[ivan.moony]

Big Think site wrote about yet another application of AI:

• Princeton physicist Hong Qin creates an AI algorithm that can predict planetary orbits.
• The scientist partially based his work on the hypothesis which believes reality is a simulation.
• The algorithm is being adapted to predict behavior of plasma and can be used on other natural phenomena.

The algorithm for now accurately predicts orbits, including parabolic and hyperbolic paths escaping orbits, without entering a single physics equation. Accompanying research paper says it is about a kind of machine learning algorithm based on training. Although the original article bombastically announces how this could prove that the Universe is a simulation, some questions arise: what is really a simulation? Does having a bunch of rules by which the Universe behaves qualifies the same as a simulation? Nevertheless, I find this an interesting and inspiring read. It makes me wonder whether we can have a magic box that spits out all the correct answers about the Universe, characteristically without letting us know how and why are those answers correct. Following this line of thought, the next important step in machine learning could be extracting exact reasoning of the magic box in a way understandable to humans.

Read the full story here.

[MagnusWootton]

If you need to simulate particles en masse,  a quantum fluid simulation could be a simple version of reality.

just takes an exponential amount of particles.  (And with that, an exponential amount of collision detection.)   And you might be able to.

One of the ways ppl wish to "transcend" Is via an exponential particle system which contains a virtual brain,  and by simulating the physical processes the brain "grows" inside the quantum computer, virtually.

If you ever got a flower to germinate inside a quantum computer,  maybe it is possible after that... but..  are u just creating hell??

[frankinstien]

Although the original article bombastically announces how this could prove that the Universe is a simulation, some questions arise: what is really a simulation? Does having a bunch of rules by which the Universe behaves qualifies the same as a simulation? Nevertheless, I find this an interesting and inspiring read. It makes me wonder whether we can have a magic box that spits out all the correct answers about the Universe, characteristically without letting us know how and why are those answers correct. Following this line of thought, the next important step in machine learning could be extracting exact reasoning of the magic box in a way understandable to humans.

I think your perspective of a computational universe is of a rule-based program, however, another approach of a computational universe can be based on a chaotic process that is free from complex rules. In other words, simple processes, e.g. two standing waves interfere with one another can converge to some stable state. Fundamentally the concept actually becomes simply the exchange of information which is what the stand waves example boils down two.  Indeed this is what we see in nature right down to the subatomic level. Atoms exchange information which then leads to a rendering of the physical juxtaposition of particles!  Effectively that is a function; inputs are force carriers that atoms absorb and the output is the physical positioning of material, albeit atoms have quirky behaviors of what is considered a juxtaposition (super-position) but, nonetheless, positions are constrained effectively becoming a consistent pattern! So the rules of nature end up emerging from chaotic interactions that are simply driven by the exchange of information. Now realize that because the universe is composed of limited resources called information, where the distribution of such information, field densities, cause constraints that limit the influence of reactions(information exchanges) that leads to or forces the formation of structures.

Since any reality is based on information and information is intrinsically mathematical(state-driven) such realities, universes, will fall into patterns that, at least in this universe, humans interpret as rules.