Nick Bostrom: We are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. Scientists have disproved the theory about the unreality of our universe

Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption The talk of scientists about the unreality of our world falls on a prepared popular culture soil

The hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation or a hologram is increasingly exciting the minds of scientists and philanthropists.

Educated mankind has never been so sure of the illusory nature of everything that happens.

In June 2016, the American entrepreneur, creator of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk, estimated the probability that the "reality" known to us is the main one - as "one in a billion". “For us, it will be even better if it turns out that what we take for reality is already a simulator created by another race or people of the future,” Musk said.

In September, Bank of America warned its customers that there was a 20-50% chance they were living in the Matrix. This hypothesis was considered by bank analysts along with other signs of the future, in particular, an offensive (that is, according to the original hypothesis, virtual reality inside virtual reality).

A recent New Yorker feature on venture capitalist Sam Altman says that many in Silicon Valley are obsessed with the idea that we are living inside a computer simulation. Two tech billionaires allegedly followed in the footsteps of The Matrix characters and secretly funded research to rescue humanity from this simulation. The publication does not disclose their names.

Should this hypothesis be taken literally?

The short answer is yes. The hypothesis proceeds from the fact that the "reality" we experience is due to only a small amount of information that we receive and that our brain is able to process. We feel solid objects due to electromagnetic interaction, and the light we see is only a small section of the spectrum of electromagnetic waves.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Elon Musk believes that humanity will create virtual world in the future, or we are already characters in someone else's simulation

The more we expand the boundaries of our own perception, the more we become convinced that the universe consists for the most part of emptiness.

Atoms are 99.999999999999% empty space. If the nucleus of a hydrogen atom is enlarged to the size of a soccer ball, then its single electron will be located at a distance of 23 kilometers. Matter, which is composed of atoms, makes up only 5% of the universe known to us. And 68% is dark energy, about which science knows almost nothing.

In other words, our perception of reality is "Tetris" compared to what the universe really is.

What does official science say about this?

Like the heroes of a novel trying to comprehend the author's intention right on its pages, modern scientists - astrophysicists and quantum physicists - are testing the hypothesis put forward by the philosopher Rene Descartes back in the 17th century. He suggested that "some wicked genius, very powerful and prone to deceit" could make us think that there is a physical world external to us, while in fact the sky, air, earth, light, shapes and sounds - these are "traps set by genius."

In 1991, writer Michael Talbot in his book " Holographic Universe"one of the first to suggest that the physical world is like a giant hologram. Some scientists, however, consider Talbot's "quantum mysticism" pseudoscience, and the esoteric practices associated with it - charlatanism.

Far more recognized in the professional environment was the 2006 book "Programming the Universe" by MIT professor Seth Lloyd. He believes that the universe is a quantum computer that calculates itself. The book also says that in order to create a computer model of the Universe, humanity lacks the theory of quantum gravity - one of the links in the hypothetical "theory of everything."

Image copyright Fermilab Image caption "Holometer" worth $ 2.5 million could not refute the foundations of the universe known to us

Our world itself can be computer simulation. In 2012, a team of researchers at the University of California at San Diego, led by Russian Dmitry Kryukov, came to the conclusion that such complex networks as the Universe, the human brain and the Internet have the same structure and dynamics of development.

This concept of the world order involves a "small" problem: what will happen to the world if the computing power of the computer that created it is exhausted?

Can the hypothesis be experimentally confirmed?

Craig Hogan, director of the Center for Quantum Astrophysics at the Fermi Laboratory in the United States, set up the only such experiment. In 2011, he created a "holometer": an analysis of the behavior of light beams emanating from the laser emitters of this device helped answer at least one question - is our world a two-dimensional hologram.

Answer: it is not. What we observe really exists; they are not "pixels" of advanced computer animation.

Which allows us to hope that one day our world will not "freeze", as is often the case with computer games.

The hypothesis of a computer simulation of our universe was put forward in 2003 by the British philosopher Nick Bostrom, but has already received its followers in the person of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk, who said that the probability of the hypothesis is almost 100%. It is based on the idea that everything that exists in our universe is the product of a simulation, like the experiments carried out by machines from the Matrix trilogy.

Simulation theory

The theory suggests that, given enough computers with great computing power, it becomes possible to simulate in detail the entire world, which will be so believable that its inhabitants will be conscious and intelligent.

Based on these ideas, we can assume: what prevents us from already living in a computer simulation? Perhaps a more advanced civilization is conducting a similar experiment, having received the necessary technologies, and our whole world is a simulation?

Many physicists and metaphysicians have already created convincing arguments in favor of the idea, referring to various mathematical and logical anomalies. Based on these arguments, one can assume the existence of a space computer model.

Mathematical refutation of the idea

However, two physicists from Oxford and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhin, proved the impossibility of such a theory. They published their findings in the journal Science Advances.

By modeling a quantum system, Ringel and Kovrizhin found that simulating just a few quantum particles would require huge computational resources, which, due to the nature of quantum physics, would increase exponentially with the number of simulated quanta.

A terabyte of RAM is required to store a matrix describing the behavior of 20 spins of quantum particles. Extrapolating this data over just a few hundred spins, we find that it would take more atoms to build a computer with that much memory than there are. total number in the Universe.

In other words, given the complexity of the quantum world that we observe, it can be proven that any proposed computer simulation of the universe will fail.

Or maybe it's a simulation?

On the other hand, continuing philosophical reasoning, a person will quickly come to the question: “Is it possible that more advanced civilizations deliberately put this complexity of the quantum world into the simulator in order to lead us astray?” Dmitry Kovrizhin answers this:

It's interesting philosophical question. But it is outside the scope of physics, so I would prefer not to comment on it.

Have you ever entertained such a thought? That the world around us can be created on a huge powerful computer and you are surrounded by people-programs? Not only physics and science speak about this, but ancient philosophers also said that everything is illusory.

Seems absurd?

Then the following Evidence Matrix can destroy your world to the ground. But, don't worry too much. This is just a game.

Scientists are preparing to recognize this fact, checking every "sign". Stay in their shoes today. Rate 10 signs that around you is a virtual computer world, computer simulation of the universe.

Fact 1. REALITY runs on electricity.

Physics: What is at the smallest level? Small balls with a negative charge (electrons), the flow of which is called electricity, absolutely everything is created from atoms with electrons. Matter, gases, liquids and all inanimate objects are composed of atoms. That is, the fundamental basis of the world - Electricity is in everything living and non-living! Everything.

Technique: Modern Devices, Gadgets, household and industrial machines use the same Electricity.

Anatomy: Your Brain, Heart, Sense Organs work on Electricity ! Remember how people are brought to life? They use "defibrillators" that are applied to the chest and a charge of current flows right into your heart. All connections between neurons in tissues are built on impulses of electricity.

Modern implants in the brain. This would not be possible if the brain did not run on electricity.

The heart beats 3 million times in a lifetime. Each impulse is a lived second. electrical impulse.

Fact 2. The world is an accurate mechanical watch.

To do simulation of the universe predictable, you need laws.

Our world has laws of physics and everything is based on them. notice, that themselves we didn't make the laws . They exist, we can only describe what already exists, stick to it, use it for our own purposes. These laws include the law of conservation of energy, Newton's laws, the laws of Ampere, Ohm, Faraday, Bohr's postulates, the law of propagation of light, the laws of thermodynamics, and the direction of electromagnetic induction.

The world is very precise, there is no place for chaos, everything is subject to formulas. This - Matrix proof?

Fact 3. The world around us is not solid .

if you SEEMS, What solid objects around: table, chair, floor, walls then it's just your feelings. In fact nothing is solid . This is just an illusion. Your eyes, your hands, feel electric fields, which by definition are not solid. The atoms of the hand feel the atoms of the wall, and the first and second are only energy waves of different frequencies.

Explanation: Imagine computer game, where the hero walks along the corridor, the walls do not let him go left and right,

None of this really exists. No wall, no corridor, no walls, no hero. All this is code that is processed on the processor of your computer. And what does the hero feel in the game? That there are laws he cannot overcome. There are walls that he cannot break through, walks through the tunnel without falling down. Certain laws describe his world, and he obeys them.

Doesn't it remind you of anything?

We were born into our reality. There are laws that we did not create, but we obey them. There is electricity that feeds everything around. And the digital world works according to formulas.

Now it is easy to explain the following anomaly, which has baffled physicists for almost 200 years, since 1803. Read below.

What if it's a code?

Fact 4. Corpuscular-wave dualism.

Physics, 11th grade of a comprehensive school.

IN 1803 Thomas Young conducted an experiment in which he showed that light behaves in two ways, like a particle and like a wave, at the same time . That is, when you closely, closely observe the experiment, the light behaves like fine particle as soon as you stop watching, the light becomes wave. How to explain it? Very simply, returning to our “ digital universe = computer simulation of the world”and the process of information processing by the processor.

There is such a thing in programming as simple and complex drawing of details.

When you look outside in the game, nearby buildings, trees, pedestrians, grass, and cars are rendered in great detail. As soon as you leave the street, life on it stops. What does it mean? The fact that the processor does not have to process all the objects of the building, trees, pedestrians, grass and cars when you are not near them. As soon as you approach again, the processing is in full force. This saves a lot of CPU resources. .

And we return to our world and the experiment "photons - particles or waves?". Are you watching from afar? You see only an indefinite "photon" wave. You observe closely - "photons" turn into "particles". An experiment has never been solved so easily. Because 200 years ago there were no computers and similar analogy!

This also includes the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" and "Schrödinger's Cat". It's the same reality rendering effect . Like this. Scientists see that ultra-small particles behave differently than large objects behave. And it confuses them.

Experiment. 1 slot - gives 1 line of photon balls.

2 slots - give 9 lines (!!) of balls. And there should be 2!

Let's take a close look at what's going on there.

Voila! 2 slots - 2 lines on the screen. Now the "wave" has become a "particle". The paradox is solved at the expense of the observer! I just had to get close enough.

How does this manifest itself in digital technologies? Modern games are built on the principle that only what is in front of you is calculated in detail. And distant objects are always blurry.

Fact 5. DNA is the code for all living things.

DNA- Another one elegant way how can describe all living organisms . It only takes 4 nucleotides to do this: adenine "A", guanine "G", cytosine "C", and thymine "T" . There can be an infinite number of combinations of these 4 nucleotides, from the code of microscopic viruses to the codes of huge multi-ton whales.

Now the million dollar question. If we take the DNA of an individual person down to the basic building blocks, make a copy of them, create another person, will we get an identical clone? Answer - yes we get. It will differ only in character, but externally and internally it will be a copy. And if we repeat this experiment with slight modifications from each other, we will get all the inhabitants of the planet, which supposedly differ from each other by 0.0001%. Technically, it remains to collect samples, study, make copies and can be loaded back into the program. Moreover, the DNA code is too similar to the program code of any modern computer program. Isn't it obvious? You can even see when individual pieces of code are copied according to the banal principle CTRL + C - CTRL + V . Look at the colored areas.

Fact 6. Fibonacci numbers

Story. In the distant medieval Europe was a mathematician Leonardo of Pisa. He was also called fibonacci. And one day they came to him and asked what would happen if we take a couple of rabbits and put them in a cage. Each pair of rabbits makes a copy after 1 month, how many rabbits will be in the cage after a year (12 months)? He thought and said. The answer was 233 pairs of rabbits. That is, the sequence of numbers was 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 ... The next number is obtained by adding the previous two numbers. Is the story over? No.

1: 1 + 1 = 2 2: 1 + 2 = 3 3: 2 + 3 = 5 4: 3 + 5 = 8 5: 5 + 8 = 13 6: 8 + 13 = 21 7: 13 + 21 = 34 8 : 21 + 34 = 55 9: 34 + 55 = 89 ... etc.

Nowadays. An algorithm has been discovered on how to draw plants, things, objects in our computer simulation of the Universe. Starting with regular spiral shapes.

We must use a sequence of numbers, which in our reality is known as Fibonacci sequence. Here the sequence is used, when the previous one is added to each next number: " 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89″… The correct geometry in nature, for example, flowers, the structure of sunflowers, cones, sea shells, tornadoes, waves, splashes, etc. You will see how the objects diverge along the correct geometric lines from the center. Similar to Evidence Matrix in nature?

What does it look like in our world? See below.

Also, great video.

Fact 7. Fractals.

second thing became fractal geometry , discovered by the scientist Mandelbrot in 1977. Extremely simple algorithm, allowing you to get wrong geometric shapes (not Fibonacci!), but according to the simplest principle. Structures repeat themselves ad infinitum, from small to largest scale.

There is no place for Chaos. A fractal is a self-similar geometric structure , each fragment of which is repeated when zooming out.

Whether you look through a telescope or a microscope, you will see the same construction principle. Examples? Microbes, bacteria, man, mountain range - the same pattern. From small to huge.

Probably, microbes, rivers and snowflakes also taught mathematics at school ..? Or are they simply drawn by a giant processor on God's computer?

Below is a regular geometric fractal.

Explanation on the fingers.

Now our reality.

Reality. A colony of bacteria in a cup.

Reality. Satellite view of the Putorana Plateau, Russian Federation.

Reality. The human circulatory system.

Tree roots or human lungs?

Fact 8. Doubles and NPCs.

Now we need populate your simulation with people , that was not boring.

How many times has something like this happened people met their doppelgangers on the streets, on the Internet, in other countries. Moreover, these were complete copies, down to the details. We have already written. And they are not related! it is very difficult to explain such a similarity, if you do not take into account that, within the framework of the "Matrix" theory (), you do not have to be relatives in order to be 100% identical. The database of faces is still the same and players can create the same character as yours. That's the whole secret.

England + England. Copies, but not relatives.

The 'Twin Strangers Experiment'. Pictured are Karen Branigan (left) and Niamh Geaney (right).

England + Italy.

The same Twin Stranger experiment. Niamh Geaney (left) and Luisa Guizzardi (right).

More NPCs now.

Don't forget to add NPC (non-player character) . These are human programs run by a computer. They have only a couple of thoughts, a minimum of emotions, a minimum of knowledge. Do you live in a city of 100,000 people? How many people do you know well? 100, 1000? And then who are all the others, what are they doing around? Walking around, standing in lines, driving cars. They create the illusion of being populated... right?

You won't be able to talk to them . They are busy and go about their business. Consider that your social circle is limited to live players with whom "fate" and "screenwriters" will confront you. The living include: family, relatives, work colleagues, nothing more. You will not be able to take a job that is not intended for you, and I think by our age you have already understood this. Have you ever been surprised by the fact that you send out 100 resumes for a job, and only 1 employer answers you? Where do all the other resumes go? Where are all the other firms?

Who are all these people in my city?

Fact 9. What millions of people like .

or

"How to live another life"?

The computing power of the first computers was so limited that the first game looked like a square ball and rectangular platforms, hitting from the walls to the right or left. This game was called PONG«.

1972 . « PONG«.

Then the games became more complicated and improved. There are complex: shooting games, and the first drawn strategies.

1993 . DOOM and Warcraft 2. 20 years of progress.

year 2009. The era of total wars. 36 years of progress.

year 2012. MMO era. 40 years of progress.

For you IMO does not say anything? This - Massive Multiplayer Online games played by millions of people simultaneously, they all connect to the same server and see each other. This means that millions of people are simultaneously in the game and develop their characters, commanders. Second Life, World of Warcraft, World of Tanks just some of them. That is, if in the past you could command entire armies of thousands of soldiers, now you can play as an individual soldier, an individual tank on the battlefield, etc. You are looking for weapons for him, looking for armor for him, developing, improving, making him stronger.

That is, the evolution of games went like this: square games -> challenging games-> army command -> development of 1 hero in MMO world. We are one step away from our world.

Don't you think that the next stage will be games in which you live any time you are interested in (antiquity, the Middle Ages, feudalism, world war) « right in the game“feeling it from the inside, politics, betrayal, joy and love.

Moreover, modern games in terms of realistic graphics are improving at a crazy pace. Here's the engine for comparison: Unreal Engine 2015. How do you like the room and detail? You say it's a computer game?

Unreal Engine - digital graphics.

Real enough?

Graphics today. EVE: Valkyrie - 45 Years After "Pong"

Fact 10. Final argument.

And if there is opportunity and resources , then why not try to make such Game like OUR WORLD ?

Realistic, brutal by the rules of survival . Didn't make money, didn't eat. Did not eat - weakened, fell ill, died. This is a very tough game for beginners. Moreover, you should be taken care of for at least 7-10 years after birth. Otherwise, you exit the game without even starting to play.

Results: what signs computer simulation of the universe?

Our 10 :

1. Everything runs on electricity.

2. There are laws that we obey.

3. Electric fields - the illusion of a solid world.

4. DNA is a program code.

5. Corpuscular - wave dualism - detailing the surrounding world (near / far).

6. golden ratio Fibonacci: simple geometry. Shells, flowers, water, etc.

7. Fractals: complex geometry. From snowflakes to mountains, rivers, bacteria and the structure of human tissues.

8. Doubles + NPC = illusion of world population.

9. MMO - chosen by millions of people, and millions more on the way.

10. If possible, why not create such a world?

Ecology of consciousness. Life: In this discussion about whether our world is real or fictional, there is practically no other important argument ...

You've probably heard this already: our world may turn out to be a sophisticated computer simulation that makes it feel like we're living in a real universe. Recently this topic was raised by Elon Musk. And he may very well be right. But in this discussion about whether our world is real or fictional, there is practically no other important argument: it doesn't matter at all.

But first, let's see why the world can be a simulation. Similar ideas were put forward by the ancient Greeks - what we can call a computer simulation, they considered, for example, dreams. And the first thing to understand - our perception of reality does not equal reality itself. Reality is just a collection of electrical impulses interpreted by our brains. We perceive the world not directly and not in the most perfect way. If we could see the world as it is, there would be no optical illusions, no color blindness, no all sorts of tricks to mislead the brain.

Moreover, we perceive only a simplified version of this sensory information. Seeing the world as it is requires too much processing power, so our brains simplify it. He is constantly looking for patterns in the world and correlates them with our perception. Therefore, what we call reality is just an attempt by the brain to process incoming data from the senses.

And if our perception depends on this simplistic flow of information, it doesn't matter what its source is - the physical world or a computer simulation that throws the same information at us. But is it possible to create such a powerful simulation? Let's look at the universe from the point of view of physicists.

fundamental laws

From a physical point of view, The world is based on four fundamental interactions:

• strong,
• weak
• electromagnetic,
• gravitational.

They govern the behavior of all particles in the known universe. Calculating the action of these forces and simulating the simplest interactions is quite easy, and to some extent we already do it. But the more particles interacting with each other are added to this picture, the more difficult it is to model it. However, this is a matter of computing power.

Right now, we don't have enough computing power to model the entire universe. Physicists might even say that such a simulation is impossible - not because it is too difficult, but because the computer modeling the universe will be larger than this entire universe. And this is obviously an impossible task. However, there is a flaw in this logic: simulating the entire universe and making it feel like you're living in some kind of universe are not the same thing.

Many computer problems would be impossible to solve if our brains could not be fooled so easily. For example, we watch a movie or video on the Internet, which is transmitted with a delay and in fragments, but we perceive it all as one sequential stream. The logic is simple: you need to reduce the detail to a level at which an optimal compromise between quality and complexity is reached and at which the brain stops making distinctions.

There are many tricks to reduce the need for computing power when simulating the universe. The most obvious: do not process or show what no one is looking at. Another technique is to portray as if the universe is huge and limitless, although in reality it is not. This technique is used in many video games: by reducing the detail when depicting "distant" objects, we save a lot of effort and generate objects only when the player actually detects them. For example, in No Man's Sky, a huge virtual universe is generated on the fly as the player explores it.

Finally, fundamental physical principles can be introduced that make it extremely difficult or impossible to reach any other planet, which means that those who experience the simulation are locked in their own world (the speed of light, an ever-expanding universe - yeah, yeah).

If you combine these approaches with some mathematical tricks (for example, fractal geometry), you can create a fairly decent simulation of the universe, which relies on the heuristic principles of our brain. This universe seems to be infinite, but it's just a trick.

However, this in itself does not prove that - as Musk and other proponents of this idea say - we most likely live in a virtual world.

What is the argument?

Simulation and mathematics

The simulation argument was developed by the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom. It rests on several premises which, if interpreted in a certain way, lead to the conclusion that our universe is most likely a simulation. Everything is pretty simple:

1. It is quite possible to simulate the Universe (see above).

2. Each civilization either dies out (pessimistic view) before gaining the ability to simulate the universe, or loses interest in simulating, or continues to develop, reaches a technological level that allows such simulations to be created - and does it. It's just a matter of time. (Will we do the same? How about...)

3. Having reached this level, a civilization creates many different simulations. (Everyone wants to have their own universe.)

4. When the simulation reaches a certain level, it itself starts to create its own simulations (and so on).

If we analyze all this automatically, we will have to conclude that the probability of living in real world extremely small - too many potential simulations. From this point of view, it is more likely that our world is a level 20 simulation, and not the original universe.

The first time I heard this argument, I was somewhat frightened. But here's the good news: it doesn't matter.

"Reality" is just a word

We have already discussed that our perception of reality is very different from reality itself. Let's assume for a moment that our universe is indeed a computer simulation. This generates the following logical chain:

1. If the universe is just a model, it is a combination of bits and bytes, simply put, information.

2. If the universe is information, then you are information, and I am information.

3. If we are all information, then our bodies are only the embodiment of this information, a kind of avatars. The information is not tied to a specific object. It can be copied, converted, changed as you like (you only need the appropriate programming techniques).

4. Any society capable of creating a simulation of the world is also capable of giving your "personal" information a new avatar (because this requires less knowledge than simulation of the universe).

In other words, the information that defines you is not tied to your body. Philosophers and theologians have long argued about the duality of body and soul (mind, personality, etc.). So this concept is probably familiar to you.

Thus reality is information and we are information. Simulation is part of the reality that it simulates, and everything we simulate is also reality from the point of view of those we simulate. So reality is what we experience. There are quite popular theories that say that every object that we see is a projection of information from the other end of the universe, or even from another universe.

That is, if you experience something, perceive it, it is “real”. And the simulated universe is just as real as the universe that runs the simulation, since reality is determined by the content of the information - not where that information is stored. published

20, Nov, 2016

Some physicists and engineers believe that humanity lives in a virtual reality. They believe that the increasingly popular "simulation theory" will be proven in the same way that it was proved in its time that the Earth is not the center of the universe.

Sometimes, when Elon Musk isn't making plans to use his huge rocket to leave the decaying Earth and , he talks about his belief that the Earth isn't even real and we might be living in a computer simulation.

"There is only one chance in a billion that we live in the mainstream reality"

Musk, a Silicon Valley resident, is very interested in the "simulation hypothesis," which claims that what we take to be reality is actually a giant computer simulation created by more sophisticated intelligence. Sounds like the movie The Matrix? This is true.

What are the signs that we live in the "matrix"?

Sam Altman, venture capitalist and head of Y Combinator, writes in his The New Yorker profile that the two billionaires high technology are secretly hiring scientists to get us out of the simulation. But what does it mean?

The now common argument in favor of the simulation hypothesis was proposed by Oxford professor Nick Bostrom (although the idea dates back to the 17th century and belongs to René Descartes). In an article titled "Are we living in a computer simulation?" Bostrom suggests that members of a progressive "post-human" society, with sufficient computing power, could run simulations of their ancestors in the universe. This assumption has spread through observations of current trends in technology, including the rise of virtual reality and efforts to map the human brain.

Is humanity ready to create its own simulated worlds?

Suppose there is nothing supernatural about what creates consciousness, and it is just the product of a very complex architectural design in the human brain. In this case, we can reproduce it. “Soon, there will be no technical limitations standing in the way of creating machines that have their own consciousness,” said Rich Terrill, a scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

At the same time, they are becoming more and more complex, and in the future we will be able to create simulations of thinking beings in them.

“Forty years ago we had “Pong” - two triangles and a dot. Those were the games. We now have photorealistic 3D simulations that millions of people are playing at the same time. These simulators are getting better every year. And soon we will, Musk predicts.

Pong-one of the first video games. Developed by Atari in 1972. Photo: de.wikipedia.org CC BY-SA 2.0

"A few more changes and games will be indistinguishable from reality"

This point of view is shared by Terill. “If someone makes progress a few decades ahead, very soon we will become a society where artificially created creatures live in simulations in which living conditions are much more favorable than ours.”

If there are many more simulated intelligences than organic ones, then the chances that we are among real intelligences are less and less. Terill puts it this way: “If there are more digital versions of people living in simulated spaces in the future than there are now, then why not say that we are already part of it?”

Who could create a simulation of our universe?

Fragmented into parts (subatomic particles) the universe operates mathematically. It's like a pixelated video game, another reason to believe the universe is a simulation. “Even the phenomena we think of as infinite—time, energy, space, sound—have limits in size. If so, then our universe is quantifiable and has a limit. These properties allow it to be simulated,” Terill said.

“To be honest, we are most likely living in a simulation.”

So who created this simulation? "The future us," he replied pointedly.

How to understand that we are in a simulation?

Not everyone was convinced by this hypothesis. Musk Tegmark, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, answered a few questions:

- Is it logically possible that we are in a simulation?

- Are we really in a simulation?

I would say no. To make such an argument, we first need to know what fundamental laws of physics are involved in simulations. And if we are in a simulation, we have no idea about these laws. I just teach simulated laws of physics at MIT,” Tegmark explained.

Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randall is even more skeptical. “I see no reason for this. None real evidence No. It is arrogant to think that we would be what we are if we were simulated,” comments Ms. Randall.

Rich Terrill believes that realizing that we are probably living in a simulation would be the same shock that Copernicus experienced when he realized that the Earth is not the center of the universe. "It was so complex theory that they couldn't allow it." Before Copernicus, scientists tried to explain the unusual behavior of planetary movements using complex mathematical models. “Once they made the assumption, everything else became much easier to understand,” adds Rich Terrill.

Terill argues that it is easier to believe that we are living in a simulation. More difficult is that we are the first generation that rose from the mud and evolved into conscious beings. The simulation hypothesis also takes into account the peculiarities of quantum mechanics, especially the problem of measurement, on the basis of which things become certain only after observations. Tegmark does not see the point in this: "We have problems in physics, but we cannot blame the failures in solving them on the simulation."

How to test this hypothesis?

“This has been a problem for decades. Scientists have gone out of their way to eliminate the idea that we need an intelligent observer. Maybe the solution is that you really need a sentient entity like a sentient video game player,” Mr. Terrill said.

On the one hand, neuroscientists and artificial intelligence researchers can test whether it is possible to simulate human mind. So far, machines have been proven to be good at playing chess and go, correctly captioning images. However, can a machine have consciousness? We do not know.

On the other hand, scientists may try to find signs of a simulation. “Imagine that someone is simulating our universe… For some, the idea of ​​simulation will be tempting. You could find evidence for this in an experiment,” notes Tegmark.

For Terill, the simulation hypothesis has a "beautiful and deep" meaning. Photo: Unsplash , CCO

First, the hypothesis offers a scientific basis for some form of life after death or a space of reality beyond our world. “You don't need a miracle, religion or anything special to believe. It follows naturally from the laws of physics,” he says.

Secondly, it means that soon we will be able to create simulations ourselves.

"We will have the power of mind and matter, and we will be able to create anything and take over all the worlds"

Translation and adaptation Tatyana Lyulina, editorial