From my (admittedly somewhat limited) understanding of QM, with classical computers we will only be able to simulate a single-worldline at once. However I dont think this is an issue, because its not as if the world didn’t work until people discovered QM and MWI. QM effects only really matter at tiny scales revealed in experiments which are infinitesimal fraction of observer moments. So most of the time you wouldn’t need to simulate down to QM level.
That being said, a big big quantum computer would allow you to simulate many worlds at once I imagine? But that seems really far into the future.
I’m sorry, I find it difficult to take this whole line of thought seriously. How is this kind of speculation any different from theology?
Err the irrationality of theology shows just exactly how and why this sim-universe idea could work—you design a universe such that the actual correct theory underlying reality is over-complex and irrational.
Its more interesting and productive to think about constructing these kinds of realities than pondering whether you live in one.
From my (admittedly somewhat limited) understanding of QM, with classical computers we will only be able to simulate a single-worldline at once.
Not true. Our physics are simple mathematical rules which are Turing computable. The problem with simulating many Everett branches is that we will quickly run out of memory in which to store their details.
I should have been more clear, we will be able to simulate more than a single-worldline classically, but at high cost. An exponentially expanding set of everett branches would of course be intractable using classical computers.
Ah, I see what your problem is. You’re cheering for “quantum computers” because they sound cool and science fiction-y. While quantum computing theoretically provides ways to very rapidly solve certain sorts of problems, it doesn’t just magically solve all problems. Even if the algorithms that run our universe are well suited to quantum computing, they still run into the speed and memory issues that classical computers do, they would just run into to them a little later (although even that’s not guaranteed—the speed of the quantum computer depends on the number of entangled qubits, and for the foreseeable future, it will be easier to get more computing power by adding to the size of our classical computing clusters than ganging more small sets of entangled qubits together). The accurate statement you should be making is that modeling many worlds with a significant number of branches or scope is intractable using any foreseeable computing technology.
From my (admittedly somewhat limited) understanding of QM, with classical computers we will only be able to simulate a single-worldline at once. However I dont think this is an issue, because its not as if the world didn’t work until people discovered QM and MWI. QM effects only really matter at tiny scales revealed in experiments which are infinitesimal fraction of observer moments. So most of the time you wouldn’t need to simulate down to QM level.
That being said, a big big quantum computer would allow you to simulate many worlds at once I imagine? But that seems really far into the future.
Err the irrationality of theology shows just exactly how and why this sim-universe idea could work—you design a universe such that the actual correct theory underlying reality is over-complex and irrational.
Its more interesting and productive to think about constructing these kinds of realities than pondering whether you live in one.
Not true. Our physics are simple mathematical rules which are Turing computable. The problem with simulating many Everett branches is that we will quickly run out of memory in which to store their details.
I should have been more clear, we will be able to simulate more than a single-worldline classically, but at high cost. An exponentially expanding set of everett branches would of course be intractable using classical computers.
Ah, I see what your problem is. You’re cheering for “quantum computers” because they sound cool and science fiction-y. While quantum computing theoretically provides ways to very rapidly solve certain sorts of problems, it doesn’t just magically solve all problems. Even if the algorithms that run our universe are well suited to quantum computing, they still run into the speed and memory issues that classical computers do, they would just run into to them a little later (although even that’s not guaranteed—the speed of the quantum computer depends on the number of entangled qubits, and for the foreseeable future, it will be easier to get more computing power by adding to the size of our classical computing clusters than ganging more small sets of entangled qubits together). The accurate statement you should be making is that modeling many worlds with a significant number of branches or scope is intractable using any foreseeable computing technology.
Quantum computers efficiently simulate QM. That was Feynman’s reason for proposing them in the first place.