Here's a basic example using the statement, "This true statement is not provable." If it were provable, it would be false, making logic inconsistent. If it's not provable, then it's true, but that makes any system trying to prove it incomplete. Either way, pure computation fails.

Am I the only one seing this as a misnomer? The statement is a composite of two statements: "This is a true statement" and "This is not a provable statement".

The "This is a true statement" part asserts truth. And, given nothing else to go of, we can assume the part true. "It's true that this is true". There just isn't any real statement being made. Taking the assumption is oerfectly valid, since we can disprove it at a later point.

The second statement, "This statement is not provable", is very much provable, since it also asserts almost nothing, just like the previous one. Its assertion is "I'm not provable", which is provably false.

Since the two sentences form a composite, we must compose the results of the previous two. We have a "true" and a "false". From the composite sentence we can infer the logical operation used to connect them: AND.

Thus we have a TRUE AND FALSE boolean expression, which has a resounding answer of FALSE.

I have to say, my system didn't prove it, but it evaluated it - unlike the authors, which claim to have proven the universe is forever ununderstandable to anyone and thus unable to be simulated.

That being said, my system seems to be perfectly consistent with itself, and, dare I say, quite grounded in reality.

Yes, the simulation was programmed so they'd arrive at that conclusion.

We are not in a simulation. A particle is only able to hold exactly as much information as is necessary to describe it, and hence is irreducible.

Any incomplete simulation, even to a tiny degree, leads to wildly inconsistent, and eventually incoherent conclusions.

Either our universe is a simplified, and thus unreliable, simulation, destroying any long term usefulness to would-be simulators ; or it is simply not a simulation at all.

Nice but ... simulation of what?

The whole idea was just something Elon used to recruit imaginative minds to his companies.

This information exists in what physicists call a Platonic realm

Friend-zoned by the universe. That's gotta sting.

I don't buy the simulation hypothesis, but I also don't understand why the simulation would need to be 'complete' as long as it's sufficiently consistent - after all, wouldn't the same argument apply to simulations we do have, such as emulators and VMs? But they work anyway

Mathematical proof sponsored by:

Disclaimer: not a physicist, but I am familiar with mathematical logic side of things e.g. incomplete theorem and stuff.

I have to say, terrible paper. Very light on technical details, full of assertions not backed up by arguments. I wouldn't really take this too seriously. But this is just a letter, maybe the full paper, if they ever publish one, will have more substance? We will see.

Full paper is here for those looking for it

All I read is "The computer simulation we're living in fooled some mathematicians"

Any claim of a proof of nonexistence should be taken with a handful of salt, you throw over your shoulder to drive the scary ghosts away. Happy Halloween.

Btw, this logical fallacy is a bunch of whoo.

Or this is what the admins want you to think.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

Nothing says that our computers can't eventually operate on the same principles as the universe.

I personally don't believe we're living in a simulation, though it's a fascinating thought experiment and I can't say for certain that we're not. This article is frankly way too definitive about questions that I don't think we're equipped to answer yet, without actually explaining itself.

The simulation hypothesis was long considered untestable, relegated to philosophy and even science fiction, rather than science. This research brings it firmly into the domain of mathematics and physics, and provides a definitive answer.

I haven't read the full paper, but the article about it says the theory is now testable, but doesn't explain how they tested it to get their "definitive answer." They also don't address the fact that their research is based on their current understanding of reality. Usually assertions like this will include something like "as technology progresses, it's likely that more questions will arise and we'll have better tools to attempt to answer them." But nope, it's just a hubristic "here's the definitive truth."

Also, the generated images are infuriating. Either hire an artist, use public domain media, or just lean on the science and leave out the images. Not everything needs meaningless pictures.

The notion of a simulated universe is a bit of a misnomer IMO. It doesn’t mean the nature of our reality is unphysical as in order to exist as a simulation all of it must be represented physically in whatever the “top level” universe is. It just means that what we experience is built and described in a way that is not inline with our subjective reality, which is true in any case.

Another fun opinion is that it would be easier for a technological civilization to discover it is in a simulation than it would be to develop interstellar travel. Upon discovery of the fact that it is simulated a civilization would either abuse that fact or change it’s behavior both of which ruin the validity of the simulation’s outcome. The natural response to this by whoever is running the experiment would be to cull that part of the data to preserve the fidelity of the result. Thus the Fermi paradox is explained.

Because any putative simulation of the universe would itself be algorithmic, this framework also implies that the universe cannot be a simulation.

How do they conclude that any simulation would have to be (purely) algorithmic? (For a fictional counterexample, take Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex, which simulates a universe by extrapolating from a physical piece of cake.)

Gotta tell you, this sounds like bullshit. Godel's incompleteness theorems prove that there are some questions that cannot be proven by axiom (or consequently, by algorithm). But that in no way rules out simulating our reality. Cuz I got news for you, Godel's incompleteness theorems hold true here inthis universe too, my guys. And yet we still have a functioning universe.

Godels proof only applies to mathematical abstracts like the nature of natural numbers. It shows that we will never have a complete, self consistent, provable description of things like natural numbers. But we still use them all the damn time, particularly in computation. And things that aren't abstract? Things that can be observed, and described? That can all be simulated.

Their argument seems to come down to the idea that you need a non-algorithmic higher order logic to have a universe. Insert whatever mystical unknowable source you want in there. Cool. We would still have that in a simulated universe, sourced from the universe doing the simulation. You dont have to recreate the nature of mathematics in this new universe to simulated it. The math already exists, and you apply it to the simulations. Godel's theorems hold true, and observable physical nature is simulated without issue. The only thing that is actually difficult to simulate algorithmically is true randomness, but there are already plenty of ways to generate random numbers from measurements of our own physical world's randomness, so this too can arise from the higher order world too.

I'm not saying that I think we are actually in a simulation, I'm just saying that the aspects of this "proof" that they mention in the article seems very weak.

Okay, I hate to be "that guy" but the over use of "—" in the writing next to certain phrases like "not X, but something more, something deeper, it's Y". Makes this article look 100% AI written to me. Like, I'm more than reasonable certain it is just copy pasted AI. Someone will need to prove to me that it isn't at this point.

From my non-physicist or mathematician reading of the article, it seems like it hinges on a specific computational theory of quantum gravity. I don't believe we have an experimentally verified theory that connects quantum gravity to macroscopic gravity so it seems like the whole analysis hinges on that.

I thought we didn't understand gravity enough to prove it is quantum though? I think their results are based on the assumption that quantum gravity is the final explanation

The whole concept in quantum mechanics of a particle's wave function collapsing into a single point due to an observation event is just weird enough, and feels just enough like some otherworldly programmer's hack to save tons of resources, that I am not sure I will ever be fully convinced that we are not in a simulation.

I'm not asserting that we're in one, and I don't know of any reasons to believe that we are in one, but I think I'll always have that little suspicion.

I really don't buy this. It's the same sort of bullshit logic of robots exploding when they read contradictory logical statements. I don't really believe we're in a simulation but I see no reason why, given infinite storage, time, and processing power, some higher reality couldn't be simulating what we live in.