Very bizarre perspective. If anything this made me want to increase engagement of discovery and wonder of our reality. what better way to increase wonder than to reverse engineer reality to figure out how it works? I was getting chatgpt to help me understand quantum compression algorithms to see if there is any way to compress many quantum states (aka tensor networks). I even found a few papers of people thinking of these same ideas
I have long said that quantum theory (as well as a humble pleb can understand it) really lends some credibility to the idea we live in a simulation.
It strikes me as exactly the type of optimizations a game developer would make to optimize a game. Not looking at something? Maybe it isn’t there.
One challenge is distinguishing between source code of an external being or source code of randomness. They appear one in the same.
Something complex enough might appear random as well.
Well said. And since human understanding of math has helped us create order around such randomness it would be natural to relate to an external being’s creation using the snippets of source code we have uncovered.
It’s a neat idea but would be hard to pull off and keep consistency. It also ties in consciousness which I am not a fan of. If it is a simulation, all it seems right now is that the 3d propagation of quantum waves we see are encoded efficiently on some distant 2d boundary. Then again this is all based on AdS/CFT which isn’t even a theory of our universe (but may be close somehow), so the story could be more complicated. we’re just ants inside a giant machine that we barely understand.
Bit of a tangent, but won’t it be cool if these maths end up leading to more efficient computer storage?
We’ve been copying off nature’s work for eons, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
These are all cool thoughts. Black holes fascinate me. They seem to violate conservation of energy, but some of Hawking’s protégés believe they may have solved that.
I mean utilizing quantum variants of Fourier transforms lead to Shors algorithm which breaks cryptography, wouldn’t be surprised if there was clever compression techniques. Downsize is trying to build quantum algorithms is like skipping rocks on a lake and hoping the correct answer is encoded at the peaks of the wavefronts. Its hard, ive tried. quantum computer science by mermin is really good for anyone who wants to deep dive into this stuff. Some light reading.
I’ll look it up.
Is that light reading like Hermione would class it, or like Ron? 🤣
Oh 233 pages isn’t awful sounding.
its because we’ve only figured out how to build like 6 quantum algorithms 😆 the overview of each one is quite interesting though. Shors is most impressive.
Thanks for the book recommendation. It’s ordered. I enjoy my plebeian understanding of these things.
Haha good luck, i liked it because its like quantum mechanics with all the physics stripped out. Quantum information distills the essence of what computation means in our universe.
That sounds perfect for those of us who aren’t qualified but can’t help but peek behind the curtain.
I started with stuff like that with a course called “Physics for Future Presidents” that was made free online by UC Berkeley. It was supposed to be “all the physics we wish a future president would understand.” 🤣 Great class.
Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Future-Presidents-Science-Headlines/dp/0393337111
Class (audio as podcast linked free):
One analogy I like from Max Tegmark is each human is like an incredibly complex braid, one of the most complex in all the universe. More complex than super computers, stars, and any non living thing in the galaxy.
Each individual visualized in space time is disparate strands of atoms that converge at conception, that weave through one’s lifetime and shoot back off into randomness as our body turns over the atoms we are composed of. Eventually the braid or rope shoots off back to complete randomness (physics) as our beings ability to attract atoms and make life ceases. Then those atoms continue on the journey through space time.
From chapter 11 of our mathematical universe by Max Tegmark
