If This Is True Then The Question Is Who Made? Why? Most Importantly Who Is Watching?

[Henrietta]

How credible is this and does this fall kind of along the lines of the "Matrix" theory? That life is a kind of computer animation?

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/universe-2d-hologram-experiment-aims-200713377.html#NTKEKqT

[Zacs-Master]

If it isn't true who made it?

[bert_h]

I think you're reading too much into it. The words the scientists are using have a specialised meaning for them, but if you take their normal conversational meaning instead, then you get the wrong idea.

[agchristie]

Henrietta, a very scientific link which I had to read a few times! The experiment is reportedly at full steam ahead though how long it will be before we will hear further is unclear.

[agchristie]

@ divebuddy

I'm a bit clearer to understanding now, I will have to check out Hogan's theory...

[jim360]

Yes, this is not a hologram as in some sort of image deliberately created by someone, but a bit of scientific jargon that relates what is going on in a 3D-shape to its "D surface only, and doesn't at all imply some intelligence behind the hologram. An unfortunate clash in the meanings of words, but it does again serve to illustrate how important precision over what you mean by certain words is in Science.

[Old_Geezer]

Surely it would make little difference. Were we 2 dimensional beings moving in a two dimensional universe and not be any the wiser for it.

[woofgang]

the matrix isnt a theory it is FICTION

[agchristie]

Woofgang, Im not sure Henrietta meant 'theory' in the way you interpreted.

[jim360]

Some philosophers have suggested that the world could be a massive computer simulation. This particular study can't be linked to that idea though.

[ll_billym]

If the universe was a computer animation then that would certainly explain planes in pre-Columbian and alien bases on the moon. Deja-vu, no, just a glitch in the Matrix.

[mibn2cweus]

It's Legos . . . all the way down.

[agchristie]

@ Jim

I'm intrigued! The world being a possible computer animation.... What is the best study undertaken so far on this theory? Curiousity has got the better of me.

[jim360]

I'm not aware of any studies -- indeed it's not even clear how you would study it anyway -- but I am sure I've seen one or two philosophers talk about the idea. They talk about a lot, mind, and it might have been prompted just by discussing the film "The Matrix" anyway.

I've given some thought to the idea myself and reckon that it might be possible to test it to some extent. For example, suppose that the computer simulation we're living in is very powerful but only capable of a finite number of calculations per second. That would mean that it can't model continuous space so that there would be hints of discrete chunks of space at some small scale. This might show up as, say, our Universe behaving as a "Lattice Gauge Theory". This is something we use to calculate physics where what happens is that you take a finite set of points in space separated by a finite distance, perform physics on this set of points, and then extrapolate to "the real world" by taking the distance between between the points to be zero. On the other hand if the world were actually a lattice then it might show up by the better approximation being after all a finite distance between points rather than continuous space.

This might not be very easy to test, partly because of the precision needed, and indeed it's possible that the universe could be "lattice-like" at small scales without being a computer; and even after that particular test turns up nothing it wouldn't rule the idea out entirely, but it could be worth a try.

But then the idea is only interesting if such a test exists, and I rather suspect that one doesn't. It would be far more likely that the "computer simulation" conspires to hide its true nature from us e.g. by writing its own set of physical laws that provide a "natural" explanation. So: what is the difference between reality, and a computer simulation so convincing that there is no way of distinguishing it from reality? I think the answer to that is "none whatsoever".

Even so, the idea is intriguing...

[Zacs-Master]

//but only capable of a finite number of calculations per second//
There you go again, limiting your predictions to known parameters.

[agchristie]

Jim - many thanks for taking so much trouble with your thoughts... in laymans terms too! ;-)

[jim360]

But that's precisely the point: If the computer is capable of an infinite number of calculations per second then how could it be distinguishable from a reality where space and time are continuous (at least down to Planck scales)? Under the circumstances where the Universe is a computer simulation so "perfect" that it's not distinguishable from a reality that wasn't a computer simulation then at least from a scientific point of view it's an unnecessary and untestable abstraction equivalent to supposing the existence of a God.

So the only thing to do is to bring the theory into the regime of, at least theoretically, testable. That means a computer that, while working through no means we know of obviously, does at least respect the entirely reasonable limit that it can't do infinitely many operations per second. And once you impose that limit it follows that there are testable consequences, and you can then devise experiments that at least in the future may be able to test it.

[Zacs-Master]

from a scientific point of view it's an unnecessary and untestable abstraction equivalent to supposing the existence of a God.

Well, it is abstractions we're discussing after all. Making the theory 'testable' can only use methods known now ( or at least what the computer simulation lets us think of as 'now') and so is spurious.

[jim360]

Incidentally, by default I've already gone beyond all sorts of limits merely be entertaining the idea. As an illustration of the point, the most powerful computers today are often devoted to performing precisely the calculations of Lattice Gauge Theory. The current fastest computers performing about 10,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second still take months to work out what happens in a tiny space of, say, 48 points in each x,y,z direction, taking 32 steps forward in time, where each step is of order 10^-18 seconds and each point is a similar distance apart. To scale this up to the entire Universe implies a computer something like 10^200 times more powerful; to do it in real time probably requires another several orders of magnitude; and since the Universe isn't separated at scales of 10^-18m but closer to 10^-36m again, that ups the required computing rate still further. For any computer we will ever build this is certainly impossible. Obviously then if there is any computer simulation at all it's using no method we can possibly imagine so even entertaining the possibility seriously is breaking current physics in a massive, massive way.

Just about the only thing we have to go on, then, is that the computer is only finitely powerful, and that it stops somewhere. If it doesn't stop, is infinitely powerful and consequently capable of modeling a perfectly continuous Universe with no flaws whatsoever, I don't see how we can test it.