Do We Live in a Computer Simulation?

[no one]

Minimalist:
Ever notice how no one thought of life as a video game or a computer simulation until video games and computers were invented? 

Those magic ways and shit. Though I'm pretty sure the almighty OS in the sky prefers Technical Wizardry and shit.

[Dānu]

All I know is that computer sim or not, mine keeps crashing.

[Free]

All I know is that computer sim or not, mine keeps crashing.

Download and run in this sequence:

Adware Cleaner

Malwarebytes

[Dānu]

All I know is that computer sim or not, mine keeps crashing.

Download and run in this sequence:

Adware Cleaner

Malwarebytes

sudo make me a sammich

[Free]

Download and run in this sequence:

Adware Cleaner

Malwarebytes

sudo make me a sammich

[c172]

Yum! Sounds good right now.

[Cavebear]

Is this theory a way of avoiding responsibility by blaming some cosmic programmer?

Sounds like a religion to me. All the same aspects of control and non-free-will. But I'm sure we are not a computer simulation. I have a self-written app that detects when my CONTROL button is activated outside of my computer. The computer tells me.

Oh wait, "the computer tells me". Hmm...

[pythagorean]

String Theory is a hot mess. Garbage in garbage out. Physicists being mislead by overconfidence in conjectural mathematical models. 

"Ask not what Mathematics can do for Physics - ask what Physics can do for Mathematics."  - me


Mathematics and string theory

PDF: einaudi.dvi (marcosmarino.net)





Bohemian Gravity | A Capella Science

0.3. Clash of cultures
 
In the course of preparing this book I have been fortunate to have had many discussions with computer scientists, applied mathematicians, engineers, physicists, and chemists. Often the beginnings of these conversations were very stressful to all involved. I have kept these difficulties in mind, attempting to write both to geometers and researchers in other fields.
 
Tensor practitioners want practical results. To quote Rasmus Bro (personal communication): "Practical means that the user of a given chemical instrument in a hospital lab can push a button and right after get a result."
 
My goal is to initiate enough communication geometers and scientists so that such practical results will be realized. While both grouops are interested in communicating, there are language and even philosophical barriers to be overcome. The purpose of this paragraph is to is to alert geometers and scientists to some of the potential difficulties in communication.
 
To quote G. Folland [126] "For them (scientists), mathematics is the of manipulating symbols according to certain sophisticated rules, and the external reality to which those symbols refer lies not in an abstract universe of sets but in the real-world phenomina that they are studying."
 
But mathematicians, as Folland observed, are Platonists, we think that the things we are manipulating on paper have a higher existence. To quote Plato [266], "Let us take away any common instance; there are beds and tables in the world - plenty of them, are there not?"
 
"Yes. But there are only two ideas or forms of them - one the idea of a bed, the other of a table."
 
"True. And the maker of either of them makes a bed or he makes a table for our use, in accordance with the idea - that is our way of speaking in this and similar instances - but no artificer makes the ideas themselves: how could he?"
 
"And what of the maker of the bed? Were you not saying that he too makes, not the idea which, according to our view, is the essence of the bed, but only a particular bed?"
 
"Yes, I did. Then if he does not make that which exists he cannot make true existence, but only some semblence of existence; and if anyone were to say that the work of the maker of the bed, or of any other workman, has real existence, he could hardly be supposed to be speaking the truth."
 
The difference of cultures is particularly pronounced when discussing tensors: for some practitioners these are just multi-way arrays that one is allowed to perform certain manipulations on. For geometers these are spaces equipted with certain group actions. The emphasize the geometric aspects of tensors, geometers prefer to work invariantly: to paraphrase W. Fulton: "Don't use coordinates unless someone is holding a pickle to your head."
 
*Footnote: This modification of the actual quote in tribute to my first geometry teacher, Vincent Gracchi. A problem in our 9th grade geometry textbook asked us to determine if a 3-foot long rifle could be packed in a box of a certain dimensions, and Mr. Gracchi asked us all to cross out the word "rifle" and substitute the word "pickle" because he "did not like guns". A big 5q + 5q to Mr. Gracchi for introducing his students to geometry.

(pages xvii-xviii)

Tensors: Geometry and Applications

J. M. Landsberg

Graduate Studies in Mathematics (Volume 128)

American Mathematical Society