"A recent study by theoretical physicists from Oxford University in the U.K., which was published in the journal Scientific Advances just last week, definitively confirms that life and reality aren’t products of a computer simulation."
Strong statement. This is because they determined that running a simulation of a small quantum system was intractable:
"To store information about a couple hundred electrons, they noted, one needs a computer memory that requires more atoms than what’s available in the universe."
This might have something to say about what we can simulate on a classical computer in our universe, but it has no bearing on if our universe is itself simulated. If it is we have no idea what kind of computer is doing the simulating, nor what the physical laws are of the universe where that computer is running, nor even how many atoms it has at its disposal.
It's okay Elon, you still might be on to something.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Have we Already Proved that the Simulation Hypothesis is False? #etc#simulationhypothesis Oxford University confirms that we don't live in a simulation - but they haven't proved what they think they've proved.)
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 12, 2022.
In the New York Times last weekend Preston Greene has an op-ed piece on the simulation hypothesis where he argues that we shouldn't check, because:
"If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation — to destroy our world."
But let's back up. To start with he trots out Bostrom:
"In 2003, the philosopher Nick Bostrom made an ingenious argument that we might be living in a computer simulation created by a more advanced civilization."
Am I living in a simulated universe where I am the only person to have ever consumed any science fiction, or spent late nights discussing the nature of the universe in a bad simulation of a kitchen? For some reason Nick Bostrom is now almost universally credited with the simulation hypothesis. Every article on the topic seems to starts with this revelation. In 2003! Like right after he finished watching The Matrix Revolutions. Have no newspaper editors ever read any Philip K. Dick? Descartes? This is not a new idea, and Bostrom's ancestor simulations are a rather tortured special case of a much wider set of possibilities.
And then:
"Professor Smoot estimates that the ratio of simulated to real people might be as high as 1012 to 1."
Sounds specific. It could be 1016 though. Or 7. Not really subject to numerical analysis at our current level of knowledge (which Greene would not increase).
And given that we don't know this invalidates the whole point of the article:
"In much the same way, as I argue in a forthcoming paper in the journal Erkenntnis, if our universe has been created by an advanced civilization for research purposes, then it is reasonable to assume that it is crucial to the researchers that we don’t find out that we’re in a simulation."
That's one possibility, sure. Reasonable to assume? No. Equally possible is that the researchers are trying to find universes that figure out that they are simulated. They keep the ones that manage it within 13.773 billion years or so and discard the others.
I think it's even more likely that simulated universes are a commodity and the number running as screen savers vastly outnumbers those used for serious research projects. Our fate depends on whether the entity that installed us is having a three martini lunch or heading back after two.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Can I move to a Better Simulation Please? #etc#simulationhypothesis If the simulation hypothesis is true should we avoid checking? Rebuttal to New York Times op-ed by Preston Green. Spoiler alert, there is no way to know. Also, can we stop pretending that this was Nick Bostrom's idea?)
95% of my incoming calls are now spam. Most of them are some strange pre-recorded Chinese voice with music playing in the background but I occasionally get a free hotel stay as well.
So far Google has rolled out Call Screen. This means I can waste my time watching Google Assistant talk to the spammer. It's way faster not to bother, hang up all calls and delete the voicemails later.
It seems like instead of Call Screen there could be a better way to deal with this.
Firstly, send any call not from someone in my contacts directly to voice mail. This would actually solve a lot of the problem.
Next, for extra credit, run spam detection on the voice mail before sending it to me. If it's two seconds long and blank then just bin it. If it's Chinese with music bin it. Only if it passes the smell test should it appear in my actual voice mail. Google is very good at this for Gmail.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Please fix phone spam Google! #etc#google#spam#phone Why can't Google manage to fix phone spam when Gmail does such a good job?)
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Wednesday, November 16, 2022.
In TechCrunch today Josh Constine gets friend portability for Facebook almost right:
"In other words, the government should pass regulations forcing Facebook to let you export your friend list to other social networks in a privacy-safe way. This would allow you to connect with or follow those people elsewhere so you could leave Facebook without losing touch with your friends. The increased threat of people ditching Facebook for competitors would create a much stronger incentive to protect users and society."
The problem is having a list of friends does me no good at all when none of them are on Google Plus, Diaspora or whatever.
What we need is legislation that forces interoperability. I can share with my friends via an open protocol, and Facebook is forced to both send and receive posts from other networks. This would actually create an opportunity for plausible competition in a way that a friend export could never do. Social networking should work like email, not CompuServe.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Facebook Interoperability #etc#software#facebook Social networking should work like email, not CompuServe. We need legislation to mandate interoperability between platforms.)
The site I had been using for global cloud cover images in Catfood Earth abruptly shut down recently so I've had to scramble to build a replacement service. This is live now and updates are available to download for Windows and Android.
More details about putting together the best possible clouds image for Catfood Earth here.
Catfood Earth 3.44 is available to download. This version updates the timezone database to 2018i, moves to a new source for timezone mapping an fixes a bug in the volcanoes layer.
Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today: "Could we have our first four-party election in 2020 — with candidates from the Donald Trump far right, the old G.O.P. center right, the Joe Biden center left and the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez far left all squaring off, as the deepening divides within our two big parties simply can’t be papered over any longer?". Here's my daisyworld analogy from 2010, and a write-up of an Intelligence Squared debate on the same topic from 2011.
