• Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    If the universe we live in is a simulation, the universe that simulation exist in, must be infinitely millions of times more complex than the one we live in, to be able to have the necessary storage and computational power to simulate our universe.
    Is that really a likely scenario?

    Don’t answer that, because obviously the chances are fifty fifty, it either is or it isn’t. /s

    • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 days ago

      A simulated universe would probably have some hard caps introduced to reduce computational needs, like some minimum temperature things can reach or max velocity.

      • scratchee@feddit.uk
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        6 days ago

        Or a limited number of dimensions. Our 11 dimensional overlords probably wonder if we even count as life, or perhaps we’re just entertaining automata running as a screensaver.

        • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 days ago

          You know that thing on video games that stuff is only rendered when the player is looking at it? A simulated universe could probably save a lot of energy by implementing something like that, like particles behaving like waves until observed.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        6 days ago

        Also, you’d need a limit, like a minimum distance, so errors don’t creep in. People would have to be crazy to believe something like that exists.

    • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      The programmers of that simulation could be cheating a bit. For example, they could approximate the movement of particles by using wave fields, and only if the particles are observed, would it actually simulate individual particles.

      It would cause some weird effects that shouldn’t be there. For example a light spot in the middle of circular shadows. But most players don’t want 100% perfection. They want to be able to run the game on their device.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        To simulate a single base particle would require millions of atom equivalents.
        In our universe, to simulate 1 atom, requires millions of atoms.
        So to simulate our universe perfectly, would require a universe more than a million times more complex, and even then everything in that universe would be used only to simulate our universe.

    • Lena@gregtech.eu
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      6 days ago

      In this hypothetical scenario, we can’t possibly know what this external universe looks like. It could be entirely different from ours in terms of physics, so we may well be living in a simulation. I personally don’t care because it doesn’t affect me at all.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        we can’t possibly know what this external universe looks like.

        I 100% agree, except what we can know, is that it must be infinitely more complex then this. It’s a necessity of math and logic.
        But what it looks like or what the laws are, we cannot know. Only that it’s more complex.

        Apart from that, I agree that no matter if this is a simulation or not, it remains our reality that we continuously try to better understand.

        • Lena@gregtech.eu
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          6 days ago

          it must be infinitely more complex then this.

          Probably not infinitely, just very very very very very very very very much more complex.

          So yeah, nothing is outside the realm of possibility for the external universe.

        • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          It doesn’t necessarily have to be more complex, if it is infinite.

          Just like there are exactly as many rational numbers between 0 and 1 as there are in total. The same works for real numbers.

          We don’t know if our universe is infinite. There is reason to believe that spacetime might be discrete. And we don’t know if the universe is infinite, or if the observable universe is all there is, and we just happen to be approximately in the middle of it.

          But if the universe is dense, and if the technology was advanced enough, simulating an equally complex should be possible.