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Elon Is Wrong. We Don't Live in a Simulation

14 点作者 pastalex将近 9 年前

13 条评论

galistoca将近 9 年前
This guy basically is saying &quot;the world we live in is physical, because well.. it is physical!&quot;. How does someone like this become a professor and publish books?<p>I have no problem someone saying &quot;it is very likely we live in a simulation&quot; because it&#x27;s an opinion and he&#x27;s not trying to hide the fact that it&#x27;s just an opinion.<p>But saying stuff like &quot;THAT IS WRONG&quot; and &quot;It&#x27;s conceptually and empirically incorrect&quot; is really amateur.<p>By the way does this guy even know what &quot;empirically&quot; means? Our experience is nothing more than what we perceive as human beings, and there&#x27;s plenty of evidence that supports that what we perceive is not necessarily the reality. And this guy is saying &quot;it&#x27;s empirically wrong&quot;. It is impossible to prove a philosophical theory &quot;empirically wrong&quot;.
johnloeber将近 9 年前
The basic objection here -- that Musk misunderstands the nature of simulation on a philosophical-technical level, and that even if our existence was simulated, it is still as meaningful as it would be if it weren&#x27;t -- is nicely written and argued, but it feels woefully irrelevant to the debate. The author has done nothing to address the fundamental probabilistic argument that Musk uses in favor of simulation. This article is mostly an attack on definitions, not one on substance.
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chriswarbo将近 9 年前
Urgh, one nonsensical statement after another. I think I need a shower after reading that.<p>Most of the authors&#x27; misguided ramblings seem to stem from a very naive misunderstanding of the word &quot;computer&quot;, i.e. that in a technical context it refers to any system capable of universal computation (AKA &quot;Turing complete&quot;). &quot;Universal computation&quot; has precise Mathematical definitions, but can roughly be understood as the &quot;complexity limit&quot; of the Universe; just as nothing can go faster than light, nothing can exhibit behaviour that&#x27;s more complex than that of a Turing complete system. The proof boils down to showing that a Turing complete system can, given a specially constructed input stimulus, produce response behaviour which is equivalent to <i>any other system</i>. These days, we call the system the &quot;hardware&quot; and the stimulus the &quot;software&quot;.<p>As an analogy, the author&#x27;s arguments would be like claiming the laws of thermodynamics don&#x27;t apply to the brain, since we have no theory of conciousness and it certainly doesn&#x27;t look like a steam engine. Just like &quot;computer&quot; in computer science, the word &quot;engine&quot; has a precise meaning in thermodynamics (any system which transforms energy from one form to another), and we don&#x27;t need to know the precise workings of the brain to know that, for example, it&#x27;s not a perpertual motion machine.<p>Likewise, we don&#x27;t need to know the precise hardware or software of the brain to know it obeys the physical Church Turing thesis, and can hence be simulated by a universal Turing machine.
Tossrock将近 9 年前
I think Elon is wrong, but for technical reasons, not philosophical ones. For one, we do not have photorealistic simulations for real-time games. We&#x27;re not even close, frankly. Still-renders can pass the photorealism barrier, as in indistinguishable from a photograph, but even state-of-the-art triple A games are still facilely obvious simulations.<p>Most importantly, there hasn&#x27;t been much progress in the past few years. Compare Battlefield 3 (2011) with Battlefield 4 (2013) with Battlefield 1 (2016, strangely enough), and you really won&#x27;t see that much progress in realism. While you can get pretty screenshots, as soon as it&#x27;s in motion, the distance from reality is obvious. What&#x27;s missing is physics. Good physics simulations (ie fluid flow, soft-body, divisible materials, etc) is so computationally expensive that I doubt anything even approaching it will ever be realtime possible.<p>Why? Because the rate of improvement is slowing. Those paying attention know Moore&#x27;s law is running out of steam (Intel recently had to insert an extra tick into their tick-tock model), and power draw &#x2F; heat dissipation are ever more difficult to push. Arguments for the singularity &#x2F; simulation all rely on an exponential curve being projected as far into the future as the speaker feels necessary, but in reality, there is no such thing as an exponential curve. All physical processes that experience exponential looking growth eventually slow down, forming a logistic curve, and it&#x27;s looking like the growth curve for FLOPS is going to top out well before &quot;photorealistic realtime simulation of the entire world available to every consumer&quot;.
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gonvaled将近 9 年前
If you are in a simulation you are not the one looking at the picture of the apple, and trying to eat it from the outside: you are the one for whom the only real thing is the apple that you have in front of you. And the apple indeed feeds you, since the rules in the simulated world are such that &quot;consuming apple object provide nutrients to being eating it&quot;.<p>In a simulation, the reality <i>is</i> the simulation, the rules are the rules programmed in the simulation, in fact you will have a hard time reaching out to base level, since the rules in the simulated world are hiding it from you (which gives for interesting science fiction ideas).<p>&gt; Simulations are things that we use to talk or to think about other things. In this respect, they do not step out of Musk’s base reality. They are still base reality. They are made of the same stuff everything else is made of.<p>Accepting the simulation premise does contradict the fact that everything is made of stuff. But that everything is made of stuff does not mean that the objects in the simulation are made of the stuff that the simulation suggests.<p>And he is missing the main point of the simulation theory, namely that all entities in the simulation are not aware of the underlying levels: in our simulations, the apple and the avatar eating the apple are objects in a program (that is, basically 1s and 0s, not matter) running in a computer processor <i>made of</i> silicon matter. But the apple, or the avatar do not know anything about computer programs, 0s or 1s, silicon, or anything else in the underlying level. And, more interestingly, the apple and the avatar can be upgraded, modified, cloned, deleted or shut down by the computer programmer, all while they are running on &quot;stuff&quot;.<p>In the simulations being run by our masters, where we live, we are objects in a &quot;program&quot; running in a &quot;computer&quot; made of &quot;silicon&quot;, all that in quotes because we do not know how exactly the underlying level is structured.
freyir将近 9 年前
As evidence against:<p>&gt; <i>Simulations Are Things In The World ... they do not step out of Musk’s base reality. They are still base reality. They are made of the same stuff everything else is made of.</i><p>I stopped reading here.
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joelg将近 9 年前
I&#x27;m reminded of the title-text from this xkcd: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;947&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;947&#x2F;</a><p>&quot;But Einstein said that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe, and I take all my investment advice from flippant remarks by theoretical physicists making small talk at parties.&quot;<p>Musk&#x27;s comments get held to ludicrously high standards because it&#x27;s sensational to write headlines like &quot;Elon is wrong.&quot;
devnonymous将近 9 年前
I&#x27;m getting a bit tired of reading this &#x27;Elon Musk says we live in a simulation&#x27;. No he didn&#x27;t! At least he wasn&#x27;t the first one to say it. The idea isn&#x27;t his. The philosophical idea has been around since when people started questioning existence and actual theoretical basis of living in a computer simulation argument has been around since well 2001.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.simulation-argument.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.simulation-argument.com</a>
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nikki-9696将近 9 年前
Someone missed the point. If we&#x27;re in a simulation, there is no spoon, man. Nor a worm that needs that apple. The water isn&#x27;t simulated because there is no water.
Vanit将近 9 年前
Do the authors even know what a simulation is?
dukoid将近 9 年前
Let&#x27;s assume it&#x27;s feasible to run this kind of simulation in the future. Wouldn&#x27;t this be unethical and hence probably illegal, making it less likely?
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JakeAl将近 9 年前
Reality: it&#x27;s is all in your head.
fbomb将近 9 年前
&quot;Simulation.&quot; - You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.