Quantum Realism FAQ

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http://brianwhitworth.com/QRFAQ.pdf

1. A universe as big as ours must be real.
Answer. It is only “big” relative to us within it.
2. A universe that has been going for billions of years must be real. Answer. Again, only relative to us. With enough processing power, one could run a program of the history of the universe in a few seconds.
3. It would take a computer bigger than the universe to simulate it.
Answer. So? Physicists already speculate a meta-verse, e.g. Everett's Many Worlds Theory.
4. So who is the programmer? Answer. How should I know?
5. Computers need physical hardware so the argument is circular. Processing based on the physical world can't simulate the physical world. That’s recursion. Answer. Our computers need physical hardware but Shannon and Weaver's definition of processing implies no physical base, e.g. the quantum processing of qubits is by the quantum field (A), which is definitely not physical. The argument that physical computers can't simulate the physical world is true, but that is not what is proposed.
6. Can we hack into the system?
Answer. Quantum computers already do that.
7. Is this like The Matrix, with Keanu Reeves as Neo? Answer. No. Neo escaped from the Matrix of the machines into a physical world, i.e. the virtual world was a physical world output. The virtual reality conjecture is that physicality is an information output by non-physical quantum waves. So reality is generated on demand as we observe, as an online game generates a view as we look.
8. Even if true, it just defers the problem of fully explaining everything to another level, so it can't be a theory of everything (TOE). Answer. You expect science to fully explain everything? Dream on. That vision died with determinism. Science is a way of asking questions not a fixed set of answers. The VR conjecture is not a theory of everything (TOE). It is a query of everything (QOE).
9. A theory that some other world creates this world is not testable. Answer. Of course it is. A theory about another world would not be testable, but a theory about this physical world is testable. We can say if it is an information output, because we know how the physical world behaves and we know how information behaves.
10. It is all just meta-physics, like the number of angels on a pinhead. Answer. Meta-physics speculates untestable theories about unknowable things. The virtual reality conjecture speculates about this physical world, so is not just meta-physics.
11. This theory is unproven. Answer. So is objective reality theory. Would you fail one candidate by a test the other also fails? Nothing is ever proven in science, as even mathematics assumes axioms. The virtual reality conjecture is just that - a conjecture - so why not consider it? The claim is not that it is proven, but that science should at least consider it.
12. This theory makes assumptions. Answer. So does any other theory. The method of science is to make an assumption then prove or disprove it by the data. Even mathematics has axioms.
13. Denying the axiom that there is nothing outside the physical universe opens the floodgates to let anything convenient through, no matter how unlikely or even absurd. Answer. No floodgates open as long as we stay scientific, i.e. follow logic, collect data, test predictions, etc. To ask a question of the physical world is science. It is just that the question happens to be: Is the physical world a processing output?
14. This theory would end science, as you can't study what you can't by definition see. Answer. Not true. Science studies quantum fields no-one can see and it is still fine.
15. A theory that postulates the unseen is not scientific. Answer. That science is only about the seen is logical positivism, a simple nineteenth century view that is now discredited in almost every discipline. If visibility were a demand of science, how could physicists talk of quarks, which never exist alone?
16. This theory will never be decided. Answer. Not true. Science proves theories based on likelihood. Modern physics makes it more likely that the physical world is a virtual reality, e.g. in an objective reality, there is no reason for a maximum speed (of light), but in a virtual reality it is the screen refresh rate.
17. The theory contradicts Occam’s razor. Answer. Occam's razor takes the simplest theory that fits the facts. Last century it favored an objective world but today space bends, time dilates and quantum entities teleport past impassable barriers. Compare the VR conjecture's one invisible grid creating space, time, energy and matter, to the standard model's five invisible fields, twenty four fundamental particles, eleven charges, thirteen force-carrying particles and twenty three arbitrary parameters. Which is simpler? Is the big bang creating a universe from nothing simpler than a virtual reality booting up? Today, Occam’s razor cuts the other way.
18. This is not mainstream physics. Answer. Of course it isn't. Nothing new ever is.
19. This is a crazy idea. Answer. OK, but that doesn't make it untrue. Science can advance by crazy ideas. Even if this conjecture is found to be wrong, we might learn something.
20. This is just another God theory. Answer. No it isn't. The VR conjecture is a theory about this world, so it falls in the domain of science. It asks if our world behaves like an information output or an objective reality.
21. Doesn't it imply that a God programmed the universe? Answer. No. It doesn’t change the arguments about God one way or another. Maybe God is the programmer, or advanced aliens, or as some claim, ourselves from the future! Whether this theory is true or false, we can go on arguing about whether God exists.
22. This model implies a phantom spirit world reality, alongside the physical world. Answer. No it doesn't. Orthodox religions are dualistic, with a spirit or heaven beyond the physical, but this theory is not. It has only one reality, which can be called quantum reality. It is the physical world we see that is the phantom copy.
23. It is impossible for everything we see to be information! Answer. Not at all. Science already knows that we only see information, delivered by nerves, which are on-off devices like transistors. This is not only possible but factually true. Yet solipsism arguments are irrelevant here, as our nerves only fire 200 times/second. The
refresh rate here is a Planck time of 1043 seconds and the pixel resolution a Planck length of 10-33 meter. The speed of light is then one grid transfer per node cycle (see chapter 2).
24. Where are your equations? Answer. The equations are already in quantum theory, e.g. Schrödinger’s equation is a three-dimensional wave whose point amplitude is “something” undefined, except squaring it is the probability the entity physically exists there. Chapter 3 links a wave's power, its amplitude squared, to program access. If entity programs distributing on a grid network overload a node, it must reboot. This restarts and merges all the entity programs at that point, which is quantum collapse. We see particles because every physical observation is a grid overload.
25. Our equations work, so that’s enough. Physics doesn’t need meaning. Answer. This was Bohr's Copenhagen view - lets ignore that quantum theory makes no sense and just carry on. If you are happy with that, then fine. But why stop others from wondering what quantum theory means? Asking for meaning is part of being human.
26. I don't believe that the world is a fake. Answer. Neither do I. A virtual world is not a fake world. It is just a local reality, i.e. one that does not exist in or of itself, as an objective reality would. To those within it, a local reality is as real as it gets. There is still a real world “out there” is generating experiences, but it just isn’t the world we see.
27. If the world is virtual, then we don’t really exist!
Answer. Not so. In an online simulation, the pixels are virtual but the observer is not. This is no anthropomorphic view, as everything is observing everything else. If a tree falls in the forest, the ground “sees” it fall. By Conway's free will theorem if we are conscious so is an electron. Everything participating in the simulation is conscious. We are just self-aware.
28. Whoever is playing my character is pretty boring. Answer. Sorry about that. Have you tried all the options?
29. This contradicts common sense.
Answer. Common sense tells us that the physical world is objectively real, but it also told us that the earth was flat and that the sun circled the earth.
30. This is not a new idea.
Answer. True. It goes back to at least Plato's story of men in a cave taking shadows on the wall as reality. Yet the idea that science can address the issue is new.
31. Why would anyone create a world like this?
Answer. I don't know. Perhaps reality wanted to know itself and this was the only way?
32. What difference does it make in practice?
Answer. A lot. In quantum realism, the fundamental particles of the standard model are neither fundamental nor particles. So money spent colliding matter should be spent colliding light and the 30 billion dollar Higgs project just found another transient resonance in the particle zoo. The Higgs emperor has no clothes, as what existed for a millionth, millionth, millionth, millionth of a second can’t explain gravitational mass that acts over light years. As Comay shows, a spin-0 particle is impossible in quantum theory, so the Higgs is probably just the top-anti-top meson.

[marcus300]

Holy fuk TR I preferred you on morphine

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some guys look at porn...

.....I read this shit.

I'm still waiting for the results to come back from the "reality" test last month. They were testing to see if we are 2d holograms in a VR program.