Scientist Suggests We Explore 'Universe is a VR Simulation' Theory

holy_calamity writes "A New Zealand physicist has written a paper saying that physicists should seriously explore the possibility the universe is a giant virtual reality simulation. He says that the existence of quantum phenomena could be due to the underlying digital nature of the simulation and also claims his VR hypothesis can explain relativity, the big bang and more. It should be possible to perform experiments to prove the hypothesis too. He reasons that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual."

Comments

1637 called, they want their idea back.

[SatanicPuppy]

In a word: Crap.

Philosophers have been pondering this nonsense for centuries, and have gotten nowhere...It's an argumentative blackhole, a solipsim. It's not testable...his "testable" experiments are like the sort of thing you see an idiot do to try and demonstrate that they have free will (e.g. "See? I just punched myself in the face, no way would anyone make me do that, so I must have free will!") If our reality is virtual, then all data is suspect, and it would be impossible to trust any sort of experimental data. Even if you come up with a clever test that would pierce the illusion, one would have to assume whoever maintains the illusion would simply fix it so that didn't work a second time. Nothing would be repeatable.

It's just not a useful avenue for speculation. This guy brings nothing new to the table except the kinda crap the ID people bring..."Hey, if the universe was a simulation, it would explain why everything tastes like chicken!" Just because there is no currently workable theory for some occurrence, there is no reason to invent a wild explanation that just makes it go away.

Without some compelling proof (which he lacks) this is nothing more than a conversational topic over a bag of weed.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[explosivejared]

So how would we be able to tell if our universe was a simulation? Whitworth says that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual. But he falls short of suggesting what this might be.

This is the failure of reconciling the metaphysical with the physical. I agree with you completely. There is no way for us to remove ourselves from the universe at large to observe it. Whitworth is not a scientist when he speaks of this. He is a philosopher exploring metaphysics and ontology.

I can come up with a number of theories about reality myself, and without being able to experiment on them they are just as valid. Therefore I propose that the universe we experience is really just the eye of an aether system. Once you get beyond the aether, it really is turtles all the way down. That's just as valid, without relevant experimentation, as the universe being a vr sim. Metaphysics is cool and all, but just don't call it science or its practitioners scientists.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Raindance]

I completely disagree. The calculus on the simulation argument is surprisingly solid when you think about it (Bostrom, for instance, has some pretty good arguments for it). You say, "It's just not a useful avenue for speculation. This guy brings nothing new to the table except the kinda crap the ID people bring." Did you read the paper? This guy Whitworth says some interesting stuff... personally I think the most interesting part of his paper is near the end, where he compares "Virtual Property" with "Physical Outcome".

Diversity of effort in science is good. This guy has a diverse approach to trying to understand the universe. He also says some interesting things and is looking for predictive qualities in his theory. That's good.

The problem is that we know nearly nothing about what simulations "have to be" or "cannot be" in the case of a system advanced enough to simulate our universe. So he might have a long road ahead of him. But it's an approach worth pursuing, if damn difficult to do so.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[kebes]

A notable difference being that this scientist is proposing means by which one could potentially distinguish between a "simulation reality" and a "real reality". That is, he is presenting a theory that makes falsifiable predictions. In his abstract he puts it as:

It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve.

He also readily admits that the idea is "strange" but says that it is still worthy of investigation:

This article argues that the idea that our physical world is a virtual reality, which is normally a topic of science fiction, religion or philosophy, should be considered as a possible theory of physics. Whether this is true or not, the reader is asked to keep an open mind, as one has to at least consider a theory to reject it. ... The paper asks if a world that behaves just like the world we live in could arise from a VR simulation, and whether physical data from this world supports (or denies) this possibility. The first considers if VR theory is logically possible, and the second if it explains known facts better than other theories.

Now having said all that, I'm not convinced that his idea is really sound. Fundamentally he is arguing that if our reality is the result of information processing, then there will be effects that cannot be computed/simulated within our reality. He says:

a VR processor cannot logically exist within the virtual reality its processing creates. It is logically impossible for a processor to create itself because the virtual world creation could not start if a processor did not initially exist outside it.

I'm not sure I understand or agree with this. The reality we see appears to arise because of the 'laws of physics' acting on certain 'initial conditions.' Simulating the entire universe would require precise knowledge of those initial conditions (location of every particle at the big bang) but it is possible (but as yet unproven) that the laws of physics are quite simple and computable and could be simulated by a (quantum) computer within our universe. I think this would hold whether reality is real or virtual (you can simulate a universe inside reality; and a computer can simulate itself).

A much more lucid and convincing discussion of these ideas is presented by Max Tegmark in his paper "The Mathematical Universe" (preprint available here). In it, he discusses this idea of whether we could detect being inside a virtual reality and provides arguments for why there may be no meaningful difference between a "simulation of reality" and "reality itself". His overall argument, that the universe may be fundamentally mathematical, is quite interesting, and again he provides some means by which we could determine to what extent his arguments actually apply to our universe. Worth a read.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Kenshin]

Even if you come up with a clever test that would pierce the illusion, one would have to assume whoever maintains the illusion would simply fix it so that didn't work a second time.

That, or they call it a "feature".

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[ChronosWS]

Um, no :)

Assume that the Universe is a VR simulation running on some machine. What we experience as time is a sequence of calculations produced by this machine. We are only aware of those parts of the calculation which the simulation specifically makes us aware of. No experiment can prove or disprove this because the calculations which the VR machine makes need not be 1-to-1 with our experiences. For example, the VR machine could 'suspend' the reality simulation while it performs some complex task, and we would be none the wiser.

Further, since the sum of our existence is contained within the VR simulation, and it can be paused OR ALTERED at will, the VR simulation could self-correct for any flaw we discover by simply rewriting the memories of any experiences we had, or deleting and replaying that part of the simulation with different variables. Again, since our experience is wholly under the control of the simulation, we again would be none the wiser.

Finally, since all information within the VR machine is controlled by the VR machine, any experiment we design is itself fully under the control of the VR machine. All data we perceive is perceived because the VR machine has elected to let us perceive it. Ergo, no experiment we could produce would allow us to discern the reality of the VR machine unless it chose to reveal itself to us.

There is nothing new here.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Curtman]

Meh.. The Buddha figured this stuff out 2500 years or so before The Matrix.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Spazmania]

This is the failure of reconciling the metaphysical with the physical.

No, no! He's on to something. Consider this example:

When routing TCP/IP packets, the best available software algorithms are tree-based. You step down the branches of the tree until you find the most specific route known for the destination address. Its O(log n).

However, if you step out of the software universe running on a general-purpose computer, you can design a hardware device called a "TCAM." A TCAM is a special kind of static ram where a request is processed across all cells in the same cycle in order to produce the best match. Not only does it return a routing decision in O(1), it returns that decision in exactly one clock cycle.

Now, we could describe how a TCAM works within software and we could even simulate it but the simulation would run in O(n) because the simulation would have to activate each cell in sequence instead of activating all cells at once the way a real TCAM does.

So the challenge for detecting whether we're in a virtual reality is this: find a mathematical problem which is conceptually simple (e.g. factoring the product of large primes) but which we know to be hard ( O(x^n) ) and then construct a simulation of a finite ur-universe in which the problem is easy. The simulation itself won't run any faster than the best known factoring algorithms but it would be able to prove that given the physical rules of the ur-universe the factoring would have completed in O(1).

Successfully constructing such a simulation wouldn't prove that we're actually in a virtual reality, but proving that such a simulation can't be constructed would prove that we're not. Thus the theory is falsifiable. Thus it is science, not philosophy.

Before we explore this theory...

[carpe_noctem]

Before I can explore this theory, I need to re-pack the bong...

*cough*

Ok, ready!

A question...

[Mr. Bad Example]

Do they give out Nobel prizes in the "Dude, I Am So Fucking High Right Now" category?

Re:A question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they give out Nobel prizes in the "Dude, I Am So Fucking High Right Now" category? It would seem so

Vacation

[Facetious]

I propose that we, the /. community, establish a vacation fund for New Zealand physicists.

bad idea

[syrinx]

Seems to me that if the universe is a simulation, then the obvious ending condition would be "when the residents figure out they're in a simulation". The creator of the simulation could be stretching his noodly appendages out towards the 'killall -9 universe' keys right now, now that this guy has gone and blabbed about it to everyone.

Re:Hrm

[SatanicPuppy]

One of the strengths of science is that there are always people asking weird questions.

Granted, this one is a bit over the edge, but if you force people to bend to the orthodoxy in all things, then your science has become a religion. Either the current theory can withstand a dissenting voice, or the current theory sucks, and needs to be replaced.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[Baron_Yam]

Actually, I don't think that's a valid point.

Just because you believe some programmer in a 'higher' level of reality created this one, doesn't mean you don't believe he did it with rules that we see as the Laws of Nature. You can still investigate those Laws and try to figure them out.

This is different from the ID crowd, who apparently feel that 'God did it' means you actively refuse to even think about the rules.

Yes, and this guy won!

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

The thing about all this is (preps Karma Shield) Who cares?

Ahhh good shield...
Uh oh detecting anomolies... Captain we need to reroute power from the phasers & the warp drives to the shield deflectors.
Make it so.
Ahhh it worked. Good job!

K now that my Karma is safe... Please understand what I mean.

Philosophical, unprovable arguements are by nature not worth more than discussion, and can not by nature lead to any outcome other than heated debate, War, or in this guys situation, a bad case of the munchies. I totally agree that this is like a conversation over a bowl of weed after watching the Matrix.

Personally, I believe in God because of certain situations in my life where I should have died or been seriously injured but was preppared by a "voice." But if god is just a program to inject thoughts in my head that save my life, then my belief in God is still valid, because from my perspective that program IS GOD.

Secondly if this is a VR sim, than there must be some Reality sufficiently advanced to where we could get replicated in RL from our VR selves after we proved our worth here! (another reason to be good!)

mathimatical basis for this...

[Connie_Lingus]

This idea is not new...mathematicians have been exploring this for years now, and the "theory" is based on these three ideas and how "true" they may be;

1. the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a posthuman stage.
2. any post-human civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof).
3. we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become post-humans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation.

It all breaks down to probability...if any "post-human" species with enough computer power to model our universe down to the quantum level decides to run Sim-like models, there would almost assuredly be many many simulations run. Now, it might require a computer the size of a small planet to run the estimated 10^42 ops/second that modeling our universe may require, but it is not totally unbelievable that 200-500 years from now we, as a species, will harness this type of computer power.

The real problem is...who cares? Even if it were possible to discover this "truth" what difference would it make in our lives?

Not to turn this into a religious debate, but...

[VE3MTM]

You can't disprove this theory for the same reasons you can't "prove" that God doesn't exist with ontological arguments. There's no way to prove that we're not living in a simulation, because for every test you come up with, some weeny can say, "well, of course you get that result, it's part of the simulation!"

It's bad science. Hell, it's not science.

Re:I disagree

[roggg]

I believe it is testable. All computers ultimately reduce to the Turing Machine. This includes neural networks and at least some classes of quantum computer. (Heresy, I know. Terrible. Now go find a medium-rare steak to burn me on.) However, not all problems reduce to computable problems. If there is a non-computable system that exists in the real world, then it cannot be the product of a simulation, no matter how advanced the computer is. The problem with this is that computers, computability, Turing, and the entire field of theoretical computer science are fabrications made possible by the rules of the simulation we are running inside of. No correspondence to uber-reality is assumed or implied. You cant prove anything from inside the box.

Trippy, duuude

[longacre]

"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather." --Bill Hicks

He is NOT a physicist

[quadong]

Brian Whitworth, the author of the paper, is a senior lecturer in information technology at Massey University in New Zealand.

http://www.massey.ac.nz/~wwiims/people/b.whitworth/

Here are his degrees: BSc (Maths), BA (Psych), MA (Hons), IS Doctorate
Masters Thesis: Brian Systems and the Concept of Self
PhD Thesis: Generating Group Agreement in Cooperative Computer Mediated Groups

He also suggests that our universe could be running on a "three-dimensional space-time screen", which doesn't make any sense given that space-time is 4 dimensional. The verbiage on page 2 of his paper continues to make it clear that besides not having any formal training in physics, he seems to only have a layperson's understanding of the modern physical concepts that would be needed to begin to make a coherent argument on this topic. The idea isn't total crap, but this guy does not seem qualified to champion it.

Re:not quite a paradox but..

[multisync]

but wait, what if that real universe is just a virtual reality simulation.. and on and on and on..

Yup. Just turtles, all the way down ...

Re:Occam's Razor

[mea37]

Trying to reason about whether the universe is real or simulated is only useful as entertainment. Not only is it philosophical, it's philosophically meaningless. The guy proposing the theory claims there's a way to test it, but he's merely given a name to the type of test he thinks will work, without considering whether such a test is theoretically conceivable. (And the author of TFA, in his zeal to discredit the theory, conflates the concepts of "describing" an algorithm and "executing" it, in an attempt to suggest such tests have already been run.)

Some of the speculation around the theory - possible ties to quantum physics and relativity, etc. - is entertaining and might make good sci fi. I've found myself wandering down similar lines of thougth at idle times. But I don't believe any true reasoning on the topic is possible.

In that spirit, here's what's wrong with your attempts to reason on the topic :)

Occam's Razor already negates the need for testing if the universe is real or not . . . the universe must be real, because they are equally capable of explaining what goes on in the universe, and one requires fewer assumptions.

For all the times I've seen Occam's Razor referenced on Slashdot and/or in pop culture, I've never once seen it used correctly in either place. This is no exception. Occam's Razor does not prove anything; it merely give guidance as to which of two competing theories is preferable to work with.

Or to rephrase that. Science is about the how, not the why.

That would be a false (or at least oversimplified) dichotomy. Speculative "why"s are often steps in reasoning that lead to more complete models of "how".

Further, if the universe was a simulation there would be no random numbers, only pseudo-random numbers.

If our world is a simulation, then you cannot know what technology exists in the "real" world. Just because we (in this world) haven't invented a true random number generator for a computer (yet) doesn't mean one can't exist, especially since we'd have no baseline for knowing basic physics in the "real" world.

Quantum physicists have to work with statistics and effectively random numbers

I question whether we know that variables in quantum physics are truly random vs. pseudorandom, but I'm a bit rusty in that field. But ironically, if they are truly random, then that suggests a perfectly sound procedure for making a truly random number generator for a computer...

with our current view of the universe, we can know every detail of every thing in the whole universe, and still not be able to predict the future

Yes, but if the universe is a simulation then any random number seeds would not be included in "every thing in the whole universe".

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[EllisDees]

>I'll never forget my spirit trying to resync with my body as my chest pumped up and down. Two very distinct and separate entities. Surreal to say the least.

I once had a very similar experience after drinking a bottle of Robitussin.

A Quick Test to find out if this is a simulation..

[theJML]

Just say "Computer, Arch!". Damn, no arch. Must not be a simulation.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[JWSmythe]

Ahhh, and you've figured it out.

    Hallucinations are hallucinations. It doesn't matter if they're induced by illegal drugs, abused products (like the DXM in Robitussin, the nitrous oxide in whipped cream cans, or other of thousands of abused products), lack of sleep, or lack of oxygen to the brain, they're all still hallucinations.

    A few that have been passed on to me have been...

    Are they giant purple lizards crawling along the roof tops, following you around?

    Separating from your body, having your spirit become one with the universe, being everywhere, and then thinking to yourself, "I had a body once. I wonder what that was like..." only to be slammed back into reality a few seconds later.

    The ceiling turning into a gridwork, then the cells of the grid being filled with green paisley patterns, which all began to spin simultaniously. The sound of the music turned into taste and color, and your body becomes one with the waves of music.

    Or..

    Lying in a bed, a dark spirit floats above you, with an evil face, and large tattered black wings, who simply says "it's not your time yet", and then disappears.

    Some people relate that when hallucinating, they are easily guided into their hallucination, either through ideas that have been impressed upon them before, or during the hallucination. "Are those ants all over your body??". We've all heard of the floating spirit hallucination, and the light at the end of the tunnel hallucination. Since those have been so impressed on us as the way it's going to be, it's very easy for that to be a driving factor in such hallucinations.

    In my only near death experiences, I saw .... black .... Lots of nothing. There's nothing in the great beyond, because I have no preconceptions to guide my hallucinations.

Re:I disagree

[Hatta]

Do you have anything to actually back that up?

It's called the Church Turing Thesis

They haven't even invented quantum computers yest, and if by "neural network" you mean livingbrain tissue, you're flat wron, and it's based on facts, not speculation. The brain is a chemical process using various mixes of chemical. Thought, sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, are nothing more than a complex chemical reactions.

Right, and all those chemical reactions are defined by laws of physics. The same laws of physics that govern the computers we all know and love. What is it that makes you think computers can't be implemented with chemistry?

If brains were turing machines than dogs could do math.

Wow. To paraphrase Charles Babbage, I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a statement.

First off, what makes you think that dogs don't do math? Just think about their brains controlling their muscles. Somehow they have to be calculating how much neuronal stimulation to apply to a muscle to get the desired amount of force. Isn't that math?

Secondly, what would make you think that dogs being an implementation of a computer implies that they would be able to consciously do math? You've got your logical levels hideously confused. Have you ever seen the animal simulation toy program "Dogz"? I don't think there's any question that that dog is an algorithm. But can it do math?

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[jafuser]

What piss me off is people disbelieving in God's existence just because they can't scientifically prove it.

Why do you have to be "pissed off"? Why not just let people believe what they want and go on with your life?

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[lgw]

OK, let's say that God exists. Which one? We've imagined about a million of em. Pick the wrong one and you go to Hell for sure.

Stipulating that some god or goddess or pantheon exists, please provide proof (or even a little evidence) that your religious views won't doom yourself and everyone who listens to you to eternal torment.

The thing about statements that can't be falsified is that they have 0 predictive power. True or false, it doesn't matter: no reason to care.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[tbg58]

There are reasonable people on both sides of the question of god's existence. In this case, the issue is one of causality. Specifically, the "it's watchmakers all the way up" fails because it posits an infinite series of causes.

We exist right now at a point in the series of causation. But an infinite series cannot be traversed, so the infinite series of watchmakers cannot lead us to any present we are part of.

This doesn't connote necessarily the existence of god. It does mandate at some point a cause which is uncaused, non-contingent and necessarily existing as the foundation of existence, but there is no purely logical reason that says a higher order universe cannot have these attributes.

The idea that what we experience as the universe is a VR simulation really doesn't advance the question about ultimate being at all, it just moves it down (or up) one layer.

Ultimately, though, since all we know and experience is both caused and contingent (including the universe itself) there must be something uncaused and non-contingent behind it. Non-being cannot give rise to being, so self-creation is out as well. Again, this doesn't on purely logical grounds have to be god, and even if one suggests that god is the ground of being this sort of argumentation doesn't come anywhere near proving the existence of any particular god.

In my own case I am a theist, but I have reasonable friends who disbelieve on reasonable grounds (I also have both theistic and atheistic friends who are unreasonable - I hope I'm not falling into that camp by this post). Hope this helps a bit at least to clarify the implications of the concept of causality.

Not necessarily VR- Compressed

[flappinbooger]

There are a lot of people saying the universe is really something like 10 dimensions.

But, we live in 3, and are constrained in one direction in the 4th (time).

So, the universe is compressed, and the quantum weirdness is a (digital?) artifact resulting from the compression.

It's like we're an mp3, and it works well until you look too closely and then the weirdness and approximations start to show up.

I feel like I'm a .WAV living in an MP3!

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[lessthan]

Even the Vatican is starting to back Evolution

This statement annoys me. I've seen it on various evolution websites, like it was news. The Vatican has backed evolution since the 1950's, but it seems that no one outside the religion got the memo. In the "Humani Generis," encyclical (a letter from the Pope to the rest of us) released in 1950, Pope Pius XII states "The Church does not forbid that...research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter." Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI (the current pope) have also made statements in support of evolution. The Vatican hasn't started to back evolution, it does and has for quite some time.

All research taken from Wikipedia.