Life is but a dream? ........Scientists ask.

[Dover]

November 14, 2004

Top scientist asks: is life all just a dream?
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

DEEP THOUGHT, the supercomputer created by novelist Douglas Adams, got there first, but now the astronomer royal has caught up. Professor Sir Martin Rees is to suggest that “life, the universe and everything” may be no more than a giant computer simulation with humans reduced to bits of software.
Rees, Royal Society professor of astronomy at Cambridge University, will say that it is now possible to conceive of computers so powerful that they could build an entire virtual universe.

The possibility that what we see around us may not actually exist has been raised by philosophers many times dating back to the ancient Greeks and appears repeatedly in science fiction.

However, many scientists have always been dismissive, saying the universe was far too complex and consistent to be a simulation.

..snip..

In a television documentary, What We Still Don’t Know, to be screened on Channel 4 next month, he will say: “Over a few decades, computers have evolved from being able to simulate only very simple patterns to being able to create virtual worlds with a lot of detail.

“If that trend were to continue, then we can imagine computers which will be able to simulate worlds perhaps even as complicated as the one we think we’re living in.

“This raises the philosophical question: could we ourselves be in such a simulation and could what we think is the universe be some sort of vault of heaven rather than the real thing. In a sense we could be ourselves the creations within this simulation.” ...cont'd

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1358588,00.html

[Worst Username Ever]

1. I wish I had taken the blue pill n/t

[pnutchuck]

2. Back to the ancient Greeks?

Hinduism has been around a hell of a lot longer than the Greeks and the premise is that nothing is real....

[Sequoia]

3. Where's my row boat? I gotta go gently down the stream.

A lot of these older beliefs think the same. Our dreams are our real lives, the daily grind of day is the dream.

[tmooses]

4. "Is all that we see or seem/But a dream within a dream?." Poe...

A Dream within a Dream
by: Edgar Allen Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

[indigobusiness]

7. Would that I could, just once,

drink cognac with Edgar Allen Poe.

[prof_science]

15. My choir just premiered a work containing those lyrics...

...um, that's all.

[nytemare]

5. This guy at my work

sort of a militant bible thumper type says that dreams are "preparing you for death" and that "you dream so God can read you thoughts". He says that "what you dream is what will happen when you die". I just tell him I don't think I will end up playing wide receiver for the Redskins after I die (especially since I am female....although the way the Redskins are playing, it would not be that inconceivable that would happen), and that I don't think when I die I will be flying and end up landing in a pool filled with chicken soup. Maybe I should have my dreams analyzed.

Anyway, this fellow is a noodle short of a lasagna. I hope he doesn't get a hold of this article, or I am sure I will hear endlessly about it.

[tmooses]

9. Your "guy at work" sounds like Bush's base

[nytemare]

11. kinda spooky stuff really

this guy is a strange bird.

[Johnny Noshoes]

26. Love the phrase

"Anyway, this fellow is a noodle short of a lasagna." I've gotta remember that one for future use.
Sometimes walking to the subway in the morning on the way to work I just wonder is this whole thing just "The Truman Show" are we just subroutines in some universal holodeck program. Maybe I just watch too much Trek :D

"Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings." — John F. Kennedy

[Goldmund]

6. My answer is: who cares if it's a simulation?

Also, "However, many scientists have always been dismissive, saying the universe was far too complex and consistent to be a simulation."... This sounds like a bunch of hogwash to me. No scientist would use such an inexact term as "too complex and consistent" -- for that matter, the same "argument" can, and has been, used by creationists to "prove" intelligent design.

So if it is a "simulation", it's still our universe. What difference does it make if it's a simulation or not?

[trotsky]

10. Exactly.

Simulation or not, that doesn't change how we go about our lives, or discover things about our environment.

[LibLabUK]

12. Hehe..

It's only a problem when you get a Blue Screen of Death™, although I hear upgrading to LifeXP™ will solve many of those issues.

[moggie]

25. "Universe far too complex"

Perhaps we just see it as complex, because it's part of the simulation for us to do so?

As for whether it makes a difference whether or not we're a simulation, what if the purpose of the simulation is invalidated if too many of us think we're a simulation? If that happens, maybe the kid with the games console we're running on will hit reset and play "GTA: R'lyeh" instead?:scared: Stop talking about this, folks!

[soothsayer]

8. Scientists are just now getting into drugs? n/t

[mcscajun]

13. About the "dust bunnies" subroutine...

...can we get them out from under the furniture, please?

And those spiderwebs in the corner...what techno-dingbat wrote that routine?

[msmcghee]

21. I suspect the creator was into . .

. . object oriented design.

Dust bunnies don't need a routine. Just attributes and a method and a way to be aware of "events" in their domain.

[Swede]

14. When does Universe 2.0 come out?

I'm kinda tired of this game.

[msmcghee]

22. It's coming Jan 1, 2005 . .

. . and if you don't upgrade you can't expect support.

[prof_science]

16. I always thought it would be cool...

...if this universe was just an alien's graduate student project in computer science. Of course, the question would remain: would that alien's universe also be a simulation of some OTHER being?

then I think about something else. Someone else here posted "who cares if it's a simulation" and I tend to agree. what the hell difference would it make to the lives that we've been given?

[Dover]

17. And what grade would you give those alien students for this "project" ?

Whoever was the joker who created Bush and Cheney should be automatically flunked! NOT FUNNY!

[prof_science]

18. Hmm.

I think I'd give overall good marks, but then again, I have no work to compare it with. Perhaps putting the * administration in charge is the alien's attempt to test how robust the system is-- will it crash, find new equilibrium, or will the error handling code catch the problems and return us to a pre W state?

anyway, don't listen to me, I'm afraid my ass is doing most of the talking right now :)

[Dover]

19. Well next time warn me so I can cover my eyes!

Now I have to wash them out with soap!

[zonmoy]

24. only flunked

An insane assylum would be the best solution for such a being.

[Nihil]

20. The hard part is keeping religion out of the discussion

I went through a phase of investigation/discovery/enlightenment several
years ago along the same lines as mentioned in this article.

In my case, it was triggered by my growing skills in computer graphics
(now sadly dated) combined with sufficient fresh air walks at lunchtime
to allow my mind to freewheel without so many cares & worries to clutter
it up.

I loved the simulation programs, in particular tree building algorithms
that could generate a simple yet realistic simulation of an English
woodland by tweaking a few key control parameters; the variations in
tree height, structure, bushiness, could all be encapsulated in a
sequence of initial values. I could see how the paths of raindrops
down my windscreen affected my view of the objects beyond - and could
generate the same effect on my computer screen. I could watch the
way that the leaves rippled in a silver birch when the breeze drifted
across it (and only dream of the computing power to reproduce *that*
with any degree of realism).

This became reinforced by my studies of life-shapes (e.g., the myriad
species of teleost fish "changed" simply by stretching the dimensions
of skeletal length, width and height).

Add in the fractal relationships within nature, the mathematical
fundamentals found across this Universe (from submicroscopic to
galactic scales) and the recurrence of certain physical constants
in so many aspects of our understanding.

Yes, I could easily map that concept onto the idea of being a
participant in a simulation (indeed, started writing some fiction
based upon this but let it fade on the paper after reading the
works of other writers on this subject!).

Sadly, some changes in my life meant that I drifted away from those
habits and attitudes. They still lurk in the recesses of my mind,
to be briefly awoken by topics such as this, but rarely rise high
enough for long enough to topple the harsher, flatter, less grokking
view that tends to predominate these days.

Thanks for posting the original thread Dover!

Nihil

[GoBlue]

23. Are you simulating this response of mine

or did I simulate reading your post? God I'm so confused, I think.