Several thousand years ago, Plato suggested that what we see may not be real at all. With the advent of computers, the idea has taken on a new lease of life, especially in recent years with the films Inception, Dark City, and the Matrix trilogy. Well, long before the appearance of these films, the idea that our "design" is virtual found a place in science fiction literature. Can our world really literally be simulated on a computer?
10. Simulators of life
Computers can handle huge amounts of data, and some of the most productive and intensive solutions require modeling. Simulations involve the inclusion of many variables and artificial intelligence to analyze them and study the results. Some simulations are purely game-based. Some involve real life situations, such as the spread of disease. Some games are historical simulations that can be played (for example, Sid Meyer's Civilization) or simulate the growth of real life in society over time.
This is what simulations look like today, but computers are getting more powerful and faster. Computing power has periodically doubled, and computers in 50 years may well be millions of times more powerful than they are today. Powerful computers will allow powerful simulations, especially historical ones. If computers become powerful enough, they can create a historical simulation in which self-aware beings have no idea that they are part of a program.
Do you think we are far from that? Harvard's Odyssey supercomputer can simulate 14 billion years in just a few months.
Promotional video:
9. If someone could, he would do
Well, let's say it is quite possible to create a universe inside a computer. Will it be morally acceptable? Humans are complex creatures with their own feelings and relationships. What if at some point in the creation of a fake world of people something goes wrong? Will not the responsibility for the universe fall on the shoulders of the creator, will he not take an overwhelming burden?
Maybe. But what does it matter? For some people, even the very idea of modeling will be tempting. And even if historical simulations were illegal, nothing prevented one creature from taking and creating our reality. It would only take one person to think no more than any Sims player starting a new game.
Other than entertainment, humans can have good reasons for creating simulations like this, too. Humanity could face death and force scientists to create a massive diagnostic test for our world. Simulations can help them figure out what went wrong with the real world and how to fix it.
8. Obvious disadvantages
If the model is of sufficient quality, no one inside will understand that this is a simulation at all. If you grew your brain in a jar and made it respond to stimuli, it would not know what is in the jar. He would consider himself a living, breathing and active person.
But even simulations can have jambs, right? Didn't you yourself notice some of the flaws, "glitches in the matrix"?
Perhaps we see such disruptions in everyday life. The Matrix offers an example of déjà vu - when something seems inexplicably familiar. Simulations can malfunction like a scratched disc. Supernatural elements, ghosts, and wonders can be glitches too. According to modeling theory, people do observe these phenomena, but this is a consequence of errors in the code.
There is a ton of such evidence on the Internet, and although 99 percent of it is nonsense, some recommend keeping your eyes and mind open, and perhaps something will be revealed. After all, this is just a theory.
7. Mathematics is at the heart of our lives
Everything in the universe can be counted in some way. Even life is quantified. The Human Genome Project, which calculated the sequence of the chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, was solved with the help of computers. All the mysteries of the universe are solved by mathematics. Our universe is better explained in the language of mathematics than in words.
If everything is math, everything can be broken down into binary. So, if computers and data reach certain heights, a functional person can be recreated from the genome inside the computer? And if you build one such person, why not create a whole world?
Scientists suggest that someone may have already done this and created our world. To determine if we are really living in a simulation, researchers are doing serious research, studying the mathematics that makes up our universe.
6. Anthropic principle
Human existence is supremely amazing. To start life on Earth, we need everything to be in order. We are at a great distance from the Sun, the atmosphere is right for us, the gravity is strong enough. And while in theory there may be many other planets with such conditions, life seems even more amazing when you look beyond the planet. If some of the cosmic factors, like dark energy, were a little stronger, life might not exist here or anywhere else in the universe.
The anthropic principle asks the question: “Why? Why are these conditions so great for us?"
One explanation: the conditions were deliberately set to give us life. Each suitable factor has been set in a fixed state in some laboratory of universal proportions. The factors connected to the universe and the simulation began. Therefore, we exist, and our individual planet is developing as it is now.
The obvious consequence is that there may not be people on the other side of the model. Other creatures who hide their presence and play their space sims. Perhaps alien life is quite aware of how the program works, and it is not difficult for them to become invisible to us.
5. Parallel universes
The theory of parallel worlds, or multiverse, assumes an infinite number of universes with an infinite set of parameters. Imagine the floors of an apartment building. The universes make up the multiverse in the same way as the floors are a building, they have a common structure, but they differ from each other. Jorge Luis Borges compared the multiverse to a library. The library contains an endless number of books, some may differ by letter, and some contain incredible stories.
Such a theory makes a kind of confusion in our understanding of life. But if there really are many universes, where did they come from? Why are there so many? How?
If we are in a simulation, multiple universes are multiple simulations running at the same time. Each simulation has its own set of variables, and this is no coincidence. The modeler includes various variables to test different scenarios and observes different results.
4. Fermi paradox
Our planet is one of many capable of supporting life, and our Sun is quite young relative to the entire universe. Obviously, life should be everywhere, both on planets where life began to develop simultaneously with ours, and on those that originated earlier.
Moreover, people dared to go into space, so other civilizations should have made such an attempt? There are billions of galaxies that are billions of years older than ours, so at least one should have become a "traveling frog." Since there are all conditions for life on Earth, it means that our planet could become a target for colonization at a certain moment.
However, we did not find any traces, hints or smells of other intelligent life in the universe. The Fermi paradox sounds simple: "Where is everyone?"
Simulation theory can provide several answers. If life is supposed to be everywhere, but only exists on Earth, we are in simulation. The person in charge of modeling just decided to observe how people act alone.
The multiverse theory says that life on other planets exists - in most model universes. We, for example, live in a calm simulation, such loners in the universe. Returning to the anthropic principle, we can say that the universe was created only for us.
Another theory, the planetarium hypothesis, offers another possible answer. The modeling assumes a mass of inhabited planets, each of which thinks that it is the only one in the universe so inhabited. It turns out that the purpose of such a simulation is to nurture the ego of a particular civilization and see what happens.
3. God is a programmer
People have long been discussing the idea of a creator-god who created our world. Some imagine a particular god as a bearded man sitting in the clouds, but in modeling theory, the god or someone else could be an ordinary programmer pressing buttons on a keyboard.
As we have found out, a programmer can create a world based on simple binary code. The only question is why he programs people to serve his creator, as most religions talk about.
This can be intentional or unintentional. Perhaps the programmer wants us to know that he or she exists and has written the code to give us the innate feeling that everything was created. Perhaps he did not do this and did not want to, but intuitively we assume the existence of a creator.
The idea of God as a programmer evolves in two ways. First: the code started to live, let everything develop and the simulation brought us to where we are today. Second, literal creationism is to blame. According to the Bible, God created the world and life in seven days, but in our case he used a computer, not cosmic forces.
2. Beyond the Universe
What is outside the universe? According to simulation theory, the answer would be a supercomputer surrounded by evolved beings. But even more insane things are possible.
Those who run the models may be as fake as we are. There can be many layers in the simulation. As Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom suggests, “the post-humans who developed our simulations can be modeled themselves, and their creators, in turn, can also be modeled. There can be many levels of reality, and their number can increase over time."
Imagine sitting down to play The Sims and playing until your Sims created their own game. Their Sims have repeated this process, and you are actually part of an even larger simulation.
The question remains: who created the real world? This idea is so far removed from our life that it seems impossible to speculate on this topic. But if modeling theory can at least explain the limited size of our universe and understand what lies beyond it … that's a good start in figuring out the nature of existence.
1. Fake people make simulation easier
Even as computers become more powerful, the universe may be too complex to fit in one of them. Each of the seven billion people today is sophisticated enough to compete with every imaginable computer imagination. And we represent an infinitely small part of a vast universe that contains billions of galaxies. It will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to take many variables into account.
But the simulated world doesn't need to be as complex as it seems. To be convincing, a model will need a few detailed metrics and a lot of barely delineated secondary players. Imagine one of the GTA games. It houses hundreds of people, but you only interact with a few. Life can be like this. There are you, your loved ones and relatives, but all those whom you meet on the street may not be real. They may have multiple thoughts and lack of emotion. They are like that “woman in a red dress”, metonymy, image, sketch.
Let's consider the video game analogy. Such games contain huge worlds, but only your current location at the present moment in time matters, the action unfolds in it. Reality may follow the same scenario. Areas outside of the gaze can be stored in memory and only appear when needed. Enormous savings in computing power. What about remote areas that you will never visit, such as in other galaxies? They may not run at all in the simulation. They need compelling imagery in case they want to look at them.
Okay, people on the streets or distant stars are one thing. But you have no proof that you exist, at least in the form in which you imagine yourself. We believe that the past happened because we have memories and because we have photographs and books. But what if this is all freshly written code? What if your life refreshes every time you blink?
The most interesting thing is that it is impossible to prove or disprove.
ILYA KHEL