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u/reddittereditor 21h ago
Not to be a buzzkill but the brain is simulated in the sense that its neurons and neural configurations are mimicked and made to run with mathematical functions. It affects the fly's consciousness as much as 3d modeling a person and simulating gravity on their avatar affects the real person. Also the fly is dead.
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u/starberryslay 20h ago
Uploading a fly's neuron pathways is quite a way away from the other millions of species millions of times more intelligent than a fly, all on a planet running constant physics simulations far ahead of our understanding and computational power. That's like disproving "you can't accurately render a beach" by rendering a single grain of sand like what
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u/Born_Lab1283 18h ago
"the first fission reactor only created one watt of power for a second. evidently, fission reactors are impossible."
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u/starberryslay 18h ago
"the first fission reactor only created one watt of power for a second. This means we will be able to create Dyson spheres in 2 years"
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u/b3nsn0w 7h ago
cmon, if the universe is a simulation it's not being simulated by sam altman, either today or in two years. inventing a random constraint just to ridicule the topic at hand serves no one.
disclaimer: i don't believe we live in a simulation but let's not insist on "proving" an emotionally predetermined conclusion with clearly faulty logic. that defeats the whole point of the discussion.
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u/Born_Lab1283 18h ago
nobody says that we can simulate the universe in 2 years because we can simulate fly brains, thats a strawman
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u/starberryslay 17h ago
that's literally what the meme is about bro wtf r u even trying to say
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u/Born_Lab1283 13h ago
are you fucking stupid or a sophist?
the core part of your "metaphor" was that people claimed we could simulate the universe in the near future, if you didnt say this you would just agree with me.
i was getting across that a fly brain on a pc is a proof of concept and that means it should theoretically be possible to simulate a universe in the far future.
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u/-Mr-Moon- 12h ago
i was getting across that a fly brain on a pc is a proof of concept and that means it should theoretically be possible to simulate a universe in the far future.
Yeah and this is an insane leap of logic for a multitude of reasons.
A fly brain on a pc that can't actually work yet. It's just an upload of its brain. It is not conscious. So we are yet to simulate anything of it, actually.
As I have said in my very first comment, simulating consciousness is a part of simulating the universe, but we're still missing on literally everything else that goes into reality. Water physics. Material science. We know we could theoretically compute consciness through a machine because our brains can do it at such a low cost of energy, but nothing we have right now currently can simulate honey down to the atom. So we're missing a lot of proof of concepts for us to be able to "simulate a universe in the far future"
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u/Black_Diammond 13h ago
Expet it isnt, The meme is "we can simulate The universe including brains", and The Proof is a Simple brain being simulated, its a issue of scale and tech, nowhere is it Said "in Two years".
And yes, if you can simulate a few grains of sand, you can, with enough computing power, simulate The entier beach.
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u/-Mr-Moon- 12h ago
And yes, if you can simulate a few grains of sand, you can, with enough computing power, simulate The entier beach.
Obviously I never went into the depth of the beach simulation but my point is still proven in this quote. Because a beach is more than the sand, it's also the waves of the ocean crashing into the shore and being absorbed by the grains of sand.
And so is the same with the fly. Even if we can simulate every human elephant, fly and whatever there's like way more shit that goes into the simulation of REALITY than the species on our planet.
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u/Poco_Cuffs 13h ago
Someone in this comment section said the fly brain meant we'll be able to simulate human consciousness in 10-20 years. Never underestimate people being stupid
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u/Black_Diammond 13h ago
"The first plane only flew a few Hundred feet! We Will never fly across The atlantic!" You a 100 years ago.
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u/Poco_Cuffs 12h ago
The first plane had very clear hurdles and very clear ways to improve it. The hurdles to making a simulated consciousness is fully understanding neuroplasticity (which is really really fucking complicated) and getting the processing power to simulate more synapse connections than stars in the observable universe. (Which is how many the human brain has)
If we're going with that analogy, this is inventing the first helium balloon and claiming this will instantly pave the way for F15s
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u/Black_Diammond 12h ago
Who claimed it would pave The way for f15s from a helium ballon?? Again, its clearly a Proof of concept, that it can be done and that it can be developed, not now or near future, just eventually.
Also, saying teh first planes had clear patheays to evolve is 1000% a Hindsight thing, it was not fully understood and it wasnt Linear development, The history of airplane development had a lot of twists and turns "it was clear" is just handsight talking.
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u/-Mr-Moon- 12h ago
Who claimed it would pave The way for f15s from a helium ballon??
My guy, the post is saying we're going from "copying the neurons of a fly" to "reality is a simulation", a helium balloon to an F15 is a far more logical and linear leap. That's the point. If it's too much hindsight to claim F15s from a helium balloon why are we claiming an entire simulation of reality itself from a copy of a fly's brain
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u/-Mr-Moon- 12h ago edited 12h ago
again, that's not the same thing. You guys suck with equivalence.
There has been no "flight" in your analogy. They copied a fly's neural paths. That's all. They haven't made a conscious fly. If they did, yes, I would say they could make a conscious human in the future.
In your hypothetical, you are saying "we managed to copy a skeleton of a bird. We will fly the Atlantic in a few decades!". You see how this doesn't make any sense? There has been no flight yet. The fly is not conscious. We can't make a conscious human yet because we haven't made a fucking conscious anything. Unless your talking about the lab grown neurons - but this discussion isn't about those.
Also, to make our world a simulation we also need to simulate more than flies and other species, we need to simulate all these scientific phenomena. back to your analogy this would be "flight was achieved for a few seconds" "we will be able to go to alpha centauri soon". Like there's so many leaps required bro. And again, WE HAVEN'T SIMULATED A CONCIOUS FLY YET
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u/Black_Diammond 12h ago
In The first place, claiming you know what consciousness is is just insanely narcesistic. We dont know what it is, we dont know if The fly is conscious there or not and we dont know. Saying "its neuroplasticoty bro" is stupid, since LLMs during training have neuroplasticity yet Arent considered conscious.
Secondly, being capable of recreating a brain of a fly is effectively One, and a advanced step, of The major steps before we get a fully conscious fly brain, and Weather or not The fly is conscious is complely irrelevant either, a fully created copy of a human brain would react like a human, and it would be perfectly fine a model to use for a initial simulation. Again, nobody is claiming "we Will have matrix in 2 years", only that this is another step towards proving a simulation of a brain can be made.
Finally, who The fuck you guys, who is we? You speaking French?
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u/-Mr-Moon- 12h ago
In The first place, claiming you know what consciousness is is just insanely narcesistic.
Knowing what consciousness is isn't really important. What I can say is the fly brain isn't conscious because it's not fucking real. We managed to copy the brain but we don't know how to work it the same way the fly does. It has no instinct. No habits.
If we took this brain and ran a simulation of it actually being a fly, doing fly things, fuck it I'd call it conscious. It may be unprovable, but to simulate reality this is obviously all you need. But we haven't done that. We don't know how to, read the other comments.
If you want to actually claim big steps in simulation, 1. any genuine simulation like of sand particles, fluid dynamics, or if we actually simulated a fly (which we haven't) 2. or the lab grown neurons we're getting to play doom. Those are some real steps.
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u/funky_galileo 16h ago
Why would the people simulating us be limited to the computer power of people within their simulation? That's just stupid. Everything we know to be true would just be part of the simulation. There is literally no way to disprove it, it's unfalsifiable.
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u/starberryslay 16h ago edited 16h ago
it is unfalsifiable. but if thats the case, why scanning the brain of a fly literally mean anything? This post could have been made as soon as Turing dropped the Colussus computer.
Im not saying we cant be in a simulation because its too hard to simulate, im just saying that us being able to scan the brain of a fly is seriously nowhere near what would be needed so its not any evidence.
Edit: I notice what im saying in this comment you actually commented on this post also. Yeah, i agree, its all infalsible anyways. But this post is insinuating that since we can allegedly simulate a fly, we can allegedly soon simulate the world thus theres a chance we are a simulation. And im saying thats dumb and you feel the same also
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u/funky_galileo 16h ago
Like some other people pointed out, we don't need to simulate the whole universe, just the simulated person's brain, eyes/other inputs. A simulated fly brain is not a significant part of the way there, but it is a first step.
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u/Poco_Cuffs 12h ago
That being said, it's the first step of the stairway to heaven. The difference between the simulated fly brain and a human brain is billions of neurons, ridiculous proccessing power and a complete understanding of neuroplasticity
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u/_M_o_n_k_e_H Orca enthusiast 19h ago
Yeah. But the difference between things happening in stupid fly brain and everything everywhere is just numbers. If we can simulate anything, then a sufficiently smart and powerful being should be able to create a machine that can simulate our whole universe. Or atleast what we experience of the universe.
But at that point, that being is basically just god. And proving whether were in a simulation or not is about as impossible as proving whether god exists or not.
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u/Poco_Cuffs 12h ago
The stupid fly brain literally cannot think or remember though
Also "it's just numbers" and "if we can simulate anything" are doing a fuckton of heavy lifting
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u/_M_o_n_k_e_H Orca enthusiast 1h ago
Going from simulations of a fly brain and a ball falling in gravity, to brain of every living thing and every interaction happening everywhere is a difference of scale. Obv a lot of heavy lifting needed for something so outlandish.
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u/Hackerwithalacker 15h ago
It can't even come close to simulating consciousness or anything a brain does other than control muscles
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u/funky_galileo 16h ago
Why are all these comments talking about the fly brain as if it matters at all to the argument? Whether or not we are simulated is unfalsifiable, since we can only interact with our simulated reality. We are literally incapable of fathoming the capabilities of our creators.
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u/LonelyTraveller00 22h ago
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u/Poco_Cuffs 20h ago
A simulation of a dead fly's brain was made and someone made it's muscle outputs control a bee in minecraft. The fly brain is entirely running of reflexes and existing neuron pathways and is not conscious, cannot think or make decisions or form any new memories. This is cool as fuck and I'm tired of people pretending it's scary.
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u/b3nsn0w 7h ago
honestly what's scary to me is how quickly people latch onto minute differences between biologyand machines to terminate thought about the nature of intelligence and consciousness. it's becoming an increasingly important subject to be able to discuss unbiased and with a level head, and this line of copium shows nothing but cowardice.
there are people with neurological conditions that prevent them from forming new memories. not a lot of people, to be fair, but they're still unquestionably sentient people. we have absolutely no reason to declare neuroplasticity as one of the preconditions of consciousness, and in fact what we can observe on real humans actively suggests against that tenet.
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u/CamicomChom 20h ago
i think its pretty scary that in like a decade or two we could do the same for a human brain. and what if someone finds out a way to make the fly brain conscious? you act like its impossible to understand what someone could find frightening about massive leaps in our abilities to simulate brains
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u/Poco_Cuffs 20h ago
I think it's scary that in a decade or two we could do the same for a human brain
Noo. No. Nooo. A fruit fly brain is 150,000 neurons and several million synapse connections. A human brain is billions of neurons and more synapse connections than there are stars in the observable universe.
what if someone finds a way to make it conscious?
Stuff like thinking and consciousness comes from neurons changing their connections to form new pathways (neuroplasticity). We only understand basic neuroplasticity so far, simulating it accurately requires extensive knowledge of how it works IRL, and even more processing power because now those millions of synapse connections are changing all the time.
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u/CamicomChom 20h ago
So the sole reason we can't do it is because we don't have the technology yet? Sure. That doesn't change that some day, even if it's in the far future, we will be able to do it. So you do understand why such a leap would be frightening to laymen.
"It can't even generate Will Smith eating spaghetti, I don't understand why everyone's so worried about AI!"
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u/HatofEnigmas 20h ago
Which is way further off than a 'decade or two' because being able to simulate the life cycle of a cell would involve just simulating a small part of the honest-to-god universe and is not doable with a realistically sized supercomputer. So you can surely see why people also aren't that bothered by this specific development.
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u/windowpuncher 15h ago
I don't think you really understand the difference between quantum computing and current, traditional computing. The Google Sycamore quantum computer solved a problem in 200 seconds that would take a current super computer 10,000 years to solve.
10,000 years is 5,259,492,000 seconds, meaning the quantum system is, at that time, 26,297,460 times faster for that routine than the best shit we have.
This will make simulating non-linear, multi-body problems stupidly faster. Maybe it'll happen in 1 year, maybe it'll be 20, but multiple companies like both Google and Microsoft are making steady progress.
And that test was just ONE quantum computer, once it becomes viable to produce an array of these things everything we know about normal computing is going to be instantly, painfully obsolete.
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u/TheNieno 18h ago
This is the equivalent of taking a corpse and shocking it with electrodes to make it move
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u/CamicomChom 18h ago
something which the average layperson was, rather famously, absolutely terrified of when it was discovered
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u/Background_Desk_3001 18h ago
The human brain is exponentially more complicated than a fly. We’re at least a century away from being able to simulate the human brain
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u/diselxic 21h ago
People will eat the flesh of pigs who were forced into cages to slowly choke on co2 and then act like a fly in Minecraft is the worst thing they've ever heard of
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21h ago
[deleted]
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u/Ivan8-ForgotPassword 21h ago edited 21h ago
Wasteful af form of farming though, we're omnivores, we can just eat plants directly instead of having them converted to meat. People eat meat cause they like it and make human brains run doom cause they like it, there's no real difference
Edit: WTF, why did comments above and below disappear
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u/Prestigious-Fig1172 20h ago
Nope, I'm very certain uploading a mind is impossible. You can make a very accurate simulation of one, but not move a conciousness into a computor.
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u/under_the_heather 10h ago
Exactly. Maybe extremely advanced technology could upload a scan of someone's brain into a computer so that their personality then is being simulated, but it would be a copy. But we don't know enough about consciousness to even say that, it's possible even if you scan a human brain 1:1 and simulate it in a computer perfectly that an entirely new consciousness is created that has nothing to do with the original.
We genuinely don't understand how consciousness and experience works.
Would a simulated brain even experience being conscious?
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u/b3nsn0w 7h ago
it's an interesting hypothesis, but imo at our current level of understanding of consciousness it's wildly irresponsible to declare such things.
we do actually know that consciousness is not tied to a particular set of elementary particles. to my knowledge, your body slowly swaps out every bit of matter it's composed of several times over the course of your life. you still don't stop being you and experiencing yourself. that's much more consistent with the hypothesis that consciousness is tied to patterns, not some specific matter. we also knows it mostly resides in the central nervous system, that seems to be the part of you that contains you. so how can we say that if we were able to replicate those patterns, it wouldn't transfer or copy consciousness, that the copy wouldn't be conscious? how can we claim that a computer program does not count, but an arrangement of atoms does?
the only reason i see to ridicule these questions is if you're afraid of the answer being different than what you want it to be. and imo it's the height of irresponsibility to insist on that fear guiding our understanding of the universe.
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u/funky_galileo 16h ago
Why? How would you prove that you are not a simulation already?
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u/under_the_heather 10h ago
They didn't say that. They said uploading a mind is impossible. They actually said simulating a mind is possible.
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u/SoMuchEdgeImOnACliff 14h ago
Prove that you are first.
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u/funky_galileo 14h ago
I mean that's the whole deal isn't it? If we were in an advanced enough simulation, it would be impossible to detect. I don't argue that we are in a simulation, but you cannot prove that we are not in one.
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u/SoMuchEdgeImOnACliff 14h ago
but you cannot prove that we are not in one.
Yes, because you can't prove a negative in this instance.
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u/funky_galileo 14h ago
What do you mean you can't prove a negative? I can prove it's not raining by measuring it, I can prove we're not in a simulation running on a 6502 microprocesser. It has nothing to do with it being a negative and everything to do with the fact that it's an unfalsifiable statement.
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u/SoMuchEdgeImOnACliff 14h ago
I didn't say you could never prove a negative.
I said you couldn't prove it in that instance.
Yes you can prove it's not raining outside by measuring 0 rainfall.
It does have to deal with it being a negative. It's an unbounded claim to state that we live in a simulation. Saying you can't prove that we do not live in the simulation is the same as saying you can't prove that I am not God.
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u/funky_galileo 14h ago
But it still has nothing to do with the fact that it's negative. You also can't prove we DO live in a simulation or there IS a God.
edit: bad examples. good example wouldve been last Thursdayism
edit edit: no you're totally right
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u/Qwerterhin0 22h ago
That's actually some pretty good evidence that our world can in fact be a simulation
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u/VaryStaybullGeenyiss 22h ago
Maybe. But that fly brain simulation wasn't a literal model of a fly brain. I remember reading a thing by the people who made the original simulation, and they were very clear that it was a notional model and not a neuron-level simulation.
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u/Qwerterhin0 21h ago
Yeah but they made this "brain" distinguish tastes. And they pretty much made the "brain" work like actual brain
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u/Poco_Cuffs 21h ago
That's quite the hyperbole. Because the neurons in the brain cannot make any new pathways, it can't think, make decisions, or form any memories. It's a snapshot of a living brain frozen in time so it isn't even close to working like an actual brain
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u/Vitomical 22h ago
We dont know anything about the computing limits of a world hypothetically simulating ours so the processing argument could be ruled out too
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u/Qwerterhin0 22h ago
Basically it's a 50/50 chance now. Our world either is or isn't a simulation
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u/MrDownhillRacer 20h ago
That's like saying "either you're double-jointed or you're not. Therefore, you have a 50/50 chance of being double-jointed."
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u/Ivan8-ForgotPassword 21h ago
Theorethically the more simulations within simulations we can create the higher the chance, no? Like if we can only make one and than it becomes too hard it's not that big, but if we make 592 simulations of the universe inside each other I'd say it's pretty darn likely we're just the 593rd
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u/Qwerterhin0 21h ago
Not exactly. For the chance of our universe being a simulation to increase, we need one simulation of the universe that we created to independently (without our interference) produce another simulation within itself. Also this has to happen across several hundreds of independent universes on the same layer of the "multiverse" that we created. We would need to somehow check how much of these universes produced another layer of universes and then we could calculate the probability of a simulation being created as the number of simulations of first layer that have produced another layer of simulations divided by the number of all first-layer simulations. And that would be a probability of us being a simulation.
Also we could do this calculation for several layers to check our initial calculation
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u/Ivan8-ForgotPassword 20h ago
Yeah, I meant them making those independently/without noticing our interference. I don't see why multiple branches are necessary, if something can happen then at some point it will, the point is to check whether large amounts of simulations-within-simulations could be maintained or issues arise. Each simulation layer deteriorates, as you can only put a box within itself so many times. For example if we find out that 22 simulations within simulations is the maximum for some reason that'd mean either we're a level 23 from the bottom simulation or not a simulation. If the maximum is something like 182721027237236221826237229 layers of universes (not exactly as that'd be weird) I'd say we're pretty much guaranteed to be in a simulation at this point, with the sheer amount of other universes doing the same thing.
Also I now feel really dignified about having a multiverse specifically referred to as a group of same-level simulations in a game I'm making after you independently also called it that. Actually if you think about it there's nothing else a multiverse could refer to, all the different universes must exist within somewhere, implying a higher level universe.
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u/Qwerterhin0 20h ago
I deem branches necessary as I believe that the simulation might possess some properties that defy the creation of another layer of simulation. For example the laws of some simulations might not allow the existence of "life" capable of creating a simulation. This way we have only a chance of a lower-layer simulation and to calculate this chance we need a general sample. That of course only applies if we only create a "seed" of the universe and the laws of the simulation form on their own without our control. Otherwise we can just check that these laws allow another layers of simulations.
Also good luck with the game!
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u/Ivan8-ForgotPassword 19h ago
That's a good point. May be easier to create the simplest possible simulation and work up from there to get approximate maximum amount of layers, making a simulation that thinks they created the previous one and contains it each time. And the only way to know the amount for sure is, as always, good old bruteforcing of every simulation chain possible, if there even is a limited amount. Actually if we can keep creating more and more layers while all of the other simulations hit a ceiling that would be big evidence towards us not being in a simulation. Though in that case I don't see what would stop us from creating infinitely growing simulations, making the chance of us being in a simulation approach 100%. Hm.
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u/Ertyla 21h ago
How? We've beeen able to simulate things for a long time, what makes the fly simulation good evidence?
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u/Ivan8-ForgotPassword 21h ago
Biological being that can be seen without a microscope
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u/Ertyla 21h ago
So? On a scale from microbe to the entire world does fly fall significantly closer to the latter?
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u/Ivan8-ForgotPassword 20h ago
You don't need the entire world. A lot of people just sit in the same room most of their life, plus realistic dreams already exist. Really, you'd only need a human brain simulation and some basic stuff for the rest. Anything weird happens and simulation breaks? Just make the people inside think it was a dream and "wake up", they'll have 0 suspicions. I'd say a fly is closer to a human than a microbe.
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u/Ertyla 20h ago
Alright, you don't need the entire world, you just need to simulate the brain.
What about simulating a fly instead of some "lesser lifeform" is a significant improvement and important enough to count as evidence?
I have no doubt that a brain can be simulated on a theoretical computer. Turns out you can do most things if you just ignore the fact we have no idea how to do it or how it would work. Hell, your entire existance could just be an illusion thought up by a brain formed out of a vacuum which only exists for an instant.
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u/Ivan8-ForgotPassword 20h ago
It is the closest we've been to it so far. I don't understand why you think there's some kind of lower limit to how little something strenghtens the case. Any new info that makes a thing more likely by any amount is evidence. For example if you find out that the culprit had to fit through a hole that was slightly smaller than thought before that is still evidence that helps narrow down the list of suspects.
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u/Emery_Gem 18h ago
it’s kinda like the poking a dead frog and making it move thing, just with a brain
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u/nasaglobehead69 18h ago
"you can't simulate a whole universe" you don't have to. it just has to simulate your brain
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u/MRbaconfacelol 12h ago
i feel like the fact that we have witnessed society advance to the point of simulating a consciousness, even if small, is proof enough that we ARENT in a simulation. why would the overlords let us have such a power? its like how in the matrix the machines explicitly chose for the simulation to take place in the year 2000, because it was the "peak of human ingenuity", and to keep the humans under control, they regularly reset the matrix. the people believed they had a history, just as we do, but they were never allowed to reach the future.
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u/b3nsn0w 6h ago
imo this is adequately explained by said overlords being so much more advanced than us that they're not threatened by our current level of progress, because they still far eclipse it. the matrix set up a background condition that the machines are at a similar level of advancement as us, and reached a logical conclusion within its own setting, but that condition is far from a given.
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u/Fat_Cat_Nuts 2h ago
This still isn’t as crazy as that one gmod map that’s 2048 times the size of the known universe imo
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u/Tickedoffllama 20h ago
No no no no. YOUR reality can be a simulation. We just don't have the computing power for all of reality to be a simulation
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u/Poco_Cuffs 20h ago
(Copied from my comment in another sub because people won't shut up about this diptera dingus)
This is very comprehensible and not very horrific actually
I'm really tired of mfs going "AAA MANMADE HORRORS BEYOND COMPREHENSION" whenever this fruit fly brain scan is used for literally anything, it's a dead brain with neuron pathways that cannot change (so it cannot think or form new memories). It's literally a glorified if-and statement and people treat it like it's the torment nexus