Tag Archives: simulations

April 1, 2020

Wow to the Wow

Wow. April First, but it’s no joke how much — and how quickly — life changed. March 2020 changed the world. Now we’ll see if we survive it.

Spirits seem high around here. On my morning walk, in the park I saw that someone had used colored chalk to write good thoughts on the asphalt path: “Stay Positive!” “Nature!” “Yay! Vit. D.” “Family Time” “Exercise!” (Maybe others will join in. I think I have some colored chalk…)

It’s hard to top the real life wows, but I do have a few interesting items that might at least offer something of a distraction.

8 Comments | tags: coronavirus, geometry, Platonic solids, quantum physics, simulations, virtual reality, X17 particle | posted in Life, Wednesday Wow

November 2, 2019

Virtual Reality

By Wyrd Smythe

I’ve seen objections that simulating a virtual reality is a difficult proposition. Many computer games, and a number of animated movies, illustrate that we’re very far along — at least regarding the visual aspects. Modern audio technology demonstrates another bag of tricks we’ve gotten really good at.

The context here is not a reality rendered on screen and in headphones, but one either for plugged-in biological humans (à la The Matrix) or for uploaded human minds (à la many Greg Egan stories). Both cases do present some challenges.

But generating the virtual reality for them to exist in really isn’t all that hard.

11 Comments | tags: Greg Egan, simulations, virtual reality | posted in Computers, Sci-Fi Saturday

October 28, 2019

Physical vs Abstract

By Wyrd Smythe

Maybe it’s a life-long diet of science fiction, but I seem to have written some trilogy posts lately. This post completes yet another, being the third of a triplet exploring the differences between physical objects and numeric models of those objects. [See Magnitudes vs Numbers and Real vs Simulated for the first two in the series.]

The motivation for the series is to argue against a common assertion of computationalism that numeric models are quintessentially the same as what they model. Note that these posts do not argue against computationalism, but against the argument conflating physical and numeric systems.

In fact, this distinction doesn’t argue against computationalism at all!

9 Comments | tags: abstraction, algorithm, computer model, simulations, software model | posted in Computers

October 26, 2019

Real vs Simulated

By Wyrd Smythe

Indulging in another round of the old computationalism debate reminded me of a post I’ve been meaning to write since my Blog Anniversary this past July. The debate involves a central question: Can the human mind be numerically simulated? (A more subtle question asks: Is the human mind algorithmic?)

An argument against is the assertion, “Simulated water isn’t wet,” which makes the point that numeric simulations are abstractions with no physical effects. A common counter is that simulations run on physical systems, so the argument is invalid.

Which makes no sense to me; here’s why…

53 Comments | tags: algorithm, computation, computationalism, computer model, consciousness, human mind, mind, simulations, software model, Theory of Consciousness, theory of mind | posted in Computers

December 12, 2014

Reality IS Virtual (probably)!

By Wyrd Smythe

virtual reality One of the things I mentioned in my recent Material Disbelief post was that, if you accept everything physics has discovered in the last 100 years or so — and if you believe in philosophical materialism — you are faced with the very strong possibility that all of reality is some sort of simulation or machine process.

Not only does all the evidence, as well as some basic logic, seem to point in that direction, but as a model of reality it provides easy answers to many of the conundrums of modern physics (e.g. Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” and some basic questions regarding the Big Bang).

Today I want to lay out the details of the arguments for this.

28 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, Bell's Theorem, DisneyQuest, DNA, EPR paper, Leopold Kronecker, materialism, metaphysics, Philosophical materialism, physicalism, reality, simulations, virtual reality, Zeno's paradoxes | posted in Physics