If Reality Was A Simulation, Could We Eventually Hack It?

[Plu]

First: who, what or why would such a scenario be found to be necessary? What is the purpose?

For the same reason we make ant-farms in our kids' bedrooms. Because it's cool to look at and see what happens. Don't discard "for fun" as a reason to do something, some of the most insane things in the world are made just because someone enjoys doing them.

[Cocoa Beware]

I've heard of the idea that our reality is some sort of simulation more than once. I've heard of scientists who thought it's possible, and I've heard from potheads who have thought the same thing. What I've never heard of is what the implications are if reality is just some kind of simulation. If we were able to prove beyond a doubt that it's all a simulation, and we found out the "code" to the universe, could we conceivably hack it? Can a simulated being ever break the rules of its simulation?

What kind of hacks would be possible even?

Probably not unless its set up that way.

You gotta think the technology needed to simulate a Universe like ours would vastly outstrip our own.

[SGOS]

You gotta think the technology needed to simulate a Universe like ours would vastly outstrip our own.

Not if that technology resided in a simulation designed to create sub simulations like ours.  And suppose we are part of a simulation that was created in some ultimate reality by a high school student who did a half ass job?  Maybe the point of the simulation would be for us to eventually discover we were a simulation.  There's no end to the bullshit.  Who started this thread?  I protest! :-D

[Hopist]

Perhaps if we make a list of the luckiest or most powerful people alive we might find the avatar of the author there.
 
Once you find this avatar ask it to give you some gold, XP or even a few extra levels.

[Sal1981]

Perhaps if we make a list of the luckiest or most powerful people alive we might find the avatar of the author there.
 
Once you find this avatar ask it to give you some gold, XP or even a few extra levels.

You get exp by just living, counted in seconds, and you get only 1 life.

[Colanth]

I've written tons of code in my life, and I can't imagine how a subroutine I wrote could "hack" the program it's in.  Hacking the simulation that we call reality is looking at it as if we're outside it.  A human being can hack the code in a computer, but the code hacking the code?  Even code that's written to be self-modifying?  I just can't see it.  (And I hope it would never happen.  It would make code-writing a study in losing your mind.  Thinking in Forth would be trivial by comparison.)

Of course the simulation "The Universe" may not be "running" in anything like what we think of as computers, so it might be "hackable" by us, the "code" "running" "in" it.  Or not.  But if it is, I want to have a serious conversation with the "programmer".

[Solomon Zorn]

...Bishop Berkeley (pronounced Barkly) was an idealist thinker and said it takes a mind to create reality, and that reality itself is in the mind of God. :shock:  I'll get back on this after I look at my notes about him and that philosophy. I believe I've shown to myself it is a logical fallacy but I can't remember why right now. The first time I read this I couldn't find a flaw in his thinking depending on your definition of God. It's the best evidence I've heard for a God, but it wouldn't be the God of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions.  Solitary

Isn't that set up for infinite regression? It's in the mind of god, who therefore must be in the mind of a greater being, ad infinitum.

Going back to the question though: what if somebody already HAS hacked the system, and is keeping it a secret? Could at least make some good science fiction! 8-)

[Icarus]

Manipulation of genomes is basically hacking life and therefore reality (as perceived by living organisms)

[missingnocchi]

First: who, what or why would such a scenario be found to be necessary? What is the purpose?
Secondly: If reality is a simulation, why would they violate the simple premise of conservation. Why would we need an evolving "world"? Why not just Neanderthals in the woods? Or even simpler, worms? Why all the drama? Makes no sense to create a simulation this demanding for data when it could be so much simpler.

Maybe they're just curious. I know I'd make a simulation like that if I could. Who's to say they even knew what would happen? Maybe they just created the conditions for our universe to arise, and we are the result.

[Fidel_Castronaut]