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Now, this is something that struck me. Recently some research was done that demonstrates that you can train a neural network to take random noise as input and produce a rendering of a human face as output. Here is a simple diagram to illustrate this:

(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/torch/torch.github.io/master/blog/_posts/images/model.png)

In the beginning there was the void. There was no structure, no order. Only chaos. Skip Julian years (how old is the universe (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+old+is+the+universe)), and you get real life human faces. Does anyone else draw parallels?

My point: We (well, actually, life in general) are the result of some large inter-universal neural network simulation that's been running for a long time.

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Source: http://torch.ch/blog/2015/11/13/gan.html

Is that so? I was under the impression that, considering the second law of thermodynamics, the universe could only have started in a very highly organized/low entropy state.

Point taken! But then again ... I could argue that laws of physics (along with their constants) change over time. Back then, when the universe was just starting out, different physics principles could have been at play.

Come to think of it, this goes hand-in-hand with my hypothesis that the present moment is just a result of the work of a neural network. The laws of physics were also evolved over time by the neural network  :)

yep, we usually call it "universe". ;)
and esoterics as well as physics say that it is all connected(as in network).
esoterics mean it in a spiritual way, that every action you take has an influence on everything around you, but so do physics, as gravity and energy within the observable universe form a 'network' of interaction.

I'm not sure if it is necessary to include "neural" and "simulation" in this, but I guess this is nitpicking.. It just gives this experience of the universe we all have such a "we're all in a computer with chips and cpus"-feeling, that to me is an insufficient description, a result of the zeitgeist.

"Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time" Wikipedia defining "simulation"
so our real world is just an imitation of a meta-real world process? and that meta-real world? is it also a simulation of a meta-meta-real world? what's the point of going beyond what we can actually experience as real world?

oh and btw, I would add we are the fractal result to your sentence.. for me that is the central element, that is actually new and certifiable.
I'd say the face is the result of fractal evolution.
if things stay the same, you have stagnation, leading to nothing.
if things are purely random, you have chaos, leadiing to nothing.
if you have simple oscillation, you only have two states, leading to nothing complex.
only iif you have a continuum of balance between the two over time with a causal result that never is exactly the same, will you have real complexity.
and that in my view can only achieved through fractals.
and that is the point discussion should focus on. imho.

Well that's not true. Before this technique was able to generate shapes it was used* to recognize thoses sames shapes (for example here faces, but that could be dogs or cars). Using theses new neural networks with random noise in input is a way to understand what's inside the layers.

A similar technique is used with neural style transfer :
https://github.com/jcjohnson/neural-style (https://github.com/jcjohnson/neural-style)
I think there are variant of this technique where you can generate pattern, maybe this one https://github.com/chuanli11/CNNMRF (https://github.com/chuanli11/CNNMRF)


So IMHO what we could infer from thoses research is an upper bound of the entropy of human faces, looking at the memory size of the network ;) .

(*I'm not talking about the same networks but others networks researchers used to create)

I think, you're comparing apples and oranges, valera_rozuvan. Considering, that the big bang theory is at least close to the truth, the universe arises from a maximum order state (everything gathered in one point is max order for me). For a closed system like the entire universe the second law of thermodynamics is valid. Most systems examined in physics are similar closed systems. no energy input, no output. They also follow the 2nd lotd.
The self organising systems we can observe here on earth and maybe outside earth are unexceptional open, dissipative systems with a permanent energy throughput. They follow the concepts of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, like for example the dissipative structures of Ilya Prigogine (he received a nobel prize for that discovery). So, you can't conclude from an open, energy dissipating system like the earth (driven by solar radiation), with all the life on it, to a larger, but self-contained, closed system like the universe.