Is God a simulation?

At the end of my previous post I said

"...in order to determine whether our Universe is a simulation either we must leave this Universe, or the Super programmer must enter it. I'm quite certain the former is not possible and can say nothing about the latter..."

Having thought about it a bit I believe I can, after all, say something about the latter; i.e. whether or not not the Super-programmer can enter our universe, and I believe the answer is "yes". Since we are, by definition, part of his universe he should be able to interact with us.

As an analogy, think about the popular Sims games. In these games the user control their characters' actions. But when not being controlled the characters (the Sims) seem to have a mind and personality of their own and can basically go about living their own lives. They will sleep, eat, go to work, wash, go out with friends, even die. In short, they pretty much live a "normal" life in their universe. The only difference between the Sims universe and the one we live in is a quantitative one: number of sims, complexity of the sims, the "artificial intelligence" of the sims, etc. Fast forward 50 years when our computers are 33 million times as powerful as they are today. How much more complex a "universe" do you think we can create?

As for the programmer interacting with the Sims? That's easy. You "inject" whatever you want to say into the Sim's "consciousness" (ever read "Conversations with God"?), or you create an "angel" to deliver your message. Or you locally change (or disable) the laws of physics to enable some event to happen - in short you create "miracles" for your Sims.

Perhaps the feeling

Life would be so much easier if only I had the source code.

isn't that far off base.

The only thing I don't like about this scenario is that it begs the question: Is the Super-programmer's universe in turn a simulation? And if so, how many layers of simulations are there? Is there, ultimately, a "real" universe? Who or what create that? Or does it, like fractals, go infinitely deep?

The mind boggles. Is this any harder to believe that the simple answer: "God created the Universe"?

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Stop the Universe, I just want to check that computer over there...

Heard what I consider to be a truly novel idea last night on Discovery Channel's "Through the Wormhole: Is There a Creator?" The concept is not a particularly new one: that our Universe is, in fact, a simulation in some super (an entirely inadequate adjective) computer being run by a super (even more inadequate adjective) programmer, much like the Sims games. The justification (not sure I would even call it a theory) is a juxtaposition of Moore's Law and the, for lack of a better word, "grainyness" of simulations.

Moore's Law says that computing power would double roughly every 12 to 18 months. Actually, Moore originally, in 1970, spoke only of the number of transistors that could fit on a chip, and he predicted a doubling every 12 months (which was later revised to 24 months). Though Moore spoke only of the number of transistors, others have applied his Law to other areas, such as memory capacity, storage capacity, even the number of pixels on a display or in a camera.

So, while not new, Moore's Law does tell us that in, say 10 years, computers will be 30 times more powerful (if we use the more conservative 2 year doubling period) and in 50 years they will be 33 MILLION times as powerful. Can you imagine what kind of programs we could run with that kind of computing power?! We must be careful, of course, not to take these predictions too seriously since 50 years is a LONG time in the electronics business and we all know how difficult it is to predict things even 5 years down the road. (I can't even predict what I'm going to have for lunch tomorrow.) The point is that if in our own near future computers could become more powerful than the human brain, is it unreasonable to suppose there could exist a computer that is so powerful that it could simulate a universe as complex as our own?

The other part of the justification for the simulated Universe proposal is that a common characteristic of all simulations is that as one zooms in on any artificial construct, an image, for example, one reaches a point where one begins to see the "pixels" that make up the image. (We conveniently ignore fractals.) One reaches a level of detail where the basic building blocks become visible. The proposal says that we are now beginning to see the building blocks of the Universe in the form of quarks and the other sub-nuclear particles: that their existence points to the Universe as a simulation.

As I said, a novel idea.

I'm not sure how I feel about this yet but take comfort in the proposition that in order to determine whether our Universe is a simulation either we must leave this Universe, or the Super programmer must enter it. I'm quite certain the former is not possible and can say nothing about the latter, so as far as I'm concerned the question does not exist.

...

Now, what am I going to write about today...

Is it really "free"?

You know what really ticks me off? Someone sends you an email that looks interesting, and offers you a "free" report. From the title you think "That sounds like it might be useful - probably not, but you never know." So I click on the link and, lo and behold, there is a short video on the landing page that tells me ABSOLUTELY NOTHING except to direct me to enter my email address to receive the report.

Now, I wasn't born yesterday, and have actually fallen for enough of these to know that over the next few days or weeks, I am going to get inundated with "follow-up" messages promoting other "useful" stuff that they know I will need and want.

I am sorry, but that does not meet my definition of "free". If what you are offering me is so great, I should be beating a path back to your site, and not have to be enticed back with "follow-up" messages. If your offering is not what I need at the moment, I DO NOT WANT TO BE PESTERED! Don't act like the salesperson we all dread: the ones that stick to you like gum on the bottom of your shoe the minute you walk in the store.

If you truly have a free offer, great! Give it to me (without expecting anything in return, including my email address) and go away. If you have what I need I will be back. Keep pestering me and I definitely will not be back.

By the way, I just "discovered" trashmail.net, a free service that lets you create disposable email addresses. It seems to be based in Germany and seems like a great idea for just these kinds of "free" offers. Unfortunately, I went to sign up and haven't received my confirmation email yet, so I can not report on their effectiveness, but I definitely like the idea.

How do you tip?

My wife and I have had a long-standing disagreement about whether it is better to leave a tip on the table, or add it to the bill. (Note that I am not touching the question of whether one should tip at all. Most wait staff make so little salary-wise I have no problem adding to the pot.) There are pros and cons for both sides and things seem pretty evenly matched. The major points are:

I think that adding it to the bill is just simpler. Besides, who carries cash around these days? Heck, you don't even need cash for Tim Horton's anymore!

My wife feels that leaving it on the table ensures that the waiter/waitress gets the tip. Of course, that may not happen if he/she doesn't clear her own tables.

Well, guess what? I am changing my mind, but with a twist. The other night we were out for dinner (New Year's Eve, in fact) and the waitress we had was just super. She had a genuinely happy smile and a "Happy New Year" for everybody. She made sure all her customers knew who she was and what she was doing about their order any time she walked by. If there was a delay she made sure the customers knew that she knew and was looking after it. In short she made the whole experience a very enjoyable one.

It occurred to me after we finished that neither adding the tip to the bill (even a generous one), nor leaving it on the table would do. This woman had to be personally acknowledged. So, from now on, any one who deserves a generous tip will also be thanked personally.