Is there any scientific evidence disproving the notion we are part of a vast simulation run by an advanced civilisation?
Nick Canning
Coleraine, County Londonderry, UK
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What sort of simulation are you considering? The Matrix films envisioned a large, multiplayer “game” in which protagonists existed both within the game, in the form of simulated information, and outside the simulation, as flesh and blood.
But how do you know that this second level isn’t part of a larger simulation? An infinite regression is thus possible, invoking ever larger simulations and requiring ever larger computing resources (memory, processing power and energy consumption).
However, considerations of the information content – for the resolution and extent of the simulation required for the whole universe potentially experienced by over 8 billion independent consciousnesses and their interactions, let alone all the other species and objects in the world – gives us pause. This would be comparable to the information content within a black hole.
If a simulator attains the size required to run the simulation of 8 billion minds, it would collapse behind an event horizon
If a simulator attains the size, mass and energy consumption required to run the simulation, it would collapse under its own gravity behind an event horizon. This makes the hypothesis highly unlikely!
Mike Follows
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, UK
The simulation hypothesis was first mooted by Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at the University of Oxford. It argues that we are all likely to be living in a scaled-up version of something like The Truman Show, a film released in 1998 starring Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank.
However, whereas Truman was living on a physical film set watched by millions of TV viewers, we would all be acting out our lives as 0s and 1s inside a highly sophisticated computer model, our interactions and perceptions of the world around us dictated by algorithms written into the software by an advanced civilisation.
Whether we will ever be able to test this hypothesis might depend on future advances in science and technology. In the meantime, it would depend on us spotting detectable “glitches” as Truman Burbank did.
Bernd-Juergen Fischer
Berlin, Germany
I’m afraid there cannot be any scientific evidence that proves that we aren’t part of a simulation, because if you presented me with such a “proof”, I would simply say: “Now look how clever the simulation is!”
And, of course, a perfect simulation of some “reality” by the inmates of that reality would be required to have us believe that we live in the reality, because otherwise the simulation wouldn’t be perfect.
A reader of New Scientist complained recently that she might as well stop sorting her bottles and cans if she lived in a simulation (Letters, 7 September). Don’t! Even if you aren’t saving the real world, you are saving the simulation, and either way that is all you have got.
Do Kester
Zuidhorn, The Netherlands
Science is driven by the notion that it should explain nature in as simple terms as possible. This principle, known as Occam’s razor, is named after the medieval monk William of Ockham. As he stated it: “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily”.
Let us look at the entities in two theories: the universe is as it seems, containing about 1080 particles, or the universe is a simulation of 1080 particles inside a computer run by an advanced civilisation. Assuming this civilisation is physical, it lives in a universe of similar dimensions. These universes not only contain particles, but also structure – galaxies, stars, planets, life, brains, civilisations, technologies – making the theories even more complicated.
It is obvious that the second theory needs vastly more entities than the first: an extra universe of entities, while they don’t explain anything new.
So as long as no “Easter eggs” pop up among the stars saying “Ha ha, you are a simulation”, the scientific choice would be with Occam.
Herman D’Hondt
Sydney, Australia
While many people consider a vast simulation possible, or even likely, I am struck by the significance of the fact that, if it were true, we are being simulated by “someone”.
The scientist in me would then ask the question: what makes you think that our simulator is real? There is no reason to expect that our simulator is the be-all and end-all. Who simulates the simulator? Where does it stop?
Or, with apologies to , is it simulators all the way down?
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