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We're Not Living in a Computer Simulation, New Research Shows (cosmosmagazine.com)
A reader shares a report: A team of theoretical physicists from Oxford University in the UK has shown that life and reality cannot be merely simulations generated by a massive extraterrestrial computer. The finding -- an unexpectedly definite one -- arose from the discovery of a novel link between gravitational anomalies and computational complexity. In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhi show that constructing a computer simulation of a particular quantum phenomenon that occurs in metals is impossible -- not just practically, but in principle. The pair initially set out to see whether it was possible to use a technique known as quantum Monte Carlo to study the quantum Hall effect -- a phenomenon in physical systems that exhibit strong magnetic fields and very low temperatures, and manifests as an energy current that runs across the temperature gradient. The phenomenon indicates an anomaly in the underlying space-time geometry. [...] They discovered that the complexity of the simulation increased exponentially with the number of particles being simulated. If the complexity grew linearly with the number of particles being simulated, then doubling the number of partices would mean doubling the computing power required. If, however, the complexity grows on an exponential scale -- where the amount of computing power has to double every time a single particle is added -- then the task quickly becomes impossible.
At best they've shown that our universe can't be simulated by a Turing machine. But machines simulating our universe, if they exist, are not constrained to be Turning machines. Indeed, we know nothing of the physics of the universe such machines inhabit, and therefore can't say anything about what physical or mathematical limits they may face. This may be interesting in the sense that it shows limits on what *our* computers can simulate, but it says *nothing* about what God's computers can do.
"Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
If you've not already watched the movie, then go watch The Thirteenth Floor.
As complex and complicated as our Universe seems to us, we have no way of knowing how far that extends beyond it. Our Universe could be rather basic and boring compare to the reality beyond. We would have no way of knowing.
Do you think a simulated colony of Ants in a computer system would be able to understand the nature of the physical reality? To them, their little world could be comparability very complex and decree it would be unable to be duplicated as it's just too complicated.
It rules out simulations that anything within this universe, no matter how advanced, could come up with. Thus it rules out that the universe is being simulated within a universe that plays by similar fundamental rules of math and logic. Thus it rules out that the universe is being simulated within any universe we are capable of comprehending or talking about. Whereof one cannot speak one must remain silent. That's quite significant.
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It rules out simulations that anything within this universe, no matter how advanced, could come up with.
There is no reason to believe that our Universe has the same physical laws as the "higher" Universe that is simulating us. Video game simulations do not rigorously recreate physics, and focus more on entertainment than accuracy.
The study in TFA actually is a evidence FOR a simulation, since obviously the simulators added this constraint to prevent "nested" simulations from overloading their servers.