From philosophical arguments to quantum mechanics, we count 10 reasons we may be living in a computer simulation
- Logic
The simulation argument has three major points to it, either the amount of people out there capable or willing to create universe simulations is close to zero or the amount of realities that exist that aren’t simulations is close to zero.
This does of course assume that it is possible to have a gigantic simulation of an entire universe, but then again, maybe we’re just in a simulation of our galaxy, or even our solar system.
But assuming that it is possible to simulate a universe, until we find a way to prove otherwise logic dictates that we’re probably in a simulation.
2. Conway’s Game of Life
It seems a bit absurd at first, that a series of binary, or perhaps trinary numbers, could emulate an entire universe, but it’s actually really quite possible, a good example of this is Conway’s game of life.
This is a very simple mathematical game that works on a grid and it has a small set of rules dictating whether each section in the grid should create or delete a square to populate it.
Despite having very simple rules it’s possible to create a universal Turing machine, AKA a machine capable of computing anything, inside the game of life, not only that but people have created a game of life, within the game of life.
3. Planck Length
But then this requires our universe to have a pixel size, a smallest possible unit that nothing can shrink bellow and we do actually have that in our universe, the Planck length.
This is an integral part of quantum mechanics that basically says that anything smaller than the Planck length is meaningless and may as well not exist thanks to how uncertain its position is.
4. Everything is Information
The speed of light is the speed limit of the universe, but it’s not a simple as nothing can move faster than the speed of light, because some things do, it’s just that the speed of light is the fastest anything that carries information can move.
Of course it’s important to remember that everything that makes you, you is made up of information carrying particles.
So the laws of our universe aren’t focused on actuality, they’re focused on the proliferation of information, the same way a computer’s limitations work.
5. We have Already Simulated Chunks of the Universe
But even if our universe is information focused, simulating an entire universe would require a massive computer and a brain well beyond our own right?
Well we’ve actually already simulated a 350 million light-years chunk of our universe, admittedly it’s not complex or precise enough to have anything we could call life, but the large scale stuff is all there and it’s good enough to help physicists test reality’s quirks.
6. Computing Power
Next comes computational power, which seems like the biggest issue of them all, but in reality it’s probably the smallest factor in the whole theory since ever since 1975 we’ve doubled our computing power every two years.
While this may slow down thanks to the fact that the smaller a transistor gets the harder it is to be certain where it is, we’re still a society that pours an insane amount of time and resources into making better computers.
7. Programming
But then it’s gotta be really hard to program an entire universe, surely that makes the argument fall down.
Of course this isn’t necessarily an issue either, since we can just program programs to program the programs for us, which believe it or not is something we already do for many areas of IT.
Not only that but we could brute force the whole issue by starting with super simple rules and beginning positions, like the game of life, and see which one works the best.
8. Power
It’s hard to deny that the power required to make such a machine run is gigantic, even if you take into account increases in power efficiency.
But there are ways around that too, there’s a theoretically possible mega structure called the Dyson sphere that can capture a large portion of the sun’s energy.
Such a structure would require a gigantic amount of material, but that can always be stripped from planets like Jupiter and Saturn.
9. Repetition and same process like Computer
Then you might wonder if a machine could emulate free will, like we seem to have, which is dubious, but then so is our free will.
Since if you ever remove a person’s ability to retain new memories a weird effect occurs.
They will repeat themselves constantly, if you give them the same parameters and the same question, they will almost always repeat themselves word for word for hours on end.
So whether we have free will or not aside, this shows that we’re not exactly unpredictable or un-programmable.
10. Uncertainty
What is seemingly un-programmable, however, is the uncertainty that comes with quantum physics, where an object isn’t in any one position, it just has a possibility of being in a series of locations until it gets observed.
So it really does seem to be truly random, but then computers have little issue creating something random in the first place, using algorithms to simulate true randomness, hell we can even do this by observing quantum mechanics.
Not only that but if a scientist recorded a large series of quantum events and then put that into the random number generator it would be almost indistinguishable from actual randomness.