It's been revealed that our reality might, in actuality, be a virtual reality. This is, some unknown agency,"Others" have created a computer simulation and we'exist' within that overall simulation. One objection to that scenario is that in order to exactly simulate our Cosmos (like ourselves) we'd require a computer the size of our Cosmos together with the type of crunch power which could replicate our Cosmos to a one-to-one foundation, which is absurd. The flaw is that realistic simulations can be produced without resorting to a one-on-one correlation.
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| Physical Simulator |
WHY ARE WE A SIMULATION?
We're the virtual reality - simulated beings. Here's the"why" of items. That's the most important reason why we shouldn't assume that ours is a really real world! If one postulates"The Other", where" Another" might be technologically advanced extraterrestrials creating their version of video games, or even the individual species, the real human species out of that which we'd predict the far future performing ancestor simulations, the odds are our really real world is really a really real virtual reality world inhabited by simulated earthlings (like us).
Now an interesting aside is that people have a tendency to assume that" The Other" are biological entities (individual or extraterrestrial) who prefer to perform" what if" games utilizing computer hardware and applications. Obviously" Another" could actually be highly advanced A.I. (artificial intelligence) with consciousness playing" what if" situations.
SIMULATIONS AND THE NEED FOR COMPUTER CRUNCH POWER
Anyhow, each individual simulated world requires just a lot of components of crunch power. We, humans, have thousands of video games each ONE requiring a certain amount of calculating crunch power. There may be in total is an awful lot of calculating crunch power going on when it comes to those video games jointly, but what counts is that the number of video games split by the number of computers playing with them. Not all video games have been played on just one computer at the exact same time. In case you have a ten-fold increase in video games, and a ten-fold gain in the number of computers they are played on, there's no demand for ever-increasing crunch power unless the nature of the game itself demands it. Video games now probably demand more crunch power than video games from twenty years ago, but we have to date fulfilled that requirement.
Now if a really real world created thousands of video games, and also the characters in each and every one of those video games created tens of thousands of video games along with the characters in those video games made tens of thousands of their video games, fine, than ever-increasing crunch power inside that initial really real universe is in demand. That is not to say that ever-increasing demand for crunch cannot be met, however. But that is NOT the general situation that is being advocated.
Having said that, a variation on Murphy's Law might be: The ways and means to utilize computing crunch power climbs to meet with the crunch power available and is easily on tap.
Skeptics appear to be presuming here that if you're able to simulate something, then finally you'll pour more and more and an increasing number of crunch power (since it becomes available) into that which you're simulating. If you would like to produce and market a video game, if you place X crunch power into it you will get Y yields in earnings, etc.. If you place 10X crunch power into it, then you might only get 2Y returns in sales. There is a counterbalance - the law of decreasing returns.
Video gamers may always want more, but if the crunch power of this computer along with the software it can carry and procedure surpasses the crunch power of the human gamer (boxing programs/software anyone), then there is no point in wanting even more. A human gamer might be able to photon-torpedo a Klingon Battlecruiser going at One-Quarter Impulse Power, but a huge fleet of them at Warp Ten might be another starship situation entirely. Gamers play to win, to not be frustrated and constantly outperformed by their game.
It makes no financial sense at all to buy and receive a monthly bill for 1000 pc crunch units and just need and utilize 10.
But the bottom line is that computer crunch power is available for simulation exercises as we've done. Anything else is just a matter of degree. If us; themthem, of course, being" Another" or The Simulators.
LIMITS TO GROWTH
Are there limitations to crunch power? Well before I get to consent to this, which I ultimately do, are opponents presuming that crunching power won't take quantum leaps, perhaps even undreamed of quantum jumps in the generations ahead? I suppose for starters that we from the first 21st Century do not have enough computing power to simulate the Cosmos at a one-to-one scale. Can quantum computers alter this investigation? I'm no expert in quantum computers - I've only heard the hype. However, are available crunch power skeptics' game to predict what may or might not be possible in a 100 years; in 1000 decades? Still, the capacity to boost computing crunch power could go on for a while yet. Is not the next innovation moving out of a 2-D chip into a 3-D processor?
Still, Moore's Law (computing crunch power doubles every 18 to 24 months) can not go on forever and I was not conscious that I.T. people have postulated that Moore's Law could go on"forever". That's a bit of a stretch.
Okay, even if we accept that we're all greedy and want more, more and much more crunch power - and - ditto by implication our simulators - then there will ultimately be limitations. There might be engineering limits such as dealing with heat production. There might be settlement limitations. There may be technological limitations as in perhaps quantum computing isn't really feasible as well as possible. There'll be economical limits as in you may want to upgrade your PC but your budget does not allow for you ask for a new study grant to buy a new supercomputer and get turned down, and so on.
Perhaps our highly advanced simulators have struck the greatest computer crunch power wall and that is all she wrote; she could write no longer. Then also, our simulators have competing priorities and need to divide the economic / study pie.
I've never heard or read about any argument which the
Physical Simulator assumes ever and ever and ever increasing crunch power. It presumes that the computer/software programmer has enough crunch power to achieve their goal, no more, no less.
Quite simply, the computer/software simulator is going to be as economical with the bits and bytes as is as possible to achieve that is still compatible with the amount of realism needed. This is logical.
The bottom line is that our simulated reality just needs to be good enough to fool us. In reality, if we'exist' as a simulation, then from the get-go you've experienced nothing but a simulated'reality' and so you wouldn't have the ability to comprehend really real reality even if it clobbered you over your head!
THE ONE-TO-ONE FALLACY
There is one obvious objection to those who propose that there's not enough computer power to create 100% realistic simulations. Here realistic way a one-to-one relationship. But such a degree of realism is not necessary and we may even be able to conceive of our simulator's really real reality since we have known no other reality other than the one we exist in right now. We've got no other reality to compare ours to additional than additional realities (i.e. - simulations of our reality) we create, which of course includes our fantasies and skate films.
The degree of realism currently possible with CGI is, in actuality, equal to the true degree of realism we all experience in our daily world; with everyday experiences. I am confident that you must have seen over the previous five years films that had loads of CGI embedded in them, and even while knowing that what you were seeing was CGI, you couldn't actually detect besides the simulation (state that the dinosaurs in"Jurassic World") from that which was actually real (like the actors). Nevertheless, you've got very little difficulty telling the difference between film actions, even 3-D film actions, and live action.
Perhaps within this reality, you can tell the difference between a film and live action, but what if that live activity was simulated as the movie? If you've spent your entire existence as live-action virtual reality (without knowing it of course) and now and watching virtual reality movie that you can distinguish from your live activity virtual reality, you then can have zero idea of the nature of the really real reality where our simulators live and of the simulators themselves (though it may be the best guess to speculate that there will be a good deal of similarities) and just how much crunch power they have committed to their own hobby /gaming/research (we could function as a grand"what if" sociological experiment). Maybe their Moore's Law gives them in theory 1000 units of crunch power, but they just need or can manage 100 units. Just because you may be able to afford a fleet of sports cars, many yachts, a 28 bedroom mansion, a half-dozen holiday houses along with a half-yearly round-the-world vacation and can buy each the girls you might want does not of necessity imply you'll invest that money.
Anyway, my conscience to the one-on-one Truth is that in a simulation, not everything must be simulated to an exacting standard. The computing power required to make our immediate environment look really real is vastly different than what is required to make the Universe outside our immediate surroundings look really real. I mean a planetarium does a fantastic job of simulating all of the sorts of things that a planetarium simulates, but you would not claim planetarium demands exactly the exact same number of bits and bytes to simulate that which are needed for your really real thing it's simulating. Two really real galaxies in the collision could be written off way more bits and bytes than needed by astronomers simulating two galaxies in the crash on their PC. The astronomers don't require that extra crunch power. So, perhaps 90% of our simulator's personal power is devoted to making our immediate community (i.e. - that the solar system) seem really realistic, along with the other 10% simulates everything external to our immediate locality. Further, even within our solar system, you do not need to simulate each and every particle, atom, and molecule which would - at a really real solar system - reside inside state sunlight or Jupiter or even the Earth. Things that you may think need to be calculated may in fact not need to be calculated in order to attain the objective of making things seem really real for us.
In our'reality', when any scientist postulates any theory or hypothesis or other, they ignore many possible factors. A biologist performing" what if" development scenarios probably doesn't concern himself with each and every potential astronomical scenario that may impact on evolution at each and every possible instant. You gotta draw the line somewhere.
The only one-on-one simulation I will think that people do will be in the realm of particle and quantum physics. Simulating two protons blasting together is about as one-on-one as you can get.
THE HOLODECK AND THE PHYSICAL SIMULATOR
To date, when talking about our virtual reality, the Physical Simulator, I've pretty much had in mind the idea that our developers, Others are otherwise called The Simulators, were monitoring us pretty much like we track our simulations - from a distance on a track. However, what if The Simulators really walk among us? In other words, their simulation is much more akin to a Star Trek holodeck compared to a standard video game.
We have always tended to immerse ourselves in virtual reality, sometimes involuntarily as in our dreams and dream-worlds, but often as not voluntarily, from telling ghost stories around the camp-fire; to studying novels; to seeing the soap, horse or distance operas; even by simply daydreaming. In more recent times that immersion has expanded to the computer and video games, but usually in the outside looking at a screen when fiddling with a mouse or a joystick or other controllers. You sometimes quasi-immerse yourself within virtual reality as in generating an avatar hence developing a virtual copy of yourself (or make-believe backup of yourself) and interacting with other virtual individuals via their avatars online, as in"Second Life". But what we really desire, truth be known, would be to actually immerse our real selves into virtual reality scenarios.
KEEP THINGS SIMPLE, STUPID
A coaching simulation has to be only as realistic as is needed to train the trainee to perfect whatever abilities are required. Take a driver training simulation package. Apart from the fact that the simulation can be near to ordinary animation standard, the images continuously shift - that the turnpike software retreats into the background as one turns away onto a country road and new software is currently to the forefront. The picture always changes and so will the applications necessary for this image. The computer just has to crunch a small percent of the overall software at any one time.
Taking Planet Earth, the number of particles, molecules, atoms, etc.. necessitating simulation hasn't changed very much over geological time. In case you've got simulated Planet Earth, you have not had to pour more and more and more crunch power resources to the simulation since you're dealing with a finite object that's ever recycling those particles, atoms, and molecules.
The simulators do not have to simulate every elementary particle within their simulation just in case one day their virtual beings (that is us) choose to interact with elementary particles that need to be there but aren't. Their simulation software may be tweaked/upgraded as essential as their simulation virtual reality situation unfolds. Take Mars. Our simulators could for the longest time just utilize applications that simulated a moving reddish dot in the sky that made odd retrograde motions (loop-the-loops) from time to time. Then the telescope situation came to pass and the software was updated to show features - polar caps, regions of clear'vegetation', two moons, dust storms and of course'canals'. Then came Mariner 4, 6 7 and 9 and the simulator's applications had to be updated again to show close-up features from these fly-by Mariners and Mariner 9 that went into orbit. Then of course came into the landers like Viking, and kin and another tweak has been demanded. It is all too simple.
Software past its use-by date could only be deleted - without any memory demanded. When it is ever needed again, well that is just another tweak or update. Your memory has deleted plenty of occasions in your life, but coming across an old letter, photograph, dairy, etc. can restore what your mind did not believe it needed to store.
When I place a character, let's call him Rob, into a video game and Rob gets zapped, no guts will look since I did not program them in. If we're on the flip side the simulation; personalities in the movie game not of our making, our bowels are there but will look if and only if the unfolding situation requires it. The bottom line remains that not all software is front-and-center in precisely the same time. Further, the software can be tweaked as the simulation scenario evolves, just like we receive upgrades to our software on our PC's.
As for having to simulate each and everything that's required, such as Rob's heart, liver, lungs, etc., in any simulation just a part of the whole is energetic and'in your face' at any one time. When the situation demands that something else now has to be'in mind' rather, well that software can be obtained, but other software now retires into the desktop until and if it's necessary again. To put it differently, not 100 percent of the applications that comprise the entire simulation is actually front-and-center at any one time so the computer's ability to deal is not taxed beyond its way.
I've said above that you don't have to do a one-on-one correlation between what's being simulated and the simulation. When I simulate Rob as a character in a video game that I do not have to also simulate his heart, lungs, liver, and all of his other internals. That is a big saving in bits and bytes.
It has been oft-noted that if one will simulate one's whole Cosmos in exacting one-on-one detail, then one would need a computer that's as large as the Cosmos that one is attempting to simulate in the first place, that is absurd. The fallacy lies in the phrase"in just one-on-one detail". A simulation doesn't require that level of exacting detail so as to be realistic. There is many a sleight-of-hand short-cut which could be entered into when simulating an entire Cosmos, as in a planetarium for instance. No matter how you slice and dice things, planetariums do an excellent job of simulating the Cosmos. When cosmologists simulate the Cosmos, they want to know more about the broad-brush picture. They do not have to know about every fundamental particle inside the Cosmos so as to understand the broad-brush picture. A simulation is NOT attempting to recreate 100 percent of reality but just those bits and pieces that are of interest. Therefore, the bits and bytes necessary to simulate the Cosmos as required by cosmologists need only be a small, tiny portion of those bits and bytes needed to simulate 100 percent of the entirety of this Cosmos.
If scientists want to simulate two galaxies colliding but their research grant doesn't provide them unlimited funds for crunch power, they then contend with what their budget permits. In the case of our simulators, maybe they've maxed out their bits and bytes; perhaps their cost has been minimal - on a shoestring budget. We don't understand. We can not know.
I'd argue that astronomers/cosmologists have not just simulated possible planetary worlds and entire virtual solar systems but also the whole Universe in the Big Bang event on up the line. Obviously, these simulations are vastly simpler than what they are mimicking but they do the job which needs doing. To these entities, that bureau, what they have simulated (our Cosmos) is readily achievable since it is NOT a one-to-one representation of their Cosmos, any more than our cosmologists try to simulate one-on-one what they believe is our Cosmos. We believe our virtual reality Cosmos is the be-all-and-end-all of all there is if it is just a very small fraction of really real reality - that our simulator's Cosmos.
Obviously, in one sense we all as simulations, are part of The Simulators Cosmos in the same way as our simulations, our virtual realities are part of our Cosmos. We might be the same'stuff' as in we are a part of The Simulators Cosmos also, which let's say is that the Full Monty of things A to Z. However, if The Simulators simulated or constructed or crafted us (yes, you too), they simplified things and state left out each the vowels. So yes, we'exist' within their Cosmos, but in a simplified virtual reality simulation of the Cosmos. To put it differently, there's no one-on-one correlation.
THE FREE WILL OBJECTION
That argument absolutely undermines the Physical Simulator. The fly in the ointment is that all anyone has to do is prove to the satisfaction of the rest of the world that they really have free will, and therefore by extension, all humans have free will. Then various sites and publishing houses can delete free will from their inventory and thus free up a huge amount of data storage space for other topics. Meantime, I can put my time, energy and efforts to better use that thinking over our possible virtual reality.
CONCLUSION
Let's also say that for The Simulators to simulate one-on-one their own Big Cosmos would require 100,000 units of calculating crunch power. Alas, The Simulators simply have 100 units of calculating crunch power on tap, and obviously, they don't attempt to stimulate their very own Big Cosmos on a one-to-one basis - in its entirety. However, they really do simulate a 100 unit calculating crunch power mini-Cosmos. That is us, that is our mini-Cosmos from the way. So we'exist' in a simulated 100 units of computer crunch power mini-Cosmos. We can no more simulate our simulated mini-Cosmos one-on-one than The Simulators can simulate their Large Cosmos one-on-one. And that's where it all ends, at least for now. Our mini-Cosmos is a simulated mini-Cosmos, simulated by The Simulators within their Large Cosmos. There is no one-on-one identity correlation anywhere to be had, in any Cosmos. Is crystal clear today?
