What does the future hold? What will become of this planet and its inhabitants in the centuries to come? We are living in a historical period that sometimes feels like the prelude to something truly remarkable or terribly dire about to unfold. This captivating video seeks to decipher the signs and attempt to construct plausible scenarios from the nearly nothing we hold in our hands today. As always, it will be scientific discoveries leading the dance of change, while philosophers, writers, politicians, and all the others will have the seemingly trivial task of containing, describing, and guiding. Before embarking on our journey through time, let me state the obvious: No one knows the future! Numerous micro and macro factors could alter this trajectory—world wars, pandemics, unimaginable social shifts, or climate disasters. Nevertheless, we’re setting off. And we’re doing so by discussing the remaining decades of the century we’re experiencing right now.
The hippocampus geometrically represents both physical location and abstract variables on a neural manifold in mice performing a decision-making task in virtual reality.
Philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers explores virtual reality and its implication for our understanding of existence. Chalmers examines the simulation hypothesis, challenging conventional views of reality and suggesting that virtual worlds might be as real and meaningful as the physical world. This is a thought-provoking lecture at MindFest, held at Florida Atlantic University, CENTER FOR THE FUTURE MIND, spearheaded by Susan Schneider.
TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 — Intro. 01:34 — Overview. 11:55 — David’s Central Thesis. 15:55 — Biosim vs. Pure Sim. 18:11 — Imperfect vs. Perfect Simulation. 26:38 — Are Simulations Illusions? 31:29 — It-From-Bit Hypothesis. 36:06 — What Is The Metaverse? 43:58 — Meaning In A Virtual World. 51:49 — Q\&A 01:06:43 — Outro.
Science: Physicists Will conduct experiments to verify if we live in the real reality or if we live in a virtual reality. In a computer simulation. In a dream. Or if not.
Researchers at California State Polytechnic University (CalPoly), Pomona are carrying out a series of quantum physics experiments expected to provide strong scientific evidence that we live in a computer simulated virtual reality. — PR13031782.
And this shows one of the many ways in which the Economic Singularity is rushing at us. The 🦾🤖 Bots are coming soon to a job near you.
NVIDIA unveiled a suite of services, models, and computing platforms designed to accelerate the development of humanoid robots globally. Key highlights include:
CEDAR PARK, Texas (KXAN) — Cedar Park is now home to a first-of-its-kind distinction in the state. The city is now hoping to cash in on the popularity of video games and virtual reality.
Cedar Park is now officially known as a “Digital Media Friendly Texas Certified Community.”
“This program is really designed to bring in that tech and creative talent,” Arthur Jackson, Chief Economic Development Officer for the city, said.
Researchers at California State Polytechnic University (CalPoly), Pomona are carrying out a series of quantum physics experiments expected to provide strong scientific evidence that we live in a computer simulated virtual reality.
Devised by former NASA physicist Thomas Campbell, the five experiments are variations of the double-slit and delayed-choice quantum eraser experiments, which explore the conditions under which quantum objects ‘collapse’ from a probabilistic wavefunction to a defined particle. In line with the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, Campbell attributes a fundamental role to measurement, but extends it to human observers. In his view, quantum mechanics shows that the physical world is a virtual reality simulation that is computed for our consciousness on demand. In essence, what you do not see does not exist.
Campbell and Khoshnoud.
Campbell’s quantum experiments have been designed to reveal the interactive mechanism by which nature probabilistically generates our experience of the physical world. Herein, Campbell asserts that, like a videogame, the universe is generated as needed for the player and does not exist independent of observation.
While multiple quantum experiments have pointed to the probabilistic and informational nature of reality, Campbell’s experiments are the first to investigate the connection between consciousness and simulation theory. These experiments are based on Campbell’s paper ‘On Testing the Simulation Theory’ originally published in the International Journal of Quantum Foundations in 2017.
Paradigm-shifting consequences
Importantly, Campbell’s version of the simulation hypothesis differs from the ‘ancestor simulation’ thought experiment popularized by philosopher Dr. Nick Bostrom. “Contrary to what Bostrom postulates, the idea here is that consciousness is not a product of the simulation — it is fundamental to reality,” Campbell explains. “If all five experiments work as expected, this will challenge the conventional understanding of reality and uncover profound connections between consciousness and the cosmos.” The first experiment is currently being carried out by two independent teams of researchers — One at California State Polytechnic University (Pomona) headed by Dr. Farbod Khoshnoud, and the other at a top-tier Canadian university that has chosen to participate anonymously at this time.
To learn more, or to follow their progress visit Testing the Hypothesis, a platform bringing together all relevant information about Campbell’s experiments, including a detailed explanation of each.
Campbell will be joined by Donald Hoffman, Rizwan Virk, Stephan A. Schwartz and others for the Doorway to the Future Event in Huntsville, Alabama this September.
Recent advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and computing have enabled the development of new tools for creating highly realistic media, virtual reality (VR) environments and video games. Many of these tools are now widely used by graphics designers, animated film creators and videogame developers worldwide.
One aspect of virtual and digitally created environments that can be difficult to realistically reproduce is fabrics. While there are already various computational tools for digitally designing realistic fabric-based items (e.g., scarves, blankets, pillows, clothes, etc.), creating and editing realistic renderings of these fabrics in real-time can be challenging.
Researchers at Shandong University and Nanjing University recently introduced a new lightweight artificial neural network for the real-time rendering of woven fabrics. Their proposed network, introduced in a paper published as part of the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Conference Conference Papers ‘24, works by encoding the patterns and parameters of fabrics as a small latent vector, which can later be interpreted by a decoder to produce realistic representations of various fabrics.
