Science tells us that an objective physical universe doesn't exist

To me, this makes perfect sense. Why would the universe spend so much energy creating actual physical universes when these universes can just be simulated? Now you're just talking about processing power of the computing device that projects this information. A computer the size of the moon could simulate the memory of every person that ever lived each minute. A smaller quantum computer can do the same thing. You would be looking at a gazillion universes but there would be no need for them to actually be physical.

I think it's becoming clear that the universe is a hologram of information on a 2D surface area. This is all you need. So the 2D surface area would be physical but it's a computational device that simulates what we perceive as "reality."

Here's people like Susskind and Greene talking about the third dimension as an illusion.



This makes perfect sense to me. Why would the universe need to waste so much energy with actual physical universes.

We also know local realism is dead and what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" is real.

Quantum physics: Death by experiment for local realism

A fundamental scientific assumption called local realism conflicts with certain predictions of quantum mechanics. Those predictions have now been verified, with none of the loopholes that have compromised earlier tests.

www.nature.com...

Also, look at quantum teleportation. Here's Dr. Kaku talking about this.



Think about this. When information is teleported it destroys the original copy. That's just amazing. The quantum state of say an electron or photon goes from point A to point B and the original electron or photon is destroyed and becomes an incoherent mess.

Here's an example on a classical level. Say you're sending the state of a cat, i.e. happy/sad or dead/alive from New York to New Jersey. the cat will exist in New Jersey but the atoms of the original cat would become an incoherent mess and the original cat would die. So the cat would die in New York but the same cat would be alive in New Jersey.

So what's real? The quantum information that tells the particles how to be configured or some "physical" object like a cat, dog or tree? Quantum mechanics tells us that information wins the day. What we call "reality" is the end result of some information being processed.

When you look at entanglement, it makes more sense in the context of computation. Particles of matter can't be in superposition or have this "spooky action at a distance." So subatomic particles should actually be called subatomic states. When you hear the word particle you think of a particle of sand or a particle of salt.

I can write a program where random red dots move across the screen. When these red dots become entangled and I click a red dot, the dot it's entangled with turns green. This will happen instantly and there's no need for information to pass between the two dots. If you blow up my screen to the size of the universe, it will happen no matter where the dots are located as long as you have enough processing power. So you can look at what we call subatomic "particles" as pixels on the space-time screen.

Reality: A universe of information
What we call reality might actually be the output of a program running on a cosmos-sized quantum computer

WHATEVER kind of reality you think you’re living in, you’re probably wrong. The universe is a computer, and everything that goes on in it can be explained in terms of information processing.

The connection between reality and computing may not be immediately obvious, but strip away the layers and that is exactly what some researchers think we find. We think of the world as made up of particles held together by forces, for instance, but quantum theory tells us that these are just a mess of fields we can only properly describe by invoking the mathematics of quantum physics.

That’s where the computer comes in, at least if you think of it in conceptual terms as something that processes information rather than as a boxy machine on your desk. “Quantum physics is almost phrased in terms of information processing,” says Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. “It’s suggestive that you will find information processing at the root of everything.”

Information certainly has a special place in quantum theory. The famous uncertainty principle – which states that you can’t simultaneously know the momentum and position of a particle – comes down to information. As does entanglement, where quantum objects share properties and exchange information irrespective of the physical distance between them.

www.newscientist.com...

This also points to a multiverse of observable universes. This is because space can expand faster than light but you can draw a boundary around any point in space that would make up an observable universe that some observers can't see.

For example, if an Alien lived in the galaxy MACS0647-JD which is 13.3 billion light years away from Earth, you can draw an observable boundary around that galaxy based on the speed of light which will include space that we can't see. Unless you think objects just magically vanish because we can't see them, there has to be other observable universes .

I hate to diminish such a thread with a one word post, but

why?

a reply to: neoholographic

Why would the universe spend so much energy creating actual physical universes when these universes can just be simulated?

Because the universe doesn't care. Like the honey badger. The universe doesn't give a crap.

Maybe they already simulated the universe and moved onto making a physical one just to see "what would happen".

originally posted by: network dude
I hate to diminish such a thread with a one word post, but

why?

If you mean "why" as a question about process, then science is uncovering those reasons but it will take a change in our understanding to embrace the new paradigms.

But I suspect that the "why" you are asking is more philosophical and science is unlikely to unlock that. One might just as reasonably ask "why" about the existence of a purely physical universe.

We can unfold various rational constructs of reality but we have to face the fact they are largely based upon immeasurable and unobserved presuppositions.

... and, why not?

a reply to: chr0naut

Why not is a perfectly acceptable answer, but just the thought of some omnipotent being or beings playing the kind of computer game that maps out my life would be an immense waste of time. They could play tic-tac-toe!

a reply to: neoholographic

I'm sorry but the simulated universe has been debunked many times.

A team of theoretical physicists from Oxford University in the UK has shown that life and reality cannot be merely simulations generated by a massive extraterrestrial computer. The finding – an unexpectedly definite one – arose from the discovery of a novel link between gravitational anomalies and computational complexity.

cosmosmagazine.com...

Now i'm not an oxford scholar like the people who wrote the paper but I know the math. A simple human brain has several billion axions, now multiply that by seven billion people-and that's just one species let alone the other millions of species on this planet-let alone other species on other planets. If there was a computer that large it would have either blown up via thermodynamics or be detected through infra red or via some other form of wavelength.

But we can all dream we have the answer, but we may never know.

originally posted by: network dude
a reply to: chr0naut

Why not is a perfectly acceptable answer, but just the thought of some omnipotent being or beings playing the kind of computer game that maps out my life would be an immense waste of time. They could play tic-tac-toe!

Why?

a reply to: neoholographic

Nice thread! It's a subject that I contemplate often.

"So what's real? The quantum information that tells the particles how to be configured or some "physical" object like a cat, dog or tree? Quantum mechanics tells us that information wins the day. What we call "reality" is the end result of some information being processed. "

I like to take it a step further, first the quantum information tells quantum energy to act like particles. When what we used to call fundamental particles are broken down further and further, we are left with just energy. The physical universe is really just quantum energy arranged into patterns, so nothing is really 'physical'.

originally posted by: network dude
a reply to: chr0naut

Why not is a perfectly acceptable answer, but just the thought of some omnipotent being or beings playing the kind of computer game that maps out my life would be an immense waste of time. They could play tic-tac-toe!

Yes seems stupid to simulate a universe when you could be playing candy crush.

originally posted by: network dude
a reply to: chr0naut

Why not is a perfectly acceptable answer, but just the thought of some omnipotent being or beings playing the kind of computer game that maps out my life would be an immense waste of time. They could play tic-tac-toe!

Yes seems stupid to simulate a universe when you could be playing candy crush.

originally posted by: network dude
a reply to: chr0naut

Why not is a perfectly acceptable answer, but just the thought of some omnipotent being or beings playing the kind of computer game that maps out my life would be an immense waste of time. They could play tic-tac-toe!

Yes seems stupid to simulate a universe when you could be playing candy crush.

a reply to: dragonridr

3rd time, it really sunk in.

Methane...

a reply to: chr0naut

If they are driving the bus that is my life, they need to come up with some new and exciting things. GO to work, pay bills, drink a beer, repeat. I would think tic-tac-toe would be a bit more challenging and exciting. But at least they let me have beer.

a reply to: neoholographic

That is not at all proven.

a reply to: neoholographic

Awesome thread and info -

OP have you read Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot?

I guess this would prove the flat-earthers right?

Not only is the Earth flat (2d), everything is.

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
a reply to: neoholographic

I'm sorry but the simulated universe has been debunked many times.

A team of theoretical physicists from Oxford University in the UK has shown that life and reality cannot be merely simulations generated by a massive extraterrestrial computer. The finding – an unexpectedly definite one – arose from the discovery of a novel link between gravitational anomalies and computational complexity.

cosmosmagazine.com...

Now i'm not an oxford scholar like the people who wrote the paper but I know the math. A simple human brain has several billion axions, now multiply that by seven billion people-and that's just one species let alone the other millions of species on this planet-let alone other species on other planets. If there was a computer that large it would have either blown up via thermodynamics or be detected through infra red or via some other form of wavelength.

But we can all dream we have the answer, but we may never know.

If you are thinking of a conventional computer, then computation would require a lot of energy.

But holographic reduction in dimensionality can be thought of as a type of data compression and does not require computational steps to achieve.

Holograms use the wave like nature of light to encode the 3d spatial nature of that light into a 2d surface.

We know that 3d space and matter gets reduced to a 2d surface at the Swartzchild radius (event horizon) of a gravitational singularity (black hole). This is a prime example of 3d physical reality being transformed into a hologram of itself and requires no computation whatever.

In such a 'holographically reduced' reality, the 'interference fringes' can interact in ways that give explanation to effects such as "spooky action at a distance", quantum teleportation and quantum tunneling.

From within such a holographic reality, the encapsulated 'world' would still have all the appearance of a physical 3d construct, but there would be also be evident effects inexplicable to a purely 3d physical realm.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

It hasn't been debunked and the holographic universe is being accepted by more and more Scientist each day. There's no evidence that an objective 3D physical universe exists.

Did you even read the article you posted?

If the complexity grew linearly with the number of particles being simulated, then doubling the number of particles would mean doubling the computing power required. If, however, the complexity grows on an exponential scale – where the amount of computing power has to double every time a single particle is added – then the task quickly becomes impossible.

The researchers calculated that just storing information about a couple of hundred electrons would require a computer memory that would physically require more atoms than exist in the universe.

That makes no sense when we know that you don't need to store information about a couple of hundred electrons. This study acts like people are talking about simulating every aspect of the universe at all times.

We know that particles are in a state of superposition until measured, so there's no need to calculate information about the electron when it's not being observed. It's like a website. When it's not being accessed the information isn't online. It's stored on a server.

Also, you wouldn't have to store information about a couple of hundred of electrons, You just need to store information about what states these electrons can be in.

So you can have a million electrons that can only be in 100 states. You would just need to store the 100 states not states for a million electrons. Here's an example.

Question:

How many possible states are there for an electron in a hydrogen atom when the principle quantum number (a) n= 1 and (b) n =2.?

Answer:

For a one-electron atom, the number of states is given by the number of quantum states available in all the orbitals that could be occupied. You can actually do this by hand without taking too much time.

Thus, there are 10 states

socratic.org...

So you can have a MILLION one electron hydrogen atoms and you would just need to store information on 10 STATES the electron can be in.

Again, this paper is flawed because it assumes, for no reason, that you would have to store information about each electron. Quantum teleportation refutes this notion.

Are you saying it's by Intelligent design ?