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The Holographic Universe

The latest New Scientist focusses on similar issues:

Could we become gods?

We are a curious species, and our curiosity has led to some interesting ideas about our place in the universe.

Perhaps the most curious of all is the idea that the universe isn’t real, and we live in a computer simulation created by a superior intelligence. Whatever the plausibility of this claim, it begs a tantalising question: could we become the gods of a universe that we create, inhabited by creatures so smart that they are able to question their own place in the universe?

:confused:
 
If we are in a huge holographic game, I want to find out what the cheat codes are!
 
Why would you bother? I mean if you've got the resources to pull off a stunt like a computer simulation I reckon you'd get bored of our antics after awhile.

What do we do? Eat, sleep, fart, f*ck, whinge, kill each other. Not exactly fascinating. I mean looking at an ants nest or at microbes under a scope is interesting for about 5 minutes to the average person.

After the dinosaurs, it must have been pretty dull as well.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
Why would you bother? I mean if you've got the resources to pull off a stunt like a computer simulation I reckon you'd get bored of our antics after awhile.

What do we do? Eat, sleep, fart, f*ck, whinge, kill each other. Not exactly fascinating. I mean looking at an ants nest or at microbes under a scope is interesting for about 5 minutes to the average person.

After the dinosaurs, it must have been pretty dull as well.
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Perhaps it's better than the reality? Maybe the real 'us' is in cold storage somewhere, in a giant warehouse underground - because outside it's a nuclear wasteland.
 
If our Universe is a simulation, perhaps our time runs a lot faster than that of the beings observing us? Or for that matter, maybe when they come to a boring bit, they can speed up time in our Universe? From our perspective time would run at the same rate, but from theirs, it would be like fast forwarding a DVD.
 
graylien said:
If our Universe is a simulation, perhaps our time runs a lot faster than that of the beings observing us? Or for that matter, maybe when they come to a boring bit, they can speed up time in our Universe? From our perspective time would run at the same rate, but from theirs, it would be like fast forwarding a DVD.
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I'm hoping they just fast forwarded the last 10 seconds when I was doing some "rearranging".
 
Perhaps we are only beings in a computer like simulation. I have my doubt about a Matrix scenario.
Exciting speculations, but neither can be proven right now.
 
graylien said:
If our Universe is a simulation, perhaps our time runs a lot faster than that of the beings observing us? Or for that matter, maybe when they come to a boring bit, they can speed up time in our Universe? From our perspective time would run at the same rate, but from theirs, it would be like fast forwarding a DVD.
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With more people born (or programmed) every day, you probably wouldn't need to fast forward your "favourites", just watch another who wasn't asleep or doing something boring for a while. It'd be like Gogglebox on the TV, only more cosmic.
 
They could. I always imagined them as watching the patterns made by the rise and fall of empires and the spread or extinction of species rather than being interested in individual lives.

I'm not too concerned about them ending the simulation - I imagine if they did, we'd just wink out of existence none the wiser rather than have to endure apocalyptic destruction.

Wasn't there once an obscure Christian heresy that God is continually creating the Universe, and that should he cease to do so, it would immediately cease to exist? Arguably a proto-version of the simulation theory. I can't remember what it was called for the life of me, though.
 
graylien said:
Wasn't there once an obscure Christian heresy that God is continually creating the Universe, and that should he cease to do so, it would immediately cease to exist? Arguably a proto-version of the simulation theory. I can't remember what it was called for the life of me, though.
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Please try and retreive that memory... assuming it's real and not some kind of auto-construct. This sounds like a curious blend of contemporary Bangean Scientificism and Judeo-Christian Genesis.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Perhaps it's better than the reality? Maybe the real 'us' is in cold storage somewhere, in a giant warehouse underground - because outside it's a nuclear wasteland.
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Quoting myself now... :cool:

I (just now) watched a German-language film called Cargo that has as its core theme an entire population inside a simulation.
Well worth a watch. It's a quality film, if you can put up with subtitles. Somehow, stuff said in German seems to have more gravitas.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Somehow, stuff said in German seems to have more gravitas.
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Jawhol. Ist zehr zupergut.

Sounds like an interesting film...
 
Mythopoeika said:
Quoting myself now... :cool:

I (just now) watched a German-language film called Cargo that has as its core theme an entire population inside a simulation.
Well worth a watch. It's a quality film, if you can put up with subtitles. Somehow, stuff said in German seems to have more gravitas.
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Found it online. Will watch it.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Quoting myself now... :cool:

I (just now) watched a German-language film called Cargo that has as its core theme an entire population inside a simulation.
Well worth a watch. It's a quality film, if you can put up with subtitles. Somehow, stuff said in German seems to have more gravitas.
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FFS Myth. That's like saying 'You know that movie where Bruce Willis is a ghost all along?.. Sixth Sense...that's the one'.
 
jimv1 said:
FFS Myth. That's like saying 'You know that movie where Bruce Willis is a ghost all along?.. Sixth Sense...that's the one'.
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Well...I didn't give away the whole plot...
 
Mythopoeika said:
Well...I didn't give away the whole plot...
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th
 
jimv1 said:
FFS Myth. That's like saying 'You know that movie where Bruce Willis is a ghost all along?.. Sixth Sense...that's the one'.
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Aargh. Reminds me of the embarrassing time when I was talking to friends and gave away just that bit about that film.
Those friends didn't stay in touch. :oops:
 
Mythopoeika said:
Aargh. Reminds me of the embarrassing time when I was talking to friends and gave away just that bit about that film.
Those friends didn't stay in touch. :oops:
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Ah, even the blurb on IMDB makes you suspect that funny biz is afoot.
 
Universe A Matrix Computer Game Designed By Aliens, Say NASA
Posted by Sean Adl-Tabatabai in Sci/Environment 23 hours ago


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British philosopher Nick Bostrom says he believes that the reality we perceive around us may be the product of a highly-advanced computer program, much like the plot of the Matrix movies – and surprisingly NASA have said they agree with him.

Dr Bostrom proposed in a paper he wrote that an evolved race of aliens have imprisoned the human-race in what he refers to as a “digital imprisonment”.

These aliens, or super-humans, are using virtual reality to simulate space and time, according to Bostrom

NASA scientist Rich Terrile, director of the Centre for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, thinks Dr Bostrom may be onto something.

Speaking to Vice the NASA scientist said, “Right now the fastest NASA supercomputers are cranking away at about double the speed of the human brain …If you make a simple calculation using Moore’s Law [which roughly claims computers double in power every two years], you’ll find that these supercomputers, inside of a decade, will have the ability to compute an entire human lifetime of 80 years – including every thought ever conceived during that lifetime – in the span of a month.”

Express.co.uk reports:

“In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a definite state unless they’re being observed.

“Many theorists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how you explain this.

“One explanation is that we’re living within a simulation, seeing what we need to see when we need to see it.

“What I find inspiring is that, even if we are in a simulation or many orders of magnitude down in levels of simulation, somewhere along the line something escaped the primordial ooze to become us and to result in simulations that made us – and that’s cool.”

The idea that our Universe is a fiction generated by computer code solves a number of inconsistencies and mysteries about the cosmos.

The first is the Fermi Paradox – proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi during the 1960s – which highlights the contradiction between the apparent high probability of extraterrestrial civilisations within our ever-expanding universe and humanity’s lack of contact with, or lack of evidence for, these alien colonies.

“Where is everybody?” Mr Fermi asked.

It could simply be that Earth and mankind truly is the centre of the universe.

Another mystery explained by Dr Bostrom’s Matrix-like theory is the role of Dark Matter.

US theoretical cosmologist Michael Turner has called the hypothetical material “the most profound mystery in all of science”.

Dark Matter is one of many hypothetical materials used to explain a number of anomalies in the Standard Model – the all-encompassing theory science has used to explain the particles and forces of nature for the last 50 years.

The Standard Model of particle physics tells us that there are 17 fundamental particles which make up atomic matter.

The Higgs boson, which was first theorised by scientists during the 1960s, is amongst these 17 fundamental particles.

In summer 2012, scientists at CERN observed what is now believed to be the elusive “God particle”.

But the Standard Model is as-yet unable to explain a number of baffling properties of the universe – including the fact that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing speed.

Dark Matter is believed to be a web-like matter that binds visible matter together.

If it exists, it would explain why galaxies spin at the speed they do – something which remains unexplained based only on what we can currently observe.

The Standard Model does not yet hold an explanation for the force of gravity.

The as-yet unproven existence of Dark Matter could be explained by a virtual universe.

But not everybody is convinced about The Matrix explanation.

Professor Peter Millican, who teaches philosophy and computer science at Oxford University, thinks the virtual reality explanation is flawed.

“The theory seems to be based on the assumption that ‘superminds’ would do things in much the same way as we would do them,” he said.

“If they think this world is a simulation, then why do they think the superminds – who are outside the simulation – would be constrained by the same sorts of thoughts and methods that we are?

“They assume that the ultimate structure of a real world can’t be grid like, and also that the superminds would have to implement a virtual world using grids.

“We can’t conclude that a grid structure is evidence of a pretend reality just because our ways of implementing a pretend reality involve a grid.”

“It is an interesting idea, and it’s healthy to have some crazy ideas,” he told The Telegraph.

“You don’t want to censor ideas according to whether they seem sensible or not because sometimes important new advances will seem crazy to start with.

“You never know when good ideas may come from thinking outside the box.

“This Matrix thought-experiment is actually a bit like some ideas of Descartes and Berkeley, hundreds of years ago.

“Even if there turns out to be nothing in it, the fact that you have got into the habit of thinking crazy things could mean that at some point you are going to think of something that initially may seem rather way out, but turns out not to be crazy at all.”

- See more at: http://yournewswire.com/universe-a-matrix-computer-game-designed-by-aliens-say-nasa/
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Is our universe FAKE? Physicists claim we could all be the playthings of an advanced civilisation
  • Physicists say there is a possibility that our world is merely a simulation
  • They claim there may be evidence of this if only we know where to look
  • For instance, some of the laws of physics may not quite add up, they say


The year is 2050 and super-intelligent robots have taken over the planet.
Except you have no idea, because you're living in a computer simulation, depicting what life was like in 2015.
Everything you see and touch right now has been created by robotic overlords who are using humanity as playthings in their virtual game.
That's the radical theory put forward by a number of scientists over the years, who claim there is a possibility that our world as we know it is fake.

He notes that, according to Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom, the scenario played out in the film, The Matrix, could be a reality.
But 'instead of having brains in vats that are fed by sensory inputs from a simulator, the brains themselves would also be part of the simulation,' said Bostrom.

'It would be one big computer program simulating everything, including human brains down to neurons and synapses.'
Kuhn also points out how physical laws are sets of computational processes, with patterns in nature revealing an inherent, intentional model.
Marvin Minsky, a founder of artificial intelligence, told Kuhn it would be very difficult to distinguish that you're in a computer simulation.
That is, he says, 'unless the programmer has made some slips — if you notice that some laws of physics aren't quite right, [or] f you find rounding-off errors.'
Several years ago, Silas Beane of the University of Bonn suggested, like Minsky, that there may be signs that we are living in a simulation.
All we have to do to identify what these constraints would be, he said, is to build our own simulation of the universe, which is close to what many researchers are trying to do on an incredibly miniscule scale.
He believed that simulating physics on this fundamental level is equivalent, more or less, to simulating the workings of the universe itself.
In such a simulation, the law of physics have to be superimposed onto a discrete three-dimensional lattice which advances in time.
Professor Beane and his colleagues found that lattice spacing imposes a limit on the energy that particles can have, because nothing can exist that is smaller than the lattice itself.
This means that if the universe as we know it is actually a computer simulation, there ought to be a cut off in the spectrum of high energy particles.
And it just happens that there is exactly this kind of cut off in the energy of cosmic rays, a limit known as the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin (GZK) cut off.
This cut off is well-studied and happens because high energy particles interacting with the cosmic microwave background lose energy as they travel across long distances.
The researchers calculate that the lattice spacing forces otherfeatures on the spectrum, most strikingly that the cosmic rays would prefer to travel along the axes of the lattice.
Proving this is the case would be the acid test that the researchers are searching for - an indication that all is not at it seems with the universe.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...s-claim-playthings-advanced-civilisation.html


Personally, I am slightly dissatisfied with our robot squid overlords.
 
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Mythopoeika said:
If we are in a huge holographic game, I want to find out what the cheat codes are!
Click to expand...

...and after cheating you get to the end and think, "I wanna play another game". It then dawns on you that you were part of this one...stuck for eternity without the fireexit cheat. :eek: Your only hope is for Sapphire and Steel to arrive and clean everything up.
 
Holographic universe bleeds into old Computer games.

If the universe is a hologram and we are all soul circuits contained inside body projections what about miner Willy? His he our own unbeknown formulation of a alternate reality? Does he find himself trapped inside a Groundhog Day style existence were he explores that extremely large house. The natives are deadly, for poor Willy contact results in darkness before he finds himself back in the bathroom. Each time this happens he overcomes a previous mistake and learns more about his existence....

Sadly for Willy, collecting that last item doesn't bring enlightenment. Instead he finds himself underground in a mine shaft - were he first found himself before Jet Set Willy. Roland Deschain now springs to mind.
 
This is an interesting discussion about the universe as a hologram.
 
jimv1 said:
Is our universe FAKE? Physicists claim we could all be the playthings of an advanced civilisation
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What makes this idea more amusing is that derealization is considered an accepted symptom of a number of mental issues, for instance anxiety disorders. So if you think the world isn't real you are either mental, or a theoretical physicist.
 
I'm not sure where this post should belong .. it's titled It's amazing .. what you take for granted. New glasses that correct colour blindness :cool:

 
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