Anyone got a blue pill?

[Tale]

German researchers believe they will be able to determine whether our entire cosmos is a simulation running on a vastly powerful computer. Maybe then won't have to fix the euro crisis?

Link: The Measurement That Would Reveal The Universe As A Computer Simulation

If the cosmos is a numerical simulation, there ought to be clues in the spectrum of high energy cosmic rays, say theorists

[Sir T]

I predict 6 posts to politics. 

[Tale]

Well it only took 1 post to douchebag.

[Signe]

Oh, I thought this was the Xanax forum.

[apocrypha]

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

[taolurker]

Oh, I thought this was the Xanax forum.

My first thought was the thread being about Viagra.

[Nebu]

Oh, I thought this was the Xanax forum.

My first thought was the thread being about Viagra.

I taught pharmacology and know that both of those are blue... the question is, how did YOU know?   

[Merusk]

Shit... that would mean there really WAS a God, and he's a Sims player.  We're all fucked, those people are psychos.

[Signe]

Oh, I thought this was the Xanax forum.

My first thought was the thread being about Viagra.

I taught pharmacology and know that both of those are blue... the question is, how did YOU know?   

Because I've taken one of them.  Yes, that's right.  I'm a Viagra junkie.   

[Sir T]

Well it only took 1 post to douchebag.

Welcome to f13. Glad you are enjoying your stay. 

[Paelos]

This isn't about penis pills?

[Signe]

No, it's about Xanax. 

[Pennilenko]

Shit... that would mean there really WAS a God, and he's a Sims player.  We're all fucked, those people are psychos.

If you think about it like that, so much of human history begins to make sense.

[Cadaverine]

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

[Tale]

Nerd viagra for the record: If you take the blue pill, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

[Venkman]

Shit... that would mean there really WAS a God, and he's a Sims player.  We're all fucked, those people are psychos.

If you think about it like that, so much of human history begins to make sense.

Yea but I still gotta pay the goddamned bills, even if I'm being puppetmaster'd.

[Yegolev]

Naproxen sodium pills are blue as well.  I like those.

[Signe]

I had a script for Naproxen the last time I fucked up my knee in the UK.  I was surprised because isn't Naproxen OTC in the US?  

Also:

[Hawkbit]

Naproxen is OTC Aleve here in the US.  Same drug, but for reason it just feels different.  Aleve doesn't do much for me, but Naproxen takes the edge of any pain I have.  Weird, considering it's supposed to be the exact same drug.

[Yegolev]

How many mg are you taking?  OTC bottles lie.

[Sheepherder]

OTC Naproxen Sodium looks to be half strength in most cases.  Not that you should consider this sound medical advice.

[Kail]

I wish I understood enough (or, like, any) quantum physics to figure out if that's bullshit or not.  I don't get a lot of what he's saying, and much of what I am picking up sounds a lot like any one of a number of old "luminiferous aether/absolute space-time" theories which don't play well with relativity.

[MahrinSkel]

Have you played around with A-life simulations (like "sugarscape") or cellular automata?  You can get weird effects based on the matrix you embed the simulation in.  If you're using an ordinary square graph, for example, you can get effects where the agents follow straight-line paths along the cardinal compass points even though you thought you had explicitly allowed for diagonal movement.

Essentially what this is saying is that at the femtometer level, there may be an inherent structure to spacetime if it's actually the product of simulation, and certain kinds of events might be affected by this structure because of minor errors in the simulation at this incredibly fine level, far too small for direct observation.

--Dave

[Venkman]

Or just Hiesenberg? :)

[Kail]

Essentially what this is saying is that at the femtometer level, there may be an inherent structure to spacetime if it's actually the product of simulation, and certain kinds of events might be affected by this structure because of minor errors in the simulation at this incredibly fine level, far too small for direct observation.

Yeah, I'm just boggling at what this would imply about the macro world, unless I'm misreading it (and again, extremely likely).  The theory posits (as far as I can tell, noobish first glance etc. etc.) that there's a sort of matrix underlying the universe, which would give us a single objective unit of distance and orientation.  No more "physics must be valid in all inertial frames" stuff, since there's one inertial frame we can objectively point to as correct (and indeed, this theory would seem to indicate that the laws of physics would be different for inertial frames traveling along the lattice in different orientations).  Distance is objectively measurable, and speed is objectively measurable, therefore time is objectively measurable, and relativistic physics essentially goes out the window.

I mean, I assume this is either a result of my not getting quantum mechanics (and this theory in particular) or quantum mechanics not playing well with macro level physics, but it seems like it would be a pretty massive shake up in the world of physics, even without the "computer simulation" angle.

[Ghambit]

In simulism Time is simply derived from a "clock speed" of sorts.  That is, in order to iterate you need a cycle of some kind... just like on a computer.  Any matrix you devise stems 1st from here, with time itself being the base matrix.  I recall recently someone calculated what this speed should be in order for the Universe to do what it does.  I gotta go watch Looper right now so no Time to look it up.  

[angry.bob]

So now does this overlap with that thing about our perceived existence as 3d being a holograph projected from what is actually a 2d universe? If I remember that was because of resolution errors with reality at some rediculously small scale, but not as small as they're talking about. One millionth of a nonometer indeed. Harumph!

[ajax34i]

No, I thought that was because:

1.  No Hair Theorem = black holes only have mass, magnetic field, rotation, and no other properties.
2.  But wait, how do we deal with information loss for things falling into the black hole?  All the information about molecular composition, color, smell, whatever, is lost.  The laws of conservation are broken, oh noes!
3.  Um, well the event horizon could retain a holographic encryption of the object falling in, thereby preserving the information.  Only thing is, the even horizon is a surface, thus 2D.
4.  Oh ok.
5.  Oh, hey, mathematically we see no difference between that being true, and "the universe inside a giant holographic black hole" being true.

[Cyrrex]

Well, if all I am is just a holographic image or some other collection of bytes...could someone please make me a bit taller?  Kthx.

[Fabricated]

If this is all a computer simulation QA needs to report this shit and someone needs to fix it because it sucks.

[Bunk]

I taught pharmacology and know that both of those are blue... the question is, how did YOU know?   

It would probably be the fact that the Pharmecutical Industry spends more advertising their little blue pills yearly than the GDP of most African nations (it's true, I googled it). Add to that the fact that most of the ads only tell you the name of the pill, perhaps what it looks like, and to "Ask your Doctor!".

I'd hate to be a doctor in this era. "Hi Doc! I made this appointment so I could ask you if I need Celebrex! It sounds very upbeat!!"

[March]

Shit... that would mean there really WAS a God, and he's a Sims player.  We're all fucked, those people are psychos.

If you think about it like that, so much of human history begins to make sense.

Yea but I still gotta pay the goddamned bills, even if I'm being puppetmaster'd.

German Researchers have a term for that: Dailies.

[Merusk]

If this is all a computer simulation QA needs to report this shit and someone needs to fix it because it sucks.

Working as intended.  You haven't played enough SIMs to understand the pathological glee of making them suffer rather than succeed.

[Pagz]

So at least somewhere someone got a good version of Spore.

[Merusk]

Showed this to a coworker. His response, "I truly hope that it isn't the case.  It would mean that everything is even more pointless and needlessly shitty than I already think it is."

He's a cheery guy.