Is our Universe just one big computer simulation?

Question

Let's imagine that one day we manage to make a computer as intelligent as a human being, in the sense that it can improve itself through accumulating, processing and making knowledge useful. A self-building, self-sustaining machine whose main priority is to expand into the environment (solar system, galaxy, universe), learn about it and harness energy in order to fuel further improvements and expansion. It runs physics simulations of other Universes and how they would evolve based on certain initial conditions in order to better understand its own Universe. 

Now imagine this machine was created in a different Universe than ours and our Universe is actually a simulation being run in one of these machines. Perhaps even those machines have also risen to existence within another simulation. A simulation within a simulation. Perhaps this is a window into fractal computing. Infinite computing power being the goal of the beings on top?

There is a digital-like nature to our Universe in the Planck scale/quantum theory. Any thoughts?

nyphdinmd · Accepted Answer

It's a nice bit of metaphysics and utterly untestable.  As to the "digital" aspect of the quantum level, I think that is stretching an analogy quite a bit.  Computing is done with ones and zeros, those are teh only two building blocks for computer code.  The subatomic world however has letons, mesons, and baryons with mesons and baryons being made up of quarks.  There are six types of quarks with different masses and electrical charges.  There are also different leptons - electrons, photons, neutrinos, and muons each with different masses (photons and neutrinos are massless) and electrical charges and spins.  Certainly it's a more complex palette than the choice of one or zero.

So, you have a nice bit of philosphy here, but I don't believe you answer any fundamental question.  It's another form of the (flat) earth sits on the back of a giant turtle who sits in a vast sea which is found on another huge slab of land (ancient explanation for how the flat earth worked).

neil s · Answer

No, or there would be nobody to experience the illusion. Thus, something in the universe must be real - us.

Trending News

Is our Universe just one big computer simulation?

2 Answers