Features, Not Bugs

The universe is full of fascinating physics that have been experimentally confirmed but are still far from fully explained.

In an unpublished paper, circa 2018, titled The P2P Simulation Hypothesis and Meta-Problem of Everything, University of Tampa philosopher Marcus Arvan argues that many of the most confounding aspects of physics could be reasonably explained by our universe being the result of a specific simulation structure.

Our world has a wide variety of deeply perplexing physical and philosophical features. Consider physics. At present, our two best theories of fundamental physics are the General Theory of Relativity, which explains gravitation, and Quantum Mechanics, which explains all other known forces. Both theories have been systematically confirmed by experiment—yet both theories tell us our world’s physics is incredibly strange.

General Relativity tells us that:

  • Space and time are relative to observers: simultaneous events in one reference frame are non-simultaneous from another, time moves at different rates depending on the observer’s frame of reference, and the physical properties of objects in spacetime (e.g. their length) depends on the observer’s reference-frame.
  • The physical world has a ‘speed-limit’: no information can travel faster than light.

Quantum mechanics, in turn, tells us that all of the following are true of our world:

  • Quantum superposition: every particle simultaneously exists in many different eigenstates (i.e. a superposition of different space-time locations and properties).
  • Quantum indeterminacy: the eigenvalue a particle will be observed to have upon measurement is indeterminate, in that the value can in principle only be predicted probabilistically.
  • Wave-particle duality: every individual particle simultaneously has properties of particle (existing at a particular point) and a wave (spread out over space and time).
  • Wave-function collapse: observation of a particle (or measurement of quantum system it is a part of) leads the wave-like features of a particle (viz. the particle’s superposition) to ‘collapse’ to a single observed value (i.e. the observed properties of the particle).
  • Quantum entanglement: particles arbitrary distances apart can become entangled, such that changing the physical properties of one particle will instantaneously change the other particle’s properties without any observable exchange of information.
  • Minimum space-time distance: there is a minimum space-time distance below which space and time themselves have no physical meaning (the Planck Length).
  • Quantum retrocausality: measurements of a quantum system can have observable effects on the system earlier in time, causing wave-function collapse before the measurement is taken.

These features of our world are incredibly bizarre—yet they are implied by the equations of quantum mechanics, and quantum mechanics been systematically confirmed by experiment.

The simulation structure that Arvan advocates as an explanation for these phenomena is a peer-to-peer (P2P) arrangement.

[…] a particular kind of simulation—peer-to-peer networked (P2P) simulations—actually replicate our world’s relativistic and quantum-mechanical physical features due to the computational structure of peer-to-peer networking itself. For consider what a P2P simulation is. In contrast to dedicated server simulations—where there is a central computer representing the spatio-temporal locations of all objects in the simulation—a P2P simulation has no central computer at all: instead, a P2P simulation is simply a network of independent simulations interacting with each other. In a P2P simulation, each ‘user’ only ever experiences their simulation, and ‘the physical world’ that all users experience in common is just a superposition of all of the simulations interacting on the network.

Arvan ultimately uses the paper to argue that the P2P simulation hypothesis is the best explanation to holistically explain a wide variety of physics and metaphysics mysteries that otherwise don’t seem to have an obvious means of unificiation.

– – — – –

While it may be possible to discover if we’re living in a simulated virtual world, it seems we’re still far from actually doing so. One thing seems certain, however: even though our understanding of virtual reality, quantum computing, and AI is rudimentary compared to what would likely be needed to simulate an entire universe, eventually doing so in the far future seems entirely likely based on what we currently understand about reality.

Leading us to have to seriously consider… will we be the first beings in the universe to reach the necessary technological capability to run countless numbers of such simulations? Or are we one of many simulations already ongoing by beings that got there first?

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Finding out might not be a great idea, actually. Philosopher Preston Greene has argued that discovering that we’re in a simulated universe could lead to the end of the universe itself.

Think of it this way. If a researcher wants to test the efficacy of a new drug, it is vitally important that the patients not know whether they’re receiving the drug or a placebo. If the patients manage to learn who is receiving what, the trial is pointless and has to be canceled.

In much the same way, as I argue in a forthcoming paper in the journal Erkenntnis, if our universe has been created by an advanced civilization for research purposes, then it is reasonable to assume that it is crucial to the researchers that we don’t find out that we’re in a simulation. If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation—to destroy our world.

So, are you taking the blue pill, and continuing to believe that our world is the real world—or the red pill, and wondering how deep the rabbit hole goes?
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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • kontis

    I doesn’t go two ways.
    We may be able to find out for sure that we live in a simulation one day.
    But we will never be able to find out for sure that we DON’T live in a simulation.

    In other words: it’s possible to prove that something is real, but it’s not possible to prove that something isn’t real.

    You can replace the word “simulation” with “God” or millions of other concepts created by your imagination.

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    • Nothing to see here

      Since we have just created computer simulations, we naturally project this new exciting technology over reality to explain it. Perhaps post singularity, people will assume that the AI is actually god and wonder if it created us and everything else in the universe.

      • Jistuce

        It is actually a hypothesis that predates electricity.

        It is just an untestable hypothesis as we have no way of knowing whether the universe naturally works under insane rules or if the universe is a pile of poorly-debugged spaghetti code full of ugly speed hacks.

        • Craig Anderson

          ancient texts might be the OG stackoverflow

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      In other words: it’s possible to prove that something is real

      That is not trivial, as any observation you make for that proof is based on the idea that you can actually make an observation. That idea crumbles the moment you cannot first verify that you actually exist and are not just a simulation or illusion created to believe that you made that observation.

      The whole approach described in the article works around this problem by looking at sort of the quantum granularity of the universe. Which of course again assumes that this granularity applies to any universe, including any that might simulate ours. [They probably covered this somewhere.] Even if it’s true, this still doesn’t allow to prove that something is real, it only allows to prove that it is not a simulation.

      • Albert Anon

        Logically, even if they could prove String Theory, you could say that the “stings” were the equivalent of pixels in a TV or computer monitor and still be uncertain if it was natural or simulated.

    • Cl

      Unless the universe has a good alibi.

  • Nothing to see here

    One aspect of a simulation is that we, as observers in the simulation, may have limitations which prevent us from noticing otherwise obvious errors in the simulation. GTA V has an obvious error which is only obvious once you notice it. When two or more players can see the location of the train as it travels around the track in the game, that’s where it is located for all players in the game. Nice and consistent. However if only one player can see the train, the train will appear on the track in front of them when they look in that direction. The train could have appeared anywhere on the track but since there are no observers in the other locations, those locations are not simulated so the train must appear when the user first looks towards any potential location it could appear. It makes you wonder if there are any such errors in our simulation, if we we are living in one, that we simply don’t notice?

    • Bob

      50/50. Either we are in a simulation, or this could this actually be the original timeline of physics based reality which leads into simulations. Either way, I don’t mind :)

      • david vincent

        Since countless simulated realities can exist simultaneously when only one “real reality” is possible (by definition), you could think us living in a simulation is much more probable.

        • Bob

          But those countless simulated realities cannot exist if the timeline we are living in is the only one. Your statement only makes sense in a universe of multiple timelines or rather the existence of “parallel universes”.

          • Jistuce

            It stands to reason that if someone can simulate a world, they can simulate more than one world at a time. We already KNOW multiple simulations can be run on one subject within one timeline, because it is how we operate today(albeit with much smaller-scale simulations).
            Hence, if there’s a simulated world, there are MANY simulated worlds within a single real world. Thus, we could be in any of numerous simulations or in the single “real world”. Thus meaning the odds are weighted against us being in “the real world”.

            You’re conflating parallel realities with simulations.

            I do agree with you that it doesn’t matter, though. Whatever reality we exist in, it is real to us. But if it is a simulation, then I have some harsh words for the administrator.

          • Bob

            The second point I made was referring to the fact that if the reality we are all living in right now is not simulated then we clearly don’t have the technological capability to simulate. That is potentially a far future capability which goes back to my original point where there are two possibilities.

            But you’re right; conflation with timelines and simulations is apparent here. Watching The Matrix and Avengers: Endgame back-to-back has jumbled my brain somewhat :)

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    René Descartes is sitting at the bar. The bar keeper asks him “Another beer?”. Descartes replies “I don’t think so …” and disappears.

    [Hint: It’s a philosophy joke about verifying one’s existence referring to his most famous quote.]

    I will have to stick with Descartes due to s lack of equipment for checking inconsistencies at subatomic level. Based on that I assume that I’m still using a Quest 2 instead of the more advanced Quest 2000 just simulating it. If I’m wrong here, could my simulation please be upgraded to at least a Quest 5 or any model with acceptable weight distribution?

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    • I loved the joke

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  • get lost

    This simulation conspiracy is so ridiculous. Anyway, you can find out easy if it is or not. Just take a dump, if your s**t is disgusting stinky, is it probably not a simulation…

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      You are obviously familiar with the first VR implementation of this fool proof test, “Totally Accurate Toilet Simulator” from 2013 for the Oculus Rift DK1.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7R0Z_FgLDY

    • Tabp

      I was thinking the same thing about how s***ty this universe’s game design is.

    • Nicholas

      That’s what they want you to believe in order to not disrupt the simulation!

  • Kevin White

    “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”

    I see the Simulation Hypothesis world as existing within two primary branches. One is the Ancestor Simulation — something, maybe past humans, maybe unrecognizable aliens — created a simulation that we’re now existing within. This is the Musk / Matrix / Bostrom idea. The other is the Tom Campbell (My Big TOE) / Tegmark idea of the universe itself as the result of processing and really, despite our inability to really comprehend it, as the best model for uniting our observations of Newtonian, relativistic, and quantum observations.

    The latter has far broader implications but also asks the listener to accept far less about everyday reality. In fact, the latter helps unite not only disparate physical observations but idealism and materialism. For example, I consider myself an anthropic mechanist because I think consciousness / ideation / the umwelt is entirely a manifestation of predictable biological–>chemical–>physics–>mathematical phenomena — i.e., there is no “soul.” So this sounds very materialist. However, I am deeply interested (in a “pop sci” way — I’m not a trained physicist) in the concept of the physical universe as a manifestation that doesn’t resolve until it needs to, which sounds unbearably idealistic to some people.

    Personally, I enjoy the odd fictional diversion into the ancestor simulation idea, but I don’t take it seriously. I’m far more interested in advancing our understanding of how the universe works and how consciousness and ideation works and what models best describe these things.

    I also really love stuff by people like Andrew Gallimore, Steveh Lehar, Don Hoffman, David Eagleman, and Joscha Bach. And I’ve given the Fair Wind Films documentary “The Simulation Hypothesis” on DVD as a gift on several occasions, just to get people thinking.

    • Kevin White

      Also, if you read this far and want a bit of fun, I recommend this short story: https://qntm.org/responsibility

    • Cl

      Maybe its like rick and morty. Its actually a game and you live your whole life. When you die you wake up and it has only been a short amount of time. Maybe we are aliens in outerspace and have nothing better to do than play this game.

      • Kevin White

        Possible. Not probable, but possible. I do think there’s an element of the “we can’t be descendants in an ancestor simulation our countless similar simulations, we’re the REAL ones” even if in the fullness of time (50 years, 500 years, 5,000 years?… just add time) we become capable of simulating all that we experience now idea that sounds fairly anthropocentric — similar in a way to creation myths (“we’re special because the world was created for us”) or geocentrism (“we’re special because the heavens revolve around us”). This is mentioned in Bostrom’s Simulation Argument — if there are thousands of simulations, or even thousands of generations of simulations or even many nested layers of simulations, than the chance that we are the “original” or “top-level” simulation approaches zero.

        But then again, the idea that a simulation was set up for us (whatever “we” are), even if there are countless similar ones, is itself anthropocentric (rather than that we’re just a predictable and ordinary consequence of the processing that goes on outside our reality frame across the entire “observable universe” — like complicated but not unexpected or unique versions of the cast-off “gliders” in Conway’s cellular simulation The Game of Life).

        Look into the recent observations on temporal entanglement, and then think of how time exists within, say, a game world vs. how it exists for the code and processors that produce that game world (where there can be little corollary between the two), This kind of mirrors the way we might reconcile our macro physics observations with many of our quantum observations and relate that to a game world.

        For example, in GTA V the game world contains physics and time that essentially only exist within that simulation. The code / processing creates the three dimensions of space and the physics rules that govern how matter and energy within the simulation interact, but the code / processing exists completely outside that reality frame. So imagine the AI routines within GTA V eventually having the ability to develop tools to peer into the fabric of what actually creates the pixels, polygons, the arrow of time, the physics rules, and discovering that when you look closely enough you start to observe phenomena that do not seem to conform to the known physics of your simulation.

        Two “particles” separated by a large distance — say, south of Los Santos and northern San Andreas — can be entangled because to the code / processor there is no such distance. The dimensions of space that separate those two “particles” only exist within the simulation and those dimensions don’t even make sense in a dimensional way from a code / processor standpoint. The code / processor exist outside of the reality frame being created BY the code / processor. Further, these amazing AI routines with their new science and new tools are able to observe that the things that their world is composed of at a base level (bits of code, the output of math processing) don’t seem to coalesce into being until they need to do so, so these new tools let the AIs view that process happening or not happening and produce perplexing observations that rock their world and open a whole new understanding of how “real” things (that have continuity and mass and dimension within the simulation) are seemingly created from things that do not appear to be “real” within the simulation.

        But this ^ is more about the second branch of the Simulation Hypothesis, not so much the Ancestor Simulation branch. Or perhaps it brings together the two branches.

        Finally, there is my favorite Fermi Paradox / Drake’s Equation solver: the Stay At Home Civilization. That is, the reason we don’t see a universe teeming with life (so far) is that sufficiently advanced civilizations don’t expand beyond their own star and instead turn inward and create a perceptually limitless digital metaverse instead. So they may harvest most or all of the energy of their local start (via Dyson construct), but with that secured, the cost of venturing beyond exceeds its benefit vs. using the star’s energy to stay home inside an infinite universe of their own creation. I recommend the Isaac Arthur vid of the same name (Stay At Home Civilizations).

      • Kevin White

        Trying this again — pasting from “Detected as spam” from my Disqus dashboard.

        Possible. Not probable, but possible. I do think there’s an element
        of the “we can’t be descendants in an ancestor simulation our countless
        similar simulations, we’re the REAL ones” even if in the fullness of
        time (50 years, 500 years, 5,000 years?… just add time) we become
        capable of simulating all that we experience now idea that sounds fairly
        anthropocentric — similar in a way to creation myths (“we’re special
        because the world was created for us”) or geocentrism (“we’re special
        because the heavens revolve around us”). This is mentioned in Bostrom’s Simulation Argument — if there are thousands of simulations, or even thousands of generations of simulations or even many nested layers of simulations, than the chance that we are the “original” or “top-level”simulation approaches zero.

        But then again, the idea that a simulation was set up for us (whatever “we” are), even if there are countless similar ones, is itself anthropocentric (rather than that we’re just a predictable and ordinary consequence of the processing that goes on outside our reality frame across the entire “observable universe” — like complicated but not unexpected or unique versions of the cast-off “gliders” in Conway’s cellular simulation The Game of Life).

        Look into the recent observations on temporal entanglement, and then think of how time exists within, say, a game world vs. how it exists for the code and processors that produce that game world (where there can be little corollary between the two), This kind of mirrors the way we might reconcile our macro physics observations with many of our quantum observations and relate that to a game world.

        For example, in GTA V the game world contains physics and time that essentially only exist within that simulation. The code / processing creates the three dimensions of space and the physics rules that govern how matter and energy within the simulation interact, but the code / processing exists completely outside that reality frame. So imagine the AI routines within GTA V eventually having the ability to develop tools to peer into the fabric of what actually creates the pixels, polygons, the arrow of time, the physics rules, and discovering that when you look closely enough you start to observe phenomena that do not seem to conform to the known physics of your simulation.

        Two “particles” separated by a large distance — say, south of Los Santos and northern San Andreas — can be entangled because to the code / processor there is no such distance. The dimensions of space that separate those two “particles” only exist within the simulation and those dimensions don’t even make sense in a dimensional way from a code / processor standpoint. The code / processor exist outside of the reality frame being created BY the code / processor. Further, these amazing AI routines with their new science and new tools are able to observe that the things that their world is composed of at a base level (bits of code, the output of math processing) don’t seem to coalesce into being until they need to do so, so these new tools let the AIs view that process happening or not happening and produce perplexing observations that rock their world and open a whole new understanding of how “real” things (that have continuity and mass and dimension within the simulation) are seemingly created from things that do not appear to be “real” within the simulation.

        But this ^ is more about the second branch of the Simulation Hypothesis, not so much the Ancestor Simulation branch. Or perhaps it brings together the two branches.

        Finally, there is my favorite Fermi Paradox / Drake’s Equation solver: the Stay At Home Civilization. That is, the reason we don’t see a universe teeming with life (so far) is that sufficiently advanced civilizations don’t expand beyond their own star and instead turn inward and create a perceptually limitless digital metaverse instead. So they may harvest most or all of the energy of their local start (via Dyson construct), but with that secured, the cost of venturing beyond exceeds its benefit vs. using the star’s energy to stay home inside an infinite universe of their own creation. I recommend the Isaac Arthur vid of the same name (Stay At Home Civilizations).

      • Jistuce

        Rick and Morty? That was a Red Dwarf episode.

        • Cl

          It was also a rick and morty episode. Doesnt matter if another show did it first.

    • Kevin White

      If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, did it make a sound?

      If an event occurs that produces vibratory waves through a medium but no neurons exist to convert those waves into an ideation we call “sound,” was there sound?

      No. Sound only exists because a brain of some sort creates it. Even if recording equipment records the “sound” for later playback, that equipment isn’t recording “sound” because the sound doesn’t exist until later playback in the presence of a brain of some sort. The equipment is recording a waveform (in digital or analog) which is an observable physical phenomena but that is not “sound.”

      If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to FEEL it, did it create tactile sensations? No, of course not. Tactile sensations only exist, as a way to create an ideation of the interaction of matter, because a brain of some sort creates them. To be sure, matter interacted when the tree fell, but with no brain there to feel the tactile sensations of that event, no tactile sensations were created.

      • Cl

        Well, idk what happened. I tried to reply to your last comment with a long post, then the page froze up. Lost it all and i dont even see the comment you posted. Not going to write it out again… did you delete the comment?

        • Kevin White

          No, I didn’t delete anything. It looks like it was deleted FOR me by Disqus. Very aggravating. If I click on my name I can see my reply post which has a “Detected as spam” flag on it now. Not sure whether that was automated or if somebody manually flagged the post. Sorry.

  • Marc MacInnis

    “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” ~Douglas Adams

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      God’s Final Message to His Creation: ‘We apologize for the inconvenience.”

      ~Douglas Adams

    • FrankB

      I always thought Douglas had it all figured out anyway.

    • Jistuce

      “Multiple times.”

    • Albert Anon

      You know, since some theorize that we may have originated from a black or white hole, I recently got the very scary and unsettling thought that since at this time it seems that the Universe is expanding at an ever faster rate, and it could be 500 times bigger than we can detect at this time and don’t know where it’s going or leading to, what if we were still in the “Big Bang” or “Big Birth” as some DNA piece like piece or part of a singular genetic organism, and we’re just getting ready to be developed enough for the whole organism that we are, and we are part of, to be birthed. I can’t really verbalize it well enough, but believe me, at the time it was cosmic mystical and cosmic scary.

  • Ad

    The matrix is a little different since they have real bodies. It also has a million plot holes; it’s established that they live in a simulation of the 90s, but also that the simulation has presumably been running for truly insane amounts of time that a human could be born and be a glitch of the actual universe multiple times. And they all live in one simulation but never seem to understand that it’s always been the 90s and always will be.

    • Cl

      I thought the “one” comes by every so often and the machines wipe everyone out and reset the system? Something along those lines, i havent seen the movie for a while.

      • Ad

        They do, but it’s shown that he always looks and acts like neo and does the same series of events. That sounds like the same human combination of real world DNA pops up, which implies like billions of years.

  • But if we are in a simulation, all the tools that we are using to measure stuff have been provided by the simulation, so they could be developed so that not to make us understand the truth. What I am saying is that we are in a closed system, with its own rules, trying to understand that actually there is an outside system… how can we do that if we don’t know the rules of the “real” world? We are just using the knowledge we gained inside the simulation, but maybe it is all false.

    I’ll explain myself with an example: if Mario has always lived in a 2D world, how can he imagine that there is a 3rd dimension? He has no tools in his world to understand that

    • david vincent

      “if Mario has always lived in a 2D world, how can he imagine that there is a 3rd dimension”
      That’s exactly the problematic treated in “Flatland” (Abbot). Great read.

    • Jistuce

      We’re attempting to develop an Arbitrary Code Execution exploit so we can TAS our way out of the Mario simulation’s sandbox.

  • RonnieV

    That would explain all the bugs.

  • david vincent

    “discovering that we’re in a simulated universe could lead to the end of the universe itself”
    Running our own universe simulations could have the same result… Since no computer has infinite calculation power, you can’t have simulations running into a simulation running into a simulation, etc. infinitely.

    • Cl

      How do you know there isnt computers with infinite calculation power in the future? Thats the problem we dont know anything.

      • david vincent

        Because computing power is limited by physics. You can’t have infinite computing power without infinite resources. The speed of light is also another physics limitation.

        • Jistuce

          That assumes our physics are exactly the same as the hypothetical universe simulating our universe.

          • david vincent

            An universe with infinite speed of information travel (so there is no causality – it means all events can happen at the same time) and where beings can manipulate infinite resources ? That’s heavy metaphysical speculation there. At this point you can just as well invoke God…

          • Jistuce

            Practically speaking, the sysadmin of a simulation would be indistinguishable from God.

          • david vincent

            Indeed he would be like a demiurge, at least. Potentially omniscient and omnipotent – he can set his simulation to a pause when he wants and have all the time to watch, change stuff, etc.
            But still a limited god because he wouldn’t have infinite time, workforce, calculation power, etc.

    • Kevin White

      While it is true we’ll never have machines that could simulate the exact Planck Length-accurate position of every particle in our known universe every trillions of times per second, that limitation applies to the physics inherent in our universe — in our reality frame. It doesn’t preclude that we could still run unfathomably complex simulations of our own (just not as complex as our own universe) and it doesn’t preclude that our universe, with its physics limitations, isn’t being run on another layer that exists outside of our physics / reality frame with different physical limitations.

  • Jonathan Winters III

    Of course the universe, and everything you observe, is a simulation, and we are also. Which would explain why we behave exactly like logic programs.

  • VRFriend

    Stupid. Everything is a simulation this way. By the way. Who cares if we live in simulation or not? Does not matter. We breathe, eat, think. Those scientists have no data and will never have.

    • benz145

      This is a strangely cynical take.

      • Jistuce

        I’d call it practical more than cynical. Whether our reality is “real” or not is likely impossible to prove, but it doesn’t matter because it is the only reality we have.

  • kalqlate

    Wave function collapse is only “true” in the Copenhagen and related INTERPRETATIONS of quantum mechanics.

  • dk

    lol yeah what’s next researching if the universe started as is 5 min ago or any other useless unfalsifiable claim out there ….I mean as long as they have free time or funding …go nuts ….I wouldn’t bet on anything being discovered since we can’t even figure out effects we know about

  • Nicholas

    Facebook has come a long way with their neural interface. In fact they high jacked your mind the very first day you put on your quest. In reality I am now a click farm slave.

  • david vincent

    Since countless simulated realities can exist simultaneously when only one “real reality” is possible (by definition), you could think us living in a simulation is much more probable

  • Trenix

    Scientists have way too much time on their hands and get funded for outrageous things. Religious people have been saying since forever that we’re spirits inside bodies that are mere vessels. We have numerous of life after death experiences throughout all different cultures that have similarities, a third perspective is a big one. Where people can hear and see despite having no brain functionality. We don’t even comprehend dreams, they’re a reality of their own.

    What exactly do you even define as a simulation? Senses? Some can’t see and can’t feel. Also what is considered to be real? Schizophrenics see things that aren’t there, are they not real just because everyone else doesn’t see it? So of course we live in a simulation, our brain simulates our reality. Maybe we eventually have a unifying reality once we die, who knows. We won’t ever know.

    • Rosko

      What a load of nonsense.

  • Rosko

    There will never be such a simulation, there will not be enough gfx cards left.

  • Rosko

    Why would we create such a sim? I know some sims are dull but i wouldnt fancy a sim where you could burn to death and actualy feel it. And what hsppens when you die? You get reincarnated as a cat? Or are cats ai? There is nothing in science that indicates we may be a simulation, pure philosophical fantasy.

  • JB1968

    BTW have you noticed our perceived sense of time is different while in VR? I suspect this may have something to do with the always present “fight with death” symbol. Maybe creation of nested VR simulations to slow down perceived time and “escape the death” is the common aim of the beings that in the end created (and now live thru our bodies) in our current reality.The more deep you can go the longer you think your life is, but anyway in the end death always wins.

  • guest

    VR porn!

    • Jistuce

      Seconded!

  • tpbeta

    Wave-function collapse is a form of foveated rendering. Isn’t that obvious? Both systems only render that which is observed.

  • Marcus Arvan

    Many thanks for discussing my work. I just want to quickly note that the unpublished paper referenced here is based upon two earlier peer-reviewed journal articles. They are available here:

    ‘A New Theory of Free Will’ – https://philpapers.org/rec/ARVANT-2

    ‘A Unified Explanation of Quantum Phenomena? The Case for the Peer‐to‐Peer Simulation Hypothesis as an Interdisciplinary Research Program’ – https://philpapers.org/rec/ARVAUE

    • Thank you!

    • benz145

      Awesome, thanks for pointing these out!

  • Ardra Diva

    people who think we live in a computer simulation need to set their device down and come out of the mental matrix. Go camping or something. Get away from the internet. You’ll discover true reality again.

  • Awesome read. Always good to reread the quantum mechanics stuff.

  • In the following sentence, who is “we”?

    Is it you? What if you fail to convince “us”?

    “If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation—to destroy our world.”

  • Nicholas

    I want a refund.

  • Erik

    So we keep asking ourselves these questions because technology gives us the chances to produce simulated worlds and explore possibilities . How we experience VR right now is just a tiny small step of what is really coming in the next decades. What about this: this might be an endless process. So, the ‘people’ who control our simulated world are also living in a simulated world who one day got their technology so far they could create the world as wé know it. This could have been going on for ages. It’s an absolute mindf*ck!