Are We Living in a Simulation

Physicists have long struggled to explain why the universe started out with conditions suitable for life to exist and grow. For example, why do physical laws take the very specific values that allow stars, planets, and, ultimately, life to develop?

A common answer is that we live in an infinite multi‑verse of universes, so we shouldn’t be surprised that at least one of them has turned out as ours. But there might be another answer. It is that our universe is a computer simulation.

The idea is actually not that new. In 1989, American physicist John Wheeler suggested that the universe is fundamentally mathematical and can be seen as emerging from innovation. He coined the famous phrase “it from bit.”

In a 2013 paper, the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom from the University of Oxford introduced his simulation hypothesis, which argues that it is highly probable that we live in a simulation. That’s because an advanced civilization (perhaps an alien species) reached a point where its technology is so clever that simulations would be completely indistinguishable from reality.

Seth Lloyd from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took the hypothesis to the next level by suggesting that the entire universe could be a giant quantum computer (量子计算机). And in 2016, business giant Elon Musk concluded that “we’re most likely in a simulation” at the Code Conference.

There is some evidence suggesting that our physical reality could be a simulated virtual reality rather than a(n) real objective world that exists independently of the observer.

Any virtual reality world will be based on information processing. That means everything is ultimately digitized or pixelated down to a (n) smallest size that cannot be subdivided further. This appears to be like our reality, according to the theory of quantum mechanics (量子力学), which rules the world of atoms and particles (粒子). It states there is a smallest unit of energy, length, and time. Similarly, elementary particles, which make up all the visible matter in the universe, are the smallest units of matter. To put it simply, our world is pixelated.

The laws of physics that govern everything in the universe also resemble like computer code lines that a simulation would follow in the execution of the program. Moreover, equations, numbers, and geometric patterns (几何图案) are present everywhere—the world appears to be entirely mathematical.

Another curiosity in physics supporting the hypothesis is the maximum speed limit in our universe, which is the speed of light. In a virtual reality, this limit would correspond to the speed limit of the processor (处理器). We know that an overloaded processor slows down computer processing in a simulation. Similarly, Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity shows that time slows near a black hole.

The nature of our reality is one of the greatest mysteries out there. The more we take the simulation hypothesis seriously, the greater the chances we may one day prove or disprove it.