Philosophy Now Forum

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:23 pm

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:17 pm Either information is a fundamental property or energy is. Now I am happy to say I don’t really know but I am biased towards the quantum because ontology.

You have dismissed information on a number of
Times as being “just an abstraction” And so that is effectively you siding with Einstein.

That is you accepting energy as fundamental and Bekkenstein tacitly.

Unless, of course your contrarianism now puts you at odds. Because you have to decide what to reject so that you can disagree with me.

Doesn't really matter here, even if "information" is "encoded" at Planck-scale, you will still need a computer bigger then our universe to simulate our universe at Planck-scale.

But at Universe scale you get Compression and economies of scale.

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:27 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:23 pm

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:17 pm Either information is a fundamental property or energy is. Now I am happy to say I don’t really know but I am biased towards the quantum because ontology.

You have dismissed information on a number of
Times as being “just an abstraction” And so that is effectively you siding with Einstein.

That is you accepting energy as fundamental and Bekkenstein tacitly.

Unless, of course your contrarianism now puts you at odds. Because you have to decide what to reject so that you can disagree with me.

Doesn't really matter here, even if "information" is "encoded" at Planck-scale, you will still need a computer bigger then our universe to simulate our universe at Planck-scale.

But at Universe scale you get Compression and economies of scale.

Which is a brain-in-a-vat scenario, not a universe simulation.

Information is relative in a sense anyway. There are effectively bits of bits of bits of bits. Many things in reality can be thought of as bits (or qbits) of larger systems, eg. a molecule is like a bit of a cell that's like a bit of an organism, organisms are like bits of colonies and so forth.

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:32 pm Which is a brain-in-a-vat scenario, not a universe simulation.

Which is an "you can't tell the difference" simulation. That is you can't tell if THIS universe is simulated not.

And so unless you can devisee an experiment then both are equally likely hypothesis.

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:48 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:32 pm Which is a brain-in-a-vat scenario, not a universe simulation.

Which is an "you can't tell the difference" simulation. That is you can't tell if THIS universe is simulated not.

And so unless you can devisee an experiment then both are equally likely hypothesis.

No, it means that the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis is many orders of magnitude more likely to be true than a whole-universe simulation hypothesis.

Greta wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:42 pm Information is relative in a sense anyway. There are effectively bits of bits of bits of bits. Many things in reality can be thought of as bits (or qbits) of larger systems, eg. a molecule is like a bit of a cell that's like a bit of an organism, organisms are like bits of colonies and so forth.

Information is much easier to explain than that in a scientific framework.

1 bit of information answers any yes/no question a scientist can ask. One distinction = 1 bit of information.
And so information is inseparable from the mind interacting with reality. It is formalised empiricism.

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:53 pm No, it means that the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis is many orders of magnitude more likely to be true than a whole-universe simulation hypothesis.

From which reference frame?

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:58 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:53 pm No, it means that the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis is many orders of magnitude more likely to be true than a whole-universe simulation hypothesis.

From which reference frame?

Size of computer / amount of computation needed for a whole-universe simulation vs a brain-in-a-vat simulation.

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:03 pm

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:58 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:53 pm No, it means that the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis is many orders of magnitude more likely to be true than a whole-universe simulation hypothesis.

From which reference frame?

Size of computer / amount of computation needed for a whole-universe simulation vs a brain-in-a-vat simulation.

That's not a reference frame. That's a conclusion. Try again.

The Bekkenstein bound tells that we can simulate THIS (e.g OUR) universe in a black hole that is much smaller than OUR universe.

A brain-in-a-vat simulation will be significantly smaller. Your mind tiny is tiny in proportion to the Universe.

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:06 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:03 pm

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:58 pm
From which reference frame?

Size of computer / amount of computation needed for a whole-universe simulation vs a brain-in-a-vat simulation.

That's not a reference frame. That's a conclusion. Try again.

The Bekkenstein bound tells that we can simulate THIS (e.g OUR) universe in a black hole that is much smaller than OUR universe.

A brain-in-a-vat simulation will be significantly smaller. Your mind tiny is tiny in proportion to the Universe.

The Bekenstein bound tells nothing like that. Our universe isn't classical; a simulation of a classical model of our universe would be just an unnecessarily big brain-in-a-vat simulation, in which we would never have discovered quantum behaviour because there wouldn't be any. And even that is assuming that qubits magically give the right answers; but they seem to have a random behaviour.

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:18 pm Our universe isn't classical

So is that a rejection of energy as a quantum phenomenon?

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:20 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:18 pm Our universe isn't classical

So is that a rejection of energy as a quantum phenomenon?

No, I don't see how your question is related.

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:23 pm No, I don't see how your question is related.

Then I'll leave you with homework

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound

It is agnostic of the classic/quantum distinction.

the Bekenstein bound is an upper limit on the entropy S, or information I, that can be contained within a given finite region of space which has a finite amount of energy—or conversely, the maximum amount of information required to perfectly describe a given physical system down to the quantum level

where S is the entropy, k is Boltzmann's constant, R is the radius of a sphere that can enclose the given system, E is the total mass–energy including any rest masses, ħ is the reduced Planck constant, and c is the speed of light. Note that while gravity plays a significant role in its enforcement, the expression for the bound does not contain the gravitational constant G.

Which one of those variables do you think relates to the classical universe? S, k, R, E, ħ, c or G ?

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:33 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:23 pm No, I don't see how your question is related.

Then I'll leave you with homework

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound

It is agnostic of the classic/quantum distinction.

the Bekenstein bound is an upper limit on the entropy S, or information I, that can be contained within a given finite region of space which has a finite amount of energy—or conversely, the maximum amount of information required to perfectly describe a given physical system down to the quantum level

where S is the entropy, k is Boltzmann's constant, R is the radius of a sphere that can enclose the given system, E is the total mass–energy including any rest masses, ħ is the reduced Planck constant, and c is the speed of light. Note that while gravity plays a significant role in its enforcement, the expression for the bound does not contain the gravitational constant G.

Which one of those variables do you think relates to the classical universe? S, k, R, E, ħ, c or G ?

You don't get it, you are focusing on the said system only, discarding the rest of the quantum realm inside the sphere, which also needs to be simulated. Thus making such a simulation classical, even if you have a perfect statistical description of the said system down to the quantum level (which isn't the same as a perfect simulation either).

Atla wrote: ↑Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:50 pm You don't get it, you are focusing on the said system only, discarding the rest of the quantum realm inside the sphere, which also needs to be simulated. Thus making such a simulation classical, even if you have a perfect statistical description of the said system down to the quantum level (which isn't the same as a perfect simulation either).

Well, let me try and re-explain it then.

The Bekkenstein bound doesn't care that the universe is 'quantum' or 'classical'. It pre-supposes that energy exists and its consequence - mass, and therefore the Higgs boson/field!

And so as long as we only care about RE-DESCRIBING the universe so that it is indistinguishable TO A QUANTUM PHYSICIST then we are good to go!
There is no distinction between a perfect and imperfect simulation if the system responds isomorphically for all inputs!

That is - there is no distinction between 'brain-in-a-vat' and 'simulated universe'! Unless you propose an experiment for HOW we tell whether THIS universe is simulated!

Basically. The only violation of the laws of physics would occur if we were to INVENT ENERGY. Out of thin air!