What is simulation theory

The question seems absurd. Yet there are plenty of smart people who are convinced that this is not only possible but perhaps likely. In an influential paper that laid out the theory, the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom showed that at least one of three possibilities is true: 1 All human-like civilizations in the universe go extinct before they develop the technological capacity to create simulated realities; 2 if any civilizations do reach this phase of technological maturity, none of them will bother to run simulations; or 3 advanced civilizations would have the ability to create many, many simulations, and that means there are far more simulated worlds than non-simulated ones.

So I reached out to Virk and asked him to break it down for me. In that movie, Keanu Reeves plays the character Neo, who meets a guy names Morpheus, who is aptly named after the Greek god of dreams, and Morpheus gives him a choice of taking the red pill or the blue pill. And if he takes the red pill, he wakes up and realizes that his entire life, including his job, the building he lived in, and everything else, was part of this elaborate video game, and he wakes up in a world outside of the game.

There are lots of mysteries in physics that are better explained by the simulation hypothesis than by what would be a material hypothesis. They took a couple of decades of figuring out how to model physical objects using 3D models and then how to render them with limited computing power, which eventually led to this spate of shared online video games.

But there is plenty of evidence that points in that direction. When you say there are aspects of our world that would make more sense if they were part of a simulation, what do you mean exactly? But quantum physics tells us that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until somebody opens up the box to observe it. The cardinal rule is the universe renders only that which needs to be observed. The history of video game development is all about optimizing limited resources.

It commits the theist to a very unpalatable position: our universe was not designed by God and is instead, most likely, a computer simulation. A low-level physics simulation using the simplest simulation methods, which simulated our universe on a grid with finite resolution, would result in some potentially observable distortions of the simulated physics because of the rotational symmertry breaking effects of the simulation lattice.

I would think that even the earlist simulations of systems sufficiently complex to contain observers would make use of powerful computational shortcuts that would eliminate the opportunity to observe any such discrepancies mostly the simulation would take place at a much higher level of abstraction in order to reduce the computational demands.

Analyzes some analogies and disanalogies between the doomsday argument and the simulation argument, and concludes that the former fails whille the latter succeeds. His homepage is at nickbostrom. You have proved that my psychiatrist was wrong all along.

Some Popular Synopses. Yet another popularization, for Matrix-aficionados. Frequently asked questions. Answers to 16 common questions. Scholarly commentaries and follow-on studies. An MIT computer science grad student theologizes. A student's MA thesis. More specifically, our truth. If we do in fact exist inside a video game that requires our characters i. What Is Simulation Theory? Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? What is reality? Simulation theory tackles some heavy questions.

Mike Thomas. April 1, Updated: August 20, Do We Live in a Simulation? The question of if we live in a simulated universe has been hotly debated since the Enlightenment period. There is no definitive answer, but simulation theory posits the universe as we know it is an advanced digital construct overseen by some higher form of intelligence.

Elon Musk on Simulation Theory In an interview with popular podcaster Joe Rogan, Elon Musk said, "If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then games will be indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will end. One of those two things will occur," Musk said. You might as well call them reality, or you could call them multiverse. Physicists are divided over whether the process of collapse is something real or just reflects a change in our knowledge about the system.

To this end, Owhadi and his colleagues have worked on five conceptual variations of the double-slit experiment, each designed to trip up a simulation.

But he acknowledges that it is impossible to know, at this stage, if such experiments could work. Zohreh Davoudi , a physicist at the University of Maryland, College Park, has also entertained the idea that a simulation with finite computing resources could reveal itself.

The equations describing strong interactions, which hold together quarks to form protons and neutrons, are so complex that they cannot be solved analytically. To understand strong interactions, physicists are forced to do numerical simulations. And unlike any putative supercivilizations possessing limitless computing power, they must rely on shortcuts to make those simulations computationally viable—usually by considering spacetime to be discrete rather than continuous.

The most advanced result researchers have managed to coax from this approach so far is the simulation of a single nucleus of helium that is composed of two protons and two neutrons. Maybe in years or so, we can do the [human] brain. Davoudi thinks that classical computers will soon hit a wall, however.

Thus, she is turning her sights to quantum computation, which relies on superpositions and other quantum effects to make tractable certain computational problems that would be impossible through classical approaches. All of these factors have led Davoudi to speculate about the simulation hypothesis.

If our reality is a simulation, then the simulator is likely also discretizing spacetime to save on computing resources assuming, of course, that it is using the same mechanisms as our physicists for that simulation.

Signatures of such discrete spacetime could potentially be seen in the directions high-energy cosmic rays arrive from: they would have a preferred direction in the sky because of the breaking of so-called rotational symmetry.

And even if such an effect were to be seen, it would not constitute unequivocal evidence that we live in a simulation. Base reality itself could have similar properties.