Is our Universe a computer simulation?

Question:In all the vast Universe there are surely more advanced peoples than us. At some point they would devise computer simulations, like we do, to discover answers to questions.

How can we be sure that all this, including ourselves, is not one of those simulations?

It would explain a lot. An unfathomable God. Illogical human behavior. Ghosts. Rhubarb pie. The question of human free will vs determinism.

(Yes I'm familiar with The Matrix and Hitchhiker's Guide)

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: In all the vast Universe there are surely more advanced peoples than us. At some point they would devise computer simulations, like we do, to discover answers to questions.

How can we be sure that all this, including ourselves, is not one of those simulations?

It would explain a lot. An unfathomable God. Illogical human behavior. Ghosts. Rhubarb pie. The question of human free will vs determinism.

(Yes I'm familiar with The Matrix and Hitchhiker's Guide)

Well, there's a fair bit to say on this one.

I've heard two separate arguments that we're living in a simulation. One is a get-out from something called the Doomsday Argument, the other is connected with something else called the anthropic principle.

First, the Doomsday Argument (see here for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_ar... In a nutshell, this goes as follows: either mankind will continue for aeons to come, or die out. If it will continue, then there will be many trillions of humans yet to be born. In which case - why am I alive now? Isn't it more likely that I would be born in the vast future? Because this is not the case, we deduce that the alternative - that humanity will die out "sometime soon" - is much more likely.

Some people have used this argument to claim that we are living in a simulation, because the argument effectively says (they say) that the fact of our existence (in this universe) is extremely unlikely.

I don't buy this reasoning, mainly because i think the doomsday argument is a load of old tosh (for reasons i won't go into here).

Secondly, the anthropic principle. scientists have noted that the physical constants - speed of light, gravitational constant, etc - seem to be finely tuned to allow life in the universe. if they were just slightly different, the laws of nature would be such that life could not emerge.

Some people claim that this is so spectacularly unlikely that there must be something else going on, and a few argue that the only explanation is we're living in a simulation.

I don't buy this argument either. Apart from plenty of other explanations - eg the Everett-Wheeler "many worlds" hypothesis - it doesn't explain why the simulation would be set up this way, in a physically improbable universe.

The "real" universe in which our simulated universe is running either:

a) has the same physical laws as us, or

b) has different physical laws.

If (a), then we've just pushed the problem back a step - why does the "real" universe have such unlikely laws so as to sustain life?

So we assume (b). In which case, wouldn't it be far easier and less suspicion-raising for them to simulate a universe with the same physical laws as their own? I'd conclude that we can't use this line of reasoning to argue we're living in a simulation.

It may be that we would never know if we're living in a simulation. If the simulation were perfect, we'd never find out unless we were told. But what if the simulation weren't perfect?

Consider: in a simulated environment running on a computer with finite processing power, there would be no point in wasting computations in simulating regions which nobody is looking at. But to me this sounds similar to the way we understand the universe to work on a quantum level, where a particle can be both "there" and "not there".

So maybe our observations of quantum phenomena are merely us inspecting the simulation to the limits of its "resolution"?

OK, I don't seriously believe that, but it's a nice thing to think about...

Edit: just noticed your name. Is that from "The Prisoner"? Though it was never fully explained, that may all have been a simulation - inside Number 6's head...

It very well could be. Among other theories I have heard it makes as much sence as any of them.

No, and seeking an alternative to reality is a fool's errand.

I would like to think it is.

But our technology is still far from the "perfect" reality. Perfection, it seems, is open ended, and there's really no perfection at all.

Is perfection just a pipe dream?

I'm not sure they call it computer or simulation, but it's definitely something like that. I think our Universe is just a very tiny part of that computer program though; a virus maybe. Indeed, life is a disease!0!

All truths are easy to understand once we discover them, the point is to discover them...G.G.

Good luck!

well I am eating Indian cusine & I simply cannot imagine these flavors are fabricated of numbers.

Religion does strike heavily, true.

Would it make sense (in a slightly skewed, 'left-turn' sort of argument) that, given the program that God wrote and was violated by a spiritual virus, all functionality of the 'program' would be off-target in comparison to the original intent?
That the spiritual anti-virus has to be applied per instantiation?

And I'll defend the rhubarb pie - it CAN be made quite yummy...

I think it's definitely an existential possibility. We wouldn't have any way of knowing existence is a simulation unless the programmers let us in on it. It's more likely than any of the magic sky daddy hypotheses.

The universe could be a computer simulation, if by 'computer' you meant an equation processor. The word universe refers to the idea that all of the universe contains sound. I believe the Universe computes actions to simulate the reactions, but I'm not sure.
A computer uses light and electrons to simulate an equation.
The Universe animates matter and electrons to simulate an equation.

The message I got from The matrix and Hitchhiker's Guide was: the man is trying to control people. What do you think?