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At the recent World Science Festival, a panel of digital physicists debate the possibility that everything that this site is about may be true: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=world-science-festival-rebooting-the-cosmos-is-the-universe-ultimate-computer-live-eventI missed the live stream (but thanks for the link, Kurt S.), but would love to find a podcast of it. Anyone?
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jim wrote:
I missed the live stream (but thanks for the link, Kurt S.), but would love to find a podcast of it. Anyone?
I can send you a copy but the file is over 500MB. Do you have an ftp server or place to upload it? -TheArchitect
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Hey Jim.
This is great news. I hope that the scientists keep discussing the idea for many years to come. There appears to be so much evidence now to support this theory.
If only we could somehow prove it- attempting to make contact with the Programmer/Creator of the universe would be a good starting point. Projecting a message into the sky, "Hello Programmer of the Universe!" just might get you a reply. Hey, you never know.....
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You rock, TheArchitect. Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier - busy week and I couldn't think of a quick way post a large file.
Thanks very much,
Cheers...
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Thank you so much for this. Kudos to Jim and The Architect!
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That was a great video. Was it just me or did Jurgen Schmidhuber sound like Bill Lumbergh from Office Space? I could easily imagne him saying something like... "Mmm, yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Sunday, too..."
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First of all, I would like to welcome Switch to the forum. We look forward more of your posts. By the way, as a huge fan of Lumbergh in Office Space, I find the idea of a German Lumbergh pretty funny.  I've been so busy lately that it has taken a while to finally get a chance to view this video, which I thought was excellent. I am particularly impressed with Ed Fredkin and am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I didn't know who he was, or anything about his research over the years. But, coming from the computer science orientation, he totally gets the idea and possibilities of programmed reality, and I completely resonated with much of what he said. Unfortunately, I don't think I could say the same for Seth Lloyd, who didn't seem to be on the same wavelength. First, he confused digital and discrete, which are not the same thing. Then, he jumped on Jurgen's idea that the QM probability function may be discrete by saying that there was no evidence to that effect. But there is also no evidence that the QM probability function is continuous, because we have absolutely no way to make measurements at that level (Planck). So, to be adamant about one model over the other seems a little closed minded. He and Fotini seemed to be struggling to conceive of a computer being "emergent" from laws of physics rather than one that generated them. Finally, his assertion that you can't simulate something the size of the universe with a device smaller than the universe made no sense. What about considering the consciousness-centric model, for example. Or considering that information density could be drastically different in different scales of space. Jurgen kind of pointed that out with his 4-line program example. Ed had some great ideas and quotes, like (paraphrasing): "The place where the computer exists doesn't have to have beginnings and endings." What a great thought! "I've never seen anything more hare-brained than the ideas that...the big bang started as the result of a quantum fluctuation." Bravo! I also liked that Jurgen went beyond that physics-centric view of the holographic model being limited to the mapping of 3D space onto a black hole surface, by saying that that in itself could be the linear mapping of the program that generates the information. Interesting that they never approached the idea of a creator. It is implied in the whole discussion, but I guess that would have pushed the discussion a little too far, huh? One final thought (for now) is that while I was interested in Ed's concept of reversible computers, I have to say that: You don't need a reversible computer to model the universe if THEORETICAL physics requires it but OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE does not! Scientists have wondered for years why the laws of physics (which are of course man made) allow non-causality, but it is never observed in practice (save all of the evidence for rewriting the past). Maybe it is because the computational mechanism is irreversible? Any other thoughts on this program?
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Could we have created or transformed and then programmed the vacuum or space in our distant past thus we have what we have now? And by doing so we guaranteed our immortality by installing our Cousiness or I-ness in Dimensionless which was empty space but now it is what we created it to be? Thus we are living or experiencing everything new again in this highly advanced computer reality/stimulation according to our observations the way we intended it run? Or maybe we our not the creators of the universal computer but we are learning to accesses it?
These are just some questions I've been thinking off I would like to know what other like minded individuals have to say. please leave a comment.
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Hi Alex. Welcome to the Forum! Great to have you and we look forward to more posts about this stuff. Can you expand a little on your first idea? Do you see the universe as real (vacuum of the distant past) or virtual (as a simulation)? It definitely seems like a creator of such a simulation would have to be far more advanced than we are today, right? But I guess that leaves a couple possibilities: 1. The creator is far advanced and different than us. 2. The creator is us, advanced in the future, and playing this retro-simulation "game." The 2nd one is sort of the classic Nick Bostrom Simulation argument. But the first one appeals to me a little more, and I don't really know why. :)
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"Can you expand a little on your first idea?" sure thanks for asking. Am thinking that maybe in the distant past some humanoid race advanced to the point where they had the knowledge, technology, necessity, time and purpose to work on or reconstruct the virgin cosmos thus we have this strange and almost supernatural reality. Maybe the universe as we know of it today was not so in the distant past. It was reconstructed for a purpose.
"Do you see the universe as real (vacuum of the distant past) or virtual (as a simulation)?" In short 85%(real)-15%(simulation). I see the universe as real but as i gain more knowledge of it the more it becomes 50/50. The way I see it or beginning to understand it now is that the universe is real and all this phenomena or supernatural occurrence written by mystics is due to the artistic work of an advanced humanoid race, who recreated, reconstructed or simple programmed their virgin universe to act the way it does now. Again maybe just maybe the universe acts according to the observer because we or it was programmed that way. It was designed to insure our safety, will-being and so forth because that would be in our self-interest or in the interest of the programmers.
what if "The creator is us, advanced in the [PAST]," and we reached the point of total knowledge and immorality and because of that we became bored or maybe for recreation purpose's decided to use our technology the universal computer and programmed ourselves to be born where we are now and the universal computer is guiding our life according to our per-destined wishes.
I hope I cleared up some of your questions for you. By the way do you remember when or who was first to say that the universe was a computer?
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Hey Alex, hope you are still checking in. Sorry it took a while to get back to you on this one - it fell off my radar. You may be interested in my blog about retrocausality: Rewriting the Past, especially the part about Paul Davies' theory on remodeling the universe from the future. These are very cool ideas and you are on a great path toward thinking about the possible explanations for our universe. Quote:By the way do you remember when or who was first to say that the universe was a computer? I'm going with Philip K. Dick, who in said in 1977 that "We are living in a computer programmed reality." There may have been others prior to him, but that is the earliest clear reference to the idea that I can find.
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