If this fact makes you uneasy just know that 100% of the universe's galaxies, except the one we are currently in, are already unreachable within your lifetime.
If this fact makes you uneasy just know that (nearly) 100% of the galaxy's solar systems except the one we're currently in are (likely) unreachable within your lifetime.
Though to be fair, I think the original title can't possibly know this, for instance if we live in a simulation, what's to say that some sort of algorithm (assuming we learn to meta-code our own existence) could put us in any galaxy we choose... Or warp drives, worm holes... light speed travel hardly seems worth the trouble, and unfeasable.. but if we can master warp drives, and bending space around us... then is there a limit on max speeds? If we can actually reprogram the universe would there be anything we couldn't do? have any other alien civilizations realized that at all?
If we're in a simulation then there aren't any alien civilizations. No sense wasting computational resources on them.
P.S. As far as I know, computational complexity is the only physical quantity that doesn't obey conservation laws. So we're probably not in a simulation. If we were, it would probably be the other way around.
If we are in a simulation it’s most likely a physics/first-principles driven simulation… probably a “what if physics worked like $X” type of deal. So fidelity is likely the primary design goal and the weird nature of computational complexity in our universe is likely just an emergent property of the physics they setup the simulation with.
Not sure I agree about the overall information complexity, since a first principles physics simulation of a universe involves simulation of all the wave/quanta up through molecular dynamics and on to macroscopic behaviour of the universe (and us in it)…
It’s hard for me to imagine the “information complexity” we’re inducing into the universe as significant compared to the total size of the state machine representing all the neutrinos and photons in the universe, let alone the other particles.
Also if the the universe is a simulation it makes sense the simulators would be working with snapshots since even if you have the computational capabilities to simulate an entire universe, you probably don’t want to waste whatever time/energy resources exist in the simulating universe, simulating the first few billion years till your simulated universe gets to the point you’re most interested in, be it changing parameters / picking the outcome of particular random outcome or just zooming in and studying what goes on in the randomness, or just looking at it like some kind of highly advanced virtual zen garden.
So I’m not entirely convinced that our electronic computation devices which operate by way of the movement of electrons or photonics devices operating by manipulating photons (and usually electrons too), represents our hypothetical simulators having to design or run a simulation of anything beyond what we call “normal operating behaviour of clumps of solid baryonic matter”. All the computers in the world, full of electrons and interconnected by fibre optic lasers, is unlikely to involve simulating more electrons, neutrinos, and other subatomic particle interactions than are necessary to simulate the earth’s inner and outer core and their electrodynamic (which are coupled to the solar electrodynamics) and thus simulate the production of the earths magnetic field.
> If we're in a simulation then there aren't any alien civilizations. No sense wasting computational resources on them.
Seeing how mindbogglingly huge the universe is, our insignificant planet is unlikely to be the most intensive object to simulate. For a Universe simulator it would be peanuts, less than peanuts, peanut crumbs that fell behind the pantry where you can't clean them.
Think of it this way: it's trivially easy to randomly generate terrain for a video game world. The "size" of the in-game universe is just an arbitrary parameter.
Populating the world with interesting NPCs, is, however, a vastly more difficult problem than just scaling the same copy-pasted planets and stars across light years.
So no, the size of our universe is just a scale parameter. There's no evidence that it's more computationally complex out there than here, and computational complexity is the only interesting metric.
This assumes humans are interesting NPCs. I feel like we're the bizarre comic relief planet for the really interesting players to have the space adventure of the day.
I understand your point, though, but even if it was true, keeping track of all the physics in the Universe's filler would demand more processing power than what is needed for our planet. The speed of light would be our rendering depth, and that's still an unthinkable amount of computing, copy-paste included.
Why wouldn’t aliens work in a simulation model? The universe could be a shared sandbox to cross pollinate models or expose them to similar realities. Hah.
Nearly 100% of the countries on this very earth are unreachable to most poor humans within their lifetime.
And for a sizeable chunk of humans even reaching the very neighbourhood of their country, geography involves putting their lives on risk on a near sure to sink boat only to be shot/sent/sunk back by border police.
Humans are horrible at working together for their own good.
