Another sign of quantum entanglement support for the idea we are in a simulation comes from the fact that a programmer/simulator/intelligence would already know what it means to measure/observe/know and to “make something known” to an “environment.” (A knower knows what it means to know.) Yet the possibility that a universe would simply evolve at random to be able to recognize and react to measurement, without any clear advantage for doing so, is hard to support.
It’s important to remember that language always comes between us and reality, and that there is a difference between the map and the territory. (The map being our conceptual and linguistic maps of reality, and the territory being reality.) A conscious observer isn’t necessary for a “collapse of the wave function” or superposition decoherence to occur. Measurement by an intelligent conscious observer is a very special case of what physicists generally refer to as “measurement.” The general case is just interaction with the rest of the universe, and doesn’t involve knowing or making things knowable.
The fact that the universe reacts to measurement by a conscious observer doesn’t mean that it is recognizing that it is being observed and responding to the presence of a conscious observer— any more than lake ice breaking under your feet represents the lake’s awareness of your presence and its intention to capture and maybe kill you. The ice would break under the weight of a rock just as readily.
There’s no way for us to know WHY the universe reacts to “measurement,” so we really aren’t in a position to appraise whether or not it is advantageous. Is there an advantage to thin ice breaking under your feet? Or does the ice do that because it has to, and because there’s no particular reason why it shouldn’t?
Nevertheless, if we do live in a simulation, designing the simulation such that the details of where everything is and what it’s doing don’t need to be worked out until someone is looking at it would make an awful lot of sense. Why work out all the details in places where no one is looking? In that sense, I agree completely. If we have some other reason or reasons to believe that we live in a simulation, then this becomes compelling. In and of itself, though, I don’t think it means anything.
According to decoherence theory, all measurement is decoherence, but not all decoherence is measurement. So the universe doesn’t particularly care about measurement as an act performed by humans.
It’s important to remember that language always comes between us and reality, and that there is a difference between the map and the territory. (The map being our conceptual and linguistic maps of reality, and the territory being reality.) A conscious observer isn’t necessary for a “collapse of the wave function” or superposition decoherence to occur. Measurement by an intelligent conscious observer is a very special case of what physicists generally refer to as “measurement.” The general case is just interaction with the rest of the universe, and doesn’t involve knowing or making things knowable.
The fact that the universe reacts to measurement by a conscious observer doesn’t mean that it is recognizing that it is being observed and responding to the presence of a conscious observer— any more than lake ice breaking under your feet represents the lake’s awareness of your presence and its intention to capture and maybe kill you. The ice would break under the weight of a rock just as readily.
There’s no way for us to know WHY the universe reacts to “measurement,” so we really aren’t in a position to appraise whether or not it is advantageous. Is there an advantage to thin ice breaking under your feet? Or does the ice do that because it has to, and because there’s no particular reason why it shouldn’t?
Nevertheless, if we do live in a simulation, designing the simulation such that the details of where everything is and what it’s doing don’t need to be worked out until someone is looking at it would make an awful lot of sense. Why work out all the details in places where no one is looking? In that sense, I agree completely. If we have some other reason or reasons to believe that we live in a simulation, then this becomes compelling. In and of itself, though, I don’t think it means anything.
According to decoherence theory, all measurement is decoherence, but not all decoherence is measurement. So the universe doesn’t particularly care about measurement as an act performed by humans.
@InvisiblePlatypus
If the simulators are interested in conserving resources, why we they make the universe so big? A mediaeval cosmology would have done.