It’s a plot device beloved by science fiction: our entire universe might be a simulation running on some advanced civilization’s supercomputer. But new research from UBC Okanagan has mathematically proven this isn’t just unlikely—it’s impossible.
Dr. Mir Faizal, Adjunct Professor with UBC Okanagan’s Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, and his international colleagues, Drs. Lawrence M. Krauss, Arshid Shabir and Francesco Marino have shown that the fundamental nature of reality operates in a way that no computer could ever simulate.
Their findings, published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, go beyond simply suggesting that we’re not living in a simulated world like The Matrix. They prove something far more profound: the universe is built on a type of understanding that exists beyond the reach of any algorithm.
“It has been suggested that the universe could be simulated. If such a simulation were possible, the simulated universe could itself give rise to life, which in turn might create its own simulation. This recursive possibility makes it seem highly unlikely that our universe is the original one, rather than a simulation nested within another simulation,” says Dr. Faizal. “This idea was once thought to lie beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. However, our recent research has demonstrated that it can, in fact, be scientifically addressed.”
Why would it be unlikely for us to be an end point, though? assuming an infinite chain from all spawned universes is kinda just silliness, imho.
If this is some big deal simulation (as in not common or easy, but like one simulation per universe) it would need several rounds of testing with simpler or randomized states to ensure it even works well enough for full prod. Sure those universes probably wouldn’t be maintained indefinitely, but from the inside it would be identical. There would necessarily be several of these -per chain link-. Plus if it’s for research, why wouldn’t they try simulating “impossible” universes with different physics than their own? I mean we do it, and we are nowhere near this level of complexity.
If simulation becomes trivially easy in just some of the universes, though… Everyone who plays sandboxy games plays through several really shit runs while they figure out what they are doing, before finally getting somewhere. And then half the time those runs get abandoned as well for whatever reason (like having a killer new idea, or some event happened that can’t be recovered from). I see no reason universe simulation, should it get trivially easy, would be any different. Some game which entities set up and play out, or abandon for something better… or maybe they are fucking around with mods and just testing stuff out so it doesn’t need to be complete in that way. (e.g. in rimworld a dev test map is tiny, and spawns with zero configurations, just random simplified spawning to test things, and you may need to spawn dozens of these to sort out issues.)
And if that’s the case, that for any reason there are far more end points than links in chains (like tassel fringe rather than chain), I see no reason to assume we would have physics that allow us to be a link rather than an end, since ends would be infinitely more common.