Simulated Worlds Will Soon Be Indistinguishable From Reality

[Jesus Malverde]

The technological singularity is a hypothetical moment in the future when artificial intelligence becomes indistinguishable from human intelligence—and capable of creating smarter iterations of itself. Apply the same general idea to simulations and you get the "simulation singularity": when a simulated world is indistinguishable from reality.

This was the theme of a talk this week at London’s Digital Shoreditch festival by engineer Andy Fawkes, who works for global simulation software company Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BIS) and is director of tech and training company Thinke. "Will there be a world where the simulation may be just as good as the real world?" he asked. Could it even be better than the real world?

"In a sense, I think in some regards it’s already happening," Fawkes told me in an interview. If people’s minds are already accepting a simulated world as “real” somehow, then we could perhaps consider that we’ve already reached the tipping point. In his talk, Fawkes showed examples of driving simulators from a game that were very nearly visually indistinct from real-life footage.

Another example that shows the power of realistic simulators is in the military sphere: pilots learn to fly using simulators that effectively trick the brain into thinking it’s actually controlling a plane. In the US, a quadriplegic woman was able to "fly" an F-35 fighter jet using nothing but her mind. Fawkes looks forward to strapping on an Oculus Rift in old age and “escaping” his weary body.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-simulation-singularity-is-near

[Binkie The Clown]

1. Didn't you know. THIS is a simulated reality.

See. Already you can't tell the difference.


Consider this: if every "real" world contained even just 1,000 world simulations, then the odds are 1000:1 against this world being a real world.

[Jesus Malverde]

2. It's interesting.

Is there a hidden code that rules the Universe?

Physicists rely on equations to understand the world, but could the Universe operate more like a computer program instead? Stephen Wolfram thinks so.

Mathematics helps us understand the world we live in – physicists have devised equations that attempt to explain everything from the way a ball hurtles through the air to the Big Bang.

Yet could there be another way of unlocking how the world works?

Computer pioneer Stephen Wolfram has been arguing for more than a decade that mathematics has its limits for modelling nature. Instead, he believes that there are rules underlying everything, acting much like computer programs. These programs might define the shape of a seashell, the weather, or human intelligence. We just haven’t found them yet.

Wolfram’s idea came out of his work showing how simple programs called cellular automata could reproduce the structure of objects like snowflakes or leaves. His controversial idea – not accepted by most physicists – is that similar computational rules may explain the workings of everything in the Universe.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140529-universe-ruled-by-a-hidden-code

[Binkie The Clown]

14. I've often thought that and electron is actually

a program which computes and simulates an electron's behavior. Every electron is a copy of the same program, so every electron is identical.

When you think about it, what gives an electron, or a proton, or a neutron or photon, etc. it's characteristics? Simply that it computes and simulates those characteristics.

See also John Conway's "game of life"

Yes, I've read Wolfram's Magnum Opus A New Kind of Science. Check also the references at Digital Physics. I particularly enjoy Edward Fredkin's writings on the subject, and Wheeler's book It From Bit.

Another thing to consider is that Calculus assumes a continuum, but if space is discrete then at very small distances the large-scale laws of physics break down, because at that scale a continuum is only a rough approximation of what is actually step-wise space/time. Hence, the difficulty reconciling gravity (large scale continuum) with quantum Mechanics (small scale discrete).

Makes one wonder, Is "death" the way we leave the game in order to play a different simulation next time?

[Jesus Malverde]

17. Death could also be a way to clean up old code and leave room for v2 or v2000000

To run.



Interesting stuff gonna check out your links thanks.

[Xipe Totec]

3. This reality is too shitty to be simulated. nt

[Jesus Malverde]

5. The interesting aspect of that

I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned.
Adult. You have become adult.”

Harlan Ellison

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6775-i-know-that-pain-is-the-most-important-thing-in

[Xipe Totec]

8. Adoration - Leopoldo Lugones (1874 - 1938)

When it shines in the infinite
so pure, distant and beautiful
does a star ever realize
when it is reflected by the sea?

But when it gazes at such beauty
shining so distant and pure
the sea is only at peace
when it is reflecting the star.

In its hidden beauty like a soul,
does the pearl know
that its softness and luster
was engendered by pain?

But who is worthy of hidden joy
than he who knows
how to engender, tender and lustrous,
a pearl from his own pain?

- Adoration
Leopoldo Lugones (1874 - 1938)

[hunter]

7. Not many fascist or libertarian troll-bots, meat or silicon based, get past DU's MIRT.

I think we must attribute some sort of "intelligence" to them that do.

[Binkie The Clown]

15. Almost as shitty as a video game that won't let you win.

That's what makes video games challenging and interesting. This game we call "reality" is no different. Under this hypothesis, we are here because we chose to play this particular game.

Why would we choose a game full of fear and pain? Why do people go to see horror movies? "Oh," you say, "but horror movies aren't real." Well, if this is a simulation then this is just as unreal as going to a horror movie, and a person (soul?) might chose to play a shitty game for the same reason a person chooses to watch a horror movie.

Speaking as an atheist who does not believe in "afterlife", I can still speculate about the sort of "afterlife" that we, as players in a simulation, might experience "between games". It gives me, if nothing else, a way to speculate about afterlife and reincarnation and Giver Of Data and still remain within the realm of logic and rationality.

[Lint Head]

4. Could you kill a simulated human without being prosecuted

for murder?

[Jesus Malverde]

6. Let's give McCain the death simulator, maybe he'll leave us alone.

[Xipe Totec]

9. I just saw Ex Machina

I highly recommend it.

[Jesus Malverde]

10. I'll check it out..nt

[Xipe Totec]

11. Updated my post with a link to the preview

As an enticement...

[Jesus Malverde]

12. Thanks

Looks great‼️

[Binkie The Clown]

16. You might be prosecuted WITHIN the simulation.

The player of a video game is about to sneak into the evil wizard's castle. At each of the four gates stands a fire-breathing dragon. He has been told that the wizard actually only has one dragon and that the other three dragons are illusion. Now the player has to decide which is the real dragon.

"The real dragon?" What the hell does that mean? There's no such thing as a "real dragon". But within the context of the simulation, there is one real dragon, and three illusory ones. The same applies to murder of a simulation character. From within the simulation there is such a thing as a real person. Outside the simulation, it's nonsense to talk about "real person" in that context. Such a "real person" doesn't exist in the outer reality.

[NV Whino]

13. Can we use this on Congress?

Or, er, maybe it already is.

[MisterP]

18. we've seen this one before

[Jesus Malverde]

19. Lol

Thanks for that.