Living in a simulation: Is Universe a Neural Network? – The Indian Wire

In the past few innovation-led ease-enabled years, the best-performing Artificial-intelligence systems such as the speech recognizers, automatic translators or most welcomed virtual assistants have resulted from a technique called deep learning, a part of Neural network approach.

Neural nets have occupied a major area of research in both neuroscience and computer science and has seen its zenith in 1970s as well as its nadir in years later.

It is a means of performing machine learning, in which a computer learns to perform some task by analyzing training examples.

When we train our neural networks we run thousands or millions of cycles until the AI is properly trained.

The first Mind-Machine collab:The very first trainable neural network was named the PerceptronIt was demonstrated by the Cornell University psychologist Frank Rosenblatt in 1957.

It exhibited the qualities of executing certain fairly common computations on Perceptrons would be impractically time consuming otherwise.

The latest but surely not the last of such revelation regarding neural networks is a recent enlightening study regarding a possible collusion between our worldly phenomenons and the neural network model.

Vitaly Vanchurin( professor of physics at the University of Minnesota Duluth) published a paper by the name The World as a Neural Network that has recently found hightened resurgence among peers.

The study attempted to describe the scope between quantum and classical physics.

We get hold of quantum physics to understand universal processes at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles including photons and even cells but on large scale, we seek refuge under classical physics.

Undoubted is that general relativity works pretty well on large scales and Quantum on small levels.

For years, physicists have tried unsuccessfully to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. This is known as the problem of quantum gravity.

The study clearly proposes of an entire universe at its most fundamental level to be simulating a neural network.

What has Vanchurin said:We are not just saying that the artificial neural networks can be useful for analyzing physical systems or for discovering physical laws, we are saying that this is how the world around us actually works.

With this respect it could be considered as a proposal for the theory of everything, and as such it should be easy to prove it wrong. All that is needed is to find a physical phenomenon which cannot be described by neural networks.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) it is easier said than done.

The two available explanations for our universe based on distinct interpretations deriving from quantum mechanics. These are:

1. many worlds- there are many worlds existing in parallel at the same space and time as our own. Therefore it becomes possible to remove randomness and action at a distance from quantum theory and thus from all physics.

This implies that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in some world or universe. Stephen Hawking, Everett and Sean Carrolls are its proponents.

2. hidden variables-this approach is championed by Albert Einstein and David Bohm, among others, basically states that the wave function is just a temporary fix and that physicists will eventually replace it.

Vanchurins concept tries to reconcile the two distinct Quantum theories. Though adding nothing new in existing ones, just exhibiting the approximate behaviours of both.

If such a theory found more proponents and leads to more work in this era, it could soon yield the absolute Theory of everything ie. How the World around us actually works.

Since it is widely believed that most of the fundamental ideas of entire universe are governed by the rules of quantum mechanics, even gravity should somehow emerge from it.

This may definitely resolve a few things but triggers a few more questions that will require inherent research:

If the Universe is a neural network, do we act as deep learning nodes connecting inputs and yielding output connections?

If so, whats the networks purpose?

Is it one giant closed network or just a single layer in a grander network?

Are there other universes connected to the same network?

Are we just being trained for some larger-than-universal machines greater purpose?

These questions will rule our minds for some considerable time as this idea is definitely crazy, but is it crazy enough to be true?

That remains to be seen. We may never find it different enough!

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Living in a simulation: Is Universe a Neural Network? - The Indian Wire

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