Here's one for you. Following on from yesterday's free will post, in which I decided that everything is already pre-determined and we are merely following train tracks, I will make an outrageous prediction: eventually (and we're talking a looong way ahead), once we've worked out how everything works, a computer program will be designed, using the laws of physics, that can compute the entire universe. This has two huge implications.
1) What this amounts to is time travel. We will be able move the simulation forwards (or backwards), seeing events as they will unfold. I can't even speculate about how being able to view the future would change the pre-defined path concept. Maybe it would create a loop, signalling the end of everything. Who knows.
2) If we can perfectly simulate the universe, then in starting the program we are effectively creating life. (Yes - this is very Matrix, or numerous other sci-fi stories. How do we know we're not in a progam? Spooky!) If the program can replicate consciousness, then the simulated people would experience consciousness in the same way that we do.
Let me know what you think. Hopefully this is a more fun thought than yesterday's blog.
Intriguing, however there is a flaw in your prediction. In order to simulate the entire universe, the program would also have to simulate itself, with regards to the movement of electrons that govern the instructions running on the processor, plus the memory that gets modified as a result of those instructions.
ReplyDeleteBasically, this means that a simulation of the universe would have to contain a simulation of the universe, which would also have to contain a simulation of the universe, ad infinitum. Since it's by definition impossible to have infinite memory or processing power (however close we may get), it renders such a program impossible.
The reason that the machine couldn't just 'ignore' itself and leave itself out of the simulation is that you don't know what effect the matter and energy moving through the machine running the program would have on the rest of the simulation.
Brilliant! That makes perfect sense, thanks for commenting. I would really have liked to have a go on that computer though.
ReplyDeleteActually, I have thought of a way round that: just stop the simulation before it has to simulate itself. You might not be able to look into the future but you could still have a good rummage around in the past.
ReplyDeleteso, what, just like life then?
ReplyDelete