Speaking of creationism

[Good ol Ivan]

Who?

Russell Brand, founder of the Russell Group universities.

Sounds like a nice lad.

[_venox_]

no and no

[Good ol Ivan]

no and no

Okay.
Let''s say there is a teapot orbiting the sun in an eliptic orbit, between Earth and Mars.
Nobody is able to disprove my assertion, provided the teapot is too small to be seen by the most powerful telescopes, or be detected through other ways.
But even if my assertion can''t be disproven, the burden of proof still lies on me. No one in his sane mind would be convinced there''s a teapot orbiting our sun just because I said so and there''s no way to disprove it.

tl'dr Simply saying "but you can''t really disprove it" is not enough to make an idea feasible.

[Goodspeed]

"The act of simulating something first requires that a model be developed' this model represents the key characteristics or behaviors/functions of the selected physical or abstract system or process. The model represents the system itself, whereas the simulation represents the operation of the system over time."
To me this sounds like a simulation isnt unreal or untrue, its just the operation of the system. With a 3D computer you can simulate a 2D world, right? So what about a 4D computer simulating our 3D world?

Yeah, but as you can see, having a simulation first requires for someone to create it, to produce its content. Are you implying computers could create lives down to the smallest detail out of sheer algorithms? Does this happen at any scale right now to make you believe this is something computers could do? When was the last time a computer generated livable physics? Does the stuff we create in 2D simulations of 3D worlds actually live in any way? Does it die and feel pain when we delete it? Are we digital murderers who commit binary genocide when we delete files? Should we stop deleting files because we produce too much pain to those poor simulated beings inside the computers?

See? I can invent silly thought experiments too, even though Im not from Oxford, like Nick Bostrom.

You are being quite short sighted. Software has evolved tremendously in the past decades and will continue to do so in the future. That plus the massive increase in processing power means that eventually computers will have the ability to simulate, well, pretty much anything. The problem is not limitations of software, after all any algorithm can be implemented and the universe is nothing but a bunch of matter interacting in predictable ways (therefore it can be turned into algorithms). The problem is that we may never know how things work in enough detail to simulate them accurately. Id say were well on our way though.

[Metis]

There is a small species of wasp, only a few times the size of the width of a human hair. This wasp has only 7400 brain cells. However, even it can perform autonomous tasks that we still can't get our best machines to do. Digital computers can do many things and can perform many simple repetitive tasks better than any living brain. However, to obtain the next leap in computing power will require "chips" that actually reconfigure themselves as they learn and grow in much the same way an animal brain does. Modeling has come a long way but even basic aspects of biology like how proteins fold in response to a changing chemical environment can still requires weeks to model on a supercomputer or distributed computing system.

[Goodspeed]

Of course these are major problems now, but we're talking millions of years into the future. I don't think it's optimistic to think we'll be able to simulate a brain, be it a wasp's or a human's. Keep in mind computers are very new still.

[deleted_user]

Ah the good days of off topic I was too clueless to partake in.

Still clueless today but marginally less so.