I don’t see any reason to think I’m not in a simulation, except that it’s just a silly ancient fable, created by the simulation. but none of that affects the “realities” of life and love all the rest of it.
It’s based on the idea that if we were, we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
I never see my neighbors bringing groceries into their house.
I think it’s a contemporary way of viewing the creation problem that religion has also been trying to address. Who created the universe, and who created the one who created the universe. What caused the Big bang. Etc.
The whole thing is irrelevant in my opinion. It doesn’t matter, because whatever initialised existence is outside of our existence. That would be separated in dimensions, or even if we could interact with it, it would at least be in a completely different frame of time. The entire existence of our universe could be a blink of an eye in whatever is outside of it.
It seems like megalomania to me for humans to believe that they can ever figure this one out. Just like the microbes in our bodies can’t interact with us, I don’t have any hope for humans to ever understand how the entire universe interacts with it’s creator, whether it’s a simulation, a devine creation or the result of physics.
If it’s a simulation and we are just variables in a sub-routine, then its futile to claim that we can ever figure out what is outside our loop. We can catch global variables from the main loop, like natural constants, but we’ll never see the code that calls our sub.
The only reason to believe it is that we can also not prove that it isn’t so. Someone claims that it’s statistically unlikely that it’s not a simulation but I’m not so sure about that argument. It’s based on an extremely deterministic view, that everything can be simulated with enough computer power, which itself is a questionable view.
Every time I need to cross a seemingly empty street, suddenly cars appear. I can’t help but imagine it’s a render distance issue.
Try to cross the street without turning your head. When you turn your head, they render the cars in the opposite directions.
/jk always look both ways before crossing the street.
I’ve got a spinbot for crossing the street to exploit the universe’s shoddy hitboxes
Because Elon Musk believes in it, I know it’s probably wrong.
All text has already been written. Everything you ever read was already cached for easy access, even this comment.
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The Library of Babel isn’t pre-written or cached. It’s an algorithm to generate text. Huge difference.
All text has already been written. Everything you ever read was already cached for easy access, even this comment.
All text has already been written. Everything you ever read was already cached for easy access, even this comment.
All text has already been written. Everything you ever read was already cached for easy access, even this comment.
All text has already been written. Everything you ever read was already cached for easy access, even this comment.
All text has already been written. Everything you ever read was already cached for easy access, even this comment.
All text has already been written. Everything you ever read was already cached for easy access, even this comment.
- The render distance (observable universe)
- The pixel size (Planck units)
- And the update rate (‘speed of light’ = speed of information being updated)
- Status not being updated if no one is looking at it (Schrödinger’s cat, quantum entanglement)
Calling Planck units “pixels” is extremely reductive. This is just naively applying video game concepts to physics with a poor understanding of both.
I took an entire graduate course in QM and a quantized Universe does, in fact, seem pixelated. That’s exactly how I explain it to people. There’s simply a finite level to how closely you can zoom in.
isn’t the most recent explanation on planck’s length saying that we simply can’t observe further down, but it is hypothesised that smaller lengths actually exist?
isn’t the most recent explanation on planck’s length saying that we simply can’t observe further down
No. The math has the indivisibility built right into it, and our countless observations agree. There’s no smaller length, because then the probability distributions between different particles start overlapping. There’s a limit to how closely you can zoom in, and we can describe that limit mathematically. We don’t know why it’s there, but it’s certainly there.
can you post a source for this?
I can’t post a source for all of QM, no. I can share my class notes with you, but you might as well look into it. There are lots of quality online classes about it. You can go digging for info about Planck’s constant, that’s where it’s “built into” the math.
Here’s a good explanation from PBS Spacetime https://youtu.be/tQSbms5MDvY
but he’s not saying that the Planck’s length is the pixel size of our universe.
There is a misconception that the universe is fundamentally divided into Planck-sized pixels, that nothing can be smaller than the Planck length, that things move through space by progressing one Planck length every Planck time. Judging by the ultimate source, a cursory search of reddit questions, the misconception is fairly common. There is nothing in established physics that says this is the case, nothing in general relativity or quantum mechanics pointing to it. I have an idea as to where the misconception might arise, that I can’t really back up but I will state anyway. I think that when people learn that the energy states of electrons in an atom are quantized, and that Planck’s constant is involved, a leap is made towards the pixel fallacy. I remember in my early teens reading about the Planck time in National Geographic, and hearing about Planck’s constant in highschool physics or chemistry, and thinking they were the same. As I mentioned earlier, just because units are “natural” it doesn’t mean they are “fundamental,” due to the choice of constants used to define the units. The simplest reason that Planck-pixels don’t make up the universe is special relativity and the idea that all inertial reference frames are equally valid. If there is a rest frame in which the matrix of these Planck-pixels is isotropic, in other frames they would be length contracted in one direction, and moving diagonally with respect to his matrix might impart angle-dependence on how you experience the universe. If an electromagnetic wave with the wavelength of one Planck length were propagating through space, its wavelength could be made even smaller by transforming to a reference frame in which the wavelength is even smaller, so the idea of rest-frame equivalence and a minimal length are inconsistent with one-another.
Reference: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/hand-wavy-discussion-planck-length/
Just searched a bit, looking into how the length came to be and found this from wikipedia. https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length “The Planck length does not have any precise physical significance, and it is a common misconception that it is the inherent pixel size of the universe.” What I found elsewhere was that it’s the only length one can get out of the universal constans of G, c and h. So as far as I know with my limited know how is that the planck length is useful or more convenient than other lengths in quantum physics.
I took an entire graduate course in QM and a quantized Universe does, in fact, seem pixelated. That’s exactly how I explain it to people. There’s simply a finite level to how closely you can zoom in. Space, time, and energy are all quantized, and maybe even gravity though we haven’t figured that one out yet.
A finite level to how close you can zoom in is very different from pixels. Pixels (or voxels in this case) are indivisible elements of a larger whole that exist along an evenly spaced grid. The universe doesn’t have a Cartesian coordinate system measured in Planck lengths
Pixels (or voxels in this case) are indivisible elements of a larger whole that exist along an evenly spaced grid.
That’s exactly what a Planck unit of spacetime is. And yes, the Universe–like a screen–is divided into an evenly-spaced grid any time you choose a coordinate system.
Why can’t you cut a Planck unit in half?
The why is not really known. But we simply cannot. There is not line where one particle ends and another particle begins. The best you can do is give a probability distribution, but some of the particles will be in places where they’re not really supposed to be. This is actually what drives the fusion processes in stars. The nuclei don’t actually have enough kinetic energy to fuse–but she is the protons in one hydrogen nucleus just magically appear in the nucleus of a neighboring hydrogen atom.
You literally can’t have distances that are smaller than these probability distributions.
Wikipedia’s description quotes Bernard Carr and Steven Giddings as saying that any attempt to investigate the possible existence of shorter distances [via particle accelerator] would result in black holes rather than smaller objects
Why, though?
this was one of the better descriptions for why nothing smaller than that can be measured, but I’m aware that my pop-sci joke post is starting to annoy actual students of physics - so who knows if this discussion stays up.
You have probably heard of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle? It’s the one about how you can’t both know the position and the speed of an electron or photon, because the observation itself changes the outcome of the other.
Something similar exists for length. If we try to observe things at Plancks length, we introduce issues about whether the thing or space even exists there. The observation of infinitely small space requires infinitely large energy in this space causing a black hole or something. I’m not really sure I get it.
There are several good YouTubes on it, but this video sort of made sense to me: https://youtu.be/snp-GvNgUt4
