start to wrestle spontaneously.

The software that controls the virtual creatures is an artificial neural network which is roughly modelled on the brain.

Prof Ralf Der at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig and the team at Edinburgh's School of Infomatics has applied the software to simulated animals and humans that are not given any explicit instructions on how to move. Nor do they know anything about the virtual environment.

All the neural network brain of each creature has to work with when controlling the humanoid is the angle of the 15 joints of the virtual creature. Dogs and snakes have up to 25 so called degrees of freedom.

The clever part is that the network is controlled by a process called "self regulation".

A deep mathematical analysis of living things has come up with an insight into why they are special, dubbed the "edge of chaos" by American computer scientist Chris Langton, to sum up how living things have the right balance between blindly following rules and creatively adapting to new situations.

The self-regulation principle drives the behaving robot into behaving in this special manner in two ways. "On the one hand actions should be the most sensitive answers to the current sensor values," said Prof Der.

This gives rise to a kind of "butterfly effect", he said, referring to how the effect captures the essence of chaos: a butterfly flapping its wings in London can, in principle, cause a subsequent hurricane in the Philippines because the system - in this case the Earth's atmosphere - is so "sensitive" that if there is even the slightest uncertainty in measuring the current weather conditions, then the weather in a few weeks' time is unpredictable.

For Prof Der's work, a tiny perturbation in measurements made by the sensors leads to large variations in the actions of the robot. But the robot is still under the control of physics and subject to the additional requirement that behaviour has to be predictable.

As a consequence of trying to meet both objectives the virtual creatures produce spontaneous behaviours "which are its most natural ways to move and act," he said.

While being active the robot is learning about itself and its surroundings at the same time.

Like a newborn baby, "it doesn't know anything but tries motions that are natural for its body. Half an hour later, it's rolling and jumping," Prof Der said.

Prof Der demonstrated his virtual creatures at the latest artificial life conference in Winchester.

In videos of these demos, a simulated dog learns to jump over a fence, a snake manages to jump out of a pit, and a humanoid learns how to get upright, as well as do push ups and back flips.

For now, the neural nets learn how to stand up, jump or wrestle, but promptly forgets them. Prof Der and his colleagues have just started to use virtual creatures with a long-term memory, so that when the robot finds itself in similar situations, it knows what to do.

One of the most remarkable attempts to do something similar was by conducted in the 1990s by the American computer artist, Karl Sims, who exploited biological metaphors in a computer to evolve movements, not design themselves.

The result was virtual creatures that paddle like turtles, wriggle like sperm or scuttle like crabs. But the point is that Sims, like God, told his creatures what to aim for: his program was trying to evolve a way to move across a screen.

Prof Der's system is more natural because there is no goal and the robots have to "self organise".

Prof Der said he admired the work of Sims but said that "he uses artificial evolution for achieving prespecified behaviours while we use pure self-organization without any aims or goals which gives each agent a life of its own."

"What we are at is the self-organization of the behaviour of robots from scratch so that what we get is essentially the playful robot," said Prof Der. "Specific performances, like walking, emerge only in outlines, while others, like the wrestling scenarios, emerge for free."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.j ... bot111.xml
 
The reason that the Simulation argument is compelling is because all physical quantities (charge, spin, mass, momentum, location, time, etcetera) can be reduced to numerical form (in theory) and so can their interactions. In theory all physical interactions could be mapped to mathematical form, and their interactions calculated on an arbitrarily large Turning-type computer. This suggests that the Universe can be regarded as a computer, even if it isn't one.

Except there is a problem with this idea; the Uncertainty principle and the indeterminate nature of many quantum processes. To model uncertainty in a computer would take a large amount of processing power- in fact to model it accurately might need infinite amouts of processing power, or more likely, it can only be modelled by ntroducing random factors into each transaction.

That means that either the Universe can't be modelled, or if it can, the outcome of the program is literally unpredictable. You could build two Universe simulations, for example, with identical starting states, and hey would diverge from each other as soon as you started the programs running.

So we have simulations running on some unknown and perhaps unknowable sort of processor, simulations which are unpredictable and which would be different every time they are run. This situation is effectively indistinguishable from the universe we now recognise; in some ways that means that it is not a useful concept, as it makes no testable predictions.
 
Back
Top